Poles and Police Clash on a Solidarity Anniversary

Riot police, wielding batons, broke up demonstrators chanting “Down with communism” and other anti-government slogans as they marched Sunday through this Baltic port city where a shipyard strike eight years ago gave rise to the Solidarity labor union, reports said.

One witness said at least 20 people were detained.

Edmund Krasowski, an activist with the now-banned labor union, said about 10 people were beaten by batons in a clash with police outside a coffee shop near the main canal of Gdansk.

The riot police attacked the crowd, which was throwing chairs and tables taken from the coffee shop, Krasowski said. “Those who collapsed were beaten with batons,” he said.

The official Polish news agency PAP confirmed that a group of about 200 people began a demonstration after “an aggressive and anti-government sermon” by Father Henryk Jankowski at St. Brigida’s Church in Gdansk.

The news agency said the demonstrators were “acting in an aggressive way” and hurled stones at the officers, injuring six of them, but it did not confirm witnesses’ reports about the use of force by police.

The demonstration began after a Mass at the church attended by about 10,000 people to mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of a walkout by workers at the Lenin Shipyard on Aug. 14, 1980. This first political strike paved the way for the formation of Solidarity.

The rise of the independent Solidarity union under Lech Walesa, a shipyard electrician, gave Poland a third pillar of power, in addition to the Communist government and Roman Catholic Church. But martial law was declared in late 1981, and the union was banned in 1982.

Walesa addressed a crowd of about 2,000 from the steps of St. Brigida’s parish house, saying his outlawed union is working for peaceful changes in the country.