Call for Papers
At the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the proclamation of the Martial Law in Poland, I want to organize a conference about the reactions of western trade unions on Solidarnosc, and the motives and interests behind eventual support, or the reasons for eventual indifference or reserve.
The conference will take place in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 and 8 December 2006. Scholars from Germany, Italy, France, the U.K., and Poland have already confirmed their participation, but I'm still looking for contributions from other countries (especially Scandinavia and Austria, possibly the U.S., Japan and Canada), and I'm also still open for other proposals. Below I give some more details about the concept of the conference. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you're interested. Idesbald Goddeeris,
The Polish crisis of the beginning of the 1980s provoked a lot of reactions in the western world. Both after the Gdansk agreements and the foundation of the free trade union Solidarnosc (August-September 1980), and after the proclamation of the Martial Law (December 1981), support was organized by social organizations (trade unions, human rights organizations, ...) and newly founded committees. Initially, the sympathy was almost general, even among West European Communists, but the attitudes started to differ soon. Countries as France or the U.S. showed much more sympathy for the independent Polish trade union than for instance the U.K. or Germany. Some trade unions (e.g. the CFDT in France and the ACV/CSC in Belgium) obviously had much more interest in Solidarnosc than other trade unions in their country.
On the conference, I want to map these attitudes and analyze their motives in a comparative way. Questions that could be dealt with, are, among others:
- Who organized the support campaigns? Did trade unions collaborate with each other, or did they act separately? Did they involve special committees (such as "Solidarity with Solidarity", Solidarité France Pologne, Polish Solidarity Campaign, ...), and if so, which ones? Who took the initiative and bore the organization of the support?
- What did the support lead up to (humanitarian relief (how much?), political aid, individual contacts with and travels to Polish unionists, structural collaboration (agreements, training, ...)?
- How did the support differ and develop? How big were the differences between particular trade unions? Did some cities or regions show a greater sympathy, and if so, why? How did they react on developments in Poland (differences between the periods of legal existence, martial law, amnesty and normalization, ...). When and how did the sympathy die out? Special attention should be spent on the years 1984-1985 and the reception of Jaruzelski's normalization
- What were the motives behind the support (or the reasons of its lack or limited extent)? Could it, for instance, enforce the own ideology or position towards other trade unions? How were the trade unions' attitudes related to the ones of the government? What was the place of the Solidarnosc campaigns within the international attention and/or action of the trade unions (both towards the Second and the Third World)?
- What were the consequences of the Solidarnosc support for the western trade unions? Did it have an influence on membership figures, ideologies, programs, positions and mutual relations?