After the Martial Law of 13 December 1981, the group opposed actively the state, and in 81/82 decided to join forces with underground "Solidarity". They offered help in the form of a policopier, but soon the autonomy of the anarchist group caused a freezing of cooperation. At the same time, anarchists were actively participating in demonstrations organised by "Solidarity" and in the distribution of press and books.
In 1983, a manifesto of RSA appeared, which can be considered as the moment of creation of the group. Since september 1983, the newspaper "Homek" started to be put out by RSA, through underground channels. However, soon some of those channels were blocked, after no. 2 about the military service, and no. 7 about the church. Accusations of provocation appeared, neither first nor last.
"Homek" was for a pretty long time in the solidarity-opposition trend, despite being very critical for the underground leaders and Lech Walesa, which were criticised for being too eager to compromise with stalinists and for their support for "self-limiting revolution", as well as for their tendency to pretend to be the only representatives of the people. Until no. 14/15 the word "anarchism" didn't even appear in "Homek", and the newspaper was pretty close to more radical groups within "Solidarity".
Cooperation with local industrial Solidarity committees was always more fruitful than with the leadership of the union. Especially with the committee of Nowa Huta (near Cracow) metallurgic factory, with which RSA organised a demonstration on the day of elections in 1984 (having agreed that only boycott of the elections wasn't enough), and with whom RSA exchanged texts for newspapers. With the committee of Gdansk UNIMOR (electronic factory), RSA organised MayDay demonstrations.
Unable to come to terms with the leadership of "Solidarity" and to accept its passivity, anarchists organise in june 1984 a Coalition of Independent Groups "Freedom", with different independist youth groups. This caused a hostile approach from the beginning, when the group called for a demonstration about political prisoners, outside the church of Brygida in Gdansk, where most opposition demonstrations were called (what's curious, there have been so called "anarchist masses" - meetings of anarchists in this church). Priest Jankowski has called this demonstration a "secret police provocation" of "hostile, uncatholic forces".
There was no will for common defence of political prisoners from the side of "Solidarity". Two cases of activists arrested in 1985 for anti-army leafletting were not taken into account. On 1 march 1988, workers from UNIMOR, from five shipyards and from youth groups (Struggling Solidarity, Front of Struggling Youth) and from RSA, and WiP ("Freedom and Peace" - anarcho-pacifist group) have signed a document with a list of political prisoners, mostly from anarchist groups, which was not allowed to be printed by the leadership of Solidarity in their newspaper (by people who are now in ruling parties).
After demonstrations on MayDay and 13th December in 1985, where black flags first appeared in a proeminent way, and after a 40 page interview with pictures was printed in a magazine, RSA became famous. Sections appeared in Szczecin and Poznan, there were many meetings, actions against the military service, against the nuclear power plant in Zarnowiec (it was stopped thanks to those actions). In june 1988, with the groups TOTART and WiP was created the Anarchist Interurban, later the name changed to Anarchist Federation.
There was less and less common grounds with what became of the Solidarity union, wich - except for some small fractions - sold out the ideals of worker syndicalism for government seats and for capitalist illusions. Today, anarchists can say to "Solidarity" the same thing as to post-stalinists: "Down with Government!"
Janusz Waluszko, RSA-Gdansk
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