Spartacists Argue With Demonstrators

Members of the Spartacist League and a small group of Harvard students clashed last night outside Harvard Hall in a war of words over the ongoing labor disputes in Poland.

Inside the building, a Spartacist League speaker outlined his group's contention that Solidarity, the Polish independent workers' union, intends to restore capitalism to Poland. On the steps of Harvard Hall, about eight Spartacist members were meanwhile preventing about a dozen Solidarity supporters from attending the 8 p.m. speech, which had been advertised as open to the public.

The College students protesting the Spartacist speech carried placards asking, "How much did Poland's fat bosses pay you?" and denouncing the Soviet government.

"We saw the Spartacist posters and spontaneously decided to come down here," Ron K. Unz '83, a South House resident who helped coordinate the protest, said yesterday. "They [the Sparticists] were out here when we got here and wouldn't let us inside."

One bystander, who said she was not affiliated with either group, said she attempted shortly after 8 p.m. to climb the stairs into the hall but was punched and pushed aside by Spartacist members. "I just wanted to see what was going on, and one of them punched me and then they all started shoving," Melanie B. Yun, a tutor at South House and an administrator at the Kennedy School of Government, said.

Yun said she plans to prosecute her assailant, whom she identified as Keith Manning, a Cambridge resident. University police officials, who sent about six uniformed policemen to Harvard Hall after the shoving incident, made no arrests and declined comment on the protest last night.

As the demonstrators and Spartacist League members exchanged top-of-the-voice charges and countercharges on subjects ranging from the Moonies to Stalinism to Reagan budget cuts and including Trotskyism, fascism, the Catholic Church, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Nazism and the Bay of Pigs, about 30 individuals inside the hall listened silently as Joseph Seymour, a member of the Spartacist League central committee, talked about Solidarity's ties to Western imperialism.

"Poland is heading towards a violent explosion," Seymour said. "If Solidarity wins the civil war, that will be a victory for the Pentagon and NATO."

"Solidarity has come out for the restoration of the capitalist state in Poland, and that would take the workers' progress over the last 30 years and throw it down the drain," Richard Dean, a Spartacist member, said.

But Harvard students protesting the Spartacist forum said that while Solidarity "may not be perfect," its formation nevertheless represents a "great achievement."

Spartacist members outside accused the Harvard protesters of attempting to disrupt the speech, which they said had been approved routinely by University officials. "They came here to interrupt the forum, which is clearly their motive," Dean said.

"It doesn't take much courage on my part to stand here," Robert Dujarric '83 said. "But what the Polish workers are doing takes courage; the people have risen."