I attended a discussion in someone's home. The home was immaculate,
crystal ornaments on display, gilt-framed prints on the walls.
There were three generations present: the grandparents, the fathers, who were mature workmen with their wives,
and their sons, young lads in jeans wearing the latest fashion while the other men wore suits.
Tea and coffee and cakes were served.
That same week, I think, I was in Radom in some total ruin.
There was a bed, a table, half a litre of vodka, a can of tinned meat
that someone cut into pieces with their pen-knife, everyone speared a piece with the same knife,
some mucky kids were playing on the floor.
Dirt, stink, poverty, wretchedness and destitution.
These two images illustrate a certain significant phenomenon.
Namely, there are workers of whom 30% never stay long in one place,
who earn money primarily by looking for new work on a building site or a delegation
where they'd get severance pay, something somewhere... a new team that was going to get paid more.
These people live in poverty drinking away most of their earnings
and are on the verge of the social sub-class.
Then there are other workers who have been in the same job for years and are highly qualified experts.
This covers about 30% of the workforce - the rest is somewhere in between.
These are the best experts and they are the ones who matter
although at first, we only had contact with the first sort.
This was Radom, Ursus and when KOR started its activity, they performed this action.
They set free all the workers but arrested the 'lumpen',
the thieves, the crooks so that the people we were looking after then weren't our regulars.
The people we were reaching at that time, the agitators, were their own people,
the most dynamic element, that first group which didn't organise anything
but could start a demonstration at any time because they didn't care about their workplace.
The second group did care about their workplace, they took things seriously.
In its first year, KSS-KOR still had most of its contact
with the trouble-makers, those on the verge of the underclass.
Grudziądz was the only place that did anything and that's why it came as such a shock to me.
Slowly, slowly... those kinds of homes, the contrast was classic, but I'd seen plenty of homes like that.
Only gradually did these classic worker-leaders, young worker-experts start coming to us.
One of the first was Zbyszek Bujak and then soon after him came Wałęsa all in the same year.
It's fascinating that in one year such a collection of first-rate people came to us.
I had a funny incident with Zbyszek Bujak.
One Saturday afternoon, it was in the summertime, the phone rang it was Zbyszek. 'Listen, Jacek', he says,
'we've organised a discussion and Heniek Wujec was meant to have come here but we gave him the wrong address. He's meant
to be in Ursus but we're in Pruszków so you come instead because we'll never catch him now - he's wandering around Ursus.'
I put the phone down and told Gajka what had happened. She says, 'Are you mad? Where are you going? To prison?'
So I said, 'OK, name a spot in Pruszków and let there be someone who knows me waiting for me there.'
Fine - there'll be a girl who knows you waiting for you by the Monument of the Soviet Soldier.
I put my shoes on immediately while Gajka says, 'You idiot, where are you going?' I say, 'You'll see, I won't get banged up.'
I raced off to the taxi stand, jumped into the first one, luckily the driver was going to Powązki
so that was almost in the same direction, and I said to him, 'Put your foot down and take me to Pruszków!'
I got to Pruszków, the girl was waiting for me by the monument and so I went and joined the discussion.
I knew they wouldn't catch me, and somewhere in the allotments in a summerhouse we had a meeting of activists from Ursus.
I knew they wouldn't catch me because I'd worked out that it was a Saturday, work had just finished and the one who was
intercepting the phone call wouldn't take the decision himself to have me stopped, arrested and to send out the police vans.
He'd have to first get hold of a colonel who'd decide what to do, and by the time he'd got hold of a colonel
who would have just left work and hadn't got home yet and then still had to take that decision, I'd already be in Ursus.