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

“Scotland and Aye” by Sophia Wasiak Butler

This is a cheeky title for a jewel of a book. Concise yet filled with a cocktail of worldly wisdom that bubbles and delights but belies the mere 25 years of the young author’s life span until now.
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

Federation of Poles letter to Prime Minister

ZJEDNOCZENIE POLSKIE W WIELKIEJ BRYTANII.
FEDERATION OF POLES IN GREAT BRITAIN C.1.0.
240 King Street, London W6
E-mail: office@zpwb.org.uk
Tel: 0208 741 1606
Web: www.zpwb.org.uk WB LCIO
17 Dec 2019

The Rt Hon Boris Johnson, P,
The Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SWIA 2AA


Dear Prime Minister
The Federation of Poles in GB wishes you success following your electoral victory last week. This result removes any uncertainty over whether the UK will be leaving the European Union under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement which you negotiated. That uncertainty over the terms of a future Brexit was understandably a matter of great concern to our Polish community and to other EU citizens in this country.
In view of your declared aspiration to unite and heal British society, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain CIO, a charitable organization which has been representing the voice of Polish organisations in this country since 1947, would be grateful if you were to reiterate your expressions of respect and admiration for EU citizens, such as those made during your period as Mayor of London. You expressed similar views in the parliamentary debate on EU citizens that immediately followed the referendum. We are particularly mindful that on July 6h 2016 in a parliamentary motion on committing the Government to giving EU nationals currently living in the UK the right to remain" you made the following intervention in the House of Commons: "I would like to put on record what I think has been said already - that countless times the Vote Leave campaign gave exactly this reassurance to everybody from EU countries living and working here, and it is very, very disappointing that that should be called into question. I think it is absolutely right to issue the strongest possible reassurance to EU nationals in this country, not just for moral or humanitarian reasons, but for very, very sound economic reasons as well. They are welcome, they are necessary, they are a vital part of our society, and I will passionately support this motion tonight."
These remarks appear to be in contrast to your comments on Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme on December 8th this year which have given us some cause for concern. You are recorded as stating that EU citizens were causing a "problem" by not being “democratically accountable" because they "were able to treat the UK basically as though it's part of their own country". Under the terms of the EU treaty, EU citizens who pay taxes in the UK are indeed entitled to treat this country as home, as are their children born here. The 1.2 million UK citizens living, working and drawing pensions in other EU countries also have such rights.
This turn of phrase in the midst of the electoral debate has, we feel, contributed to the negative atmosphere of administrative discrimination and verbal abuse which is experienced day by day by EU citizens, particularly those from Central and Eastern Europe. Such discrimination remains pronounced especially in areas, outside metropolitan centres, where complaints about abuse or discrimination can often be met with suggestions that the complainant should move back to their country of origin.
The tone of these remarks will no doubt have been influenced by the emotional volatility of a difficult election. Now that the stress of the election is over, as the Prime Minister seeking to reconcile the nation and reduce tension, a clear declaration on your part confirming that EU citizens currently here have contributed to the economy and to the social and cultural fabric of the United Kingdom would be most welcome. The latest wave of Poles continues the tradition of a strong work ethic and importance of family as shown by the previous post-war emigres, many of whom fought alongside the British Armed Forces.
While the ground rules for obtaining settled status through the Home Office are now clear there is still concern over the restriction to applications only online when not all EU citizens have the ability to do this. There is a fear that by December 2020 there may still be a cohort of eligible EU applicants who will have failed to apply because of their limited technology and lack of access to appropriate advice centres e.g. in rural communities. It would be very helpful for EU citizens receiving settled status to obtain confirmation of this (or of pre-settled status) in a printed copy. Virtual images summoned up on rapidly changing and not always reliable equipment do not meet all needs. Whether applying for employment or accommodation, for a bank loan, access to medical treatment, for provision of social care, or entry at a UK border, an EU citizen already residing here should be able to demonstrate their entitlement by presenting a simple printed document. This will become even more important several years after Brexit to distinguish between those EU citizens eligible for such services and those who under new immigration legislation may not be eligible.
The Federation trusts that the comments above will be recognised as being constructive. Perhaps a good way to assist your government in the understanding of these issues could be by a meeting between representatives of the Polish community, advice workers and your government. This would allow issues raised by Brexit for our 850,000 strong community to be presented in a more direct manner; good communication is a key to progress.
Yours sincerely,
Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz, Ph.D.
Acting Chairman
Federation of Poles in Great Britain

Rok założenia 1947 (established) Charity Registration Number 1161316

Is this the final betrayal of EU citizens?

Copy of letter published in The Guardian 21/08/2019

Dear Sir,
Your correspondent Rowena Mason says in her front page article (Guardian 19th August) that Priti Patel "wants free movement to end on the dot of 31 October."
What form will this take? How will overworked border staff distinguish between resident EU citizens eligible for settled status but not yet registered and other EU citizens? Let us remember that EU citizens have until December 31st 2020 to register and so far less than a third have done so. According to the Federation of Poles, in their letter to Boris Johnson, barely 17% of resident Poles, the largest single EU national group in this country, has registered. This is simultaneously an administrative disaster for border staff and passengers, and potentially a gross betrayal of promises to Polish and other EU residents from Boris Johnson that their pre-Brexit status will be respected.
Yours faithfully
Wiktor Moszczynski
Trustee
Federation of Poles in Great Britain

Suemas Milne versus Dominic Cummings

There is only one person who could be the backroom architect of a temporary caretaker government to challenge the current no deal Brexit juggernaut. That one person is Suemas Milne, the ex Communist strategic guru. He alone could convince Jeremy Corbyn to allow the formation of a temporary cross-party coalition to replace the current no deal with either a vote of no confidence followed by an extension of the Brexit date and a call for a general election, or else a vote in support of a negotiated exit based on a customs union solution. The latter was the nearest option to command a majority in the House when moved by Kenneth Clarke in March and could still get the most support.
Arch Remainers like the Tory rebels, Lib Dems and the SNP could be kept on side in that coalition by being offered cabinet appointments and a free vote on a second referendum.
Milne should be just as ruthless and single minded as his opposite number in the Tory government, Dominic Cummings. If Milne declines this role for ideological reasons then there will be no soft Brexit coalition at all, no successful vote of no confidence and we will have the horror of a no deal Brexit on October 31st

Boris could give EU citizens proper guarantee

I am pleased that in his first appearance at the dispatch box ("I am going to make Britain the greatest place on Earth" DT26/7/19) new PM Boris Johnson is still sticking to his earlier promise to the Polish community and to other EU citizens to guarantee their rights after Brexit and, to be fair, he has been consistent about this since the referendum campaign.
However he must be aware that promises are one thing and reality another. The take up of the new settled status is still proceeding slowly as only a fifth of the 3.2 million EU citizens have registered so far. For many less IT-savvy EU citizens with poor knowledge of English the registration process is daunting and many Polish citizens in particular are still unaware of the vital need to register to stay. As nobody wants these people to be left stranded by Brexit the Government needs to include the currently agreed procedures for settled status in a new Immigration Bill to be prepared in the eventuality that his Brexit bid is successful and to prevent a new minister or civil servant changing that policy.. Furthermore Mr Johnson should ensure that the registration of EU citizens, many of them living and working here for more than thirty years, should merely be declaratory and not,, as at present, a new application and also a final hard copy certificate of their registration should be issued rather than the current online confirmation that many employers and landlords find difficult to download.

Swap tankers with Iran

In answer to Robert Spencer's piece on "Iran offers to swap seized oil tankers" (The Times 25/7/19) this is an opportunity for Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab to show real initiative and save face for all parties involved.
The UK should offer Iran the chance to sell the crude oil bound for Syria to a third party that is not subject to sanctions and even help by buying the oil for the UK if it is suitable for our refineries..
This way the UK can release the tanker Grace 2.
The iranians can then reciprocate and release the Stena Impero.
The US can be reassured that the crude oil in Gibraltar is no longer contraband and would have no legal ground to complain.
I suspect that President Trump (as opposed to his bellicose aide john Bolton) is also looking for a non-military solution to the problem of Iran and this tanker exchange could be the basis for further welcome talks between Iran and USA through British and EU mediators.

Inter-Community Racism

Unpublished letter to "i"

Dear Sir,
Your excellent columnist Patrick Cockburn is right to draw attention to the link between the Brexit campaign and the reappearance of overt racism in the community.("Brexit has unleashed the forces of racism" i 15-16/6/19). What has become a worrying phenomenon for me (and perhaps not so visible to the average white British commentator), is the growing racism in the last few years in everyday conversation between different religious and ethnic minorities that espouse Brexit thinking it makes them more British and criticize each other in their home language while remaining polite to each other when speaking English. Many of my friends from different ethnic communities complain about this and I can vouch for this happening with some East European minorities. Of course on the whole ethnic community leaders and ethnic online media continue to carry the torch for mutual tolerance and cultural cohesion but all the same it remains a worrying trend that is difficult to monitor.
Yours faithfully
Wiktor Moszczynski