Poland`s Communist Party Central Committee met Monday to grapple with a problem that has refused to disappear in the seven years since martial law was declared to crush Solidarity: What to do with the banned trade union.
Party sources say the two-day plenum is expected Tuesday to approve a resolution on union pluralism that could gradually allow Solidarity to be made legal again in some watered-down form.
Neither the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, who declared martial law to crush Solidarity in December, 1981, nor the party`s chief ideologist, Marian Orzechowski, mentioned Solidarity when they delivered the plenum`s major addresses.
Jaruzelski said ”democratic reform, including pluralistic solutions,”
was a ”great step on the way to building socialism in Poland.”
But he cautioned that only when all citizens accepted ”the supremacy of the state and its system . . . will there be conditions for a pluralism that is not confrontational, destructive and anarchistic.”
Speaking to the 230 members of the party`s policymaking body-many of whom still view any concessions to Solidarity as anathema-Jaruzelski underscored the possible dangers of ”new solutions.” The general did not elaborate on those solutions, but party sources have said they will be included in a resolution on union pluralism.
Orzechowski candidly admitted party fears that lifting the ban on union pluralism could lead to ”a repeat of the situation of 1981 and the change of enterprises into the arena of political fight.”
Orzechowski warned that the party would not allow the sort of social chaos that accompanied Solidarity`s short legal existence, from August, 1980, to December, 1981.
But at the same time he sounded a positive note for Solidarity supporters.
”The problem of trade union pluralism seems ripe for solution,”
Orzechowski said. ”There is a stronger understanding and conviction within the party that there is a need to create a possibility for legal activity of
(nonparty) forces functioning within the structure of the state and not against it.
”There is a general conviction that working people need a strong class trade union. The basic dilemma is one or more trade unions within one enterprise, and if one, then in what form,” Orzechowski said, adding that working people should make that decision.
”I would like to be a bad prophet, but it certainly does not look like a breakthrough,” said Solidarity spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz. ”I`d like to see them more specific and conclusive and not so vague and general.”
