photo - PAPPrime Minister Donald Tusk, accompanied by former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, laid flowers at the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Worker in Gdansk on Sunday, as part of the 30 year anniversary celebrations of the historic 1980 August Agreements.
The monument, erected in December 1980 in memory of workers killed during clashes with militia ten years earlier, was part of a list of demands Solidarity had laid before the communist authorities 30 years ago, in return for breaking off the strike at the Lenin shipyard.
The signing of the August Agreements - which legalised the first independent trade union in the eastern European communist bloc - is being widely celebrated in Poland this week with a series of events nationwide.
After the wreath-laying ceremony, Donald Tusk and Lech Walesa attended the premier of Pawel Mykietyn’s VIVO XXX, a special composition for the anniversary performed by the Symphonic Orchestra of the Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the Mińsk State Philharmonic Choir.
Walesa - so closely associated with the 1980 strikes throughout the world - will not be attending official celebration events this week, after he boycotted some and was not invited to others.
On Monday, around 2,500 guests, including former solidarity activists President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Tusk, President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek and leader of the Law and Justice party Jarosław Kaczyński will attend the 30 year anniversary of the agreement made between the Szczecin Inter-Factory Strike Committee and communist authorities.
Tomorrow, celebrations switch to Gdansk, where 30 years ago Walesa signed the August Agreements with a giant pen depicting an image of JP II.
On 3 September, the signing of the last of the three agreements, this time by the Zastrzębie-Zdrój coal miners in Silesia, will be remembered. (pg)
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