Bydgoszcz events

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March 20-21, 1981, issue of Wieczór Wrocławia (The Wrocław Evening). Blank spaces remain after the government censor has pulled articles from page 1 (right, "What happened at Bydgoszcz?") and from the last page (left, "Country-wide strike alert"), leaving only their titles. The printers—Solidarity-trade-union members—have decided to run the newspaper as is, with blank spaces intact. The bottom of page 1 of this master copy bears the hand-written Solidarity confirmation of that decision.

Bydgoszcz events (Polish: wypadki bydgoskie) refers to a turning point in the early history of the Solidarity movement. Following the registration of the Solidarity by the communist authorities of Poland in 1980, the farmers were also pushing for creation of a separate trade union, independent from the official system of power. The NSZZ RI Solidarność (Independent Self-Governing Trade Union of Individual Farmers Solidarity) was created, but not legalized by the authorities. Because of that on March 16, 1981 in Bydgoszcz a strike was proclaimed.

This forced the authorities to finally hold the meeting of the Voivodeship National Council, a governing body of the Bydgoszcz Voivodeship. The meeting was attended by several members of the Solidarity, among them Jan Rulewski, Mariusz Łabentowicz and Roman Bartoszcze, who were to explain the roots of the strike. However, the Council decided not to discuss the issues related to agriculture, which made the members of the Solidarity protest. The authorities responded by calling in the Citizen's Militia and the ZOMO, who entered the seat of the Council and brutally pacified the delegates of the Solidarity.

Despite the fact that the authorities had a monopoly on media, the underground press reported of the Bydgoszcz events and the matter became widely-publicised in a matter of days. On March 24 the Solidarity decided to go on an all-national strike in protest against the violence aimed at the delegates. The communist authorities bent down and on March 25 the deputy prime minister Mieczysław F. Rakowski started a conference with the leaders of the Solidarity. This led to the signing of the so-called Warsaw accords on March 30, 1981. According to the agreement, the Solidarity was allowed to report the Bydgoszcz events in the public television (the first such independent news behind the Iron Curtain since 1940s) and the government pledged to continue the talks on registration of a trade union of farmers.