History of Solidarity History of Solidarity The history of Solidarity (, pronounced ), a Polish non-governmental trade union, began on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards (now Gdańsk Shipyards) at its founding by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the fall of communism. Poland's communist government attempted to destroy the union by instituting martial law in 1981, followed by several years of
Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America Chile and the Dominican Republic. Mehdi Ben Barka, the Moroccan leader of the Tricontinental Conference, disappeared the year before. One of the main purposes of the organisation is to promote the causes of socialism and communism in the Third World; for example, OSPAAAL strongly supported Hugo Chávez. Social development, which the organization says is a human right, is a recurring theme in OSPAAAL publications. The OSPAAAL was born out of the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which Mehdi Ben Barka was preparing before his October 1965 assassination. The OSPAA (Organization for Solidarity for the People of Africa and Asia) had gathered