Chris Marks

Today marks 55 years to the day that Polish workers were on strike in revolt against their so-called 'socialist' authorities. By the 19th of December 1970, 44 workers on the Baltic coast had been murdered by the Polish state and over 1000 people were wounded. Two years earlier in 1968, the same government had, at the behest of Russian imperialism, sent Polish troops to participate in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. They had also engaged in a violent crackdown on student protests across Poland and forced the emigration of 13,000 Polish jews. Both the crackdown and the forced emigration was conducted under the guise of ‘anti-zionism’. In mid-December 1970 the Stalinist government under Wladyslaw Gomulka had announced huge hikes in basic foods. On the 14th of December protests against the measures erupted in cities on the Baltic Coast, with workers walking out of multiple workplaces. In Gdansk, protestors and strikers, predominantly from the Lenin Shipyard marched to the provincial Headquarters for the ruling PZPR Party. The authorities refused to enter negotiations and the highest-level bureaucrats were away in Warsaw. The police gathered to demand the workers to return to work. The protestors seized the police loudspeaker and announced a further rally in front of the building and a General Strike from the following day. The police and security forces roamed the city rounding up workers and beating them. The following day the strikers set fire to the PZPR HQ in Gdansk. The authorities killed 6 people. Hundreds more were wounded. The government appealed for workers to go back to work. Despite this, soldier opened fire on trains carrying workers to the shipyard in Gdynia, killing 11. Elsewhere in town, soldiers and police shot dead a further 7 protesters. Over the next 3 days the protests, strikes and workplace occupations spread across Poland. Gomulka ordered 10k’s of solders and heavy tanks to be deployed to violently crush the resistance and at least 44 people were killed with over 1000 injured. This fuelled the indignation among the population and the growing unrest and spreading strikes and workplace occupations forced the government to reverse the price rises. Even the Russian imperialist overlords had to accept that this was the only way to prevent a potential revolution and acquiesced to Warsaw’s capitulation. Poland would come much closer to that 10 years later when mass strikes resulted in the Gdansk Agreement, where the communist authorities were forced into accepting independent trade unions among other demands, including a demand to build a monument outside the Shipyard in Gdansk, in commemoration of the workers killed in 1970. This remains the first and only monument to Stalinist oppression to be erected by the government that perpetrated it.

45 years ago today, workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Stalinist Poland started an illegal strike in solidarity with Anna Walentynowicz, a shipyard worker sacked by the authorities for organising a union. Over 2 weeks, the strike grew to such proportions that representatives of the monolithic totalitarian state had to scuttle across the picket line to meet representatives of the workers to concede to all their 21 demands. A situation made more humiliating for the grey-suited bureaucrats by the negotiations being broadcast live to the strikers over loudspeakers - a key demand of the workforce themselves and a salient lesson in transparency for trade union leaderships today. Following the victory, the newly legalised independent trade union movement swelled to 10m. A third of the entre adult population of Poland. When the left are once again starry-eyed about a new political project(s), we need reminding that throughout history, the workplace is where our real power exists. The mistake of Corbynism and @PeoplesMomentum was that we didn't use it to build unions and workplace power on the rank and file principles enshrined in disputes like the Polish Autumn of 1980. #YourParty as well as @GreensOrganise must do better.

Meeting @MykhailVolynets who is also a Ukrainian MP who delivered a solidarity message to the British people for their support of Ukraine and for our London demonstration on the 22nd on behalf of the KVPU

Another week of strike action by @G4S guards on the @DWPgovuk contract. G4S - Pay your staff properly. @LabourParty and @Keir_Starmer - Stop throwing £millions of public money at private shareholders and CEOs and insource these workers on decent pay and conditions.

A great week of picket lines across the country for @pcs_union G4S guards on the DWP contract. Workers who protect civil servants, the public, and ministers striking against poverty pay. Specific shoutout to our members at Caxton House for their fierce streadfastness #PayUpG4S

Hey @JasonForCroydon and @yourcroydon you hike our council tax by 15% and can't even collect our bins? If you can't provide this basic service, why should we keep paying towards your salary? #croydon