Although Solidarity was officially christened in 1980, its roots can be traced some ten years earlier. Protesting against plunging living standards workers at the Lenin Shipyards called a strike, with the army promptly called in to intervene. Bloody clashes led to the deaths of 45 people, and ultimately forced Władysław Gormułka out of power. Replaced by Edward Gierek, his half-mad economic policies served to create an illusion of prosperity, as well as generating a flush of jobs in Gdańsk’s Nowy Port area. But the memory of 1970 did not fade and Gdańsk remained a ticking bomb for the authorities. With the seventies drawing to a close tensions started to rise again, with living standards falling and the economy in huge debt built on massive foreign debt.
In August, 1980 the dismissal of a female crane operator at Gdańsk’s Lenin Shipyards provided the spark for workers to go on strike. Workers already disillusioned with price increases and the falling value of their salaries were ready to take action. Lech Wałęsa and other activists were already planning strike action but it soon became clear that momentum within the yard was growing quickly and it was this that spurred Wałęsa to famously scale the wall of the Lenin shipyard to take control. Wałęsa with his trademark sharp trading managed to steer his colleagues away from mere wage demands towards the idea of creating a trade union movement to represent the workers and to fight injustice. This time the workers learned from the mistakes of 1970 and did not confront the authorities but instead locked themselves into the shipyards. Three days later leaders representing workers from over 150 industrial plants met in the shipyards to hammer out 21 demands, including the legalisation of independent trade unions. Days of tension followed, with tanks and armed units stationed menacingly outside the gates of the shipyards. On August 31 the government backed down, agreeing to meet the 21 demands - thereby marking the first peaceful victory over communism. A month later, on September 22, delegates from 36 regional unions met in Gdańsk forming a coalition under the name of Solidarity. Lech Wałęsa, the unlikely hero of August, was elected as chairman. The next few months marked a golden period for the nation; some ten million people joined the Solidarity movement, and Poland enjoyed a freedom unknown for decades.
Riding the crest of a wave Solidarity continued to lobby for further reforms and free elections, infuriating the Kremlin. With Soviet invasion a looming threat the Polish President, General Jaruzelski, declared a state of martial law on December 13, 1981, and tanks once again rolled through the streets. Though Solidarity was officially dissolved, and its leaders imprisoned, it continued to operate underground. When Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, Solidarity’s chaplain, was abducted and murdered by the secret police over a million people attended his funeral.
Renewed labour strikes and a faltering economy forced Jaruzelski into initiating talks with opposition figures in 1988, and the following year Solidarity was once again granted legal status. Participating in Poland’s first post-communist election the party swept to victory, with Wałęsa leading from the front. In spite of overseeing Poland’s transition to a market economy, Solidarity gradually found their power being eroded by the emergence of fresher political parties.
The 2000 elections for the Sejm (lower parliament) sounded the death knell for the party. Failing to even make the minimum vote to qualify for representation in parliament, the party which changed history found itself essentially vanishing from the political map.

Further reading

The Polish Revolution: Solidarity
Timothy Garton Ash



Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award ‘The Polish Revolution: Solidarity’ counts as the seminal work covering the Solidarity era, and ranks as one of the most important books written on post-war European history. As one of a handful of Western journalists based in Poland throughout the 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash offers an insider, eye-witness account, from his arrival to what was then the Lenin Shipyards, to a 1997 meeting with General Jaruzelski in post-communist, capitalist Poland. First penned in 1983, the book has been re-published three times, most recently in 2002. However revisions to the text have been kept to a minimum.

Although postscript chapters have been added, much of the original text remains the same, and his prose is a tense, bleak reflection on the times. Written at the height of the cold war, the author is left to reflect in one of the concluding chapters ‘There is no historical law which says that empires must evolve peacefully, and the post-war history of Eastern Europe gives us little reason to believe this one will. It is therefore probable that those tensions will not be reduced, and we shall, sooner or later, face a nuclear war’. There is little cause for optimism in Ash’s original work, and the author clearly holds the view that Poland is doomed to remain under the thumb of the Kremlin for decades to come.

Covering the meteoric rise of Solidarity – within months of its inception some ten million Poles were members, including some 30% of the ruling Communist elite – Ash documents the innocence and idealism of the early months, and of the imminent threat of Soviet invasion. The background to the strikes is covered in detail – including the protests in 1970 – and no stone is left unturned in this meticulous work.

The key players in the drama are examined in minute detail, and the author paints a vividly lifelike picture of Lech Wałęsa: ‘Now he teases the crowd in Victory Square. His speech is impossible to reproduce, disjointed, full of slang, wildly ungrammatical, at times almost nonsensical… and then the masterly common touch… was he speaking off the top off his head? Either way, the crowd love it’.

One highlight of the book is the authors time spent inside the ‘Rzeszów Commune’, the HQ of Solidarity’s rural offshoot. His account of daily life with the strikers is something left out of books of the same genre: ‘sprits are buoyed up, sustained by ample home made bread, mounds of fresh butter, cheese and meat. People play chess and cards, watch the television, and engage in long, earnest discussions – apparently the greatest pleasure’.

Writing with flashes of dry wit, Ash describes an old Poland that will appear familiar to anyone who has ventured off the well-trodden tourist route: ‘there are three classes of road in rural Poland, bad, very bad and impassable. The road to Łowisko is very bad. At one point the remains of a collapsed bus make it impassable. Two wheels and most of the bodywork have been left behind in the snow like a discarded snake skin. “Polska gospodarka” roars Stanisław Krasoń as we negotitate the frozen ditch: “Polish economy!”’.
However it is the chapter on the declaration of Martial Law that carries the most impact. Simply titled ‘War’, the shock and bewilderment of the governments actions is carried through to the reader. ‘People could not have been more taken aback if martians had landed’, comments one onlooker. Although expertly organized, leaders of Solidarity were completely caught on the hop by General Jaruzelski. Within hours communications had been cut, and the lions share of leaders apprehended. The tension of those days translates superbly into print.

As we know, Poland went on to buckle the communist system, and this book serves as a superb window into the past; an important reminder on a chapter of history that is still relatively unknown in the west. In his postscript the author examines the failings of Solidarity post 1989, as well its role in the collapse of Soviet Union. This is a weighty read, but the author succeeds in turning a serious subject into an addictive lesson in Poland’s stormy past.

In Your Pocket verdict: 9/10.