During her first visit to Poland in 1980, Jacqueline Hayden met the leading members of the free trade union ‘Solidarność’, including the future president Lech Wałęsa. As a freelance journalist at that time, she reported the events in Gdańsk in August 1980, when the shipyard workers went on strike to demand the creation of Free Trade Unions.
Our chat includes some vivid descriptions of what she saw and heard at the time, it explains the problems facing the nascent free trade union as well as details of the interviews she carried out with General Jaruselski and Cardinal Joseph Glemp among others.
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I am delighted to welcome Jacqueline Hayden to our Cold War conversation…
Relive 1989 through this fascinating boardgame
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