Polish Stalinists Bid to Pressure Walesa

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that began to develop in Gdansk develop work in the army so to control the factories-both that it comes under their in terms of production and control through soldiers soviets.

For this the workers will masses must appeal to Strikers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk The strikes called for November 12 by Solidarity, the new unofficial union confederation, were called off when the Polish Supreme Court withdrew the clauses in their union's constitution that had been added by a lower court, This was a clear victory and showed the continuing strength of the mass movement and the difficulties of the Polish bureaucrats.

The main strategy that the bureaucracy is using in order to retain its power and privileges is to put pressure on the icadership of Solidarity. This is proving effective-as has been shown by this week's events.

Two methods are used. One is the 'soft' line of "building up". the importance of the leaders, , particularly Lech Walesa. Last Friday Walesa had a first meeting with Polish Communist Party leader Stanislaw Kania-So displaying Walesa's respectability.

But this is combined with the hard line. In the Southern industrial city of Czestockowa the local governor, in the run-up to November 12, took away all the union's typewriters, refused the use of loudspeaker systems and threatened to use force to suppress the strike.

He also threatened anybody striking with instant dismissal.

And the very next day after the new court ruling, the Communist Party Secretary Tadeusz Grabski announced ban "political strikes"

This double method goes alongside the pressure of the Catholic church. Pope John Paul had another meeting with a member of the Polish Council of State' this week.

This is clearly aimed particularly at curbing Walesa, who is now arguing for an end to the present strikes: "Even when there is just cause there are other ways to settle our grievances without striking"

Waiesa has accepted the necessity of working with the continued existence of bureaucratic 'planning'. As a result, he accepts that because there is shortage of sugar, sugar workers should not strike.

The job of Solidarity, he says, is to get production up and to turn Poland into "another Japan"

Gdansk

Meanwhile the Polish working class continues its struggles. The occupation of the Gdansk Town Hall by 150 health workers and teachers' representatives from all over Poland appears to have won them substantial concessions. The miners' hunger strikes continue against the old union.

The fact that the government is now introducing rationing on a number of basic commodities means in fact that workers will get less-while bureaucrats get the same, since the already thriving market and special and dollar shops continue to exist.

Walesa says "we shall watch into whose pockets the money goes". . But this is meaningless unless it is elected workers' committees that do this watching, and are willing to maintain and use their independence from the bureaucracy.

Overthrow

The necessity for a new éonscious leadership with a programme that directs towards a political revolution to overthrow the Polish bureaucracy becomes clearer every day. It is only with such a Trotskyist leadership and programme that genuinely independent unions can be developed.

The possibilities for this are clear.

A banner now displayed at Warsaw University has the following inscription quoting Lenin: "A police state is a state where policemen earn more than teachers"

This correctly disconnects Lenin from the present Polish bureaucrats, declares that there is in existence in Poland a police state (which obviously cannot be cooperated with) and attacks the inequality in earnings by the oppressive forces of the bureauCracy .

Instead of cooperating with the authorities against strikes, the Polish unions should be need to develop defence militias demanding the opening of the under their own control. books of the economy.

And they must fight through the central strike committees distribution.

Russian army and masses solidarity and similar inde dent action for political rer tion to oust the Stalinist bur They will also have to cracies from the deformed degenerated workers' states.

On this basis, too, the Polish for penolu -and

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