Anna Walentynowicz who died, aged 80, in the Smolensk plane disaster was the woman who began one of Poland's most significant postwar events – the Gdansk shipyard strike in 1980 that led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union and, ultimately, the collapse of communism.
A Polish free trade unionist it was her sacking in August 1990 that provoked the strike at the Lenin shipyard in which more than a million workers would eventually be involved. She went on to play herself in film-maker Andrzej Wajda's seminal depiction of the strike and the era in which it took place, Man of Iron.
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