Polish
immigrants who fled during the second world war have established a
community in South Kensington, with clubs, shops, a library and a
nominal government in exile.
Bus
conductors on the 74 route will occasionally call out “the Polish
Corridor” at any stop along the Cromwell Road between Exhibition
Road and Earls Court. If they shouted it out in Polish a good number
of their passengers would understand, for if any part of London can
be called Little Poland this
is it.
If
anyone wants to find Polish restaurants with Polish waitresses, eat
Polish cakes, visit Polish hairdressers, doctors, dentists, or
chemists, do business with a Polish architect, lawyer, estate agent,
or type-writer salesman, or talk with Polish writers, publishers,
artists, or actors he need only walk a short distance from South
Kensington station.
If
you ask them why they live there they will say it is convenient.
After all that is where the Polish clubs, associations, shops, and so
on are. Perhaps it was the establishment of the Polish Club in
Prince’s Gate in 1940 that started the fashion. Now that the Polish
Ex-Combatants’ Association, the Polish Library with its 90,000
books, and the headquarters of several Polish organisations are in
the neighbourhood the South Kensington Poles are unlikely to migrate
elsewhere.
It
is estimated that the Polish community in Britain numbers some
135,000 (40,000 of them in London) and that up to now about 20,000
children have been born to Polish parents in this country. With the
return of the Polish 2nd Corps and the arrival of some 50,000
civilians at the end of the war the community numbered a quarter of a
million, but about half the soldiers opted either to return to Poland
or go farther afield to the United States and Canada.
The
community was really founded in the dark days of 1940 when, after the
collapse of France, Polish soldiers and airmen found themselves in
Scotland and Lancashire to re-form into units and some 3,000
civilians came to London.
The
Polish Government reconstituted itself under General Sikorsky, giving
employment to a large proportion of the Polish civilians in London.
Those were the days of hope for the Poles in Britain - a hope to be
wiped out with one blow in the summer of 1945 when, as a result of
the Yalta agreement, the British Government withdrew its recognition
of the Polish Government in London.
On
that date the Poles changed from a people waiting and preparing to
return home to an irrevocably exiled community. But it was still
possible for them to retain the notion that they (and their
Government in exile) represented the true and free Poland, upholding
the values, liberties, and traditions of a country dominated by a
foreign Power which had imposed a Government against the will of its
people. But in 1956, when Mr Gomulka took over the reins in Warsaw,
the situation began to change again.
Today
the Polish Government in London still exists, but few Poles know even
the names of its members. “We don’t take it seriously,” a
Polish journalist said, “but all the same we recognise it as a
symbol. On certain occasions it is even accepted as something real -
even if it is dormant.” Nevertheless there are few Poles in this
country who do not accept General Anders as the figurehead of the
community. “He is the greatest personality among us and as the
majority of the Polish men here have served under him they respect
him as a person, even if they do not take him seriously as a
politician.”
The
more liberal attitude of the Warsaw Government (most of the exiled
Poles refer to it as the “regime”) has created tensions here. It
is now possible for Poles to leave Poland for visits to their
families here and exiled Poles are encouraged to return home to live
or make a visit. The community has been split between those who visit
Poland and those who do not.
It
is not just a division between those who have taken British
nationality (about 20,000 have) and those who have not, but rather
between those who are prepared to go to the Polish Consulate and
acknowledge its authority and those who will refuse this gesture of
recognition.
The
Warsaw Government has been seeking in various ways to persuade the
Poles in exile to return home. They are told that they are not
considered political exiles but emigrant workers whose real home is
Poland; they are encouraged to go to the Polish Embassy to celebrate
their national holidays; they have been offered the facility of
having their books published in Poland; they are expected to glow
with warmth and pride at the appearance of Polish dancers and theatre
companies in London. But the overtures have met with little response.
The Poles who have British passports and travel to Poland tend to
return feeling more Polish than those who have not changed their
nationality; the Polish visitors to England continue to say that the
Warsaw Government has no popular support.
For
the younger generation it is particularly difficult. They naturally
want to merge into their British background, yet many, as they grow
through adolescence, begin to realise the importance of their
heritage and are stirred by a desire to learn their native language
and study their own literature and history. They begin to find a
pride in being Polish. Yet for them it is impossible to clutch at the
dream still cherished by some of their elders that one day the past
will take over.
It
is not difficult for a young Pole to keep in touch with his nation’s
culture. “Dziennik Polski” (“The Polish Daily”), a four-page
newspaper (eight at weekends), has a circulation of some 30,000, and
many more readers; “Wiadomosci” (“The News”), a literary
weekly (which changed its name after the original was suspended by
the British Government in 1944 for its violently anti-Russian
attitude), is brought out in London by the same two men, Grydzewski
and Borman, who founded it in Warsaw 39 years ago; “The White
Eagle,” a weekly which reflects the political views of General
Anders, has a circulation of some 4,000, and “The Continent,” a
monthly magazine which seeks to be objective, perhaps more faithfully
reflects the views of the younger generation.
The
Poles in exile are prolific writers. Between 1940 and 1960 some
11,000 books and pamphlets in Polish were published in England. The
Polish Library, which stocks books and papers published in Poland as
well as here, sends its volumes to subscribers all over the country.
London has two Polish theatres, a Polish art gallery, and two Polish
churches. Polish priests work in 175 parishes, there are two Polish
schools run by religious orders, a Polish hospital and two Polish old
people’s homes.
In
“The Polish Corridor” the Poles are articulate, opinionated, and
politically minded. They have no wish to merge into their British
background - they take pride in their apartness. But in the factories
and restaurants, farms and building sites in Scotland, Wales, the
Midlands, and the North, where Polish people have made their homes
and are working alongside British working people, where the
atmosphere is less rarefied and Polish politics may seldom be a
subject for conversation or conjecture, a merging has already begun
and the “...owskis” and the “...owskas” are becoming less and
less apart.
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