Polish-British
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
Born in the UK or Poland: 1,000,000+ (media estimates) Born in Poland only: 831,000 (2015 ONS estimate) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Throughout the UK | |
| Languages | |
| English, Polish, Romani | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism · Polish Orthodox Church · Judaism · Protestant |
The Polish community in the United Kingdom since the mid-20th century largely stems from the Polish presence in the British Isles during the Second World War, when Poles made a substantial contribution to the Allied war effort. Most of the Poles who came to the United Kingdom at that time comprised military units reconstituted outside Poland after the German and Soviet invasions of Poland.
However, exchanges between the two countries date back to medieval times, when Britain and Poland were linked by trade and diplomacy. A notable 16th-century Polish immigrant to England was the Protestant convert, John Laski, who influenced the course of the English Reformation.
Following the 18th-century dismemberment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in three successive partitions by its neighbours, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the trickle of Polish immigrants to Britain increased in the aftermath of two 19th-century uprisings (1831 and 1863) which forced much of Poland's social and political elite into exile. A number of Polish exiles fought in the Crimean War on the British side. In the last quarter of that century Russian pogroms, and famine in Galicia (ruled by Austria-Hungary), forced many Polish Jews to flee their partitioned Polish homeland; most emigrated to the United States, but some settled in British cities, especially London, Manchester, Leeds, and Hull.
In the 20th century, a resurrected sovereign Poland enjoyed less than 21 years of relative peace before she was divided in 1939, in a fourth partition, between Germany and the Soviet Union. For the duration of the war Poland moved her government abroad, first to France and, after France's fall, to London. After putting up a determined fight in France, Poland's reconstituted armed forces—troops evacuated from Poland to Romania and Hungary in September 1939, augmented with recruits from France's Polonia—continued the struggle against Nazi Germany at the side of Britain's armed forces. Polish Air Force pilots played a conspicuous role in the Battle of Britain, and the Polish Navy conducted operations under the command of Britain's Admiralty. In the wake of Germany's June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, General Władysław Anders was permitted to raise an army (the Polish Second Corps) from the hundreds of thousands of Poles whom the Soviets had deported to Siberia and Central Asia. The Second Corps was evacuated from the Soviet Union to the Near East, and campaigned at the side of the Allies in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Italy. Farther west, General Stanisław Maczek's armoured division, part of the Polish First Corps, fought with conspicuous gallantry in France (before France's fall, and in Normandy during Operation Overlord), in Holland, and in Germany.
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Wikipedia