Convoking the Three Estates

By George Russell

Hopes rise slightly as church, union and government meet

Icy winds whipped around Gdansk's 14th century gothic town hall last week, but the real storm was within. Lech Walesa, 38, faced one of the toughest challenges to his leadership of Solidarity, Poland's independent trade union federation. The occasion: a meeting of Solidarity's 107-member national commission. The task: to react to Walesa's announcement that he would join in an unprecedented tripartite summit meeting with Poland's Premier, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and Roman Catholic Primate, Archbishop Jozef Glemp. The meeting would consider the country's explosive political and economic plight.

There was no doubt among Solidarity's leaders that Walesa should attend the session. What was at issue was whether he should be authorized to negotiate alone on the behalf of the entire diverse union. "We want democracy, not a dictatorship!" yelled one commission member above the raucous uproar at the meeting. Shouted Radical Jan Rolicz, who is challenging Walesa's current efforts to hold back the organization he helped to found: "The time has come to think about a personnel change in the union, even though Walesa is still a symbol of unity." Jozef Dudek, another radical from southern Poland, declared that sending Walesa to the summit talk was tantamount to "letting a single individual represent 10 million people." At that remark, Walesa snapped back. Said he: "I will represent 10 million members, Jaruzelski will represent the government, and Primate Glemp will represent the church."

When radicals introduced a motion calling for broader union representation at future negotiations with the government, Walesa jumped up, waved his arms and shouted angrily: "All right, let's vote that we don't want talks with the Primate and the Premier." Tears rolled down his cheeks as he yelled: "But then you go and explain your vote to the nation."

There was no reply. Walesa stalked out of the meeting to his car and sped 170 miles to Archbishop Glemp's residence in Warsaw, where the pair had a long talk before going to see Jaruzelski.

The general treated the union leader far more courteously than his own membership. The soldier-politician met Walesa at the door of the government's Parkowa guest house and personally escorted him inside.

The meeting was historic. For the first time, Poland's Communist Party in effect was admitting that it could not solve the country's simmering problems without the help of both Solidarity and the Catholic Church. The session of the representatives of the three estates went on for two hours and 20 minutes. At the end, Walesa came away with an offer from Jaruzelski to open negotiations on a wide range of social and economic issues, including Solidarity's key demands for an important role in running the economy and the right to publish its views without censorship. Jaruzelski also discussed with Walesa and the Archbishop his plan to involve government, church and union in a national front for permanent dialogue, a consultative forum composed of leading Polish social and political figures, but one that stopped far short of being a national coalition government.

As he left Warsaw and later departed for Rome for talks with Pope John Paul II, the Archbishop said that he thought that the situation "was clearing up. I'm a little more optimistic. What we need is social order. We need authority and we need work. It was for that reason that we had our meeting."

Order certainly was not what Walesa faced when he returned to the unruly Solidarity meeting, which had continued in rump session while he was taking part in the discussions in Warsaw. There was still a touch of the mutinous mood when Walesa took the podium to make a report. Said he: "The authorities have stated that they are prepared to undertake talks on all problems important for the Poles." But he warned that Jaruzelski expected both sides to make compromises.

To demonstrate Solidarity's good faith, Walesa repeated his call for an end to Poland's current welter of strikes. Earlier in the week, he had persuaded the 120,000-member chapter in Tarnobrzeg Province to end a ten-day walkout, but approximately 160,000 workers remained idle throughout the country.

In the end, Solidarity's radical factions won the day. The commission declared that Walesa's negotiations had been a "positive step," but it refused to help in reining in the strikers. Then the commission set a three-month deadline for success in the forthcoming negotiations with Jaruzelski and threatened to call a general strike if there were no satisfactory results by that time. Walesa's main victory was to obtain an endorsement of a statement that Solidarity would be ready to "make concessions and seek compromises justified by the supreme good of Polish society."

Walesa and Jaruzelski increasingly face the problem of being hamstrung by their hard-line factions. The severity of the challenge to their respective authorities may sharpen when government-union talks begin, possibly as early as the end of this week, over such Solidarity demands as democratic local elections, worker self-management, and a socio-economic council to monitor the country's industrial performance. The moderate instincts of Walesa and Jaruzelski, as well as those of Poland's Roman Catholic Church, will once again be tested.

--By George Russell.

Reported by Roland Flamini/Bonn

With reporting by Roland Flamini

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