When the first wave of Poles arrived they were generally lauded as good eggs - as most of them are. I struck a note of caution though.
"The fact that these new Brits are polite and hard-working, do not do crack or firearms, nor are they likely to blow up Tube trains, is a function of the culture they have arrived with. It tells us nothing about what their first and second generation descendents will be like after twenty years exposure to the cultural vacuum of the UK."
They seem to be quick learners.
One man was taken to hospital and several others suffered more minor injuries during the mass brawl involving more than 30 men - believed to be mostly from Eastern Europe - outside the Lion And Keys pub in Leyton High Street, east London in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The pub's owner Fred Fetti said: "The English might be happy to go out for a drink and a dance, but the eastern Europeans like a drink, maybe some drugs and a scrap.
If you have Polish customers, you need Polish security. If you have Albanian customers, you need Albanian security and they need to be able to cut the trouble off before it starts.
"If someone is on drugs they think they're superhuman - Hercules. They don't respect anything. You need to give them a clump.
"The police are living in the 1960s, but we're not. They culture has changed and now we're dealing with people from another country. They can stab someone tonight and get a flight home tomorrow for £69.
"Something has to change. I'm not saying we understand what's needed, but we understand more than them. The police and the authorities need to sit down with the publicans and discuss what how to improve the licensing laws.
"They've given us later licenses and they've opened the doors to people from different countries, but they haven't taken account of how that changes the culture."
I was in the wholesale supermarket today - there's a new section devoted to Polish food. Not sure I can see the native Brits hitting sauerkraut the way they took to chicken tikka. And remember the 'they'll work for a few years then go home ?' mantra ? The lovely Anna from Stettin was back on the till today, blooming in her advanced pregnancy. The only place she's going in the near future will be the maternity unit at Gloucester Royal.
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I have Polish friends who came here in 1946-48 who are bemused at the lavish praise for more recent Polish immigrants in Britain.
They comment on the poor Polish spoken, the foul language, and the low quality of many of these incomers and how embarrassed they feel.
It is they say products of a Communist Poland which was more proletarian and less diverse than pre-war Poland where millions of the best educated were murdered or fled, and that the transfer of peasants into towns dominated by steel combines or mines or other features of Communist heavy industry coarsened both the language and behaviour as Communist ideology attacked bourgeois values.
That these people are treated like the noble savage ready to be corrupted by contact with British civilisation is ridiculed by older Poles....but it fits a British need to see Central Europeans as having been kept pure by Communism from the fleshpots of Capitalist excess.
"Not sure I can see the native Brits hitting sauerkraut the way they took to chicken tikka."
I must admit to being very fond of kabanas, the sort of chewy Polish garlic sausage.
However, this isn't an argument to say our dull indigenous culture needs exotic foreigners moving here to liven it up.
My brother, who is quite a bit older than me, used to be a blues fan. I was told that at one time he was the best blues harp (harmonica) player in London. But he didn't need millions of black people migrating here from the Mississippi delta for him to appreciate it.
My father-in-law used to cook an excellent authentic curry. This was very odd because he could trace his ancestry back to the Norman conquest and didn't have single drop of Asian blood.
I have often seen lefties claim that West Indians have enhanced our culture with reggae.
Surely it would have been cheaper and easier to just buy the records and/or the recipe books?
After WWII there were many Poles stranded in the UK. Here in Wiltshire they were stuffed into purpose built council estates in places like Calne. This quiet little village was turned into a no-go area for many due to the alcohol abuse and violence of the Polish refugees. Wife beating was also something of a Polish pastime it seems. Two generations later and things haven't actually improved much. So I'm not actually that impressed by Polish culture. Lets face it, if they had been any good they would have made more of a success of their own history and wouldn't need to come to the UK would they?
Still, they are here because the Tories siged up for the EU free movement of labour. The Asians are here because the Labour Party needs their votes. There is no hope. It's not the immigrants that are the real problem. They are only taking advantage of the free-ride courtesy of stupid Brits. It is the Brits that are the problem. All they are interested in is Emmerdale and the value of their three bed semi. They are pathetic. I want less and less to do with them and their hopeless football teams and sad tabloid patriotism.
As soon as my kids are making their own way in the world me and the wife are off out of it.
Lets face it, if they had been any good they would have made more of a success of their own history and wouldn't need to come to the UK would they?
Stupid comment.
Those who settled here postwar fought for this country - provided the fighter squadrons over London like 303, 306, 308 Squadron and troops who fought at Arnhem and Falaise and Cassino
If the British had made more of a success of their country and history they wouldn't have created Pakistan in 1948 and have established such permanent ties
Observer,
Pakistan was created by Jinnah and Nehru not the British.
Observer,
Pakistan was created by Jinnah and Nehru not the British.
Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act on July 18, 1947....Indian Independence Act 1947 - Section II
Territories of the New Dominions
1. Subject to the provisions of sub-sections (3) and (4) of this section, the territories of India shall be the territories under the sovereignty of His Majesty which, immediately before the appointed day, were included in British India except the territories which under sub-section (2) of this section are to be the territories of Pakistan.
2. Subject to the provisions of sub-sections (3) and (4) of this section the territories of Pakistan shall be (a) the territories which on the appointed day, are included in the Provinces of East Bengal and West Punjab as constituted under the two following sections; (b) the territories which, at the date of the passing of this Act, are included in the Province of Sind and the Chief Commissioner's Province of British Baluchistan; and (c) if, whether before or after the passing of this Act but before the appointed day, the Governor General declares that the majority of the valid votes cast in the referendum which, at the date of the passing of this Act, is being or has recently been held in that behalf under his authority in the North-West Frontier Province are in favour of representatives of that Province taking part in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the territories which, at the date of the passing of this Act, are included in that Province.
The Poles did not fight for this country in WWII - they fought to get Poland back from the Nazis. They did not fight for "Britain" any more than Stalin changing sides meant he was "fighting for Britain". You have watched "Battle of Britain" far too often....
bodkin: "I have often seen lefties claim that West Indians have enhanced our culture with reggae.
Surely it would have been cheaper and easier to just buy the records and/or the recipe books?"
That Reggae could "enhance" any culture is a dubious claim at best.
The Poles did not fight for this country in WWII - they fought to get Poland back from the Nazis. They did not fight for "Britain" any more than Stalin changing sides meant he was "fighting for Britain". You have watched "Battle of Britain" far too often....
If you had watched it you would have seen the end credits listing nationality of pilots...the second group was Polish in the Polish Air Force section of the Royal Air Force and swearing allegiance to King George VI.
I know because my relatives served in both the RAF and the SOE Polish Section....and others fought under General Maczek and his troops....you might read up on Bardsea before you spout your ignorance anonymously.
Since I know considerably more about this subject than your comic books revealed to you, you might want to find out about General Ironside's Military Mission to Poland, and the role of General Adrian Carton de Wiart VC.......
The Poles were allied to Britain by an agreement of March 1939 signed just after the invasion of Prague by the Nazis.
The top-scoring RAF Squadron was 303 Kościuszko destroying 126 enemy aircraft during the Battle of Britain......
Really a bit of learning would not come amiss...do some reading rather than reveal your ignorance
The Battle's Top Guns.
All in all, the Polish fighter pilots downed 8.5% of the 2 375 enemy planes that were claimed to have been destroyed (by all means, including anti-aircraft artillery and etc.) during Battle of Britain, according to the data released by the British Air Ministry. The share of the Polish victories achieved only in air-to-air combat is considerably greater.
The 303-rd Fighter Squadron "Kosciuszkowski" was the single most successful Allied unit in the Battle of Britain. The significant discrepancy between the 303-rd's and 302-nd's results, is due to the former's more busier geographical location, which offered more opportunities to down enemy aircraft. It must also be mentioned that the 303-rd achieved the best result despite of having been committed to the Battle of Britain for one of the shortest periods of time of all the Allied air units involved. It is also important to know that the 303-rd was not some sort of an elite "show-off" unit with specially pre-selected personnel, that was designed to outshine all the other units on the battlefield. The selection of personnel for this squadron was in no way different from the personnel selections of the RAF's other Polish squadrons, and during the Battle of Britain the squadron flew the unfancied Hawker Hurricane aircraft, and not the famous Spitfires.
On average the Polish fighter pilots scored more victories than their British counterparts, and, at the same time, they suffered fewer casualties. For example, the 303-rd Squadron downed three times as many enemy aircraft as the avarage Allied squadron, and it suffered three times fewer casualties in the process.
<<<<>>>>
The Battle's two most successful Allied individual pilots were:
Jozef Frantisek and Witold Urbanowicz, who both had a Battle of Britain result of 17 ---- 1 ---- *
Frantisek had a career result of 31 ---- 1 ---- * (he had three confirmed victories over Poland, 11 over France and Belgium, and 17 in the Battle of Britain).
Frantisek was a very gifted and determined fighter ace. When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, he took his machine and flew to Poland, attacking a column of German troops on the way. While in Britain he served, in spite of being an ethnic Czech, in the 303-rd Fighter Squadron "Kosciuszkowski". He scored his very first Battle of Britain victory on 2 September of 1940. He was killed during a landing accident on 8 October of the same year. In spite of such a short participation in the Battle, only Urbanowicz managed to match his Battle of Britain result. Also, with a career result of 31 ---- 1 ---- * he was also the top Allied fighter ace of the first year of the war.
Urbanowicz scored his first Battle of Britain victory in the middle of August, when he volunteered for active flying duty with a British RAF squadron. Shortly afterwards he was assigned to the 303-rd Squadron. On 5 September of 1940, when the squadron's original Polish commander, Major Krasnodebski, was wounded in combat, Urbanowicz was nominated as his replacement. He scored his last three Battle of Britain victories on 30 September, and soon later the British seconded him to the command of a fighter group.
..............................................
What a Polish Vet thinks of the 'Battle of Britain' Movie.
A fragment of the foreword to the 16-th edition of Dywizjon 303 by Arkady Fiedler:
"I saw the movie titled 'Battle of Britain', which was filmed around 1970 by the British at an immense financial cost and promoted by a massive advertising campaign, and - I must admitt - that I felt a little troubled after seeing it. Maybe even dis-tasted. After years of Cold War era silence in England on the subject of Polish fighter pilots, who participated in the as decisive for the British as the Battle of Britain was (...), this silence was ended with the showing of the Polish fighter pilots in that movie.
But how bizarrely they were shown!
I have lived with them day and night for several months, I was in constant contact with them, I watched them closely, I listened to their conversations, therefore, I know in great detail what kind of people they really were and how they conducted themselves. I know that when they entered combat in the last days of August, 1940, they spoke fairly fluent English. I also remember well that they never made much noise during combat sorties, like some kind of loud gathering of geese (...). They did not resemble a bunch of unruly slow-witted pupils, which required constant vigilence and disciplining of the British officer (like it was shown in the movie).
Unfortunetly the movie does not show the exceptionally fine qualities, both military and interpersonal, that were the hallmark of the Polish fighter pilots in Great Britain (...).
The British film-makers unpleasently screwed-up in the movie; their own memories have failed them.
Poznan, January, 1973
Arkady Fiedler"
........
Arkady Fiedler is one of the best known modern Polish authors. His books have been translated into numerous languages. Two of his books, Dywizjon 303 and Wiek Meski Zwycieski deal with Polish fighter pilots in RAF during WWII.
The Poles of 1939-45 are a different kettle of Sledz po Polsku from todays immigrants, in that they came to a country which still had a strong culture to integrate to. Half the girls in my wife's Catholic school were Polish.
I met a few of them at a function a month or so back. English girls who just happened to be called Basia.
Observer, you have conveniently missed the point. Or perhaps I should say that you are being deliberately obtuse.
The Poles that fought on the side of the RAF did so in the hope that by playing a part in defeating the Nazis they would reclaim their own country. They failed to do so because the Soviets took Poland as their own. They never fought to save Britain. They just happened to decide to be on the same side. (Although why I am not sure, since the rest of Poland was happy to side with the Germans since it meant they could shoot Jews in the back of the head and take their property. Lovely bunch).
Years ago a Polish-speaking friend asked me to go with him to support a Solidarity demonstration in London. Unfortunately we weren't made to feel at all welcome there: "This is a matter for the Poles".
About that time I made friends with a young Pole living in the Polish community at Balham - they had their own shops, church, newspaper etc, so could hardly be said to have "integrated". He was friendly, but the older members of his family were not - they ran a hostel for Poles only, and had not bothered to learn more than beginner's English, despite having been here fo about 40 years. Their community's dislike of the English, even of their Catholic co-religionists, was made plain.
This awoke memories of the Poles who attended my secondary school in the 60's: the best I can say of them is that they were an arrogant bunch, with just one or two exceptions.
I'm sorry to have to say this, but these were not the children of those born under the Communist regime: their parents came here in WWII.
At the time I tolerantly put their behaviour down to their being the sons of dispossessed noblemen, an explanation I now reject as childish. It doesn't really matter that their fathers belonged to an aerial warrior cult: they might have passed on bravery to their sons, but not chivalry.
"It is the Brits that are the problem. All they are interested in is Emmerdale and the value of their three bed semi. They are pathetic. I want less and less to do with them and their hopeless football teams and sad tabloid patriotism."
Hear, hear!
Observer: the Polish pilot's better kill/loss ratio can probably be accounted for by their prior combat experience in the Polish (and sometimes also the French) air force........ and being experienced, they were less likely to stick to the disastrous V formation tactics used by the RAF.
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