Solidarity was recognized on October 24, 1980. The Polish government, pressed by a wave of strikes, accepted the first independent trade union in the communist bloc, and the workers who had occupied the Gdansk shipyard had won. The name Lech Walesa led the movement.
The strikes had begun in August. A dispute over a dismissed worker in Gdansk grew into a nationwide movement, and the government, its economy failing and its legitimacy thin, agreed to a list of demands that included the right to form free unions. It was a surrender of a kind.
Solidarity grew with staggering speed. Within months it claimed ten million members, a large part of the adult population, and it was not just a union but a social movement, drawing in intellectuals, farmers, and the church. The party that claimed to rule in the workers' name faced the workers themselves.
The communist world was alarmed. A free union inside the bloc was a direct challenge, and the Soviet leadership considered intervention, and for a time the danger of invasion hung over Poland. The union survived, for a while.
The confrontation was not over. In December 1981 the government declared martial law and banned Solidarity, and Walesa was interned, but the movement went underground and returned. It was Solidarity, born in the shipyard and recognized in October, that finally forced free elections in 1989.