Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Articles

Vol. 58 No. 5 (2025): Prawo i Więź nr 5 (58) 2025

The Campaign of British Trade Unions to Oppose the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947.

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36128/dsgwh145
Submitted
16 September 2025
Published
18 November 2025

Abstract

This article examines how British trade unions organised a coordinated, albeit unsuccessful campaign to oppose both the establishment of the Polish Resettlement Corps in March 1946 and the passing of its accompanying piece of legislation, the Polish Resettlement Act, the following year. Perturbed at the influx to Britain of well over 100,000 Polish soldiers who had fought for Allied forces during the Second World War, many organised labour movements viewed these Poles as foreign competition for British homes, jobs and resources, especially during a period of post-war rationing. The fact that the vast majority of these trade unions were strongly left-wing and led by admirers of the Soviet Union made them not only highly sceptical of Polish soldiers’ claims of being unable to return to Poland fearing communist persecution but also led them to promote communist propaganda by labelling the Polish 2nd Corps, led by Gen. Władysław Anders, as a quasi-fascist pro-German army and a fifth column of Polish reactionaries posing a great danger to Britain. By focusing on a selection of archival documents from 1945-1946, the article demonstrates not only how these trade unions engaged in intense lobbying of the British government to prevent Poles from settling in post-war Britain, but also how they attempted to appeal to the broader population through rhetoric based on xenophobia, Soviet propaganda and even anti-Catholicism.

References

  1. Books and articles:
  2. Biegus, Zosia and Jurek, Polish Resettlement Camps in England and Wales, Rochford: PB Software, 2013.
  3. Birn, Donald S., “Konni Zilliacus.” Peace Research, 16, no. 3 (1984), 28-38.
  4. Edwards, Murray, “An Army of 250,000 that does not know what to do”, The Daily Mail, 30 June 1945.
  5. Halicka, Beata, Borderlands Biography: Z. Anthony Kruszewski in Wartime Europe and Postwar America. Translated by Paul McNamara. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh, 2021.
  6. Kernberg, Thomas, “The Polish Community in Scotland”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Institute of Soviet and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, 1990.
  7. Markert,Wojciech, ‘Polish Armed Forces in the West in 1939-1947’, https://fundacjakurtyki.pl/en/seeds-of-history/polish-armed-forces-in-the-west-in-1939-1947/, [accessed 10 June 2025].
  8. Peszke, Michael Alfred, “The Demise of the Polish Armed Forces in the West” (Review article), The Polish Review, 55, no. 2 (2010), 238.
  9. Online sources:
  10. House of Commons debates, 1945-1947, Hansard, (accessed: 10-15 June 2025)
  11. https://culture.pl/en/article/shelter-community-polish-post-war-resettlement-camps-in-the-united-kingdom, [accessed: 10 June 2025].
  12. https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/07/23/achievements-and-tasks-of-the-communist-party-new-york-district-by-max-steinberg-from-the-communist-vol-14-no-5-may-1935/ [accessed: 27 June 2025].
  13. Polish Resettlement Act, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/10-11/19/contents [accessed: 15 June 2025].
  14. Archival documents (National Archives, Kew, London)
  15. Series:
  16. PREM 3/352/13
  17. PREM 8/367
  18. FO 371/56508
  19. FO 371/56509
  20. FO 371/56510
  21. FO 371/56511
  22. FO 371/56512
  23. FO 371/56513
  24. FO 371/56514
  25. FO 371/56518

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.