Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [484]
In planning my visit I had consulted the Pope whose own visit there in June 1987 had provided the main impetus for the revival of Solidarity and the pressure for reform. It was clear that the Vatican thought my visit could do good but also that the Church was proceeding with great caution — a caution which was even more evident when on the first day of my visit I had a meeting with Cardinal Glemp.
In preparing my Polish trip there was another matter on which I felt I must consult a wise authority and that was what I should wear. A Polish lady who served me at Aquascutum said that green was the colour which represented hope in Poland. So green was the colour of the suit I chose.
My first official meeting in Warsaw on the evening of Wednesday 2 November was with the recently appointed Polish Prime Minister, Mr Rakowski. He was not an impressive or persuasive advocate of the line the Polish Government was taking about the Lenin Shipyard, though he did his best. He said how much he agreed with my public statements about the need for economic reform and portrayed closure of the shipyard as part of this process. In somewhat forced ‘Thatcherite’ tones he told me that rationalization was the only way to extricate Poland from its crisis and that Poland’s great weakness historically had been lack of consistency, which was something he was determined to change. I replied that going from a centralized economy to one based on private enterprise and competition was immensely difficult. But it was not just a matter of changing economic policies. There had to be personal, political and spiritual change. Under communism, people were like birds in a cage: even when you opened the door, they were afraid to go out. The vital task facing his Government, I said, was to take the Polish people with it in making the changes; and the problem was that there was no political mechanism for consulting them and allowing them to express their views. The difference between the situation I had faced in 1979 and that which confronted Mr Rakowski was that I had been democratically elected — and twice re-elected — to carry out the changes required.
Later that evening I met a number of opponents of the regime and learnt a little more about its shortcomings. I knew that the communists had never managed to achieve the scale of collectivization of agriculture in Poland which they had elsewhere and that this — alongside the influence of the Catholic Church — had given the Poles a degree of independence which was unique in a communist country. I said to those present that since they at least had the land they must be doing quite well. No, they said, this was not so. Did I not realize that the state directed most of the seed, fertilizer, tractors and other equipment — not least spare parts — to the collective farming sector? The authorities also controlled prices and distribution. Under these circumstances the benefits of ownership were limited. In effect, socialism, which is only a less developed form of communism, was doing its usual work of impoverishment and demoralization. I later raised the subject with Mr Rakowski, who did not seriously dispute the facts.
On Thursday afternoon I had my first real taste of Poland — the Poland which the communists had tried and failed to destroy. I visited the church of St Stanislaw Kostka in the north of Warsaw where Father Jerzy Popieluszko had preached his anti-communist sermons until in 1984 he was abducted and murdered by members of the Polish Security Services. (I also went to talk in their home to Father Popieluszko’s parents, who were grief stricken but immensely proud of their son.) The church itself was overflowing with people of every age who had come out to see me and on my arrival they broke into a Polish hymn. In Father Popieluszko they had evidently found a martyr, and I came away in little doubt that it was his creed rather than that of his murderers which would prevail in Poland.
I said as much to General Jaruzelski when I met him