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
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