Poles plan protests

Press, 25 October 1982, Page 1

Poles plan protests

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw Underground Solidarityleaders in Poland have challenged the military Government with a call for a new wave of protests culminating in a general strike next spring. The appeal coincided with a message from the interned Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, that “any kind of protest is good,” and that he had refused an offer of freedom in exchange for supporting new trade unions being set up under martial law. In a series of communiques. five top underground organisers, who form a National Co-ordinating Committee (T.K.K.). called for an eight-hour strike on November 10, the second anniversary of the union's registration, and for demonstrations in December to mark a year of martial law. The protests would be a prelude to a general strike, which has been held out as an ultimate weapon by underground chiefs. They said it would take place in the spring and that further details would be published later this year. The T.K.K. is struggling to establish credibility among workers after an initial indecisive reaction to the banning of the union on October 8 and a confused response to strikes in Gdansk and elsewhere last week which were crushed by the authorities.

A Government spokesman, Mr Jerzy Urban, told a press conference last week the disturbances showed that there were groups which refused to give up their struggle, but were incapable of organising protests on a large scale. Mrs Danuta Walesa told Western reporters at her Gdansk home that her husband had been offered his freedom in exchange for supporting the new trade unions being established in place of Solidarity. Asked about his response, she said, "The answer is that my husband is still interned." She said the offer had been made to Mr Walesa by the Trade Union Minister, Mr Stanislaw Ciosek, who visited him in detention shortly before Parliament passed the bill outlawing Solidarity and setting strict rules for new unions. Mrs Walesa, who returned yesterday after a five-day visit to her husband at the remote hunting lodge of Ariamow, near the Soviet border, said he had not been surprised by the banning. "He believes in the ideals of Solidarity and that the Polish spirit is still alive,” she said. Asked about her husband’s opinion of fierce street battles in Nowa Huta last week as workers protested against the dissolution of Solidarity, she said he believed that “any kind of protest is good."