May Day round-up
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-05-05Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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IN "socialist" Poland, May Day saw the nauseating spectacle of armed police using tear gas, water cannon and baton charges to break up workers' demonstrations - while the facade of "communism" was held up by stage managed events attended by the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy.
The unofficial demonstrations by the banned Solidarnose trade union mobilised tens of thousands of workers, including an estimated 20-30,000 in Gdansk, over 10,000 in Warsaw, and . over 20,000 in the steel town of Nova Huta, where the police operation was particularly savage. The Jaruzelski regime admitted that demonstrations took place in another 17 towns including Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdynia, Lodz, Szczecin, Bydgoszcz and Cracow.
Over 1,000 demonstrators were arrested - and many more. brutally clubbed by riot cops.
And there has been further police violence against unofficial demonstrations since May 1, as the bureaucracy seeks to assert rigid control well in advance of the scheduled visit by the Pope next month.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Jaruzelski's "Big Brothers" in the Kremlin organised a much more tightly-run May Day - with Red Square ringed with ranks of police and KGB men admitting only bona fide bureaucrats to the ritualistic celebration of what ought to be international workers' In France, too, May Day was turned into a travesty, as Socialist and Communist Parties joined forces to march in Paris in support of the Mitterrand government - currently engaged in an austerity programme designed to.
ng the shore up French capitalism at the expense of the working class.
The Papandreou government was not so lucky in Greece, where a 100,000 strong. demonstration shouted slogans against the PASOK government's pay freeze - despite the fact that the march was run by the pro-PASOK General Confederation of Greek Workers.
In Latin America a buer 100,000 strong May Day mart in Uruguay (equivalent to 1.7 million in Britain!) was the first legal demonstration for ten years Marchers shouted "The people united will never be defeated!" and calls for the end of the military dictatorship.
But in Chile, marchers. in Santiago who defied a ban to stage a May Day demonstration suffered 100 arrests, and violent attacks by club-wielding assailants which left 10 injured.