Lech Walesa is a former Polish labour activist turned politician, who rose to become the President of the country. He co-founded and headed 'Solidarity', the Polish labour union, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his considerable personal sacrifice, to ensure the workers' right to establish their own organisations. Born in German controlled Poland during the Second World War, he was unable to complete his education and began his career as a marine electrician at the Lenin Shipyard, Gdańsk. Concerned with the plight of the workers and lack of freedom, he soon started his fight against communist regime, co-founding Poland’s first non-communist trade union, Solidarity. Because of that, he lost several of his jobs and was repeatedly arrested, being kept under surveillance rest of the time. But nothing could subdue his spirit and he continued to work until the fall of the communist regime in 1989. In the following year, he won the race for Presidency with a landslide majority. Unfortunately, he was not as popular as President as he was a labour leader and so lost in the following election. Subsequently, he retired from political life. He now spends his time working at the Lech Wales Institute and in traveling around the world, giving lectures on Poland’s non-violent fight for restoring democracy.