CHAPTER 7 : "A HEAVEN FOR OLD PEOPLE, DOGS AND CATS... "POLISH REACTIONS TO LIFE IN BRITAIN
One of the first things that
the new immigrants noticed was just how insular and parochial the British appeared to be. Being 'an island race' had
kept the British, by and large, from any meaningful contact with mainland Europeans and this was felt not just by
Poles but by the masses of Europeans who now flooded to Britain to escape war-ravaged Europe. Writing about the
European Volunteer Workers, J.A.Tannahill wrote:
"Ignorance of their background can be hurtful to
them. "Where is Czechoslovakia ?" one Czech girl was asked by a fellow mill-worker. "Is it a town
in Russia ?" Many refugees were asked why they had left their furniture behind, or why, if the Communists
came to their house, they had not called the police. One Estonian lady, who had lectured on her experiences, said
rather sorrowfully that she felt her audience, while quite sympathetic, did not really believe it all but found the
horror stories pleasantly thrilling." [1]
Another point of mutual misunderstanding were the
names with which Poles are blessed. Names like Wlodzimierz Pszemyszewski and Wawrzyniec
Zwierz-Rzyszczewski were guaranteed to throw any British administrator into confusion. Ferdinand Zwieg
recounts that often a Pole would be approached thus :
"You're a Pole, aren't you ? Perhaps you would
like to see your countrymen ? We have a man whose name ends on 'Ski', an unpronounceable name." [2]
Often these 'Poles' were Ukrainian or Czechs but small things like that did not seem to really matter.
Tadeusz Modelski tells the possibly apocryphal story
about General Montgomery on a visit to Scotland before D-Day where he met General Maczek of the 1st
(Polish) Armoured Division and asked "What language do the Polish people speak at home, German or
Russian ?" Modelski comments :
"By asking such a foolish question, he offended
the Polish national pride - I hope not by malice but by pure ignorance of the facts." [3]
Taking the story at face value it is indicative of the very 'foreignness' of the Poles. Neal Ascherson
writes of the Poles in Scotland:
"...many Scots assumed the Poles were a sort of
Russian and wondered why they became so angry when one told them so. (In return, the Poles assumed the Scots
were really English, and wondered why they became so angry when one told them so...)" [4]
The Poles had a number of other problems they would
have to overcome before being accepted into British society. Firstly, the majority of the Polish Armed Forces, and
this was equally true of Society as a whole, were Roman Catholics. Although there were minorities of Protestants,
Orthodox and Jews, the Poles could be said to be Papist as a body, a fact not missed by the more zealous Protestant
groups in the UK, the Ulster Unionists in particular. For example the Egremont Duke Schomberg, Temperance
Lodge No. 486, Cheshire, wrote to the Foreign Secretary on the 20th of August, 1946, to make the following protest
that the Poles were:
"...a further step in the campaign against the
'LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND AND THE PROTESTANT RELIGION' which we as Orangemen are pledged to
maintain." [5]
The whole question of 'European' values and attitudes became very important to mutual understanding. As well as organised religion the whole area of morality threatened to taint relations with the British community.
It is a known fact that armies overseas tend to fraternise with the local population, the girls in particular. This obviously leads to tension as the American Forces found when they were in Britain waiting for D-Day; the old line about "overpaid, over sexed and over here" was deeply felt, but by the end of the war the Americans were going home, and taking a great many G.I. Brides with them. Now it was the turn of the Poles to receive the odium.
On the 19th of December, 1946, questions were asked in the Commons with regards to an incident where 80 girls, between the ages of 14 and 18, were found in a Polish camp at Watton, East Yorkshire, during a police raid. To prevent the Poles from spoiling the virtue of British womanhood the Home secretary assured the House that discipline and administration would be reviewed. He further urged "parents to exercise their responsibility in cases of this nature to avoid such incidents." [6]
The Poles were certainly not slow in 'fraternising' with the local girls. Cavendish-Bentinck, the first British ambassador to Warsaw after the War, declared that to his mind all Poles suffered from excessive politeness [7], yet heel clicking and hand kissing were something quite new to the English and Scots girls and this Central European charm seemed to do the trick. The Polish Daily in 1948 published a short article about Stanislaw, who arrived in Scotland on the 23rd of June, 1940, just after the fall of France. At a local dance he met Mary and, to quote the article:
"...going against Scottish tradition, but following the old Polish-Viennese fashion - after the dance he kissed her hand. To this gesture of chivalry Mary responded in turn by kissing the Lance Corporal's palm assuming that that was the way things were done on the continent.... It came so unexpectedly that Stanislaw did not have time to do anything about it. It just happened. After the dance Stanislaw returned to his barracks and informed his friends that he was now engaged to be married." [8]
The exact number of Polish-British marriages is difficult to say. Zubrzycki puts the figure at near 4,000, taking the estimates of the Polish Consular authorities and the Polish Army Family Allowances Bureau [9]. This figure is taken from 1939 to 1945 so therefore represents some fast work from the Poles, since from 1944 the 1st Armoured Division was overseas and the 2nd Corps had yet to arrive in Britain. Therefore the numbers of eligible Poles was not that great although the Polish sailors and airmen took up the chase with gusto. The numbers certainly rose once all the Poles had been brought to the UK.
It must be said though that not all the Poles had marriage in mind when they began relationships. Jan Podoski, one time Adjutant to the Chief Of Staff, tells of a letter he saw from an English girl called Betty who had written to the Queen on a delicate matter. It appeared that she was to have a baby by a Pole in six months time. The father stated that obviously he would marry her were it not for Polish military law that forbade marriages during wartime. Betty was not to know that there was in fact no such rule and that the soldier in question was simply looking for an excuse to evade his responsibilities. The Queen, obviously moved by Betty's plight, forwarded the letter to Sikorski asking that he might relax the no-marriage rule in this case. Sikorski agreed that this should happen and informed the soldier's Commander who in turn informed the soldier in question that "By order of the Commander-in-Chief you are marrying Betty on Saturday" and the wedding took place accordingly. [10]
Because the British were so unaccustomed to Europeans, Poles in particular, many Poles created fanciful personas for themselves by which to impress the locals. Again Jan Podoski recounts a conversation with his English landlady about her other Polish guests. She said that they were younger then he was but were of a higher rank since they had two silver stripes on their epaulets instead of his stars. "Maybe you've heard of them as they come from old aristocratic families. One is Count Cieslak the other Count Kanarek." Podoski could not shatter her illusions about the two upstart Corporals and could only humour her by agreeing that they were indeed noblemen and the stripes were obviously evidence of military valour. [11]
The theme of the Polish womaniser was one that was to stay with the Poles for years. Even Spike Milligan in his war memoirs has a running joke that every letter from England to the Mediterranean where he was staying brought news that another serviceman's wife had 'run-off with a Polish airman'. As Karol Zbyszewski wrote in 1947:
"The Poles had never published books on their talent for "l'amour" nor did they produce pornographic films. Yet every Pole was deemed to be a great success. Every Pole is an avid seducer - in love making he is a super expert. [Poles could]... knock out children with even the most stone hearted nun !
The Poles failed to convince the world that they were true democrats and they failed to convince them that they were not born Don Juans." [12]
Zubrzycki confirms this saying that all over the country the Poles were portrayed "...with some success, as a race of Casanovas who menaced the integrity of British womanhood." This was said of troops of all nations but by 1946 only the Poles remained to bear the brunt. [13]
For the Poles this was the last thing they wanted. Yet life went on and so many single men, cut off from women of their own nationality, could do nothing but look out into the local community. The friction was waiting to
Mr. R. White from Yorkshire wrote into the Foreign Office complaining about Polish "Immorality". The F.O. decided they could do nothing as it appeared to be a domestic situation. Apparently Mrs. White had taken their two children and moved in with a Pole who was sharing a house with another Pole who was living with the wife of a Scottish doctor. [14] The whole issue gave those with axes to grind yet another reason to grumble at the Poles.
Women were just one of the distractions for the Polish Forces. Drinking and brawling also played quite heavily in life - soldiers being the same the world over. During the war the dictum was "carpe diem" - seize the day. Each man lived for that day and paid little attention to the future.
For many in the 2nd Corps the Italian campaign were their golden days. As Jan Romanowski, one of Anders' adjutants remembers:
"Although the Soviets had already occupied half of Poland, the Poles on the Italian front did not want to think about this; they wanted to be happy. They chased the Germans, drank with the Australians with whom they were psychologically the closest, they brawled with the English and they loved the girls. The soldiers who couldn't touch the Kirghiz girls in Central Asia or the Arab girls in the Middle East for fear of finding a double edged dagger in their ribs could now choose to ignore their home grown 'Pestki' [P.S.K. - Polish Women's Auxiliary Service]. Now they had Italian girls." [15]
Another ex-2 Polcorps soldier remembers life in Italy in an interview at the table of a family gathering:
"Italy was heaven. A battle and after the battle a barrel of wine and a couple of Italian girls..." the ladies at the table clear their throats, "well perhaps not in front of the wives !" [16]
It is not difficult to see why coming to Britain was such a culture shock to the Poles. Slepokora continues the above interview:
"After the war England was crap [gnoj]. Extreme
poverty. Benches and doors were ripped up for firewood. Houses stood ruined, there was no one to take care of them. And the Poles who somehow tried to get by, well, they couldn't stand them. They used to hang signs out: 'No Irish, No Dogs, No Poles'."
Yet Zygmunt Nowakowski in his 1946 "Open Letter to an Unknown Friend Sailing to England" tries to be positive in saying that England wasn't that bad. Although he recognised that Italy may have been pleasant and sunny there were in fact 1200 Italian Prisoners of War who wanted to stay on in Britain rather than return to Italy. [17] It is unlikely that many Poles were convinced by this argument. Indeed a short time in Britain would certainly
be an eye-opener for many Poles.
Even the Warsaw appointed military attaché to London wrote with admiration about the bearing of the troops from Italy.
"By the end of June [1946] the streets of London began to see tourists from the first sea transports from Italy. I must admit that their turnout made an excellent impression on the watching Londoners. They were smart, well groomed, well pressed, full of confidence and free. They were the very picture of victorious soldiers returning from an occupied country in which they felt extremely good. In any case they certainly looked a different picture to their countrymen who were living in Scotland. [...]
In the English climate and with the ever increasing occurrences of local apathy, the dreams, the self-assurance and the elegance of the arrivals from Italy soon died." [18]
Certainly the effects of the British weather can not be understated in formulating first impressions of Britain. The War Diary of the 14th Armoured Brigade records the unit's impending arrival in Britain by ship:
"Although we are still some distance from ENGLAND the weather has deteriorated considerably and we are greeted by the first harbinger of the approach of Albion - fog." [19]
The 13th Battalion, 5th Kresowa Infantry Division, also recorded their approach:
"Just past Gibraltar a cold wind began to blow. We put on our battle-dresses; the rain began to pour. This, together with the fog, gave us a foretaste of the English climate; England was still a long way away." [20]
Very few Poles have kind words to say on the subject. Jean Carrer wrote the following description of life in a British Service camp:
"The English climate was not the best one could desire after sunny Italy, and its unpleasantries were doubled by our camp facilities. We lived in barracks made of corrugated iron sheets without any insulation. We could easily see the weather outside through the openings around the windows and doors. The only consolation was that the rats were forced to live in the same conditions and shared our misery. We were hoping that any one of the numerous humane societies protecting animals would protest on their behalf and thereby improve our situation. We called our barracks the "barrel of laughs", perhaps because only the one who laughed could survive in them. [21]
The passing of the years have not made the memories of these early years any less bitter when it comes to writing memoirs. It was unfortunate for the Poles that their arrival from Italy coincided with the worst Winter in Britain since that of 1880-81. For those opposed to bringing the Poles to the UK. the winter of 1946-47 was quite a gift. As Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary said during the debate on the PRC bill's second reading, 12th February, 1947:
"A curious thing is that the recent changes in the British weather appear to have persuaded some Poles that the Polish climate is preferable to the British." [22]
But it was not just the weather that the Poles disliked about Britain. One of the biggest complaints was about the traditional Sunday; for many Poles this was the worst day. England was still in the time when absolutely everything closed on that day. There was nothing to do but sit around and, perhaps worse, there was lots of time to think about home and the situation they were in. According to Nowakowski, if one could survive an English Sunday one could survive anything. [23] Britain was, according to Jerzy Potocki:
"...a heaven for old people, dogs and cats ...but for people of an age between childhood and old age Britain is not an ordinary country. For this category of person there is a lack of entertainment. England is a dull and grey country. The pub and the football pools - that is all. There is no point looking for anything else here as you will not find it." [24]
There were also customs and habits to which the Poles would have to adapt themselves. Karol Zbyszewski set down a few hints that the Poles might like to remember to make them fit in. Firstly the Poles had to learn English to get on with the locals. According to Zbyszewski, the English had a habit of looking down on people who did not speak the language properly as if to suggest that that person was feeble-minded. It was also most important for the Poles to be punctual - to the minute even. Anyone who has had dealings with Poles know they have a tendency to be 'fashionably' late and this was not in the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things. The Poles had to learn to answer letters, they had to ensure they never gave expensive presents to friends, they had to refrain from asking indiscreet and delicate questions, but above all it was certainly not recommended to seduce the daughter of ones host. [25] If a Pole could manage all this he might just fit in.
There were many other occasions where a clash of cultures occurred. One of the more delicate came in the Spring of 1944 when Dr. Jaworski, a member of the National Council, set off to Hyde Park for a spot of sunbathing. After stripping down to his underwear he was promptly arrested by the Police and appeared in court. On advice he pleaded, with some truth, that it was perfectly acceptable for men to sun-bathe in their underwear in Poland. The court gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him off with the warning that if he was caught again then he would be dealt with according to English Law - which frowned upon that sort of European decadence. [26]
One of Nowakowski's pieces of advice to the arriving Poles is the use of the word "sorry" in all its permutations such as "very sorry", "so sorry" and "awfully sorry" - a little word that costs little and is used all the time. [27] Much of Nowakowski's work is peppered with some heavy irony, especially when preparing his 'unknown friend' for being called a "bloody foreigner" and seeing signs with "Aliens Out" and "Houses for the British", something mentioned by Slepokora above. The other point mentioned by several Polish writers is that, due to a common resentment of both the Poles and the Irish, a bond developed between the two. Although there were no Poles in Northern Ireland or the Irish Free State both Nowakowski and Jozef Kuropieska say that if a Pole needed a friend then the Irish were the people who would most willingly help the Poles. [28] Having a common religion, a shared history of bloodshed and similar national characteristics - if one were to stereotype then sentimentality, a love of the grain and a love of a brawl would come high.
The Irish, as an immigrant community, did not present the same degree of 'foreigness' as the Poles - they did after all speak English. Nowakowski, again with gushing irony, quotes Shakespeare about his position as a 'bloody foreigner' living in "this fortress built by nature itself, against infection and the hand of war." Although the English considered themselves to be a homogeneous national unit, Nowakowski points out that over the centuries there had been several other 'invasions' by foreigners who decided to stay. [29] This theme was taken up in 1951 by the West Sussex County Times, a local paper representing the largest concentration of Poles in Sussex - Horsham. [See Appendix J]
It should be noticed that by the 1950s the press was looking more charitably at the Poles. The Berlin blockade, the Korean War and the effects of Stalinism in East Central Europe had altered the British public's attitude to the once 'fine brave ally'. The spin off to this was that the Poles, who had had their early warnings ignored as 'fascist propaganda', were now accepted.
Attitudes changed over time; views held in 1939 were different to those held in 1945 and still different in 1951.
In 1939 very few British people had had any contact with foreigners and obviously to see a strange uniform and hear an unknown tongue caused people to stare. Very few people in Britain had ever met a Pole and the limit of most peoples contact would have been to hear the great pianist Paderewski (whose name was usually mispronounced as Paderooski) on the gramophone or to see him in one of his films like the 1938 production of "Moonlight Sonata". Even during the war, unless a person lived in Scotland, near an air-base or a port, then the only Poles most people would have seen would have been in newsreels or films. Anton Walbrook's pilot/pianist 'Stefan Radetzky' playing "The Warsaw Concerto" to Sally Gray as Warsaw crumbled around them in Brian Desmond Hurst's 1941 "Dangerous Moonlight" was an excellent wartime propaganda piece and allowed Walbrook to demonstrate what was seen as 'continental charm' for a British and American audience. The film proved a great public success and the music became an instant hit (even though the film also demonstrated the fact that the British film-going public was still not ready for the Polish 'ski' surname ending).
For the first few years of the war the Poles in Britain had a certain novelty value. Zbyszewski relates the story of a sailor, one of the first Poles to reach England, who went into a restaurant in 1939 only to notice that everyone was looking at him. Deciding to play on their curiosity he ordered an orange. In full view of everyone he peeled the orange and put the fruit to one side and cut up the peel in to strips on his plate. He then added some cheese and pepper. He went on to order paprika, vinegar, a glass of whisky and sardines which he then mixed with the peel on his plate. While his small audience was trying to work out what this crazy foreigner was doing he got up, paid for his meal and left without eating any of it. The English in the restaurant realised that they had been fooled and next time the sailor went in to eat no one stared. [30] Although the differences in food should not be understated, one British Soldier who was stationed with a Polish unit wrote in 1944:
"As you see by the address we are now with the Poles who are very nice people indeed, but their food is just awful, we just cannot get used to it. For instance cheese for breakfast, and no milk in the tea." [31]
Such feelings were, of course, mutual. The British diet was certainly not what the Poles were used to. The sausage, the ubiquitous 'banger' was one source of disappointment to the Poles. One of the main complaints was that they contained everything but meat. As the Polish community expanded so butchers began to produce sausages to meet their tastes. This brought about the problem with rationing and the fact that ration cards did not cover the extra meat that was used in production. A new label had to be created thus the "continental type sausage" was born in Britain.
There were many other British delicacies to which the Poles would have to become accustomed - Porridge for breakfast and baked beans on toast were just two. The menu enclosed as Appendix K was described as an 'Emergency Bill of Fare' for the severe winter of 1947 and was to be served in P.R.C. camps. Anyone with a passing familiarity of central European eating would see how alien it must have seemed to the Poles.
The arrival of the Poles in Britain led to what The Economist called the 'Polish Paradox' in that while the Poles wanted to come to Britain many British wanted to move to the dominions to escape the post-war austerity.
"Hundreds of British workers have their names down on immigration lists of the Dominions and await only shipping space and the fulfilment of formalities to shake the dust of England permanently from their feet." [32]
Indeed at the time there was a popular slogan that went: "I want to be a refugee from Britain". In an interview with the New York Times Churchill had said that some 500,000 British Subjects wanted to emigrate to the Dominions and another several hundred thousand wanted to go to the Americas. [33] This would cause even more problems for the already critical labour crisis. Yet Government policy had to be carried out.
The British did not really want the Poles and, given the choice, the Poles would not have chosen Britain as a centre of permanent settlement - but they had no choice and had to make the best of the situation. For the government, as Nowakowski said in 1946, it was a "...hard and risky decision but nevertheless a brave one. It is a hazardous decision for the government since it is gambling with its own popularity." [34] The previous chapter discussed just how unpopular the whole process made the Labour administration.
Keith Sword explains what the Poles thought about the British response to their plight:
"What of Polish views ? Today there is a widely held recognition among Poles that the British resettlement provisions were enlightened and even generous. A typical comment is that the British behaved 'decently'. There is particular praise for the farsightedness which led to the continued support of education provisions. As a result many hundreds of younger Poles were able to complete vocational courses in further and higher education, and to play a valuable role in the economic and social life of the community. Nevertheless, there is also a residue of bitterness to be found in some quarters. For some the Polish resettlement scheme was an opportunity lost when, in the interests of short-term labour needs, qualified and experienced workers were employed as unskilled labour; when Poles with professional skills were compelled to take menial and mentally undemanding work. The 'declassment' which this brought about was traumatic for many." [35]
It would be difficult to minimise the bitterness felt by many Poles at the end of the war. The original war aims that had taken the Poles across many thousands of miles had come to nothing. They had seen their country slip out of their reach and now they seemed doomed to endless exile in Britain - a country with which Poles had few cultural and historical ties. It was difficult to find an answer to why they had fought. To again quote Nowakowski: "You did not fight for seven years for the privilege of ending up in an English PRC camp working in a foreign land." [36] Another Gunner sums up the feelings of many troops in what was a fairly typical letter in 1945:
"The war with Germany has ended happily for me as I came out alive, but there are new worries and painful problems to be faced now,- I have nowhere to go, no home to return to ! There is Poland I hear but not for us! It simply breaks my heart. Of all the dearest things I left my family in order to go and fight for our future. The enemy is beaten and yet there is no return home." [37]
The historical record shows that even General Anders felt let down and betrayed by the Allies. Anders' views on the post-war settlement are discussed in chapter two but in relation to the British he wrote the following, in the English language version of his memoirs:
"They were, however, obviously sincere, and there was every reason for gratitude to them for the assurances they gave that no soldiers would be repatriated against their will, and that demobilisation would not be hurried. For me, there was, indeed, no alternative but to agree with their proposals. If I disagreed, I should have been asked, "what then ?" and have had no answer, while Britain, to her great credit, was the only country which realised that there was a moral obligation to these soldiers who had fought so long by the side of the Allies and which was therefore prepared to make provision for the future of all who would not risk returning home." [38]
Some Poles have said that Anders had special reason to say kind things about the British since he was receiving a very generous pension from the War Office - for many Poles the question of gratitude never entered the equation. Nowakowski, in his open letter, tried to instil some self-confidence in the Polish Armed Forces:
"Never lower your head. Everything you receive here does not even make up a small percentage of what Poland gave to Great Britain. We put more into the kitty then we could afford and we got absolutely nothing back in return - even worse they took away everything they could take and everything we allowed them to take." [39]
Given such a state of mind it is surprising that the Poles integrated into British life as successfully and quickly as they did. Interestingly enough the Polish language version of Anders' memoirs does not give the same positive evaluation of British policy as does the version in English. Anders says that the British wanted to take an interest in the affairs of the Poles like some knight in armour, and they felt that they had sorted out the problem quite fully and then sat back expecting the Poles to show their gratitude for the British involvement. "Why wasn't it like that ? Why did the ordinary soldier rip up Bevin's note encouraging them to return to their country...?" [40]
Fundamentally, whatever complexion the politicians put on it, the Poles felt themselves let down, and this obviously coloured relations with the British. It was not only the Poles who felt this; some British - notably the right wing, also saw just how depressing the situation was for Poland and the Poles in the West. The Conservative MP, Capt. Alan Graham, made the following speech in the Commons during the Yalta Debate:
"It is, indeed, a mournful reflection that this Empire, which stood alone in 1940, except for Poland, against the might of triumphant Nazi Germany, cannot now, when she has mighty Allies by her side, stand up for juster treatment of her first and most martyred Ally of this war. But if, indeed, it be so, let us at least comport ourselves with dignity and honour. Do not let us pretend that something which is unjust is in reality right. Do not turn away from our own shores those who have given their lifeblood for the protection of our homes.
If we must consent to the fact of our Polish Allies being robbed of their homes, let us find them a new home in our Empire or elsewhere. Let us grant them the pensions that our own soldiers and wounded men receive, and at least, the right to work here and if, after this treatment, they still care to receive it, British citizenship. To send them back to a Sovietized Poland, or to hand over Poland to the Government of the Lublin Committee, with the power that lies behind it, would be nothing less than the betrayal of innocent blood." [41]
This was still a minority view at the time. It would take many years and much work before the Poles became accepted into British society. The first years are not remembered fondly by many Poles.
