Lech Walesa: Union Leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
By Jason Sibert
Lech Walesa’s life has been defined by building a movement via people power.
Walesa led a movement to shake off Communist rule in Poland called Solidarity, a labor union. Solidarity is a testament to the power of people-centered movements to change society. Walsea worked as both an electrician and a car mechanic before building the social movement that would change the fate of Eastern Europe.
He was born in 1943 and started taking an interest in worker-centered activism in 1968 when he encouraged workers at the Lenin Shipyard (where he worked) to boycott official rallies that condemned student strikes. Walsea organized illegal protests in 1970 at the Gdańsk Shipyard where workers protested the government’s decree raising food prices. He was considered chairmen of the strike committee. The strike’s outcome, which resulted in the death of 30 workers, galvanized Walsea’s views on the need for social change. In 1976, he lost his job at Gdansk due to his involvement in illegal unions. He worked for several companies after that, but his activities left him jobless for long periods of time. Walsea and his family were under constant surveillance by the Polish Secret Police for years, as his home and workplace were always bugged.
Walsea worked closely with the Workers Defense Committee, a group that leant aid to people arrested after the strikes of 1976. In 1978, he became an activist of the underground Free Trade Unions of the Coast. On 14 August 1980, another rise in food prices led to a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, of which Wałęsa was one of the instigators. Wałęsa climbed over the shipyard fence and quickly became one of the strike leaders. The strike inspired other similar strikes in Gdańsk, which then spread across Poland. Wałęsa headed the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, coordinating the workers at Gdańsk and at 20 other plants in the region. Later that year, the government, represented by Mieczyslaw Jagielski, signed an accord with the Strike Coordinating Committee. The agreement granted the Lenin Shipyard workers the right to strike and permitted them to form an independent trade union. The Strike Coordinating Committee legalized itself as the National Coordinating Committee of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) Free Trade Union, and Wałęsa was chosen as chairman of the Committee. The Solidarity trade union quickly grew, ultimately claiming over 10 million members—more than a quarter of Poland’s population. Walesa’s role in Solidarity made him a voice on the international stage.
Wałęsa held his position until 1981, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland. Wałęsa and many other Solidarity leaders and activists were arrested; he was incarcerated for 11 months near the Soviet border. On 8 October 1982, Solidarity was outlawed. In 1983, Wałęsa applied to return to the Gdańsk Shipyard as an electrician. The same year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was unable to accept it himself, fearing Poland’s government would not let him back into the country. His wife Danuta accepted the prize on his behalf.
Throughout the 1980’s, Walsea continued Solidarity-related activities. Every issue of the leading underground weekly publication “Tygodnik Mazowsze” bore his motto, “Solidarity will not be divided or destroyed”. Following a 1986 amnesty for Solidarity activists, Wałęsa co-founded the Provisional Council of NSZZ Solidarity, the first overt legal Solidarity entity since the declaration of martial law. From 1987 to 1990, he organized and led the semi-illegal Provisional Executive Committee of the Solidarity Trade Union. In mid-1988, he instigated work-stoppage strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard.
After months of strikes and political deliberations, at the conclusion of the 10th plenary session of the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polish Communist Party), the government agreed to Round Table Negotiations that lasted from February to April 1989. Wałęsa was an informal leader of the non-governmental side in the negotiations. During the talks, he traveled throughout Poland giving speeches in support of the negotiations. At the end of the talks, the government signed an agreement to re-establish the Solidarity Trade Union and to organize semi-free elections to the Polish parliament; in accordance with the Round Table Agreement, only members of the Communist Party and its allies could stand for 65 percent of the seats in the lower house. In 1989, Walsea brought together leaders of various pollical parties to form a non-Communist coalition government. The Communist state withered away. Walsea served as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995.
Walsea earned more than 30 state decorations and more than 50 awards from 30 countries. He’s still living today at age 78. His life and work is tribute to the power of people to organize peacefully and work for an alternative vision of society against the powers that be. Could a membership-based organization, inspired by Solidarity, emerge in the United States to take on the powers of the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, low-wage employers and other powers that threaten the idea of a democratic-republic?
Jason Sibert is Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project.
