Social Movement emerged as a political faction within SRP in early 2000s amongst the local activists of the party in Mazowsze.
It emerged in the 2000s amongst local party activists in Mazowsze, and became known for social justice actions such as protesting, legally challenging and obstructing evictions.
[2] The existence of numerous irregularities within the party was to be confirmed by further reports of breaches of the law by Lepper and his associates; on the eve of the conclusion of the coalition agreement with the Law and Justice party in 2016, information emerged about recordings of MP Wiśniewski's telephone conversations, which were said to indicate illegal financing of the 2005 election campaign by sympathetic businessmen.
[5] However, ultimately the faction decided to form a separate political party in February 2006, gathering 2300 members in total.
Those taking part in the convention, in accordance with the new party's statute, democratically elected the authorities of Self-Defence Social Movement, with Sławomir Izdebski as chairman, former senator Henryk Dzido, former Samoobrona MP Tadeusz Wojtkowiak and Zbigniew Łuczak as vice-chairmen, former MP Zbigniew Witaszek became the treasurer.
Social Movement appealed to the old ideals of Samoobrona from the 1990s, promising a fair and democratic structure as well as to returning to agrarian protests and rural trade unions.
Izdebski argued that Self-Defence forgot about its roots of being a movement dedicated to representing the poor, and pledged to re-embrace this concept.
[16] Social Movement also pressed SRP on the lists scandal, with Izdebski filing a notification on suspicion of committing a crime against Lepper.
Izdebski accused Lepper of extorting money from Samoobrona candidates, forcing them to sign promissory notes worth hundred thousands of PLN and conditioning their inclusion of electoral lists on the basis of the sum of their party donations.
[12] The group's leaders included former Samoobrona MPs from the 4th Sejm: Marian Curyło, Stanisław Głębocki, Jerzy Michalski and Henryk Ostrowski.
[18] The party promoted socialist, nationalist and protectionist policies and appealed to nostalgia for communist People's Republic of Poland.
[22] Social Movement enjoyed credibility in this regard, as it was known for fighting and challenging evictions when it still existed as a faction within Samoobrona.
[23] Social Movement devoted itself to this rhetoric while contrasting itself with the SRP, accusing it of having betrayed its values and consisting of "Andrzej Lepper and a group of businessmen who paid money and entered Samoobrona and parliament".
[1] According to SRS, Samoobrona had turned an elite that it was always supposed to be fighting for, as it "entered the salons, forgot about the poor and made our movement a money-making business".
[13] Frequent mentions were made of "Tsar Lepper and his court in Warsaw", further creating the imagery of the fight between "the elite" and "the people".
Samoobrona was portrayed as a "sect for extorting money", with honest activists being purged in favour of businessmen, and the problems of the poor and the countryside being neglected.
SRS then contrasted it with the concept of "old Samoobrona" that it tried to reprsesent, recalling the infamous road blockades that the party organised with farmers.