In 1914 Britain was indisputably one of the Great Powers
including France, Germany Russia Germany and the USA. Not only were we powerful
we were one of the richest countries in the world. At that time Poland did not
exist. It was divided between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Now we are
told Poland may in a few years be richer than Britain. How could this have come
to be?
Poland came back to existence due to the First World
War and in particular the collapse of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian
Empires. But it still had a tough fight on its hands particularly against the
Soviet Union. It required The Miracle on the Vistula in 1920 where at the
Battle of Warsaw the Poles turned back the Red Army and then was able to extend
the borders of Poland into modern day Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine.
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| Polish president Andrzej Duda meets Rishi Sunak |
Less than two decades later Poland was partitioned
again. 1939 saw it attacked by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The result
of the Soviet Union’s attack still stands today. Poland forever lost Wilna [Vilnius],
Lwów [Lviv] and other places where Poles had lived for centuries. It also lost
approximately 17% of its population. About the same number of Catholic Poles as
Jewish Poles were murdered by both the Germans and the Soviet Union. Only present-day
Belarus, 25% lost a greater percentage of its citizens in the whole world.
Poles fought heroically for the allies. Polish fighter
pilots may have been the difference between victory and defeat during the
Battle of Britain and Polish troops made significant contributions to the
allied war effort. But during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 the Soviet Union
chose to watch rather than help and the Western Allies could do little more
than drop supplies. The result was the near complete destruction of Warsaw by
the Germans as punishment.
Poland remained occupied by the Soviet Union until
1989. If you watch films from this period, you will see people using clunky old
telephones, wearing scruffy clothes and driving ugly little cars. How in the space
of 40 years could Poland surpass Britain?
We have an idea that Britain suffered hugely during the
Second World War, but the truth is that we only lost 0.94% of our pre-war population,
which was less than Belgium and only a little more than New Zealand.
But contrast the post war experience of Poland with
the UK. In the UK we were told that because of the losses during the War we
needed to import people from overseas to do the jobs that the dead couldn’t do.
In Poland despite moving its borders westward, despite massive destruction,
loss of industry and loss of people, almost no one was imported.
If you walk around Warsaw today, you see a population
that is almost 100% ethnically Polish. Since the Russian attack on Ukraine a
large number of Ukrainians have arrived, some may stay, but they quickly learn
Polish and become for the most part indistinguishable from everyone else.
If Poland could manage without mass immigration after
World War II, why couldn’t we? In 1950 there were around 20,000 people living
in the UK who were from ethnic minorities. 99.9% of the population in 1950
descended from people who had lived here since at least the Middle Ages.
We were told by successive governments that we needed
immigration, partly for economic reasons. The result is that the population of
the UK has increased from around 47 million in 1939 to 67 million now. Much of
the increase has been due to immigration. The percentage of people from ethnic
minorities has increased from 0.1 % to approximately 18%.
The London that was bombed in the Blitz was 99.9%
white, but in the course of a lifetime 40% of its population have become people
who were born abroad. The blitzed would not recognise their fellow Londoners
and would be astonished at who was their mayor.
I don’t want to be nasty to people whose families have
moved to Britain. They are British citizens, most frequently born here. We
cannot have a distinction between Native Britons (like Native Americans) who
can trace their ancestry back to 1066 and non-Native Britons who cannot. We are
all equal. We are all Brits. There are also both positives and negatives about
free movement of people around the world and it is probably unstoppable anyway.
But look what successive governments have done and
compare it with Poland. If Poland is to surpass Britain (and why shouldn’t it
if Poles work harder?) it will have done so without mass immigration and
without the difficulties that go with it.
Poland does not have a problem with racism, because
there is no one to be racist against. You cannot discriminate against someone
because he is a different colour or comes from a different country because
hardly anyone does.
We on the other hand saw our population grow by 20
million. We imported vast numbers of people from other races and religions. We
did so because we were told it was necessary and for the good of the economy,
but in 7 years perhaps Poland that did none of these things may surpass us by
GDP per capita.
Britain may have some advantages in having a multi-cultural
society. We may have more diverse restaurants and we also have gained some very
talented people. But it hasn’t made us richer.
The Second World War created present day Polish
society which is more uniform and united than Pre-War Poland, which had far greater
numbers of minorities. But the result given the chance since 1989 to adopt free
market capitalist policies is to create a society that is more successful than
Britain.
Poland knows what socialism is and doesn’t therefore
want to try it again. It is also absolutely clear about what a Pole is and has no
one at all who wants his part of Poland to separate from the rest, nor would it
allow its neighbouring countries to claim parts of Poland that used to be
theirs.
Some Poles particularly on the Left would like Poland
to be more multi-cultural and diverse, more like the Western European countries
they used to live in and admire. I would advise these people to be careful what
you wish for. It won’t make you rich. Despite what everyone in Western Europe
has been told about the benefits of multi-culturalism and mass immigration it
may prove to be a disadvantage and a cause of decline.
Be grateful you speak a language made up of consonant
clusters that sounds like someone lisping and which almost no one in the rest
of the world can pronounce let alone speak. But if you are British begin learning
Polish. It’s not as hard as it looks, and it may prove useful.
