Invisible Poles
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Anne White and Kinga Goodwin Invisible Poles A Book of Interview Extracts 1 Anne White and Kinga Goodwin Invisible Poles A Book of Interview Extracts School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London 2019 2 Table of Contents page Glossary 3 Introduction 4 1: Being Polish in the UK before 2004 9 2: Parents, grandparents and trauma 24 3: Polish names 37 4: Long-lost family in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine 43 5: Spending time in Poland and Ukraine 47 6: Poles arriving in the UK after 2004 62 7: Polish institutions in recent years 84 8: Contacts with Polish culture and news 90 9: Polish language 94 10: Transmitting interest in Poland 106 11: Brexit and British attitudes to Poles 112 12: Identity, passports and invisibility 120 3 Glossary babcia granny barszcz beetroot soup bigos meat stew with fresh cabbage and sauerkraut chciał(a)bym masculine and feminine forms of ‘I’d like’ Cześć Hi/hello dziadek grandfather Cichociemni ‘Silent and Unseen’. Paratroopers from the Polish army in exile in Britain, operating in Poland under Nazi occupation. Dzień dobry Good day/hello Elementarz textbook for youngest school children gołąbki stuffed cabbage leaves idziemy na jednego Let’s go for a drink! jabłecznik apple cake Jedynka, Dwójka Channels 1 and 2 kiełbasa sausage knedle stuffed potato-dough dumplings kolega friend/colleague: more than an acquaintance, but not a close friend kolonia summer camp Kresy ‘Borderlands’. Eastern regions of Polish Second Republic, annexed by the USSR; now located in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. krówka type of fudge Mazowsze Polish folksong and dance group based in Warsaw naleśniki pancakes narodowcy nationalists [historically, refers to followers of Roman Dmowski] nowa emigracja new emigration [post-2004] obywatelstwo citizenship O Boże kochany! Oh my God! ogórki cucumbers, fresh or pickled opłatek Christmas wafer (broken and shared as part of the Christmas ceremony) parafia parish pierogi filled dumplings pierogi ruskie dumplings filled with white cheese, onion and potato PiS Prawo i Sprawedliwość: Law and Justice Party polska szynkowa Polish ham sausage Przestań! Stop! sernik cheesecake SPK Stowarzyszenie Polskich kombatantów: Polish Veterans’ Association Tydzień Polski Polish Weekly Wigilia Christmas Eve ceremony and meal zabawy entertainments zespół group zupa soup ZUS Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych: National Insurance Office Place names such as Katyn/Katyń are spelled with Polish diacritic marks in cases where the interviewees pronounced them with a Polish accent. 4 Introduction This book presents the results of a research project titled ‘“Invisible Poles” and the new prominence of Polish people in UK society since Poland’s EU accession’. The project consisted of 28 interviews conducted from November 2017 to July 2018 by Kinga Goodwin (research officer) and Anne White (principal investigator). The research took place at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) and was part-funded from a UCL European Institute Jean Monnet Centre grant. The purpose was to generate a resource which would be publicly available on the SSEES website (this book); a set of transcripts archived in SSEES Library and accessible to researchers on request; and some academic journal articles. ‘Invisible Poles’ continues research by anthropologist Keith Sword, begun at SSEES in the 1980s and 1990s, but cut short by Sword’s untimely death. Sword’s archive, including the interview transcripts for his 1989 book, is deposited in SSEES Library. His Polish Migration Project, financed by the M. B. Grabowski Fund and Federation of Poles in Great Britain, consisted of interviews with first- and second- generation Polish migrants in the UK, as well as extensive analysis of written sources. The resulting three books were all SSEES publications. In 1989, Sword published The Formation of the Polish Community in Great Britain, 1939-50 (with Norman Davies and Jan Ciechanowski) and, in 1996, Identity in Flux: the Polish Community in Great Britain. A companion volume, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939-48 (1994, 1996) traces the fates of people who often, like the parents and grandparents of many of our interviewees, ended up fighting with the Allied forces. Unlike other studies (for example, Bogusia Temple’s publications on the Polish community in Manchester, or Kathy Burrell’s on Leicester) Sword discussed the Polish population across the entire United Kingdom. In his books, Sword described how Polish refugees after the Second World War created an extensive network of Polish community organisations in the UK. A vibrant Polish community life emerged in many towns and cities, thanks to a large core of highly committed activists. The emigracja projected a strong patriotic, anti-communist and Catholic identity, constituting a ‘moral community’ which exerted social pressure on its members to be loyal to values such as hard work and fostering aspirations for higher education among the second generation, as well as preserving a pristine reputation in the eyes of the receiving society. The community provided a safe haven within a Britain marked by insularity and wariness of foreigners, as well as racism, from which Poles (despite their white skins) were not always immune. Sword also illustrated the actual diversity existing behind the front of ethnic homogeneity. Polish refugees included socialists, atheists, Jews and Protestants; they came from varied class backgrounds; and, despite some pressures for marriage within the group (or to women arriving directly from Poland in the 1940s and ‘50s), many married non-Poles. The children of bi-national marriages were less likely to be encouraged to learn Polish and often did not share in the lively Polish social life enjoyed by their peers, although, as Sword points out, non-Polish spouses were sometimes supportive of family projects to keep Polish heritage and social relations alive. An important axis of difference was whether Poles in the UK had surviving relatives in the People’s Republic of Poland, with whom they were able to maintain contact during the Cold War. Sword describes the powerful impression made by 5 visits to Poland (especially the first visit) and the different sense of Polish identity felt by people with first-hand experience of the ‘home’ country. Much of Identity in Flux focuses particularly on people whom Sword names the ‘younger generation’. Sword skilfully presents the great variety of outcomes within this group, while also drawing attention to commonalities. Inevitably, the second generation differed from the first, partly because they achieved a remarkable degree of education, social mobility and therefore integration into the British middle class. Often this entailed geographical mobility – moving away from the strong communities where they had grown up, making it hard for them, in turn, to pass on Polish identity to their own children. Busy professional lives and marriage to non-Poles also diminished the participation of many in Polish community life. Many of Sword’s interviewees did continue to feel Polish, on a personal level, but also expressed a sense of not matching up to their parents on a perceived sliding scale of Polishness. As Sword points out, it would perhaps be more accurate to see them not as less Polish but as differently Polish. ‘Poles of the younger generation in Britain often maintain that they are Polish and maintain Polish culture and traditions at home. But the outward content of this Polishness [e.g. involvement in organised activities, language knowledge] is often quite meagre’ (Sword 1996:12). Their Polishness, therefore, was less recognisable to the outside world. The arrival of a new wave of Poles from Poland in the 1980s – the so-called Solidarity emigration – was not sufficient to breathe new life into many of the existing organisations and the process of becoming ‘invisible’ gathered pace. The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Polish government-in-exile (based in London) seemed to deal the final blow to conceptions of the UK Polish community as a clearly-bounded entity. It rendered irrelevant the anti-communist ethic which constituted the raison d’être of the emigracja. On the one hand, it facilitated increased travel to Poland, and a degree of merging between the emigracja and Polish society in Poland. Sword describes how some second-generation British Poles ‘returned’ to live in their parents’ country of origin, on a permanent or temporary basis (see also Górny and Osipovič 2006). Some of Sword’s interviewees were not interested in doing this; Sword quotes one as stating ‘We’ve got nothing in common with the Poles any more. We feel Polish – but here in England’ (Sword 1996: 200). As the first generation of war refugees began dying in greater numbers, this also had an impact on the community organisations they created. In the final sentence of Identity in Flux (1996: 233), Sword wrote: ‘While it seems rash to make predictions, it seems likely – unless unforeseen changes take place – that only London and a handful of provincial metropolitan centres will retain organised Polish communities of any viability in twenty years’ time’. Invisible Poles picks up the story twenty years later, after the ‘unforeseen change’ which turned Poles into the largest non-British-born national group in the UK. Polish people, and Poland as a country, were no longer ‘invisible’ to the British public and politicians. In response to new market opportunities, airport departure