Gierek makes big concessions to right

There are reports of a strike in progress at Gdansk, scene of some of the fiercest fighting in last month's strike movement.

The reports, as usual, are officially denied.

And there is evidence confirming that "the workers' committees elected in the Baltic towns strikes are still functioning, compelling the regime to negotiate over working conditions and political questions.

Activists meet This is clear from a Polish Press Agency report on meetings earlier this week between local Party bureaucrats and rank-and-file workers:

"The Gdansk executive of the Party Provincial Committee met Party activists of the Gdansk shipyards.

'In Szczecin [where the broadest-based strike committee was set up] Party activists of the shipyards met the First Secretary of the Party Provincial Committee Antoni Walaszek.

'der Golda Meir has returned to negotiate with the Arab leaders through Jarring indicates that US • pressure on both sides to reach a settlement is now very strong.

It was pointed out that the recent demonstrations of workers had not been caused solely by unpopular decisions on changes in retail prices, but in particular by the general situation in the country These party activists' the bulk of last month's • strike movement-are forcing demagogic bureaucratic promises of 'restoring Leninist norms' abused under Gomulka's rule.

But as a Yugoslav correspondent in Poland has already noted:

"The new leadership has made great promises, but that will not be enough; the working class has accepted them only conditionally, because similar promises made in 1956 [by Gomulka] were never redeemed.

New clashes Fully aware that new clashes with the working class are on the way, the Gierek leadership has begun to secure its flanks on the right.

In exchange for backing from the Roman Catholic Church (whose press is pouring out a flood of pro-regime propaganda) Gierek has promised to restore much of the Church property confiscated after 1945. According to Post and the 'Washington Polish 'Dziennik Zachodni', Gierek has already agreed to the following concessions: • More churches and church buildings are to be built (this at time of acute housing shortages for the working . class and peasantry!). • Former Church property and land are to be denationalized. • Greater freedom is to be granted the Church authorities in the management of their affairs.

These far-reaching measures will be discussed at the planned meeting between Cardinal Wyszinsky and the Polish Premier Jaroszewicz.

Welcomed These proposals have been welcomed the emigré Polish press, while the BRITISH ambassador to Uruguay, Mr Geoffrey Jackson, was kidnapped yesterday morning by Tupamaro' urban guerrillas, police said. 'Washington Post' sees them— correctly - as the most dramatic concessions to the Church ever undertaken by an E European or Soviet governUntil the working class, aided by the struggle for the social revolution in the West, overthrows the Stalinist bureaucracy in E Europe and the Soviet Union, the nationalized economies of these countries are in great danger.

The recent Church-State accord in Poland only confirms this.

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