Open letter from the market. The necessity of preparing oneself for a confrontation, to know where one is going, how, and with what in hand, is thus a question raised more and more frequently by the combative workers. Polish workers
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY comes up in the discussions is the international context in which the struggle intervention, while it is present in every mind, is much less of an obstacle than in the past to discussion on the question of power and the perspective of a confronwith the military junta. On the other hand, questions on the attitude of workers in other countries of Eastern Europe are very frequent. The feeling that the fate of the Polish revolution is in great part linked to the extension of their struggle and the support that the workers of these countries receive internationally, is a lot deeper than in the past.
is impossible to prediet today what will happen in the Eastern we know nevertheless what we must do within the Western workers
The impact of the demonstrations of 20,000 in Paris and 40,000 in Rome after the banning of Solidarnosc was immense in Poland. The call of the Italian trade unions to the European workers organisations to take up unified workers - an appeal widely broadcast by Western radio in Poland - has also raised many hopes among those who
The appeal from the Co-ordinating of the Big Enterprises in which we publish below, addressed for the first time not only to trade unions, but also to the Western workers parties. We should do everything possible to circulate it and respond to those who have addressed us
The dates set by the Solidarnosc leadership in the weeks to come should set the pace for our activities. should be a lever we use to win the broadest solidarity, through actions from demonstrations to one-hour solidarity strikes, and taking up the proposal to give one hour's salary to the outlawed Solidarnosc, and the organisation of rallies and meetings that will inform Western workers of the true aims of the struggle of the Polish workers, the difficulties and the progress of the underground movement in its struggle against the minority in power.
On November 10 and 11, on December 13, 'anniversary' of the crackdown by Jaruzelski, the Western workers movement, and revolutionary Marxists in particular should show the Polish workers that they are at their side, and that they will support them in every stage of the struggle without respite in which they are engaged.
General Jaruzelski's junta is moving systematically to wipe out every vestige of the gains the workers made in the wake of the August 1980 strike. On October 8, 1982, following the directions of the apparatchniks and the Orgbureau
Polish United Workers the deputies approved a law 'dissolving' the Independent Self-Managed Union Solidarnosc. By this action, the junta not only trampled on the August 1980 accords and all the agreements signed with the Independent workers and farmers organisations in the period from August 1980 to December 1981. It also dishonoured the pledge it itself made on December 16, that Solidarnose and the other unions would be allowed to resume functioning in accordance with their charters.
Today, through such civilian mouthpieces as Rakowski, the junta is trying to convince a terrorized society and interpublic opinion that since December 13 Solidarnose has not sought any dialogue or mutual understanding and therefore must now be liquidated in the interest of 'socialism' and 'world
We want you to know that these claims are abject lies. On many occasions, the members of Solidarnosc and their under ground leadership, including our Solidar-
Inter-Enterprise Warsaw, have demonstrated their readiness for discussion and dialogue. only condition we posed was an elemenone that was humanitarian as we asked for the release of Lech Walesa and the other arrested and interned members of Solidarnose. We were prepared to engage in such dialogue even in the circumstances of the state of war,
From the end of June to the end of August, we declared a moratorium on demonstrations throughout the country. At the start of July, the statement entitled 'Five Times Yes,' which was distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, the underground leadership of Solidarnosc officially said it was ready to engage in discussion and dialogue. Again, in a leaflet drawn up for the August were planned to be peaceful but were turned into a bloodbath by the police, the Solidarnosc leadership appealed to the junta for a compromise and a mutual understanding. Four days before these demonstrations, with the agreement of the underground leadership, five leaders of Solidarnosc, together with representatives of the Confederation of Autonomous Unions, addressed a joint letter to Jaruzelski, including an urgent appeal for junta rejected not only the appeals issued by the underground Solidarnosc. It also ignored Church to achieve conciliation. Appeals advisors and individual leaders of the union for dialogue and compromise also against a wall of silence. memorandum of leading Polish intellectuals belonging to the study group Doswiadczenie i Pryslosc' ('Experience and the Future') and the theses of members of Solidarnose contained in the work The September Following December -all these ended up in the generals' trash
These facts show that in this dramatic moment of our national history workers movement organized in Solidar nosc displayed political maturity and
The junta, on the other hand, was and still is prepared to sacrifice anything to maintain itself in power - the lives of workers, the economy, and national sovereignty. This, in fact, has been avowed in an open and cynical way by the junta's press spokesman Urban 'the government can always feed itself.' It should not be forgotten either that in the sixteen months in which it operated openly, the most notable show of force a union of ten million workers was the removal from a factory in a wheelbarrow of two bosses of the corrupt old unions. But what sort of a record has the junta accumulated over the past ten months - dozens of workers murdered, hundreds tortured by the police and imprisoned, thousands sentenced to long years in prison for their trade-union hundreds of thousands subjected to terror in the militarized fac-
If you hear the junta's mouthpieces telling you about 'bloody plots' supposedly being hatched by our union, remember that they are the representatives of murderers whose authority is based precisely on this record of violence and terror.
In Poland today, the authorities see the unions more as a police problem than as a means for the political and economic emancipation of the working class. To prevent any misunderstanding, we should point out here that the military junta is not fighting to defend socialism. It is fighting to protect its rule and its privileges. It is for this reason that it has no interest in dialogue with Solidarnosc. If there are any who still believe that what is at issue in Poland is defense of
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hope that you will focus attention on the fact that the so-called trade-union law passed on October 8 is in violation of the convention of the International Labour Organization and that it in fact puts recognition of new unions in the hands of the secret police. The sort of trade-union movement the junta is projecting for the coming years is nothing but the 'model' followed by Pinochet in Chile. The application of this 'model' involves the transformation of the entire state administration into a kind of 'army of overseers' endowed with special rights and privileges, on the model of the old Czarist "Table of Ranks' (the Nomenklatura).
We are convinced that the unions and the workers parties in the West are prepared to take up a consistent struggle in support of the rights of labour in Poland We are convinced that in supporting Sol darnosc you will also find an effectin way for defending the fundamen interests and rights of workers West. For today and the days that ahead, we are depending on you for and solidarity. That is what we look most of all from you. From us, then one thing you can count on - that will fight on against the junta.
Solidarnose Has Not Perished. signed: Miedzysakladowy Robotniczy Komitet Solidarnosci Warszawa Solidarnosc Warsaw Inter-Workplace Workers Committee October 17
British Labour Party leader
Polem supports Solidarnosc
***
Harold
'people's power' or 'collective ownership of the means of production, they are, if we may be permitted to speak plainly,
To
Zbigniew Bujak
President of the Regional Executive Commission of Solidarity, Warsaw
'hopeless idiots.? The junta in Poland is to maintain at any cost endeavouring a 'socialism for idiots, a socialism based on the whip, terror, corruption, prisons,
Labour Leader of the Greater London Council, London military despotic factory managers, commissars, police agents, and apparatchniks. The Polish workers have already had
To you, and through you to all the members of Solidarity in Warsaw I quite enough of this kind of 'socialism' send my cordial greetings and warmest best wishes. I wish you victory in and 'people's power.' your struggle to defeat the martial law regime of General Jaruzelski and to
The junta thinks that it has 'dissolved' reinstate your union rights and all the other democratic conquests of the
Solidarnose.
So, some of you may be wondering whether there is still any point
As a representative of the labour movement in the city of London I will do today in talking about Solidarnosc and all I can to develop links between the labour movement in this city and supporting it. You should know that your free trade union in the historic city of Warsaw. This is in the interests
Solidarnose cannot be 'dissolved,' since of our common struggle for human, civil and workers rights and for demothe Polish working class cannot be dissolved.' It can be crushed, but that would mean the physical smashing of Polish reactionary military labour. This is no exaggeration on our part.
threatens us too because it would strengthen the reactionary
"freedom.'
You say "Solidarnosc' forces in our country who today are energetically attacking working class we say
You say 'socialism,' we say "justice and rights, union freedoms and the right to strike self-management.' Ask yourselves, can the
Your struggle against the martial law regime and for the establishment of workers' aspirations for freedom, justice, peace in Poland unites with the struggle of our labour movement for a decent life, and control over their workpeace, nuclear disarmament and against the danger of war in Europe and places be confined within prison walls?
Solidarnose has not
Since they cannot,
'dissolved. Even been, and cannot be,
We are nearing the second anniversary of the historic victory of the Polish driven underground and with many of its workers, the registration of your free trade union in Eastern Europe. I am itself leaders and activists jailed, and sure that through the struggle of the Polish workers, in which you are a prominent leader, Solidarity will be able to return to legal activity and
'dissolved, Solidarnose still strikes fear defend efficiently the rights, the dignity and the interests of the workers.
into the generals and the apparatchniks.
Friends,
I am giving this letter to another of your union leaders, Mr. Zbigniew
We are hoping for joint statements and
Kowalewski, whom I have had the pleasure to meet at our annual Labour mass actions by the unions and workers
Party Congress in Blackpool, with the request that he transmit it to you.
parties in the West in defence of the Soliwould be very happy for you to publish this letter in your Solidarity darnosc leaders persecuted by the junta.
We hope that you will call the military
'gorillas' to account before world public opionion on every possible occasion for their record of violence and terror. We
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From
Ken Livingstone
Dear Friend.
Polish working class.
cratic socialism.
The consolidation of the the world.
underground press.
friendliest greetings,
Ken Livingstone dictatorship in Poland political
"We will not be fooled a second time"
Letter from a Polish worker
Reactivating the unions is a fundamen- is called for is uniting this struggle,
The following