Poland to Let 5 Intellectuals Act in Strikes : Church-Connected Independents Will Mediate, Activist Says

Communist authorities agreed to let Catholic intellectuals mediate in two major strikes, a Solidarity activist said today.

At the huge Lenin Shipyard where Solidarity was born in 1980, workers in the third day of an occupation strike backed down from a demand that the outlawed independent labor federation be legalized nationwide.

Walesa, a Solidarity founder, said strike leaders decided to limit the demand to Solidarity’s shipyard branch because they felt they had a greater chance of success.

“There will be many different strikes around the country; even if they crush the shipyard, we will do it,” Walesa told strikers after returning to the shipyard today. “The only reason the entire country is not on strike is that it is too early.”

Bishops’ Statement

Poland’s Roman Catholic bishops declared in a statement today that Polish society “has the right to seek to be in charge of its own fate.” The statement urged authorities to find common solutions for Poland by meeting with representative groups.

“Citizens who feel responsibility for the fate of the country must be filled with fear by the recent unrest and strikes in some areas,” the bishops said in a communique.

It was the first official statement by the church on Poland’s worst wave of labor unrest since 1981.

In Warsaw, Solidarity activist Henryk Wujec said authorities had agreed to permit a mediation role for five independent intellectuals linked with the Catholic Church, which claims 94% of Poles as followers.

He said the five had split into two groups, one leaving for the Lenin Steelworks in the Krakow suburb of Nowa Huta, the other for the 12,000-worker shipyard in this Baltic port.

Gdansk Mood Subdued

The five included Andrzej Stelmachowski, chairman of the Warsaw Catholic Intellectuals Club. His wife said he left today at the request of church authorities for the Nowa Huta steelworks, now in the ninth day of a strike.

The mood was subdued in Gdansk this morning. There was no heavy police presence as had been the case Tuesday night.

About 3,000 workers spent the night in the yard and during the day their numbers rose to 7,000, said strike committee chairman Alojzy Szablewski.

Like the shipyard workers, the 15,000 striking steelworkers in Nowa Huta are demanding higher wages, an independent union, reinstatement of fired union activists and release of political prisoners.

‘Not Negotiable’

Chief government spokesman Jerzy Urban told a Warsaw news conference Tuesday that legalizing Solidarity “is not a question that can be an object of negotiations. . . . It is not negotiable.”

Meanwhile, opposition sources said that miners working two shafts of the Rudna copper mine near Lubin in western Poland went on strike but that production was not affected. The mine employs 1,000 men in each shaft, but it was not possible to confirm reports in Gdansk that strikers were staging an underground sit-in.