The Coastal Free Trade Unions: The security service and the free trade unions of the Coast
The Security Service could not passively watch the increasingly effective and spreading of anti communist activity in the Gdańsk region. It used various methods from surveillance through intimidation to repressions. The standard activity aimed against the opposition included surveillance carried out within the framework of operational cases, planting wiretaps, correspondence control, and observation of flats. The SB frequently used 48-hour detention without giving a cause, particularly on the eve of the celebrations commemorating the December 1970 victims, flat searches, often without a warrant, assaults by ‘unknown perpetrators’, penal sanctions imposed by the judiciary and harassment in the workplace. The security apparatus also threatened activists’ family and friends to force them to change their attitude or give up their activity.