[Report from Brixton by Henry Phillips Jaruzelski has…]
Socialist Press1981 1981-04-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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Report from Brixton by Henry Phillips Jaruzelski has succeeded in pushing a law through the Sejm (parliament) banning strikes for two months. He said that if the law wasn't passed he would resign.
This was a clear threat, with the inference that if he goes, Kussian troops will move in.
The first response of Solidarity was clear:
"Suspension of the right to strike will be interpreted by the community as an announcement of measures which can generate these We can only say that we strikes."
Solidarity leaders threw down a chalienge to the Sejm's power:
"No resolution of the parliament will manage to prevent a strike if the security of our union is threatened or a glaring violation of the law occurs The latter point is a challenge in that it effectively states that the union has a right to decide what "the law " is.
This confrontation has weakened the hand of Lech Walesa who has been arguing in Solidarity for an end to strikes.
The question is why the Lech Walesa Midlands: Coventry sup- Midlands: Polish bureaucracy is carrying out this provocation when their policy has up to now been to try to strengthen Walesa and weaken the militarts.
• This policy was once more confirmed by a private speech to militiamen given by Politburo meinber Andrzei Zabinski in which he described how the Polish government hoped to bureaucratise Solidarity.
The reason for Jaruzelski's moves were revealed by his references to the worsening economic crisis which forces the government to act.
Solidarity is right. The 'no. strike' moves were because the government is going onto the offensive. Contained in Jaruzelski's speech was also a proposed austerity programme.
He proposed rationing of off machinery to other workers' states.
And he insisted that 'all goods that don't fulfill basic social needs and can be sold outside the country must be exported', All this is to pay Poland's huge foreign debts.
This "austerity" comes at a time when Jaruzelski himself already admits that life for Polish shoppers is "toriure"
This crisis is not resolvable by peaceful means.
The Polish bureaucracy will not fade away and cannot be reformed out of existence.
It is necessary to build a revolutionary party in Poland to lead a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy and defend the nationalised property relations.
There is a strong possibility of developing such a revolutionary leadership. The mass movement is in a ferment of discussion.
When Polish CP leader Stanislaw Kania last week addressed workers in the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk the questions he was asked showed a very high level of understanding.
Another important question was whai happened to the $26 billion borrowed from the West:
"We don't know how that money was used society has a right to know'"
This latter point, which is really calling for the opening of the books, shows how a transitional programme would connect in with the spontaneous struggle of the Polish masses.
It foliows on a series of similar wide-reaching spontanecus developments such as workers defence sqmads to guard militants against the bureaucracy.
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