POLES IN BRITAIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 12, 31 March 1947, Page 7

POLES IN BRITAIN

160,000 SOLDIERS AND DEPENDENTS RELATIONS AT LOW EBB BETWEEN COUNTRIES Britain’s labour problem has focussed attention on the Polish “minority” in England. So far only a fraction of these Poles have been absorbed into industry and agriculture, both of which are seriously depleted by their labour resources. There are 160,000 Polish soldiers and their dependents in Britain. The cost of the Poles to the national exchequer is unknown, but the figure suggested by British military authorities is £5 per head per week, or nearly £42,000,000 a year. The actual army pay of 142,000 uniformed Poles, 17,000 of whom are officers, is only one item. Other items include accommodation, clothing, rations, fuel, light and transport.

Already 4000 Poles have emigrated. It is impossible to estimate how many intend to return to Poland. One in seven of the national total are at present awaiting repatriation, but even these are liable to change their minds at any moment according to the news from Poland.

The difficulties of absorption are many. Few trade unions have yet agreed upon terms of admission. Accommodation is also a problem. The word “camp” is anathema to Poles, who would scorn to enter a dis-used German prisoner of war camp. And surplus British military camps \sere not established near industrial areas—for obvious wartime reasons. Yet nearly every Pole who takes a job must move and take his family, if he has one. And, as homes are not available, hostels or some similar accommodation must be found or built.

Finally the Pole, though a hard worker, is “touchy” and not easy to deal with, while on the other side employers in general show no sign of welcoming him with open arms. Anglo-Polish relations have reached a low ebb. This is probably the result of three incidents. The former British Ambassador to Poland (Mr Cavendish-Bentinck) proved a good Ambassador—but probably not for the Poles. It has been suggested that they engineered his removal by making charges of contact with an underground movement. The British Foreign Office, after denying the charges, promoted the Ambassador to a post in Brazil.

Secondly, the Poles arrested the 50-year-old Polish translator at the British Embassy, Marie Marynowska, on charges of “a serious political nature.”

Thirdly, the Poles have charged the 8.8. C. with incitements to murder, in its foreign brodacasts in the Polish language. The broadcasts were allegedly full of hatred and calumny towards Poland.

Attempts to discredit Mr Caven-dish-Bentinck could easily be explained. He was in Warsaw from 1919 to 1922, when he was transferred to the Foreign Office in London. Both the Russians and Poles knew that, during the war, he headed a joint intelligence sub-commit-tee there, and was Foreign Office adviser to the War Office Plans Department.

They knew also that since he was appointed Ambassador in 1945 he travelled widely in Poland, where doubtless he saw and heard much that Warsaw would have preferred him not to have seen or heard.

There are many reasons why Warsaw does not like Mr CavendishBentinck, but the question being asked in London now is whether any motive lies .behind what appears, on the surface, to be a planned Polish policy intended to irritate Britain.