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The coalition government consists of two groups which emerged from Solidarity, and which hate each other as much as they hate the opposition. President and parliament must co- habit uncomfortably: the president, Alexander Kwasniewski, represents the Democratic Left, actually the re-named Communist Party. Walesa praises and scolds the government by turns.This political confusion can seem almost irrelevant to the bigger picture of Poland today. Under a clutch of successive governments since 1989 (liberal and conservative, ex-Communist and anti-Communist), Poland has moved in one direction with the steadiness of a supertanker, and next month will join Nato - an idea that would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago. More extra-ordinary, the country is likely to become a member of the European Union.The transition has been painful for many. Those who work hardest to bring about change are often those who suffer most once change has been effected. Take the events in 1981 at the Wujek coalmine in Silesia, Poland's industrial heartland, when nine miners were shot dead in the most notorious act of repression during the years after martial law was signed.
As one of the memorial plaques at the mine declares: "They died for freedom." But what kind of freedom? In Communist Poland, coal-miners were treated as a kind of arist-ocracy: they could buy ham and sausage when others could not; they received bonuses. But in the past few years 200,000 jobs have been lost, and this year at least six more pits are expected to close There is little hope of reversing the tide The unions are fragmented as never before. Ask for the Solidarity office at the Wujek mine, and you get the answer, "Which Solidarity?" You can take your pick from Solidarity-80, August-80, and a clutch of others - the plaques jostle for attention. What the quarrelling Solidarities share is an anxiety about the future Marek Imjolczyk, a miner for 18 years, is dejected "People are worried that Silesia will die.
What's Silesia without coal?"It is the same story at Nowa Huta (literally the New Steel Works) on the edge of Krakow. Nowa Huta was built in the Stalinist years as a proud monument to socialism. Songs were composed in its honour: Over the broad Vistula, the song of the builders was heard This song is about Nowa Huta, yes it is This tune is about Nowa Huta, yes it is And there is no other future This one brings us peace and prosperity. In the Eighties, it was an important centre of opposition, and tear gas hung in the air.Today, huge areas of the plant, itself the size of a small city, have closed down Rusting equipment lies abandoned. Thousands of jobs have already been lost, more seem certain to go.