He then applied the kind of pragmatic approach that had proved popular in Katowice on a nationwide scale. Poland raised over $20bn in loans from western banks with the intention of boosting industrial output that would pay back the credits in the form of increased exports.Initially, the scheme appeared to be working. There were many visible results of the Gierek experiment: Polski Fiat cars on the roads, Coca-Cola in the shops and relative freedom to travel to the West. Gierek was greatly helped by the improvement in East-West relations that accompanied the policy of d?nte and a key part of which was West Germany’s “Ostpolitik” – Chancellor Willy Brandt’s opening to Bonn’s eastern neighbours.Gierek enjoyed for a while considerable popularity.

Tall and rugged in build, having a common touch which appealed to workers and yet being sophisticated enough to speak fluent French, the ex-miner was seen as very different from the grey party apparatchiks who surrounded him.But the Gierek experiment soon ran off the rails with the quadrupling of oil price rises following the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. The recession in the western world reduced the demand for Polish exports and further credits began to dry out.The newly built metal and engineering plants became a millstone around Poland’s neck. That and the failure to carry out any substantive reforms led to growing discontent particularly when attempts were made to raise food prices. Meanwhile, widespread corruption and the ostentatious lifestyle of the “Silesian mafia” angered many Poles.Gierek survived a round of strikes in 1976, but when Solidarity emerged on the scene in the summer of 1980, he was unceremoniously removed from his job.

Gierek found out he had been sacked in early September when, after suffering a heart attack, he was visited in hospital by one of his colleagues, Stanislaw Kania, who told him bluntly, “I’ve got your job.”In typical Communist fashion, Gierek was turned into a scapegoat by his successors, who blamed him for all the disasters that had befallen the Polish economy. When General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law to deal with Solidarity’s challenge to Communist rule, Gierek was interned, along with thousands of Solidarity activists, in a bid to demonstrate the “even-handedness” of the ruling Military Council for National Salvation.For a while it seemed Gierek might be put on trial on charges of corruption. But after his year-long internment, Gierek was cleared by a parliamentary committee and his punishment took a different form. He became a “non-person” – so much so that the Communist authorities even “forgot” in 1987 to award him and Stanislawa, his wife, the customary medal that is received by Polish couples on reaching their golden wedding anniversary.

They were allowed to live in quiet retirement in a suburb of Katowice.But Gierek returned to the limelight from 10 years in obscurity when the first volume of his memoirs, Przerwana dekada (“The Interrupted Decade”), became one of the bestsellers of 1990. Its success was due, in part, to its being the first of the Communist-era autobiographies and, in part, to its outspoken style, particularly about fellow members of the old Communist hierarchy.His memoirs were not just a publishing success; they also provided a form of sweet revenge. Gierek repaid in full what he regarded as his collaborators’ treachery when, at the publicity launch, he remarked: “My greatest disaster is my friends who, when I was in power, crawled in front of me, and later were the first to spit on me.”Gabriel Partos. Leon Wilkeson, guitarist: born Jacksonville, Florida 2 April 1952; died Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida 27 July 2001. Leon Wilkeson, guitarist: born Jacksonville, Florida 2 April 1952; died Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida 27 July 2001.
The bassist Leon Wilkeson was a founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the southern US rock group who sold 35 million albums and are most famous for “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird”, defining tracks of the mid-Seventies.Wilkeson survived the 1977 plane crash which killed the band’s original singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines and their personal manager Dean Kilpatrick. Ten years later, Lynyrd Skynyrd reformed for a tribute concert with Ronnie’s brother Johnny Van Zant as frontman.

The reunion became permanent, although only Wilkeson, the guitarist Gary Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell had lasted the 30-year course.Born in 1952, Leon Wilkeson grew up in the industrial sea port of Jacksonville, Florida, with most of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Named after Leonard Skinner, a gym coach at their local high school who disapproved of rock music and long hair, the group’s first settled personnel comprised Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, Leon Wilkeson as well as the guitarist Allen Collins and drummer Bob Burns.By 1971, they had acquired the services of a manager, Phil Walden. They were perfecting a potent brew of blues, boogie, Rolling Stones and Free influences, and cut demos at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Memphis, Alabama. Following the success of the Allman Brothers Band, the musical South was rising again and the hot-shot session player-turned-producer Al Kooper came looking for acts to sign to his label Sounds of the South. While in Atlanta, Kooper spotted Lynyrd Skynyrd playing Funochio’s bar and jammed with them on several occasions “We didn’t have anything else going for us.