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Poland marks Solidarity’s birth |
31 August 2005
Poland is marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Solidarity movement - the first free trade union in the former Soviet bloc.
Events include a mass at the Gdansk shipyard, where leader Lech Walesa and fellow workers set up the trade union.
Among foreign leaders due to attend are EU Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and German President Horst Koehler.
Solidarity, officially recognised on 31 August 1980, is credited with playing a key role in the collapse of communism.
Within months of its establishment, Solidarity had become a national political movement claiming 10 million members.
Shipyard gate
Nine turbulent years later, Solidarity leaders negotiated the end of communism and a few months later, the Berlin Wall fell.
A quarter of a century after the movement's birth, an open-air mass at the gate of the Gdansk shipyard should be the highlight of three days of celebrations.
Up to 20 heads of state are to join Solidarity members and former activists at the ceremony on Wednesday morning, to be led by the Archbishop of Krakow.
The mass marks the role played by the Roman Catholic Church in toppling communism, particularly that of Poland's Karol Wojtyla, then newly elected as Pope John Paul II.
Speakers will include Mr Walesa who, as an unemployed electrician, led the Gdansk strike that led to the formation of Solidarity, and went on to become the country's president.
The first stone will also be laid for a European Solidarity Centre to be built at the site.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the celebrations, Mr Walesa recalled the day Solidarity was born.
He said: "The further history moves on, the clearer it becomes how important that moment was.
"The European Union couldn't have expanded, the unification of Germany would not have been possible.
"And other countries wouldn't have got their freedom if the Poles had not broken the Soviet bear's teeth. When other countries did their own thing, the bear could no longer bite."
The BBC's Adam Easton in Gdansk says that when Eastern Europe was still frozen under Soviet domination, Solidarity broke the ice.
Without the Polish ice-breaking, the end of communism in Europe would have looked very different, our correspondent says.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/08/31 00:50:04 GMT
T® BBC MMV
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31 August 2005
Poland
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