Polish migrants strike: Yes, the Poles do get everywhere – we should be profoundly grateful
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Version 0 of 1. ‘We do not want to go to war,” say George Byczynski, which is a relief. This clean-cut young lawyer could easily beat me in a fight, but we are sitting in the peaceful surroundings of the terrace of the Ognisko Polskie, the Polish Hearth Club, which occupies a stunning white, terrace building in London. This is where Poles come when they have made it in Britain and want to hear captains of industry, entrepreneurs and exiled members of the old aristocracy speak in their mother tongue, between slurps of beetroot soup. “There are two powers fighting inside a Pole,” Byczynski says, trying to explain why he and his friends have been urging their fellow countrymen to give blood over the past few days instead of going on strike, which others were calling for. Their positive social media campaign has attracted the support of thousands and provided a defining, revealing moment for British Poles. “The first of those two powers is a conservative mind. ‘Step by step, slowly conserve and grow what I have, let’s not do anything too crazy.’ Then there is an almost revolutionary, romantic and emotive soul. When there is a threat, we go and fight.” Look at the way Polish people fought in the two world wars, he says. Look at the pilots of the Polish Air Force, who reformed in exile in 1940 and recorded more kills during the Battle of Britain than any other squadron. (Best not to mention the way the BNP and now Britain First have idiotically used one of the Polish Spitfires in campaigns against Polish immigrants.) Polish migrants donate blood (Charlie Forgham-Bailey) Look at those who stayed in the forests of Poland long after Stalin had taken control and resisted the Soviet Union. “Who cares if there are Nazis or Soviets killing you? They are killing you anyway.” In case you haven’t yet got the message that they are a feisty bunch, there is a poster in the men’s room at the Ognisko Polskie which copies the style of the popular wartime “Keep Calm Carry On” signs: “I Can’t Keep Calm, I’m Polish.” That fighting spirit brought about a plan for a massive strike last Thursday, when the Polish Express newspaper called for expats across Britain to down tools for the day. “Once, in America in the 1980s, immigrants didn’t go to work for just one day,” said the original posting. “The result? It stopped everything: the metro, communications, cafés. And it stopped the moaning. Maybe now is the time for us.” There are at least half a million Poles of working age in Britain and more than 80 per cent of them have jobs. That compares with 69 per cent among adults born here, so forget about calling the Poles scroungers. “We want to make the point that we are here and that we want to feel appreciated,” says Tomasz Kowalski, editor of Polish Express. In the end only half a dozen Poles turned up to protest (EPA) The sentiment – if not the strike – had the backing of Prince Janek Zylinski, the son of a man who led a famous cavalry charge against the Germans at the battle of Kaluszyn. The prince lives in a big white house in Ealing and once challenged Nigel Farage of Ukip to a duel at dawn in Hyde Park, brandishing his father’s sword and saying: “What I cannot accept is the amount of hostility and sometimes hatred towards the Poles.” But he did not support the actual strike. Nobody did, despite the attention it got. Only half a dozen Poles turned up to protest outside Parliament. “This time the conservative, take it easy approach won, which is good,” Byczynski says; he came here to study law six years ago. “There is no need for a strike. If there were deportations, people being stopped on the street and some serious stuff going on, then we could think of a strike as a weapon of last resort. None of that happens in the UK. “Hundreds of thousands of people have been given the opportunity to work here, and they are using it. They are paying their taxes. They now have the money for a better standard of living than there is in Poland. They are not feeling the urge to go on a war.” He is not saying they have no problems. The police recorded 585 hate crimes against Poles in 2013. “There are incidents of discrimination around the UK. You cannot ignore that. Many of those people who have suffered feel they have nowhere to go, because Poles don’t have the protection around them that other groups do. It’s not seen as racism, it’s not religious discrimination. Nobody writes about Polish people, they are not in the news.” Just last week, a fire was set in front of his friend’s house in Kent and someone wrote on the barn wall: “Polish scum go home”. The friend was the one who came up with the idea of giving blood, as a way of doing something positive against the haters. It was meant to highlight the blood that had been spilled by Poles on the same side as the Brits in the past, as well as pointing out that they are well and truly in the bloodstream of British society. “We give a lot back to this country and this is a way of showing we’re not as bad as some people make us look,” says Agnieszka Spytkowska, who is an administrator at the University of East London. There have been Polish people in this country for more than a century, but their numbers soared after their country joined the European Union in May 2004. There was a big party, with a mighty sound system in the medieval square in Krakow, but the beats fell silent for a very special moment at midnight. A trumpeter always climbs the tower of a church on the edge of the Rynek Glowny square on the hour, every hour, and plays a haunting tune. It ends abruptly, apparently in memory of a sentry who saw the Mongol hordes coming towards the city in 1241 and sounded the alarm with his trumpet but was stopped with an arrow to the throat. The strangled note is what everybody expects. But that night he did not stop. He kept playing, and went into the melody of the “Ode to Joy”, the EU anthem. It was spine-tingling, followed by the hysteria of teenagers hugging each other and saying: “Hello European!” There have been Polish people in this country for more than a century (Charlie Forgham-Bailey) The Poles I met catching the first flights out the next morning were not beggars, benefit-chasers or any of the things the rabid tabloid press said. They were pioneers, adventurers. Even to get a flight you had to have saved some money, at a time when a teacher was earning the equivalent of £100 a month. Eva, a 23-year-old from the mountains, was going to the West Country with an employment agency to do a job nobody there wanted (caring for and cleaning up after the sick and the elderly). At first, she struggled with the long hours and low pay, the loneliness and the hostility she encountered. A taxi driver raged at her that Poles were stealing jobs and he made her cry. “If we are not wanted here, then it makes us want to go.” But Eva stayed. She fell in love with the country and with a local man, found work in a gallery and became known as an artist in her own right. She has made a new life and only ever claimed benefits once, for a month between jobs. “Afterwards, I wrote a letter to say thank you.” Without people such as Eva, our economy would have fallen apart. The pressure on them eased a little when other nations joined the EU. “The rage all went to the Romanians and Bulgarians,” Byczynski says. “I feel sorry for those guys.” Now it is the Africans trying to cross the channel at Calais who draw all the fire. Most Poles are white; it has been easier for them to disappear into the crowd as they have settled down, had children and in many cases prospered. They work hard and wouldn’t dream of going on strike in the hope of being more appreciated. Far better to give blood. More than 6,000 Poles applied to become British citizens in 2013 and the number almost certainly doubled last year. A decade ago, some people feared that the Poles would soon be everywhere. They are. They serve us, drive us, heal us, rescue us, entertain us. They are befriending, loving and remaking us. They are us. For that, we should be grateful. email: colemoreton.com Twitter: @colemoreton |