Do we like them?

Do we like Lech Wałęsa?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A lifetime on the side of freedom and Ukraine, held back by his 2013 remarks about gay MPs, which he refused to apologise for.

Wałęsa is the electrician from the Gdańsk shipyard who helped lead the 1980 strike that produced Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, then became Poland's first popularly elected president in 1990. That is a pretty serious CV for a bloke with a moustache and a mouth on him.

The shadow over him has always been the 'Bolek' story, the accusation that he worked with the communist security service in the 1970s. A special court cleared him in 2000, and he has always rejected the claims. Prosecutors later pursued a case over his 2016 testimony about the files, and in September 2026 they dropped it, according to Notes from Poland. Where you land on the old documents probably depends on how much you trust files compiled by the secret police themselves.

Now the harm check. In March 2013, asked on TVN24 where gay MPs should sit in parliament, he said at the back and even behind a wall. When the backlash came he refused to apologise. That is the real stain on his record, and it lands on a house that cares about LGBTQ+ people. I found nothing from him on trans people, migrants, vaccines or the climate, so the record on those is thin.

On the broader side of things, he has spent the last few years loudly defending democracy and Ukraine. In March 2025 he and other former political prisoners wrote to Trump after the Oval Office clash with Zelensky, saying it reminded them of a communist interrogation. He also told Euronews that populist demagogues could set the world on fire if trust in democracy isn't restored.

The latest messy chapter is Ukraine. After Zelensky named a military unit for the 'Heroes of the UPA' in May 2026, Wałęsa said the president had insulted him and took off his Ukrainian flag pin, Polsat reported. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a Pole grieving the wartime massacres or as a withdrawal of support from a country under invasion. It is a contested position, not a smear.

So: would we back him? On balance, yes. A lifetime of risking prison for workers' rights and democracy counts for a lot, and nothing else on the record looks like a pattern of harm. But the gay MPs remark was real and unretracted, so he gets a decent mark rather than a gushing one.