Wiktor Moszczynski's Blog
Thursday 31 December 2020
Brexit - was it worth it?
Thursday 19 November 2020
After the veto - Poland historically is not a "regressive" state
Dear
Editor,
In answer
to your leader ("Poland and Hungary's wrecking tactics are cynical and
irresponsible" Guardian 18.11.2020) which refers to Poland being
transformed by the current government into a "regressive outlier",
please remember that this is only a very temporary phase in Poland's one
thousand year history. Although Poland has always been a religious country it
is also the only Christian country to harbour Jewish refugees from Western
Europe since the Middle Ages, enjoyed four centuries of parliamentary government
and tolerance of other religions before it was partitioned, introduced the
first liberal constitution in Europe in 1791, fought for progressive causes
around the world as well as for its own independence in the XIXth century under
the slogan "For your Freedom and Ours", inspired Chopin's
"Revolutionary Etude", was the first country to say "no" to
Hitler, ran the most efficient underground state against German Nazi occupation
and launched the "Solidarity" trade union movement in the 1980's
which inspired the whole world. It will inspire the world again soon.
Yours
faithfully,
Wiktor
Moszczynski
Saturday 7 November 2020
Futility and insidiousness of Internal Market Bill
First, as a
retired export documentation officer I recognized at once, when the Withdrawal
Agreement was reached with the EU by Boris Johnson last year, that it would
require some border checks to be viable, however much the Prime Minister may
want to pretend it would not. As his chief negotiator David Frost, who had
previously had responsibility for the issuing of certificates of origin, must
have explained to him, Northern Ireland being now both in the UK and EU had
become de facto a separate legal entity in trade terms. Without documentary
checks, whether on the Irish Sea or elsewhere, EU or Irish goods crossing into
Northern Ireland could then possibly be re-exported duty free to the United
Kingdom, and also on to those countries like Japan or USA with whom the UK was
planning to have a trade treaty. Similarly, goods in free circulation in the UK
could then freely enter the EU via Northern Ireland. By advocating no customs
controls in the Irish Sea to enforce its dual status the PM was facilitating
the creation of an eventual fraudsters' paradise in Northern Ireland. The EU,
which will defend its precious single market to the death, could not tolerate
any attempt by the UK to subvert it in this way. Nor is such a solution in the interests
of the UK's internal market.
Secondly,
as a former Chairman of the Polish Solidarity Campaign, who has campaigned and
continues to campaign for democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, let me
assure "Sunday Telegraph" readers that were a bill that states
"have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law
with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent....." be passed
through the Mother of Parliaments it will be quoted unremittingly by any tinpot
authoritarian leader in that area to justify their own future breaches of their
international UN or EU legal obligations. How shameful that would be for
Britain.
Composed 08.10.2020
Wednesday 23 September 2020
The UK Legend of Solidarność
It is now
exactly 40 years since that glorious August in 1980 when the striking workers
in the Baltic shipyards of Northern Poland organized a strike over the creation
of a free trade union and, under the eyes of an astounded international media, brought
a totalitarian state to its knees without a single drop of blood. While the ruthless riot militia stood
watching, while the army stayed in its barracks, while the Kremlin fulminated
with impotent rage, the Polish Inter-factory Strike Committee covering 700
different plants in the Gdansk region, accompanied by its advisers and lawyers,
negotiated with the Communist government on behalf of the whole of Poland’s
work force. Their famous 21 demands, political, economic and social, headed by
the right to set up a free trade union and the right to strike, handwritten
onto wooden boards almost as iconic as the Ten Commandments, were agreed by a
terrified government and are now a UNESCO protected artefact.
I was
active at the time in Polish media circles, in the UK Information Centre for Polkish Affairs, that were concerned with
propagating the struggle for democracy and human rights in Poland. So, I was
used to acting in the rarefied atmosphere of journalists and academics specializing
in Eastern European affairs. I was also a Labour Councillor at a time when party
members’ main foreign interests were an obsessive anti-Americanism and an
abhorrence of South African apartheid. Suddenly, there followed the successful culmination
of the strike in Poland in August and the subsequent registration in October followed
by 15 months of alternating drama and carnival and 3 bitter years of martial
law. During that momentous time, I was amazed now to find myself the centre
of attention of countless trade union branches, left wing organizations and
academic bodies throughout the country inviting me to come and explain this
extraordinary phenomenon.
As early as
the beginning of August 1980 a group of ideological left wingers had set up an
organization called the Polish Solidarity Campaign in order to campaign among
trade unions to support the striking workers in Poland. Along with others, I
was drawn into supporting this organization and becoming one of their major
speakers. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune in mid-September the newly formed structure of the independent trade union in Poland had constituted itself under the
name Solidarność, as if echoing our earlier modest organization in name. It struck
a chord. That is why in the last week of August alone I had chaired a well-attended
international press conference in the Atheneum which included the philosopher
Leszek Kołakowski, the economist Włodzimierz Brus and Electricians’ Union boss
Frank Chapple; addressed a meeting of Labour Party members at Conway Hall in
London; and travelled to Leeds to address a crowd of 1600 left-wing activists
at the “Beyond the Fragments” conference. Everywhere I travelled this hitherto
obscure East European country called Poland had now become front page news
greeted with wonder and delight in left and right wing media alike.
Sympathy
for Poland and the new Solidarność movement seemed universal. We found that the Polish Solidarity Campaign
had little problem gaining funds from the sale of Solidarność T-shirts,
pullovers and badges at Jumble sales and cultural events. We were equally welcome
at Conservative Party meetings and at CND rallies, in Catholic churches and Methodist
halls. Within a week of the imposition of martial law we had organized a march
of 15,000 people which had been announced by the BBC news following our press
conference in the Houses of Parliament. The demonstration was attended not only
by the massed ranks of the Polish community young and old but also by a massive
range of British organizations ranging from church groups to student unions,
Afghan Mujaheddin to Latvian youth
organizations, as well as branches of trade unions and political organizations
from Conservative to Communist and all stops in between, proudly displaying their
banners as they marched from Hyde Park past the Polish Embassy to Regent’s Park.
We held demonstrations regularly twice a year for the next 5 years, occupying
Jubilee Gardens or Trafalgar Square. Solidarność was a magic word that opened
all doors to political party leaders, to trade union bosses and to university
lecture rooms. It even assisted us in convincing the Labour Party National
Executive not to invite any more Eastern European Communist Party
representatives to their annual conferences. In 1989, when Lech Wałęsa finally
visited a highly polarized UK, he was the only person imaginable who could kiss
Margaret Thatcher on the hand and Glenys Kinnock on the cheek in the same day,
and he was actually the person who introduced that fiercely anti-trade union British
prime minister to Norman Willis, her British T.U.C. counterpart, as they had
never met before.
In fact,
apart from outright Soviet sympathisers like Arthur Scargill, everyone saw in
the Solidarność movement an idealized image of what they were trying to achieve
in this country. Conservatives saw an organization challenging Communism and demanding
a more market orientated economy, liberals saw an organization that was
democratic and progressive in a totalitarian environment, democratic socialists
saw here a challenge to dogmatic Stalinism, Trotskyists supported the struggle
of Solidarność for workers’ councils
running factories and regional government, trade unionists admired the ability of
Solidarność to recruit 10 million members in 3 months and fight so successfully
for workers rights using sympathy strikes to achieve progress for weaker organizations.
Religious leaders welcomed the moral God-fearing challenge to an atheist
Marxist state, peace movements saw Solidarność as their partner for peace in
the Soviet bloc and admired their ability to conduct a bloodless peaceful
revolution. The multi-faceted profile of Solidarność, as both a social movement
and as a trade union, gripped the imagination of such a disparate range of
supporters, each viewing Solidarność through a skewed and subjective ideological
telescope of its own, that it spun a legendary narrative of a universal moral
crusade cut off in its prime. It became in time, subconsciously or not, a model
for many mass popular and peaceful resistance movements throughout the world in
places as diverse as Brazil, Senegal, Ukraine or Belarus.
However in
the UK, popular interest in the resistance of Solidarność to martial law somewhat
faded in the summer of 1982 as the UK went to war over the Falklands and only
found itself restored in the public consciousness in 1989 after Poland created
the first non-Communist government in the Eastern bloc, headed by leaders of
the Solidarność. The legend is tempered now by reality. It is also somewhat tarnished
by the challenge to normal liberal values of the present Polish government,
which includes some elements of the old Solidarność ideas. Yet the main social
and political movement which is seeking to recover the values of solidarity,
tolerance and participatory democracy is hoping to lay claim to the glorious past
by recasting itself as the Nowa (New) Solidarność. Its leaders hope that it too
will capture the imagination of the democratic world once again against the
background of a world-wide illiberal nationalist challenge to democratic values
more sinister and more potent than it had been during the cold war.
Wiktor Moszczyński
23/09/2020 www.polishlondoner.blogspot.co.uk
Monday 21 September 2020
Perfidious Albion Internal Market Bill
First, as a
retired export documentation officer I recognized at once, when the Withdrawal
Agreement was reached with the EU by Boris Johnson last year, that it would
require some border checks to be viable, however much the Prime Minister may
want to pretend it would not. As his chief negotiator David Frost, who had
previously had responsibility for the issuing of certificates of origin, must
have explained to him, Northern Ireland being now both in the UK and EU had
become de facto a separate legal entity in trade terms. Without documentary
checks, whether on the Irish Sea or elsewhere, EU or Irish goods crossing into
Northern Ireland could then possibly be re-exported duty free to the United
Kingdom, and also on to those countries like Japan or USA with whom the UK was
planning to have a trade treaty. Similarly, goods in free circulation in the UK
could then freely enter the EU via Northern Ireland. By advocating no customs
controls in the Irish Sea to enforce its dual status the PM was facilitating
the creation of an eventual fraudsters' paradise in Northern Ireland. The EU,
which will defend its precious single market to the death, could not tolerate
any attempt by the UK to subvert it in this way. Nor is such a solution in the interests
of the UK's internal market.
Secondly,
as a former Chairman of the Polish Solidarity Campaign, who has campaigned and
continues to campaign for democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, let me
assure "Sunday Telegraph" readers that were a bill that states
"have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law
with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent....." be passed
through the Mother of Parliaments it will be quoted unremittingly by any tinpot
authoritarian leader in that area to justify their own future breaches of their
international UN or EU legal obligations. How shameful that would be for
Britain.
Yours
faithfully
Saturday 15 August 2020
100 year commemoration of Battle of Warsaw
It is a 100 years ago that the army of the newly restored Republic of Poland was able to hold back the invading Bolshevik hordes at the gates of Warsaw and destroy their army with a bold countermanoeuvre by Marshal Pilsudski from the south on August 16th 1920. Bolshevik commander Tukhaczevesky had predicted he would be feeding his horses in "red" Paris that same year and most of Europe was still in social and political turmoil crippled by World War One destruction and the flu pandemic. The Polish Army saved Europe from the Soviet invasion and prevented for 20 years the Communist takeover of Central Europe. Polish workers and peasants joined in the fight against the Bolsheviks. It was a true test of fire for the newly nascent Polish nation and according to British diplomat and historian Lord D'Abernon it was "the eighteenth decisive battle in world histroy." The Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920 was the only war that Soviet Russia lost until the war in Afghanistan in 1982.
It is now Polish Army Day in Poland.
On Facebook 15th August 2020
Sunday 26 July 2020
Polish government accused of risking “a serious breach” of the rule of law
In the October 2015 elections for the Polish parliament, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) won an outright majority with an ambitious Poland First programme of so-called “good renewal”, which included a generous social welfare programme and a desire to overturn their predecessors’ social and economic policies.
PiS is
ultra-nationalist and socially conservative, opposing (indeed reversing) LGBT
rights and women’s rights (for example, they have said they will take Poland
out of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against
women and domestic violence). They also opposed taking a share of Syrian
refugees because they didn’t want to undermine Poland’s Catholic identity.
Their leaders are obsessed with exposing the supposed criminality of the
post-communist political and economic establishment and its failure to
challenge the EU’s liberal social agenda.
In
particular, they blamed a self-perpetuating independent judiciary that they
claimed to include judges from former communist Poland. In fact, there were
barely three former communist lawyers left in the Supreme Court out of a total
of 125 members, as the remainder had long been retired. PiS’s self-declared
mission to brook no opposition to their economic and social programme led it to
uproot democratic conventions and cut legal corners with a series of measures
that subjugated the judiciary and the state media to their party political
“control”.
Since 2016,
a number of EU and even UN institutions have criticised the changes to the
political framework by the PiS government, but with only a limited effect. On
20 July 2020, the committee on civil liberties, justice and human affairs (a
committee of the European Parliament) issued its latest interim report, urging
the EU Commission to take punitive measures against Poland because of “a clear
risk of a serious breach by the Republic of Poland of the rule of law”.
The report
recounts in great detail the measures taken by the PiS government to erode
fundamental human rights and subvert the independence of the judiciary in
Poland. This has taken place not in one fell swoop, but as a result of a
thousand cuts, each moving forward the agenda despite attempts to prevent each
transgressions by either an outvoted and demoralised internal opposition, or by
the various EU relevant institutions.
In a
20-page document, the committee lists the abuse of powers by the new parliament
from December 2015 onward when it assumed powers to revise the constitution and
curtail the independence of the civil service, the police, the Public
Prosecutors’ Office, the ombudsman for human rights, the National Media Council
and the judiciary. In particular, the committee criticised the merging of the
hitherto non-political office of prosecutor general with the political post of
justice minister. The new parliament also redesigned the judiciary by
politicising the appointments to the Constitutional Court and by introducing
new institutions. These new institutions included the Chamber of Extraordinary
Control, the National Council of the Judiciary, and the Disciplinary Chamber,
all staffed with the justice minister’s nominees in order to control and even
purge judges both in the independent supreme court and in local courts.
This has
led to a dangerous duality in the Polish justice system where, for example, the
current Supreme Court passed a resolution refusing to recognise the validity of
pronouncements by the government-controlled Disciplinary Chamber, while the
government-controlled constitutional tribunal declared the Supreme Court’s
resolution as unconstitutional. The committee acknowledged that the
organisation of the justice system is a sovereign national competence, but EU
members are still required to ensure their legislation does not breach EU law,
and in particular the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive
and the judiciary.
Other
aspects were criticised too, such as the work of the National Media Council
changing the state television into a crude propaganda outlet for the ruling
party and for its candidates in the ensuing elections. The committee also highlighted
concerns over new legislation that has curbed: academic freedom; freedom of
assembly; freedom of association; privacy and data protection; religious
indoctrination in schools; the right to a fair trial; the right to information;
and freedom of expression in the conduct of public life in Poland.
The
committee found that legislative changes brought in by the ruling party have
also encouraged hate speech, public discrimination, violence against women,
domestic violence and intolerant behaviour against minorities. It concluded
that these measures in Poland “amount to a serious, sustained and systemic
breach of the rule of law”. These, and other crucial pieces of legislation,
were passed with excessive haste and little chance of adequate public consultation
or parliamentary scrutiny, mainly late at night, in an atmosphere fraught with
tension and anger where bullied opposition MPs had their mikes switched off
after one minute of debate.
The
committee has called on the EU Commission to use all tools at its disposal
including budgetary controls and voting rights under Article 7 the Lisbon
Treaty, to ensure “all EU countries respect the common values of the EU”.
In view of
the narrow victory of its candidate in the presidential election on 12 July,
the ruling PiS shows no inclination to comply with the resolution of the
committee. The EU Commission is also currently not in a position to lay down
the law, because it needed a unanimous vote at the European Council summit that
concluded on 21 July, to pass through an ambitious package of 750bn euros to
combat the Europe-wide economic crisis following the Covid-19 lockdowns on the
continent. The Polish government would only give its consent to this package of
measures, through which it would receive a generous provision, if it was agreed
that there would be no curtailment on Poland’s access to these funds because of
its breach of European law.
The wording
of the final agreement was something of a fudge. The distribution of funds
would be subjected to majority voting and not unanimity, but the Polish prime
minister was assured that the EU Commission would design the new budgetary
safeguards so that the funds would not be threatened by any disciplinary
measures against Poland. The European Parliament has already passed a
resolution expressing concern at this ambiguity. At the same time, the Polish
justice minister has bitterly criticised the prime minister for not clearing up
the ambiguity at the summit, as it appeared to threaten the continuation of his
party’s authoritarian “good renewal”.
The EU
Commission is to publish the budgetary mechanism for issuing the funds at the
end of September and then we shall see, in the resulting confrontation between
the EU Commission and the Polish government, which side will blink first.
Tuesday 21 July 2020
Republic of Two Polands
The second
tier of the presidential election in Poland has consolidated the painful
existence of a Republic of Two Polands. The one is conservative, Catholic,
elderly, with a Poland First siege mentality, frightened at losing the social
benefits introduced by the Law and Justice Party, such as a decent minimum wage
and a sizable drop in poverty. The other is young, entrepreneurial, socially
liberal, Europe friendly, tolerant and frightened of losing the civic benefits
of living in a western democracy, such as independence of the courts, freedom
of the press and tolerance of minorities.
The current
direction of travel of the present government suggests a deepening conflict
over those civic rights even as the post-covid recession erodes the economic
gains. Only true statesmanship by an uncharacteristically independent President
Andrzej Duda and by a courageous opposition leader Rafał Trzaskowski, ready to
shed his Civic Platform anchor, could prevent the coming confrontation between
the two Polands from exploding into civil conflict and mass unemployment. Their cooperation could unify the country around new national and local climate-friendly and
family-friendly infrastructure projects and around a common policy of
cooperation with a post-Trump USA in strengthening European security against
Russian and Chinese interference.
Letter to The Economist
Monday 18 May 2020
Letter to Russian Ambassador - Denial of Katyn in Russia
P R E S S S T A T E M E N T
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain C.I.O, based in London, which has represented Polish organizations in the UK since 1947,has sent a letter this weekend to the Russian Ambassador in London to protest at the removal by Tver city authorities in central Russia of plaques which commemorated the mass execution by the NKVD in April and May of 1940 of 6311 Polish military and civilian officials.
The local prosecutor and mayor in Tver have claimed there is no documentary evidence of the massacre despite all evidence to the contrary and despite acknowledgement of the crime by the Russian government. Prime Minister John Major recognized in 1991 that the British government held the Soviet government responsible for this wartime massacre. The Federation asks the Russian Ambassador to forward the protest both to President Putin and to the local authorities in Tver and urges that the plaques are restored in a public ceremony.
The executions at Tver have been public information in Russia since 1990 and the site of the killings was initially open to the public. The executions at Tver were part of the "Katyn massacres" of more than 22,000 Polish military and civilian personnel who had been captured by the Red Army after the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in September 1939. It was one of the most heinous crimes of the Second World War which the Soviet government had blamed for many decades as being a Nazi crime even though overwhelming evidence showed that the executions were carried out by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, at the express instructions of Joseph Stalin and the Politburo.
"Katyn denial, like Holocaust denial, is a standard feature of the growing radical nationalism in the Russian heartlands, and it is vital, in tthe interests of the survival of democracy in Russia, that the plaques are restored and due respect is paid to the memory of those Polish prisoners of war killed in Tver, Katyn, Kharkov and other places of execution in Russia as well as of all other victims of the Red Terror in the Soviet Union," said Federation spokesman and trustee Wiktor Moszczynski.
Issued by the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, 240 King Street, London W6 0RF
For futrther information please contact Wiktor Moszczynski, tel. 07786471833
His Excellency Mr Andrei Kelin, 16 May 2020
Russian Ambassador,
6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens
London W8 4QP
Your Excellency,
This week we have seen a film showing the illegal removal of plaques commemorating the mass murder of Polish citizens in the former NKVD headquarters in Tver between 4th April and 16th May 1940. This follows reports of a grotesque statement by the local mayor in June last year that there is no documentary evidence for this crime, and a subsequent letter from alocal prosecutor’s office to the Chancellor of Tver State Medical University (current landlordof the former NKVD building) to have the plaques removed.
It has been known since 1942 that 6311 Polish officials had been held in a prisoner of war camp at Ostashkov following the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939. Since 1990 we also know that they had been brought to the black panelled cellars of the NKVD in Tver to be executed at a rate of 250 every day with a single shot in the back of the
head and then their bodies were dumped in an unfenced site in Miednoye, 30 kilometres from Tver, where they were buried unceremoniously in long trenches. Their bodies had been discovered in 1990 and initially unearthed by Memorial, a local human rights group. The bodies are now reburied in an official commemorative site visited each year by relatives of the victims, Polish consular authorities and local officials. For a short period, the site of the executions was even open to visitors.
As you are aware, in October 1992, at the request of President Boris Yeltsin, Professor Rudolf Pikhoia, Director of the National Archives of the Russian Federation, presented President Lech Wałęsa with original documents showing, first, a motion by Lavrenty Beria, Commissar for Internal Affairs, arguing for the shooting of 25,700 interned Polish officers and, second, a positive response approving the motion at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee, signed by Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov and others. In the meantime, Russian military prosecutor Colonel Anatoly Yablokov, in charge of the Katyn case, concluded a 3-year investigation in 1993 that named Stalin and members of the Politbureau as guilty of the mass execution of Polish officers. This evidence and these findings were entirely consistent with all the evidence on the case held by the wartime Polish government and by the U.S.House of Representatives Select Committee in 1952. They were further supported by masses of later evidence from NKVD and other Soviet state institutions gathered by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Soviet guilt for the crime of Katyn is now the common conclusion held by every government and every independent historical institute throughout the world.
At the site of the Katyn massacre in 2010, at the 70th Anniversary, your Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, now President of the Russian Federation, rightfully acknowledged the Soviet authorship of the Katyn crimes when he stressed the common suffering of Russians, Poles and other ethnic groups under Stalin’s rule. He said that “with decades of cynical lies, they tried to blot out the truth about the Katyn shootings.” and appealed that all parties “should come to terms with a common historical truth and realise that we cannot go on living in the past alone”.
We must protest therefore at the removal of the plaques commemorating the 6311 Polish victims of the Tver massacres. We see this act as an insult to the memory of these victims, to the victims’ families and to countless millions of other victims of Stalin’s terror, as well as a rejection by the local authorities in Tver of the “common historical truth” which the Russian government had previously acknowledged. We urge that the plaques be restored immediately in a public ceremony as this would be in the interests of good future Russian-Polish relations and an acknowledgement of international concern at such a blatant attempt to revise the truth about Russia’s past.
We request that you forward our protest both to the President of the Russian Federation and to the local authorities in Tver.
Yours sincerely,
Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz
Deputy Chairman, Acting Chairman, Federation of Poles in Great Britain
Wednesday 13 May 2020
Kay Burley - Sky News seeking partisanship over Covid
Why is Kay Burley of Sky News so determined to undermine a two party consensus on the broader strategy of tackling the covid-19 epidemic?
I think both Conservative and Labour politicians should complain when a news presenter seeks to politicize constructive criticisms by politicians such as Angela Rayner into hostile declarations of responsibility on deaths which should best be delayed until the public enquiry on the coronavirus pandemic in the UK os held next year.
For now we have to combat the virus together.
Friday 17 April 2020
Polish democracy in crisis
As someone who has spent more than 50 years of his life campaigning for a free democratic Poland in a free democratic Europe, I am especially saddened by the current attempts of the Polish government to take advantage of coronavirus restrictions to ram through parliament a total ban on abortion, the banning of sex education in schools, reintroducing children into blood sports and conducting presidential elections on May 10th by an improvised untested method of universal postal voting. This dramatic change in the voting system was introduced with barely a month's notice, contrary to the constitutional requirements that any changes to electoral law should be made at least 6 months before the next election. Also this election disenfranchises all Polish citizens living abroad in countries where there is also a lockdown and social distancing measures.
These proposals are very controversial while the obsessive obstinacy in holding the election in the middle of a universal lockdown is justified solely by a need to retain power and reimpose by the back door "traditonal Polish values" on society. It forms part of the government's unilateral attempt to self-exile Poland from all aspects of EU traditions and values while still retining its access to generous EU regional and agricultural subsidies.
The sad thing is that I recognize these so-called "Polish values" as being outdated values common in the UK and other Western countries only 30 years ago, but long since abandoned as outdated.. There is nothing innately "Polish" about them. They are in contradiction to Poland's traditional call for "Your Freedoma and Ours" and are not shared by a large section of modern Polish society. They signify not the indigenisation of political culture in Poland but its anachronism.
Unfortunately pursuing this election and this controversial legislation while the Sejm is not fully functioning could also undermine public confidence in those vital measures rightly taken by the same government to combat Covid-19.
Thursday 16 April 2020
Sluggish UK response on repatriation
Dear Editor of "i", 11th April 2020
The “i” has been exceptionally generous in giving Dominic Raab the benefit of the doubt as to his fitness to be First Secretary of State at this trying time during Boris Johnson’s illness (“Johnson is released from intensive care but remains in hospital” “i” 10/04/2020).
Promoted largely because of his Brexit fundamentalism and betrayal of Theresa May while her Brexit negotiator, Mr Raab has misled the public over Mr Johnson’s apparent “hands on” control of Cabinet meetings while in hospital and shown himself singularly uninspiring in his major current task as Foreign Secretary, namely to repatriate UK citizens from abroad. The “i” reported in early April how he still had 50,000 UK citizens waiting to be brought back and he fumbled in his replies on the issue in the House of Commons.
Other countries have been far more effective in repatriating their citizens. Acting on behalf of the Polish government, for instance, LOT Airline was able to repatriate 54,000 Polish citizens from 71 airports around the world in 388 flights. From the UK alone 21,000 passengers were flown back to Poland and last Sunday LOT even carried two plane loads of UK residents waiting for 3 weeks to be brough back from Warsaw to London. I had expected a more effective response by our “acting Prime Minister” in Westminster.
Yours faithfully,
Wiktor Moszczynski
(unfortunately not published)
Wednesday 8 April 2020
Landscape After the Virus: 15 ways the world will change
Here in the UK our world has been turned upside down in the last month. The sinister coronavirus Covid-19, which originated in the wet meat markets of Wuhan in November and has then spread from Asia to other continents, most notably, to Europe, the Americas and Africa, has infected by today more than 1,434,426 and killed more than 82,220. In the UK alone there are 55,242 recorded infections and 6,159 deaths. Because of delayed testing the amount of infections is much higher. One third of the world’s population is undergoing various stages of lockdown, with international travel suspended, the economy in freefall, massive injections of state money pouring in to support private businesses, while on the front line health workers battle to save lives without adequate personal protection, delayed testing equipment, insufficient number of beds and respirators and no vaccine available to cure the disease before next year.
In the UK, because we are all affected to one degree or another by the pandemic, there is a sense of solidarity and equality in society to a greater extent than before. That may help us live through it in the short run, but social tension and real economic hardship may increase in the months that follow if there is no visible reduction in the number of infections and deaths. In order to maintain social cohesion, the government may even invite the opposition parties to join. We do not know how long this danger will last and whether our health, our economy and our personal sanity will survive. But if most of us come out of this at the other end alive and economically active it will still be a different world from the one we inhabited just a month ago.
Firstly, the government is likely to go for an exit strategy on the new social controls on social distancing only gradually with the option of enforcing them again in case the casualty and infection rates rise again. In the UK we are likely eventually to see our original freedom of movement restored even if we have to wait for the eventual vaccine early next year, but in other, more authoritarian so-called “democracies”, like Russia, India, Egypt, Turkey or Hungary the emergency legislation could remain in force for many years. If those governments had proved incompetent, they could face considerable unrest and even revolution.
2/ However, the radical economic measures taken by governments, including the 80% job guarantees, the tax and mortgage holidays, the nationalisation of rail and airlines, could remain in force for longer as the government supervises the recovery of a fragmented economy. In Europe and America $8 trillion worth of state loans and tax holidays have been promised to business. The public will want to see a new post-virus UK economy without the economic austerity and social inequalities of the past. A form of coalition government, state control of many industries and services and a planned centralized economy could stay in force for a few years more. In fact the governing Conservative Party may split over when and how this new centrally managed economy should be dismantled. This may cause a new election and a Labour Party committed to maintaining a planned central economy in order to maintain the more egalitarian and socially cohesive aspects of the crisis, including a higher taxation rate fairly distributed between the more and the less wealthy.
3/ The health service budget is likely to replace military spending as the main priority of the government in the UK and in most Western countries. Protection against viruses will replace protection against missiles as the primary concern of security as predicted 5 years ago by Bill Gates. The health industry workers and international research scientists will form the new elite of society and the new media celebrities.
4/ Second only to the health service will be concern over constant modernisation of information technology, accessible broadband, artificial intelligence and defence of cyberspace. Increasingly decisions will be made at video conference meetings within government bodies and commercial companies, both nationally and internationally. More employees will work online from home. IT experts, especially in the field of security, will replace the current dominant role of accountants on company boards.
5/ The need for commuter and international travel will be reduced and airlines and transport companies are likely to be used more for personal recreation and tourism rather than for business travel.
6/Nevertheless, border restrictions may be retained to ensure no transmission of an epidemic from country to country.
7/ Education at school and at university level will be more reliant on IT skills and online individual teaching.
8/ The high street will wither away unless it becomes an entertainment hub as well as a shopping centre; retail shops without online sales will become obsolete.
9/ Future governments would be wise to acknowledge the role of manual labour in maintaining the health service, the care industry, refuse collection, strategic industries and agriculture by ensuring them a decent level of income and social status.
10/ The current reduction worldwide in the use of transport and industry will bring a welcome pause to global warming but the need for reindustrialization and the continued challenge to climate control by the United states, Russia and Brazil could undermine any gains from that pause.
11/ With the onset of world recession and the growing threat of the coronavirus in poorer third world countries with limited medical resources and lack of adequate urban space for social distancing, the resulting Covid-19 pandemic could be accompanied by major famine and the increasing pressure from economic and health refugees seeking out a safer new life in the more prosperous countries of Asia, Europe and North America. Consequently, interventionist international cooperation, such as the proposed World bank $160 billion loan to poorer countries next month, and a moratorium on third world debt, is likely to grow at global and regional level despite the challenge of nationalism.
12/ Globalism will be less reliant on uninhibited free trade and more on centrally managed international strategies. International summits like the recent G20 based in Saudi Arabia are likely to be managed by world leaders attending through online conference calls and will be as concerned with health, education and information technology as with the economy.
13/ Faced with hostility from Russia, China and the United States, the European Union will struggle to retain its relevance. It has to challenge the nationalist agenda in each country, agree to the issue of coronabonds to supports the weaker Mediterranean economies, maintain outside EU borders against newer migrants and take a lead in ensuring a resilient health service fighting these and future epidemics in each country. Otherwise it will die.
14/ Because of continued US withdrawal from the role of a world leader under its current president, the XXI century is likely to be a Chinese century. China, having survived the coronavirus epidemic so quickly, continues to supply medical expertise and supplies throughout the world, and gives crucial low interest loans to third world countries increasingly struggling with the virus. Chinese style intensified social control, cybersecurity and lack of human rights will increasingly become the model for the new world order.
15/ The Western liberal democracies will no longer be the universal model for development and will be under constant challenge from authoritarian regimes and nationalist movements.
It will all make a brave new world.
Published also on You Tube 08/04/20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Hu_g0YcVs&lc=Ugy_bBgMm3DSfirGX2F4AaABAg
Saturday 21 March 2020
Boris Johnson's Northern Ireland Brexit Fallacy
Quoted from BuzzFeed
"Boris Johnson says: “Actually Northern Ireland has got a great deal. You keep free movement, you keep access to the single market.”
Boris Johnson spoke to local Conservative members in Northern Ireland on Thursday 19th March about his Brexit deal and it was… interesting. A video of part of his speech has gone viral — not least because the prime minister said how much of a “great deal” Northern Ireland was getting by staying in the EU's single market and keeping “free movement”, unlike the rest of the UK.
Johnson also insisted there would be no checks at all on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. But questions have been raised about some of his assertions — as well as his delivery, which some people likened to a drunk uncle at a wedding."
My comment on above:
I cannot accept what the PM is saying. If there are no border controls after December 2020 between GB and NI and NI continues to be part of the EU single market then every self-respecting smuggler or sharp trader will know that:
1/ EU goods can be delivered to an NI address without border checks or payment of tariffs and then shipped unchecked on to GB pretending to be NI goods:
2/ any GB goods can be delivered to an NI address without border checks and then shipped without paying any duty to the EU via Ireland by pretending to be NI goods
3/ Any manufacturer or trading company producing goods in the USA or Australia or any other country with which the UK will make a trade deal in the next couple of years will be able to deliver goods to NI via GB and pretend they are NI goods which can then travel into the EU via Ireland unchecked
4/ Similarly EU goods could cross into NI without paying tariff and eventually reach any of the UK's new trading partners pretending to be NI goods if no controls between NI and GB.
Agricultural goods in particular could be traded in this way.
Possibly this could be checked by customs officers checking documents internally wuithin NI and GB but that still amounts to customs control between NI and GB even if not at the actual border.
Boris Johnson's former Brexit Secretary of State Stephen Barclay admitted as much but he is now First Secretary to the Treasury and has no longer commented.
Friday 7 February 2020
Johnson as pupil of Trump or Kaczynski
Letter to Editor of "I"
Dear Sir,
Kate Maltby rightly draws a parallel between Boris Johnson’s political inclinations and the more authoritarian forms of majority rule democracy practised currently in the U.S., Poland or Hungary (“Number 10 threatens media war” “I” 06.02.20).
Boris Johnson may be a social liberal with a romantic view of the United Kingdom, but that does not stop from having an authoritarian streak. This streak does not just cover the discrimination within the press lobby. In the agenda set out for Boris Johnson by his single-minded adviser Dominic Cummings, Johnson is keen to tame or otherwise diminish the role of the BBC both in his direct attacks but also by decriminalizing the non-payment of TV licences and not subsidizing pensioner’s licence fees, in the hope that the BBC will eventually become more malleable to promoting the government’s view.
He is considering the political appointments of judges in order to ensure the judiciary will not challenge the government again and to further curb trade union rights to strike, starting with the rail industry. Environmental protest groups are to be classed as terrorist organizations. Plans are afoot to bring in a different form of civil servants based on "wierdos and misfits" who bypass the normal recruitment and examination process and are handpicked by Mr Cummings himself. Johnson has also removed the possibility of MPs voting on his eventual Brexit trade deal or supervising the Brexit process in Northern Ireland even though the current clumsy customs settlement could make Northern Ireland a future smuggler’s paradise.
His American, Polish and Hungarian mentors must be congratulating him on these first steps away from the inclusive parliamentary democracy that operates within the UK's current unwritten constitution.
Yours faithfully
Wiktor Moszczynski
Published 07.02.2020 "I"
Dear Sir,
Kate Maltby rightly draws a parallel between Boris Johnson’s political inclinations and the more authoritarian forms of majority rule democracy practised currently in the U.S., Poland or Hungary (“Number 10 threatens media war” “I” 06.02.20).
Boris Johnson may be a social liberal with a romantic view of the United Kingdom, but that does not stop from having an authoritarian streak. This streak does not just cover the discrimination within the press lobby. In the agenda set out for Boris Johnson by his single-minded adviser Dominic Cummings, Johnson is keen to tame or otherwise diminish the role of the BBC both in his direct attacks but also by decriminalizing the non-payment of TV licences and not subsidizing pensioner’s licence fees, in the hope that the BBC will eventually become more malleable to promoting the government’s view.
He is considering the political appointments of judges in order to ensure the judiciary will not challenge the government again and to further curb trade union rights to strike, starting with the rail industry. Environmental protest groups are to be classed as terrorist organizations. Plans are afoot to bring in a different form of civil servants based on "wierdos and misfits" who bypass the normal recruitment and examination process and are handpicked by Mr Cummings himself. Johnson has also removed the possibility of MPs voting on his eventual Brexit trade deal or supervising the Brexit process in Northern Ireland even though the current clumsy customs settlement could make Northern Ireland a future smuggler’s paradise.
His American, Polish and Hungarian mentors must be congratulating him on these first steps away from the inclusive parliamentary democracy that operates within the UK's current unwritten constitution.
Yours faithfully
Wiktor Moszczynski
Published 07.02.2020 "I"
Sunday 26 January 2020
Letter to Russian Ambassador over Russian falsifications
22 January 2020
His Excellency Mr Andrei Kelin,
Russian Ambassador,
6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens
London W8 4QP
Dear Ambassador,
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain which has represented the Polish community in this country since 1946 wishes to express the anger and dismay of its member organizations, and particularly those representing Second World War veterans, at remarks made before Christmas by President Vladimir Putin concerning the role of Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War and his suggestion that Poland collaborated with Hitler.
While President Putin is right to draw attention to the harmful impact of the Munich Agreement in 1938 in encouraging Hitler to pursue his aggressive policy towards Czechoslovakia, the Polish government and the Polish people played no part in the making of that agreement. Once Germany had decided to break the Agreement and invade Czechoslovakia, the Polish government felt it incumbent to prevent the Germans from taking over the Cieszyn district which had been Polish ethnic territory seized illegally by the Czechoslovak army in 1919. However, Poland can take no responsibility for the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by the Western Powers.
In the meantime, may we remind you that it was Poland that had first wanted to remove Hitler with a joint military operation with France in 1933, although the French government did not support the proposal. At this time a resurging German Army was actually being trained and equipped in Russia. France’s refusal to stop Hitler caused Poland to maintain non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Russia in order to retain a balanced peace in Eastern Europe. Later it sought to protect Russia from invasion by refusing to support Hitler’s plan for a joint invasion of Russia by Germany and Poland.
However, the immediate catalyst for the outbreak of the Second World War was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which encouraged Hitler to invade Poland aware that the secret protocol would cause the Soviet government to assist Germany in a joint invasion of Poland. It is Russia’s cooperation with Hitler, and not Poland’s, that was the final cause for the outbreak of war and Russia must take its share of blame, along with Germany, for the death of more than 6.5 million Polish citizens, both military and civilian, who perished in that war and for the devastation that left Poland in ruins.
May we also remind you that during the Second World War at least 560,000 Polish citizens perished at the hands of the Russian government. These included the 22,000 Polish officers, policemen and other members of the Polish elite who were brutally shot by the NKVD directly on the orders of the Politburo in Katyn, Mednoye, Kharkov and other execution sites. However, these statistics did not include the 111,000 Soviet citizens of Polish ethnic origin executed with equal brutality by the NKVD in the genocide of 1938/1939 which immediately preceded the War. Also, at least 1.2 million Polish citizens were brutally deported in the first two years of the War to Siberia, Kazakhstan and other outlying areas of the Soviet Union and barely half survived. These Russian crimes were coordinated in a common policy with Nazi Germany of destroying Poland’s elite and removing Poland from the map.
We are aware of the great suffering and eventual heroic struggle of the Russian people against Nazi Germany’s invasion after 1941 when 25 million Russians perished. We are aware too of the role of Russian soldiers in pushing the German army out of Polish territory and liberating the German death camps. This common struggle and suffering could have caused Russia and Poland to resist and defeat Nazi Germany together. Instead the Soviet Government chose to introduce a reign of terror in Poland, having earlier betrayed the Polish freedom fighters and the civilian population during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. With extraordinary cynicism the NKVD kidnapped the 16 leaders of the Polish Underground state, which had resisted the German occupation since 1939, and accused them of being German agents. Soviet Russia imposed a puppet regime on Polish territory and forced Poland to introduce a moribund economic system that only augmented the massive material losses incurred during the War. Poland was only free after Russian troops finally left Poland in 1993.
We are very concerned that President Putin’s comments undermine the improved Polish-Russian relations that had grown during the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. We fear that President Putin’s latest remarks could be seen as an example of the negative way that Russian government spokesmen and Russian media are reinterpreting Russia’s role in the War. We remember that President Putin has already expressed regret in the past at the abolition of the Soviet Union, even though to all the countries neighbouring Russia the existence of the Soviet Union was seen as a threat to their sovereignty, their culture and their economy.
We hope very much that Russian and Polish relations can improve but we are concerned that such a hostile attitude to Poland’s past could reflect a more hostile attitude to Poland today. We fear that unless such misinterpretations of the past are re-evaluated it will cause the Polish community in the UK to continue to distrust Russia’s present day intentions towards Poland, its neighbours and the United Kingdom.
Yours sincerely,
Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz, Ph.D.
Acting Chairman
Federation of Poles in Great Britain C.I.O
His Excellency Mr Andrei Kelin,
Russian Ambassador,
6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens
London W8 4QP
Dear Ambassador,
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain which has represented the Polish community in this country since 1946 wishes to express the anger and dismay of its member organizations, and particularly those representing Second World War veterans, at remarks made before Christmas by President Vladimir Putin concerning the role of Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War and his suggestion that Poland collaborated with Hitler.
While President Putin is right to draw attention to the harmful impact of the Munich Agreement in 1938 in encouraging Hitler to pursue his aggressive policy towards Czechoslovakia, the Polish government and the Polish people played no part in the making of that agreement. Once Germany had decided to break the Agreement and invade Czechoslovakia, the Polish government felt it incumbent to prevent the Germans from taking over the Cieszyn district which had been Polish ethnic territory seized illegally by the Czechoslovak army in 1919. However, Poland can take no responsibility for the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by the Western Powers.
In the meantime, may we remind you that it was Poland that had first wanted to remove Hitler with a joint military operation with France in 1933, although the French government did not support the proposal. At this time a resurging German Army was actually being trained and equipped in Russia. France’s refusal to stop Hitler caused Poland to maintain non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Russia in order to retain a balanced peace in Eastern Europe. Later it sought to protect Russia from invasion by refusing to support Hitler’s plan for a joint invasion of Russia by Germany and Poland.
However, the immediate catalyst for the outbreak of the Second World War was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which encouraged Hitler to invade Poland aware that the secret protocol would cause the Soviet government to assist Germany in a joint invasion of Poland. It is Russia’s cooperation with Hitler, and not Poland’s, that was the final cause for the outbreak of war and Russia must take its share of blame, along with Germany, for the death of more than 6.5 million Polish citizens, both military and civilian, who perished in that war and for the devastation that left Poland in ruins.
May we also remind you that during the Second World War at least 560,000 Polish citizens perished at the hands of the Russian government. These included the 22,000 Polish officers, policemen and other members of the Polish elite who were brutally shot by the NKVD directly on the orders of the Politburo in Katyn, Mednoye, Kharkov and other execution sites. However, these statistics did not include the 111,000 Soviet citizens of Polish ethnic origin executed with equal brutality by the NKVD in the genocide of 1938/1939 which immediately preceded the War. Also, at least 1.2 million Polish citizens were brutally deported in the first two years of the War to Siberia, Kazakhstan and other outlying areas of the Soviet Union and barely half survived. These Russian crimes were coordinated in a common policy with Nazi Germany of destroying Poland’s elite and removing Poland from the map.
We are aware of the great suffering and eventual heroic struggle of the Russian people against Nazi Germany’s invasion after 1941 when 25 million Russians perished. We are aware too of the role of Russian soldiers in pushing the German army out of Polish territory and liberating the German death camps. This common struggle and suffering could have caused Russia and Poland to resist and defeat Nazi Germany together. Instead the Soviet Government chose to introduce a reign of terror in Poland, having earlier betrayed the Polish freedom fighters and the civilian population during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. With extraordinary cynicism the NKVD kidnapped the 16 leaders of the Polish Underground state, which had resisted the German occupation since 1939, and accused them of being German agents. Soviet Russia imposed a puppet regime on Polish territory and forced Poland to introduce a moribund economic system that only augmented the massive material losses incurred during the War. Poland was only free after Russian troops finally left Poland in 1993.
We are very concerned that President Putin’s comments undermine the improved Polish-Russian relations that had grown during the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. We fear that President Putin’s latest remarks could be seen as an example of the negative way that Russian government spokesmen and Russian media are reinterpreting Russia’s role in the War. We remember that President Putin has already expressed regret in the past at the abolition of the Soviet Union, even though to all the countries neighbouring Russia the existence of the Soviet Union was seen as a threat to their sovereignty, their culture and their economy.
We hope very much that Russian and Polish relations can improve but we are concerned that such a hostile attitude to Poland’s past could reflect a more hostile attitude to Poland today. We fear that unless such misinterpretations of the past are re-evaluated it will cause the Polish community in the UK to continue to distrust Russia’s present day intentions towards Poland, its neighbours and the United Kingdom.
Yours sincerely,
Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz, Ph.D.
Acting Chairman
Federation of Poles in Great Britain C.I.O
Thursday 16 January 2020
“Scotland and Aye” by Sophia Wasiak Butler
She begins the story as an adventurous city bred ingenue, enriched by her mixed Polish-Scottish heritage, embarking on a new relationship both with a somewhat older Scottish boyfriend and with the call of nature in a lonely farmhouse embedded in the rolling terrain of the Scottish lowlands. Unlike perhaps other cautious young people finishing university, anxious to start a career somewhere, she seizes opportunity with both hands to satisfy a dream of country living, prepared to undergo whatever hardship it takes to make a success of it for herself and her new partner. It begins with the expected delights and traumas, including the arrival of a pair of mischievous goats who consume all the new plants she had laid out in her grow bags and littered her whole garden with their droppings. Eventually their tiresome presence and head-butting abilities in breaking down the surrounding fencing leads to the nightmare of an incursion by a cow into their little paradise and the subsequent need to palm off the animals to some helpful nuns.
The goats are but a sample of her rural vicissitudes and strengthens her philosophical acceptance that where there is the pain of failure there is also the reward of experience. She has the same approach to other aspects of her life, whether physical, emotional or spiritual as she continues her quest for self-discovery. She seeks it not only in her relationship with her partner, William, and not only in the rural retreat which she had hoped to idealize, but also in lavish therapeutic sessions, including on a remote Greek island, in the wilds of Canada, in Hawaii and earlier in the mountains of Poland. Each ordeal is grasped in full, celebrated and then analysed as she absorbs the energy of nature’s seasons and the wisdom of her teachings and readings. She sucks out any new experience to the full and wrings it dry in her colourful description of each sensation.
She is not old enough to be an Earth Mother. That is more the role of her worldly and sensuous mother. But she is an Earth Princess, delighting in each manifestation of nature’s beauty and cruelty, and reflecting the changing moods of the season, but displaying at the same time a true knowledge of the fauna and flora that surrounds her. She draws too on the wise comments of her barefoot Scottish neighbourly guru, Hamish, who invades her life and appears like a deus ex machina to guide her in moments of doubt.
Yet the text is also peppered by a massive lists of “bon mots” from authors and song writers, steeped in Eastern as well Western traditions, with which she can comment on her musings on weddings, on fatherhood, on the need for elegance, on friendships, particularly with her delightful collection of Polish “mongrels” in the Snob Club, on unexpected catastrophes such as the plane crash which kills the Polish president, on death and on the breakup of a relationship (as William fades further and further away in the course of her story). Although it would not suit the nature of such a short book, one could imagine that she could have provided a two-page index simply of people she has quoted in her text. She scatters this eclectic mix of quoted pearls of wisdom like a coating of raisins to enrich the literary cake that she has baked and presented between the covers of this delightful and imaginatively illustrated book.
Wiktor Moszczynski
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