Poland: the bitter hatred between rulers and ruled

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 15

Poland: the bitter hatred between rulers and ruled

From

NEAL ASCHERSON

in London

It looks as if the latest eruption of strikes and riots in Poland has subsided. The workers in the Gdansk shipyards ended their protest strike after being told the yards had been militarised and they faced five-year jail sentences if the ’ demonstrations continued.

There were street demonstrations and fighting in at least three Polish cities that day — marking the tenth month of martial law — but there is no sign so far that a more general revolt is beginning. General Jaruzelski must be a very relieved man. The strikes at Gdansk and Gdynia posed a quite different quality ■ of threat ’ from the street disturbances which

have become an almost familiar event in . Polish cities since the spring. For the first time since December, when martial law was imposed and Solidarity was suspended, the workers occupied. the shipyards and embarked on what looked like a full-dress challenge to the State which, three days before, had finally dissolved Solidarity. Polish political events often resemble a well-under-stood game, in which the opponents make successive moves in a familiar sequence. Conflict between people and regime has developed its own rules. Thus, when the first shift at the Lenin Shipyard went on strike, occupying the

yard, barricading the gates, electing a strike committee, and issuing lists of demands to the authorities, they were repeating the opening gambit played in December, 1970, .and in August, 1980. And the Government knew all too well what might follow.

In 1970, the strikes which began in the shipyards led to the fall of Wladyslaw Gomulka and his replacement by Edward Gierek as party leader. In 1980, the same shipyard led a national movement which forced Gierek’s regime — he fell a few days later — to accept free trade unions and a programme for democratic reform.

If the Gdansk strikers had managed to hold. out, it

would have been hard to avoid a 1982 crisis on the same scale. According to the rules of the game, they would have set up regional inter-factory strike committees along the Baltic coast, and the other big factories and mines in the rest of Poland would have started to follow their example. Poland would then have been approaching the brink of a general strike, in which the Communist regime would have been forced to choose between giving way to the workers’ demands — reinstatement’ of Solidarity and the release of all the detainees — or a desperate resort to force which could lead to civil war and perhaps Soviet military intervention.

This did not happen. In the first place, the shipyard workers were unable to make the strike spread: other factories in Gdansk and the Paris Commune shipyard in nearby Gdynia seem "to have joined them, but the movement did not spread along the whole coast as it had done before. Neither was there any real movement of support elsewhere in Poland, apart from a brief strike in the Cegielski works at Poznan. As an embittered worker at Gdansk remarked: “If only

one coal mine had come out with us, it might have been different” The reason for the failure to make the strike movement take off was that the Polish situation is no longer that of 1970 or 1980. In those years, the strikers challenged an unnerved and unprepared party leadership, which was ready to ditch some of its personalities and change its policies in order to stave off the threat of revolution. Those leaderships were not, in their majority, prepared to repress strikes with bloodshed. When Gomulka

ordered his forces to open fire on the Baltic coast in 1970, his fate was sealed by his own colleagues.

These conditions for a successful strike wave no longer exist in Poland. First, the Military Council of National Salvation seized power in December last yelr precisely because its members believed that no further retreat was possible. Jaruzelski is plainly convinced that he is the last barrier between Poland and civil wan if he were to restore Solidarity, or resign in favour of some more “liberal" figure, he assumes that the forces of revolution would press on to overthrow the very Communist regime itself.

Second, the martial law Government has thoroughly lost its innocence where the use of force is concerned. It came to power by violence; it has brought about the death of more than a dozen Poles by violence used against popular protest; and it is entirely prepared to use whatever degree of violence is required to enforce its will in future (although it is worth pointing out that the latest clashes in Gdansk and elsewhere do not appear to have led to any more deaths so far).

But it remains true that it is the strike weapon which is the most dangerous to the regime. Street rioting, even when crowds trv to attack

party buildings and battle with the police, can be contained. And if the riot squads can evict strikers from their factories into the streets, the regime can breathe more easily. If. however, the working class became so desperate that a general occupation strike developed throughout Poland, the regime would be forced to send for Soviet troops or collapse. There seems to be no easy way to bridge the gap of hatred and mistrust between rulers and ruled. One possible bridge, the partial restoration of Solidarity, has been blown up by the decision to abolish the union. Each side is strong, but not strong enough to overthrow

the other. General Jaruzelski is unlikely to fall back on the Stalinist methods of total terror which were used in Poland in the 19505. The Solidarity underground has called for fresh protest demonstrations on November 10, the second anniversary of the free union’s registration, but it must now be aware that its influence is not yet strong enough to call a national general strike with much hope of success. (The latest strikes at Gdansk were apparently spontaneous.) It is deadlock, and it looks as if Poland is condemned to unhappiness, instability, and privation for many years to come. — Copyright, London Observer Service.