The World - News from Nov. 7, 1988

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa threatened to call a nationwide strike alert unless Polish authorities rescind a decision by Tuesday to close the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. Under a strike alert, leaders of the outlawed labor union would select strike committees and await Walesa’s signal to proceed with a walkout. Walesa previously had called for the shutdown decision to be reversed before planned talks with the government could begin. He told a rally of more than 2,000 people after a Mass at St. Brygida’s church in the Baltic seaport that he chose to confront the authorities because “the people began to say that I am chicken-hearted.”