21 demands of MKS (21 postulatów MKS) were a list of demands issued on 17 August 1980 by the Interfactory Strike Committee (Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy, MKS). The first demand was the right to create independent trade unions. Other demands called the government to respect the constitutional rights and freedoms, dismantling the privileges for the Polish United Workers' Party members and taking actions to improve the economic conditions of Polish citizens. The demands eventually led to the Gdańsk Agreement and creation of Solidarity.
The charter was written up on two wooden boards and hung on the gates of the shipyard on August 18. To mark the first anniversary of the August unrest, the demands were put on display in Gdańsk’s Maritime Museum. The day after Martial Law was declared one museum worker hid them in his loft, where they remained forgotten until 1996. Now added to the Memory of the World Register, they can be found housed in Gdańsk’s Roads to Freedom exhibition.
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“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)