Tanya was struck by that. This was not about more pay or shorter hours: it was about the right of Polish workers to organize for themselves, independently of the Communist hierarchy. She had a feeling this was a significant development. It started a small glow of hope in her belly.

She walked around the yard as the daylight strengthened. The sheer scale of shipbuilding was awesome: the thousands of workers, the kilotons of steel, the millions of rivets. The high sides of half-built ships rose far above her head, their mountainous weight perilously balanced by spiderweb scaffolding. Immense cranes bowed their heads over each ship, like adoring Magi around a giant manger.

Everywhere she went, workers were downing tools to read the leaflet and discuss the case.

A few men started a march, and Tanya followed them. They went in procession around the yard, carrying makeshift placards, handing out leaflets, calling on others to join them, growing in numbers. Eventually they came to the main gate, where they began telling arriving workers that they were on strike.

They closed the factory gate, sounded the siren, and flew the Polish national flag from the nearest building.

Then they elected a strike committee.

While that was going on they were interrupted. A man in a suit clambered up on an excavator and began to shout at the crowd. Tanya could not understand everything he said, but he seemed to be arguing against the formation of a strike committee—and the workers were listening to him. Tanya asked the nearest man who he was. “Klemens Gniech, the director of the shipyard,” she was told. “Not a bad guy.”

Tanya was aghast. How weak people were!

Gniech was offering negotiations if the strikers would first go back to work. To Tanya this seemed a transparent trick. Many people booed and jeered Gniech, but others nodded agreement, and a few drifted away, apparently headed for their workplaces. Surely it could not fall apart so fast?

Then someone jumped up on the excavator and tapped the director on the shoulder. The newcomer was a small, square-shouldered man with a bushy mustache. Although he seemed to Tanya an unimpressive figure, the crowd recognized him and cheered. They evidently knew who he was. “Remember me?” he yelled at the director in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I worked here for ten years—then you fired me!”

“Who’s that?” Tanya asked her neighbor.

“Lech Wałesa. He’s only an electrician, but everyone knows him.”

The director tried to argue with Wałesa in front of the crowd, but the little man with the big mustache gave him no leeway. “I declare an occupation strike!” he roared, and the crowd shouted their agreement.

Both the director and Wałesa stepped down from the excavator. Wałesa took command, something everyone seemed to accept without question. When he ordered the director’s chauffeur to drive in his limousine and fetch Anna Walentynowicz, the chauffeur did as he was told and, even more astonishing, the director made no objection.