Honorable Mr. Chairman

"I'm not a born speaker," Lech Walesa shouted to hundreds of people gathered outside the gates of the Lenin Shipyard. "I'm just a simple worker, so forgive me if I use simple language." Simple it may be, but it is the language the striking workers of Poland's Baltic coast understand and respond to. In the three weeks since the Gdansk strike began, Walesa (pronounced Vah-wen-sah) has become an authentic hero. Wherever he walked across the idle yard, workers would break into spontaneous applause. A few would run up for his autograph. Each evening when he climbed the flower-covered main gate to deliver news of the strike, the crowd would cheer and break into the Polish song Sto Lat (May He Live a Hundred Years).

"He is our leader," gushed an adoring young worker. Added a Gdansk taxi driver, "He has courage. People here admire him." The authorities too soon realized that Walesa, as head of the Interfactory Strike Committee, which forced the government to the bargaining table, commanded respect. At the negotiating table, First Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski unfailingly addressed him as "the Honorable Mr. Chairman."

Walesa, 37, does not look like a hero. At 5 ft. 7 in., with a slight build, a mop of brown hair overhanging his bulbous nose, and a bushy mustache, he wears outsize clothes that look like hand-me-downs from much larger brothers. Nor is he accustomed to prominence. Walesa was working as an electrician in the Lenin Shipyard in 1970, when bloody riots broke out over food prices and prompted him to join the yard's strike committee. Just before the recurrence of rioting in 1976, he was fired for criticizing national economic policies. In 1979 he joined a group of activist workers who called themselves the Baltic Free Trade Unions. Their goal: an independent trade union. That became the main issue of the current strike after the workers remembered Walesa and successfully demanded that he be rehired. He quickly joined the strike and took the lead in negotiations, forcing an early concession from the shipyard's management that strikers would not be penalized.

Walesa is married, with six children; his youngest son was born only four weeks ago. Like the vast majority of workers, he is devoutly religious. One day he vanished from strike headquarters for a time, and when he reappeared, he was asked whether he thought a settlement of the strike was near. Replied Walesa: "I'm a practicing Roman Catholic. I've just been praying it will end tonight." At first uncomfortable with the adulation he was receiving, Walesa now exudes a puckish cockiness. In a lighthearted conversation with journalists he declared, "I am the leader. I am No. 1."

Walesa's control over fellow workers was exhibited from the start. At a mass meeting early in the strike, a man rose and identified himself as a member of the local writers' union and pleaded for understanding for Communist Party Chief Edward Gierek. When a bona fide member of the writers' union and one shipyard worker denounced the man as an impostor and provocateur, a group of workers backed him against the wall. Walesa grabbed the microphone and warned, "If he is hit or even touched, I will give up the leadership." He then called for 20 workers to escort the man from the hall and admonished, "Don't whistle, don't shout. Show your dignity." The man was ushered from the suddenly silent hall with out further incident.

Last week, during a subcommittee-level bargaining session, Walesa strolled to the gate to bring those outside up to date. Surrounded by bodyguards and a gaggle of photographers and television cameramen, he looked like a U.S. political candidate on the prowl for votes. "Ladies and gentlemen, Lech Walesa," a man with a microphone announced, and the crowd let go with a lusty "hip, hip, hurrah!" Walesa told the crowd that although the government was trying to undermine the workers, "your strike committee is participating fully in your strike, and in your effort for a victory."

Walesa has also mastered the art of the political riposte. Asked if the workers' demands might not have left the government dangerously little room for maneuver, he told TIME's Barry Kalb: "We want a strong Poland so that everyone can smile. Is the government supposed to serve the people, or are the people supposed to serve the government? Who leads whom?" Do the workers, then, want to become the leaders, he was asked. "No, no. The government has to govern, of course. We don't want to become the government."

Asked how the Polish economy could afford to lower meat prices as the workers have asked, he made it clear that his own priorities are more political than economic. "We are aware of what we are demanding," he said. "We don't want to drown Poland. We want to rebuild her. I am willing to work for a plate of soup a day, but I must feel that I have the right to say something about the situation."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.