When it turned out that I'd avoided internment,
I had to decide straight away what I was going to do.
It was obvious that the governing regional committee wouldn't meet
or at least not under the prevailing conditions
and so I decided to go to one of the factories, as that was the place for
a member of the governing committee when workers were on strike,
and I chose Ursus because I had enough friends there
who were Solidarity activists
to know that I would be smuggled into the factory
unless, of course, they were being watched very closely and then I wouldn't be able to get in.
Well, I did get in but my first impression was shocking
because I arrived between the first and the second shift,
and a huge surge of people was heading for the exit
and this went on for such a long time that after a while I thought to myself, the strike is clearly over.
But it turned out that the strike wasn't over
only that the number of people on strike had reduced hugely and very few people joined from the next shift.
Soon after that, Ursus became much more carefully and tightly surrounded.
My duty was to instruct people on how to behave
meaning, I explained to those people who were all fired up
that a crowbar and nuts and bolts weren't weapons
but only a form of demonstration which at best could cost a couple of lives
or worse, more than a couple or in the worst case there would be a large number of fatalities.
I believed this was too high a price to pay.
A monument would later be erected to those who'd died
but that wouldn't make any difference to the general direction events were taking.
Usually I managed to get through to these people, those who were the most fired up,
and I convinced them that this wasn't the way but at the same time,
I had to battle against those who were saying that the strike has to end,
that it's time to announce the dissolution of the strike.
I had no doubt that in view of the effect this would have on the rest of the country,
the surrender of Ursus would have a terrible effect on people, it would crush their morale.
The strike would have been broken by the other side with the use of force, it didn't have the right to surrender,
we just had to limit the outcome of the forceful invasion.
So when at midnight we could see that at midnight between Monday and Tuesday
we could see that they were entering the factory grounds,
there remained out of a workforce that numbered several thousand,
only around 400 people squeezed into one hall, actually, not squeezed in just gathered,
and I had a feeling that this was a failure.
Only 400 people had had the courage to stay.
How much easier is it logistically to disband, to dismantle a strike involving a few hundred people.