Solidarity (January)

[For Deborah Zion] ‘Solidarity’ isn’t defined in my January-yellowed copy of ‘Keywords’ by Raymond Williams (1983). ‘Collective’ is about its closest synonym, “to describe people acting together”, or else “belongs to the new democratic consciousness of the eC19.” Today’s meaning comes not direct from Latin but via Polish, an existing word changing meaning through foreign influence. ‘Solidarnosc’ was the Gdansk labour union the government tried to suppress by martial law in, indeed, 1983. Vincent Buckley dedicated poems ‘For Solidarity’, identifying with its anti-Soviet push. Though Buckley, a Cold War worrier, also had the Catholic Church in mind, for not against.