He dared to be himself

On August 14th 1980 a little man scrambled over the wall of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk and jumped on a makeshift platform where the works director was persuading men to call off the strike. It was Lech Walesa. ‘Remember me?’ he shouted to the man who had fired him four weeks before.

Now, no one will ever forget Walesa.  Little did he think that in the next 76 days, three million Poles would have joined his protest; that overseas be would be voted 'Man of the Year' and later win a Nobel Peace Prize.

During the past two hundred years Poland has endured bombing and bloodbath, purge and pogrom, carve-up and crucifixion, yet today the heart of Poland beats as strongly as ever. In 1939 the Hilter-Stalin pack wiped Poland off the map. One million were deported to Siberia and 15,000 officers were buried in a mass grave at Katyn. In the German area there was genocide. 

After the war when Poland became part of the Soviet sphere almost the entire democratic leadership was arrested and deported. Before the elections of '47 a million electors were disenfranchised and 142 candidates arrested. Inspite of revolts in ‘56, ‘70 and '76 life in Poland, for all but the privileged few, remained grim.

Only the Church and private agriculture lay outside Government control. The Church has held Polish history together for centuries.  Polish faith is wholehearted and intense. ln 1968 Cardinals had to spell out the human rights of all citizens. When one of them was elected Pope in '78 there was an immense upsurge of hope. When John Paul ll visited Poland in the following year his theme was ‘the inalienable rights of man’ and ‘the destiny of the Polish people’. Overnight the intellectuals had found common cause with the Church and the workers.

When the price of meat went up by 80% in July 1980, the 18,900 workers in Lenin Shipyard locked themselves in. This was when Walesa came over the wall (‘My blood was boiling,’ he says). Negotiations, broadcast to the yard, went on for 16 days. When an agreement was signed, it reinstated Walesa, promised free trade unions and a memorial for the workers who had been killed in 1970. Tapes and pamphlets carried the details all over the country and branches of Solidarity sprang up.

For most of 1981 the world held its breath, remembering Budapest and Prague, as it watched an astonishing balancing act.

The Polish Government knew that the 500,000 Soviet troops on the border would invade if the Party lost control. lt tried to delay implementing the Gdansk Agreement and infiltrated agents to provoke Solidarity and split it from the masses. ln February, General Jaruzelki took over the Government.

Meantime Solidarity struggled to organise itself. The miracle was that the ten million mass membership who had just tasted freedom and were ablaze with national feeling didn't get out of hand and try to sieze power or threaten Soviet strategic interests. They did seek free speech, freedom of the press (which is guaranteed in the constitution), free trade unions and Mass on national radio. Walesa said, ''We just want to build new within the system. That’s all.’ But it was a fundamental challenge to the Soviet idea. The Church helped restrain those who wanted a ‘show-down. Walesa shuttled across Poland, ‘permanently in a hurry’, organising Solidarity, dealing with crises, encouraging and restraining. 

Finally, in the early hours of December 13th, Jaruzelski spoke to the Polish nation.

He accused solidarity of plotting to overthrow the state and declared a 'state of war’. Tanks rolled into Warsaw, telephone lines were cut and cities isolated. During the next few hours, doors were smashed and thousands of Solidarity activists arrested. Lech Walesa was imprisoned.

Walesa was released after 11 months. He is back home with Donuta and the children and working in the yard. But he was watched night and day and physically prevented from attending public demonstrations.

Lech Walesa we born into a giant family in 1943. He came to Gdansk in 1963 to work as a shipyard electrician. He was on the committee of the 1970 strike and in '76 was sacked for criticising the Party leader at a trade union meeting. After that he was frequently arrested in his fight for free trade unions.

Lech is a character. When he speaks with his hoarse, sometime stammering style, the crowds love his humorous patter. He is a born negotiator, stubborn yet realistic. He quickly became a symbol and a legend with his well-known moustache and two raised clenched fists. The masses followed him because, after years of government double-talk, he said what everyone was feeling, met top Government bosses, fearless and friendly, and talked to them as equals. He dared to be himself – a worker, a Pole and a Christian.

His faith is the real secret of his strength. He said to Paris Match, ‘it is indispensable. If I was not a believer, l would not be the man I am. He practised meditation, (‘We must somehow help people to put things right inside themselves.') He believes God has called him to keep alive the memory of the martyrs.

This has been an amazing chapter in Poland’s history. The world watched with awe as the unthinking happened – workers revolting in a Marxist state – young men and women singing as the militia clubbed them. 'Better to die on our feet than do like on our knees' – above all a 16-month long passionate national revolution without one act of violence!

The masses had been prepared. The Church had widened her concerns. But the key was the brave little man who made it all come together.