VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

The subject domain of this paper is Polish immigration to post-War Britain. It portrays the Polish community’s rehabilitation in exile and the British government’s creation of a model migrant settlement policy for Polish refugees after 1946. It aims to explain how Poles were successfully integrated into British society to form a vibrant migrant community at the beginning of their forced exile, in the Polish Resettlement Camps. This paper will also investigate a question of national identity, cultivating national traditions, and retaining “Polishness” through the prism of resettlement. This research also examines the political implications of the passage of the Polish Resettlement Bill in March 1947 (the first ever British legislation dealing with mass immigration) and how the original refugees formed much of the Polish community as it exists today. The Bill aimed to resettle political refugiées in Britain after WW2. A good deal of the work linked to the Bill involved the creation of the Polish Resettlement Camps in Britain, in 1946. Former army and air force camps were utilized as temporary accommodation throughout the country for over 250,000 Polish troops and their families.
For many years these camps were seen as remote places, invisible for local communities, packed with Nissen huts or poor quality dwellings and always overcrowded. The remains of the Polish Resettlement Camps are part of today’s English landscape. In due course, the Poles emerged as dedicated contributors to the rebuilt British economy. Children of Polish descent, who were born, brought up and educated in the reality of the resettlement camps have engaged in professional careers and made their Polish names visible in a rapidly diversifying British society. Most recently, since 2004, places where the old camps and hostels were established after 1945 have attracted a new wave of migrants and have become valuable sources of support and assistance.