Polish Bureaucrats Fight for Life

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Monday March 30.

With 10,000 Warsaw Pact troops conducting ostentatious moves in the south of the country and on the Baltic coast; with an increasingly menacing barrage of propaganda from Stalinist regimes in Moscow and Eastern Europe; and with a runaway economic crisis driving them steadily further into debt, the Polish Stalinist regime is being forced into an all-out confrontation with the massed strength of the working class.

Since the shipyard workers of Gdansk triggered a nationwide upsurge of working class militancy last summer an almost continuous tide of struggle has eroded the very fabric of police dictatorship upon which the Warsaw bureaucrats depend for the preservation of their political power and material privileges.

Time and again they have retreated in the face of strikes or threatened strike action. The results have been devastating.

*Thousands of Stalinist bureaucrats have been purged from well-paid posts in the government, party and the state machinery -often as a result of specitic demands by strikers for their removal.

*Those who retain their jobs have come under tight scrutiny from workers angry at their privileged pay and conditions, their luxurious holiday homes, and special shops.

*The rigid censorship of the media and repression of political opposition has broken down: the government has even been forced to agree to the publication of a weekly paper by Solidarity.

*Strikes have forced the Solidarity rally Walesa in negotiations last August release of political dissidents from police custody: a Solidarity defence guard has been established to protect leading members of the reformist KOR grouping from arrest.

*Official monuments have been erected to the victims of previous police violence.

*Strikes have forced the dismissal of plant managers and even begun to challenge basic management decisions-such as the purchase of inferior Rumanian log-cutting machinery.

*Working hours have been cut back-running directly counter to bureaucratic attempts to streamline the economy at the expense of thousands of jobs.

*The radicalisation embodied in the emergence of Solidarity as a 10-million-strong union has flowed over into the Polish Communist Party -a third of whose three million members are also in Solidarity. There are insistent demands that the Communist Party reconvene its congress and hold new leadership elections-which could only result in the wholesale removal of diehard Stalinist bureaucrats.

In every respect the concessions they have made in the last nine months have weakened the Polish regime while increasing the self-confidence and militancy of the working class, raising its political consciousness and establishing the first tentative moves towards workers' control the hitherto bureaucratically controlled So powerful and uninterrupted has been the forward movement of the Polish workers that the Kania regime has been unable to find any secure means of drawing Lech Walesa and the Solidarity leadership into the bureaucratic machinery.

Eruption

At each point that Walesa has looked set firmly against strike action there has been a fresh eruption of struggle that has forced him and other Solidarity leaders back onto the offensive.

Last Friday's 4-hour general strike was testimony to the unparallelled strength of the movement that has now developed, and therefore the scale of the challenge to the bureaucracy.

The strike was total: the only exceptions were services judged to be essential by the Solidarity leadership.

If the Polish Stalinists do not soon take a stand they face an irreversible weakening of the very fabric of bureaucratic dictatorship.

And breathing over their shoulders in this crucial test of determination are the Kremlin leaders and their fellow Stalinist bureaucrats all over Eastern Europe.

They know only too well that if the Polish bureaucracy finally loses its grip, then the tide of struggle will flow rapidly beyond the Polish borders to challenge the power and privileges of every Stalinist bureaucrat.

This message was spelt out to Polish party chief Kania in no uncertain terms by Brezhnev at the recent Soviet party congress.

And since that point Kania has shifted somewhat from his previous conciliationist course. Leading KOR dissident Jacek Kuron has been arrested and charged; Polish party leaders have gone onto a political offensive against Solidarity and its demands; and, in what appears very much like a deliberate provocation, Solidarity and peasant leaders were beaten up by police in Bydgoszcz after being evicted from a council meeting.

Endorsed

As protests mounted against this police violence, the Politburo went out of its way to endorse the police action. The Solidaritv leadership was put on the spot-and, under mass pressure, called the warning strike for Friday.

The union's three demands are far less wide-reachine than the charter of economic and political demands which were conceded late last summer in a last ditch bid to prevent the Gdansk strike wave becoming an all-out general strike.

They are seeking the punishment of the officials responsible for the beating; an amnesty for political dissidents; and the recognition of an independent farmers' union.

But instead of conceding even part of these demands the Politburo and the Central Committee reaffirmed its tough stance yesterday as the Tuesday strike deadline drew closer.

Martial law

It is rumoured that the bureaucracy has drawn up plans to sit out a 30-day General Strike, using martial law restrictions against mass mobilisations on the streets.

With food stocks in Poland reportedly as low as 12 days? supply, this could mean that the Warsaw bureaucrats are contemplating an attempt to literally starve Solidarity back to work.

This is the only way that they could hope to create the conditions to reimpose rigid police dictatorship and the authority of the party bureauIn this context, Soviet troops already in Poland could be used alongside Polish troops Continued back

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Reprinted from Labor News, paper of the Socialist League (DC) USA. repression Washington, March 9: More than 10,000 miners converged on Washington D.C. to give Reagan a message: "We will strike as long as necessary to protect our black lung benefits," said one miner from Ohio, expressing the sentiment of the thousands of miners and other workers from throughout the country.

The rally and two day strike was called after Reagan's political advisor Brady declared that 88% of the miners on black lung benefits are really not entitled to them.

This slander against the of thousands of miners and the threat by Reagan to gut the programme forced United Mine Workers President to call a mass rally in front of the UMWA hall and lead a march on the White House.

The rally, which brought miners from as far away as Kentucky and Illinois, was addressed by Church along with West Virginia Governor Jay Rockefeller and many trade union leaders:

The attempt by Church to* include Rockefeller in the rally was an insult to every miner, since Rockefeller, along with the rest of the Democrats, is presently supporting the major budget cutting now going on in the Congress. Also speaking at the rally was AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland. Kirkland won cheers from the miners by reporting that they had support from throughout the labour movement.

"Your brothers and sisters of the AFL-CIO are behind you all the way. This is an important one, but there will be other fights. Any man who would take benefits from miners would stop at nothing."

•Kirkland, however, failed to call any rally or strike by the AFL-CIO to back up his words of support.

Also attending the rally were workers from other Washington area unions, including the Seafarers International Union, hospital wo: workers.

Labor many of marched received feelings.

rkers and transit News interviewed the miners as they and rallied and vivid view of their Solidarity Jack Justice, a miner in his early thirties from Mecklen County, West Virginia, thought "the other unions should join in solidarity".

Jim Miller, another miner from Mecklen County, said "I'm not concerned about myself, but my family when I die. My mother gets a black lung cheque from the death of my father and she would not be able to live without that cheque. don't even have a chance to pick up their benefits but their families get it and Reagan would end that."

Another miner siad that they were striking and rallying for workers throughout the country. "We're doing this for everybody that will be affected by budget cuts. The black lung benefits cutback would • also affect workers with asbestos problems. This is a human concern. An injury to one is an injury tó all."

Along with placards and banners against the black lung budget cuts were banners against US intervention in E1 Salvador. Wednesday April, the Reagan programme. Following on the forced wage cuts on the Chrysler workers, the government is now moving to blackmail railroad workers whose contract expires on April Reagan is proposing to shut down Conrail with the loss of 26,000 railroad jobs unless the unions make major concessions on wages.

At the samé time, in the airline industry, the Carter and Reagan government, using deregulation, are seeking to force wage cuts down the throats of the airline workers.

Both Continental and PSA airlines used scab labour to break the latest strikes and recently the Continental workers voted to take a 10% wage cut.