The unheralded heroes of Solidarity
On Aug. 31, 1980, the unbelievable seemed possible for millions of Poles when Lech Walesa and other workers laid down their tools for 17 days at the Gdansk shipyard. Using a huge plastic pen adorned with the image of Pope John Paul II, Walesa signed an agreement with the communist government giving workers the right to set up free trade unions. It was a hard-won victory.
Despite hearing only scraps of information from the state-run media, the nation was spellbound at the unfolding events and the courage of the workers, who lived in fear of government retribution. People were still haunted by memories of bloody protests in 1956, 1970 and 1976. On Aug. 16, when the director of the shipyard promised the strikers a pay rise and agreed to hire back Anna Walentynowicz, (a co-founder of free trade unions in late 1970s), workers were close to ending their strike. But Gdansk tram driver Henryka Krzywonos, who represented the city's public transport, pleaded with them to continue protesting for the sake of other, smaller strike actions.
Krzywonos is unsure whether she was the one who came up with the movement's name, but it was after her speech that Walesa decided to continue the protest. It was also then that workers prepared their famous list of 21 articles, including the right to strike. From that time on, protest swept the country and the Solidarity movement was born.
Last week, Solidarity celebrated its 20th birthday. The anniversary was a relatively muted affair. Telewizja Polska took some of the grandeur out of the celebrations by depriving viewers of live transmissions from Gdansk. Shipyard workers complained they hadn't been invited to the Tuesday celebration for the launch of the "Paths to Freedom" exhibition. It's on these kinds of occasions that one can see the different paths many of the "ludzie Solidarnosci" (people of Solidarity) took.
But ultimately it's probably more important to remember all those anonymous members of Solidarity who joined the strikes in the 1980s and supported the union during the hard times of martial law and underground resistance. They never went on to become well-known politicians, but they were among the millions who helped to pull down the Berlin Wall and finally break out of the Soviet straitjacket.
For the sake of future anniversaries, people should ask themselves whether those Solidarity members from the 1980s should join the celebrations, rather than waste time discussing President Aleksander Kwasniewski's lack of participation. He didn't want "to be part of the pack that was rushing to join Solidarity" in 1980 anyway, as he said in an interview.
