Thirty-five years ago, the leader of Solidarity, Poland’s first independent trade union, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign for freedom of organisation

Walesa to give Nobel cash to farmers

6 October 1983

by Michael Simmons

Mr Lech Walesa said yesterday after the announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that he would ask a relative to accept the prize on his behalf, and would give the £128,000 award to Polish agriculture through the Roman Catholic Church.

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Speaking at his Gdansk home, Mr Walesa said he did not regard the award as his own but as a gesture for all the Polish people.

The Pope sent his “cordial congratulations” to Mr Walesa, praising the Solidarity leader for trying to solve the problems “of the workers and society” in the two men’s native Poland.

Mr Walesa was proclaimed the winner to the spontaneous delight of his family and millions of supporters, and to the annoyance of the authorities in Warsaw. The news of the prize was ignored by the Soviet media for hours after the announcement. Throughout the day, the official news agency Tass, and evening Moscow newspapers carried no word on the announcement.

The awards committee, sitting in Oslo, had to choose from a field of nearly 80 nominated individuals and organisations and said in its citation that it had taken account of “Walesa’s contribution, made with considerable personal sacrifice, to ensure the workers’ right to establish their own organisation.”

From politics into history

Hella Pick in Warsaw on the national hero who has to stand aside from the struggle

10 December 1983

Lech Walesa, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize-winner, travelled no further than Warsaw in the latest stage of his odyssey. Having decided, possibly wrongly, that he risked being refused re-entry to Poland, he has left it to his wife Danuta, and his 15-year-old son to represent him in Oslo at today’s award ceremonies.

At Warsaw airport yesterday he acknowledged that he would have preferred to be on his way to Oslo. But after Danuta had gone, Walesa’s customary jauntiness returned. Surveying the sea of blue-uniformed militia, who were blocking access to the departure hall to all but other travellers, he pointed out that “such security was fit for a president.” Certainly for an officially-designated nonperson, Walesa can still cause quite extraordinary nervousness to the Polish regime.

Yet, even during yesterday’s farewells, Walesa attracted more attention from the Western press than from the small knots of Polish travellers who, recognising him, clapped softly. Afterwards he drove to the Royal Castle, now almost restored. Accompanied only by his driver, and even with the plainclothes police keeping a discreet distance, he stood looking out at this symbol of Poland’s turbulent history, as well as of its democratic traditions. He might have asked himself how much more of Poland’s history he has himself to write.

Certainly he seemed confident that the speeches to be read on his behalf at the Nobel awards would confirm him as a man of peace, rather than of confrontation. He obviously had to make a choice between those of his advisers (especially Solidarity emigres in the West) who have seen the Oslo ceremony a useful opportunity for attacking the Polish regime, and others who have advocated a more conciliatory tone.

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He opted for the latter. Either way it was never likely to alter the view of the Polish Government which interprets the Peace Prize award as yet another slap in the face inflicted by the West. Even one of Poland’s most experienced diplomats said this week: “Everybody knows that the Nobel Prize is about politics and not about peace.”

Walesa sees the award as an honour bestowed not just on him but on Solidarity as a whole. Inevitably such claims have reinforced the determination of the Polish authorities to exclude him from public office, and to reject any suggestion that he could speak for moderate opinion and might actually be able to help them in their elusive search for dialogue and understanding.

The Catholic Church hierarchy appears to have come round to the view that Walesa, in spite of the Nobel Prize, belongs to Poland’s past rather than to its future. One of the Catholic intellectuals who often speaks for the Primate has now confirmed that the Pope, during his meeting with Walesa last June, did indeed advise him to take a lower profile. The editor of the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, who was forced to resign for writing this almost immediately after the Pope’s visit to Poland, “had only written too soon,” but his story had not been incorrect.

The Polish Church is reluctant to champion Walesa now, largely because it has come to the conclusion that he is an obstacle to any attempt to secure genuine reform. The bishops, like the Government, must nevertheless be aware that the Nobel Prize has caused widespread rejoicing in Poland. Even if he is no longer regarded as a miracle worker, at least he helps to give the nation self respect.

It is doubtful whether Walesa himself entertains the idea that General Jaruzelski might change his view of him even after his unexpected appeal earlier this week for an end to US sanctions against Poland. To make matters clear, the government spokesman, Mr Jerzy Urban, ruled out “ any political concessions to Walesa,” even if President Reagan were to respond more readily to the Solidarity leader’s view.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former Polish president and Solidarity founding leader Lech Walesa during his presidential campaign in Plock, May 1989. Photograph: Leszek Wdowinski/Reuters

It is difficult to exaggerate the bitterness expressed in government circles here about sanctions. They embody what is perceived as the deliberate US policy to destroy the Polish economy, and to destabilise the country by fair means or foul. The government argues that the sanctions have crippled the polish economy and handicapped efforts to secure economic reform. They cause food shortages, malnutrition and, because of the shortage of medicine, health hazards.

Few Poles dispute that the sanctions hurt. Naturally there are opponents of the regime who argue that the Polish people should grin and bear it, as it may in the end force the General to make political concessions. But the regime asserts that this is a profound misunderstanding, and it claims, probably rightly, that it will never yield to duress from the Americans.

The Church hierarchy tends to be more on the side of the regime than of its opponents. Mr Andrej Mlicewski, one of the Polish Primate’s close advisers, said with great emphasis, “Tell your readers that the Church here is unambiguously against sanctions. The people who go hungry will blame Jaruzelski, but also President Reagan.”

The absurdity of the American sanctions is reflected in three marble heads of Presidents Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington, that have been reposing in the cellars of the US embassy in Warsaw for more than a year instead of being handed over, as had been promised earlier, to those in charge of restoring the Royal Castle.

But there are other sanctions that have more than a symbolic substance. These are the restrictions on Polish fishing in US waters, and the refusal of landing rights in the United States for Polish airlines. While the Reagan administration has indicated that these may soon be lifted, the Polish government says that this would merely be throwing an insulting lollypop at Poland. Nothing less than “complete and unconditional” lifting of sanctions, it says, can even begin to satisfy the government. It wants the restoration of most-favoured-nation treatment for Polish exports to the US, the lifting of the US veto on Poland’s application to join the International Monetary Fund, and new credits for food and raw material purchases.

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In a toughening of the Polish attitude, one senior official said that Poland would block any agreement on the re-scheduling of Poland’s debt to Western governments which is now under negotiation – meaning a continued suspension of interest repayment – until other aspects of economic relations with the West are normalised.

The Polish government also asserts that all its conciliatory signals to the United States have been persistently and cynically ignored. It even accuses the Americans of cynicism over the demand for the release of Poland’s political prisoners. Government officials believe, in contrast to many other Poles, that men like Jacek Kuron could be persuaded to leave the country “temporarily.” But this would depend on the West convincing the political detainees that it would be in Poland’s interest – as well as in their own – to avoid trials and heavy sentences. Polish officials think that the Americans prefer to create martyrs and have little interest in working towards normalisation and peace.

Walesa joins the Nobel band

Michael Simmons on the Solidarity leader’s third time luck

6 October 1983

Lech Walesa formally joined the ranks of the great and the good, as well as the occasionally execrated, when he was announced as the 1983 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Almost immediately, as it was expected they would, the Polish authorities in Warsaw denounced the award, as it has been denounced so often in the past, as “politically motivated.” But Walesa’s long-suffering wife, Danuta, said equally predictably from the family home in Gdansk that the new made her “very, very happy.” Walesa himself who has been off work at the Lenin shipyard for some weeks with stomach ulcers, was indulging the national pastime of mushroom-picking when the news came through.

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