Polish unions divide

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Last Wednesday: in Gdansk 250 delegates, representing 3 million workers, came together to discuss the development of new unions.

They discussed the way that factory managers were harassing workers, threatening them with the loss of social security benefits, to keep them in the old unions.

Lech Walesa, who was in the chair, reported that he had been offered control of the central board of the official trade unions. He correctly turned it down.

Although the conference agreed to coordinate activity, Walesa opposed setting up a single national union. He argued that this would be too much like the 'official' unions.

Bitterly opposed

We are convinced that this argument is wrong. One of the strengths of the Polish bureaucracy is the way that it is able to isolate sections of the working class, through its control of the media. A national union structure would counter such moves.

Similarly, Walesa's insistence that the new unions support the Catholic Church is also dangerously wrong.

The Church hierarchy is fully behind the bureaucracy which has now allowed a Mass to be broadcast on TV and radio for the first time.

And the Catholic Church stands bitterly opposed to the revolutionary theory of Marxism which is vital in the struggle for the overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Eight of the official unions representing 4.7 million workers have now left the official rades Union Council. They n • call themselves independent trade unions.

Suspicious

Members of the new unions rightly look upon this as suspicious, since the 'breakaway' unions still have the same leadership. They regard the breakaway more as a manoeuvre designed to hold on to their membership.

If sections of the leadership of the 'official' unions had genuinely been won over to the movement against bureaucracy then they would be fighting to disband the old Stalinistcontrolled unions and join the movement to form genuine independent trade unions.

Walesa