The founders of ROPCiO referred to the Helsinki Accords signed by the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic. The signatories of the document committed themselves to protecting human rights, which is why ROPCiO announced that they would conduct  activities like information campaigns, appeals and letters of protest to force the authorities to obey the Helsinki Accords.

The rhetoric and activities undertaken by the movement were distinguished by references to patriotic traditions. For instance, its members organised the celebrations of the Independence Day, which had been formally abolished by the communists in the 1940s. The ambitions of the movement leaders were, however, much greater. Its foremost politicians, such as Andrzej Czuma, Leszek Moczulski, Aleksander Hall or Wojciech Ziembiński referred to the traditions of pre-war political movements: the nationalist one and the one represented by Józef Piłsudski. They soon adopted strictly political slogans as well, including the calling for the independence of Poland. ROPCiO activists started publishing Opinia, one of the first underground periodicals.

The establishment and activities of ROPCiO met with reserve on behalf of KOR co-founders. Its members were accused of trying to break up the Committee or even serving the Security Service. This was caused by both political (with ROPCiO being clearly rightist) and social differences. The dispute also led to division within ROPCiO itself, whose members became soon involved in other opposition initiatives, for instance the Movement of Young Poland or the Confederation of Independent Poland.

That announcement brought the entire country to a boil. On 25 June 1976 workplaces in many parts of Poland went on strike, with major protests, also on streets, staged in Płock, Ursus, and Radom. In Radom the protesters showed their discontent by, for instance, setting ablaze the building of the PZPR Provincial Committee. The authorities brutally suppressed that unrest, beating their participants during the protests and also after arrest, with the use of sophisticated torture.

Worried by the scale of those protests, the authorities cancelled the price increases and introduced sugar rationing. But that did not mean that the workers’ protests in June were deemed justified. On the contrary, they were officially condemned and their participants were called hooligans. During the subsequent weeks the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB) repressed the individuals engaged in the protests; a lot of people were fired or received prison sentences.

The victims of those persecutions received financial and legal aid organized by the young people associated mostly with the scouting milieu of the Czarna Jedynka Scout Team, the ‘Commandos’ milieu, the Warsaw Club of Catholic Intelligentsia (Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej, KIK), and the Catholic University of Lublin. Deprived of means of livelihood, the arrested individual’s families could also count on their help. In September 1976 the milieus engaged in those efforts decided to establish an organization to deal with the issue of human rights violation in communist Poland. Among its leaders were Piotr Naimski and Antoni Macierewicz (the scouting milieu) and also Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik (the ‘Commandos’ milieu). That was how the Workers’ Defense Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) was formed — the first overt opposition organization in Poland since the 1940s. Some of its members and co-workers, particularly printers and distributors of independent publications, operated in the underground. The KOR collected information about violations of human rights, helped the repressed, distributed underground periodicals, leaflets, and publications, and also organized protests and hunger strikes. KOR members and co-workers were often repressed — they were imprisoned, fired, beaten up by ‘unidentified perpetrators’, or surveilled by the SB. The Committee, later transformed into the KOR Social Self-defense Committee (Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej KOR), operated until 1981, when it was dissolved because its tasks were taken over by the Solidarity Independent Self-governing Trade Union (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy „Solidarność”).