The Tablet on Poland's Solidarity

- Get the story here.

Jonathan Luxmoore takes readers on a wild ride through Poland's communist past and free-market present. He tips his hat to the Roman Catholic Church for her invaluable support of Solidarity:

Solidarity gained tactical advice from Poland’s unofficial Workers Defence Committee, KOR, which had talked in the Seventies of creating “democratic spaces” and “living freely” under Communism. It drew lessons from Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and smaller dissident groups in Eastern Europe. But the Catholic Church’s role was crucial too. Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution had listed “degrading working conditions” as offences against human dignity, alongside slavery and prostitution. It had also recognised the right of workers to form unions and strike. With the Polish Communist Party’s economic monopoly causing wastage, inefficiency and poverty, these criteria plainly applied.
-------------------------------------
During his June 1979 visit, the Pope had breathed new vitality and hope into the depressed, lifeless atmosphere of his homeland, preaching 32 sermons before 13 million people. Many saw the 1979 visit as a dress rehearsal for Solidarity. For one thing, it had enabled Poles to gather in large numbers for the first time. For another, it had provided a new language of rights and freedoms, based on Catholic social teaching, which was now being repeated by Solidarity leaders.

John Paul II had hinted at how Communist structures could be challenged – not with violent protests like those in the Baltic ports a decade earlier, but through a kind of liberation within, based on conscience, truthfulness and personal integrity. It was no coincidence that, instead of rampaging through the streets of Gdansk, the first act of the shipyard strikers had been to lock themselves in and attend Mass. In such a context, faith and ritual were empowering. They evoked the sense of freedom and dignity that the Pope’s visit had instilled.

Poland’s Communist rulers were confused. They knew how to isolate and suppress popular discontent. But they had no answer to an “independent self-governing trade union” which invoked the country’s international commitments, as well as the teachings of a Church. The Pope had used the term “solidarity” in Redemptor hominis, his first encyclical. In 1981, he followed this up with Laborem exercens. The encyclical was published during Solidarity’s first national congress, against the backdrop of Soviet naval manoeuvres in the nearby Baltic.

When the people allowed the Church's social teaching to transform their hearts and minds, they became a people of conscience. Their solidarity and commitment to the Truth allowed them to achieve justice. Unfortunately, the post-communist Poles did not maintain their transformation one the obvious enemy of totalitarianism was tossed into the dustbin of history:

Having self-confidently proclaimed a new Third Republic after his 1990 election victory, Lech Walesa made an indifferent president, famously admitting he had “no idea how to govern”. Solidarity itself fragmented, as a new infrastructure of political and economic institutions emerged from the ruins of Communism, and ambitious young politicians who had played little if any part in the events of 1980-1981 competed for Solidarity’s mantle and claimed credit for its successes.

Vigorous market-led reforms drove up unemployment and exclusion, and were widely viewed as negating the Solidarity ethos. There was bitter feuding over the future shape of state and society, and it took eight years for Polish voters to approve a constitution. Though pro-life legislation was passed and religious education brought back to schools, these remained under constant pressure. It was easy to conclude that the fruits of the Solidarity revolution had been won by an emerging middle-class, on the backs of heroic workers who were now rewarded with factory and pit closures, the loss of jobs and destruction of livelihoods.

Nevertheless, the Polish people changed the course of history. They also witnessed how putting into practice Catholic Social Teaching leads to a more just society. Their transformation into a people of conscience allowed their nascent civilization of love to ultimately overthrow the Stalinist empire of the Soviet Union.

Imagine what the nations of the world could accomplish today if they followed Poland's example.