page_title: Poles in the United Kingdom
section_title: Cultural and educational ties with Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Poles in the United Kingdom / Post World War II / Cultural and educational ties with Poland
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. gen. Sikorskiego w Londynie - wejście.
context_page_description: British Poles, alternatively known as Polish-British people or Polish Britons, are Poles who are citizens of the United Kingdom. This includes people born in the UK who are of Polish descent, and Polish-born people who reside in the UK. There are approximately 800,000 people of Polish nationality in the UK, making them one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country alongside Indians, Pakistanis, Germans and the Irish. The Polish language is the second-most spoken language in England, and the third-most spoken in the UK after English and Welsh. About 1% of the UK population speaks Polish.
  Exchanges between the two countries date back to medieval times, when Britain, Europe's chief power, and Poland, then one of Europe's largest countries, were linked by trade and diplomacy. A notable 16th-century Polish resident in England was the Protestant convert, John Laski, who influenced the course of the English Reformation and helped in establishing the Church of England.
context_section_description: The social make-up of successive waves of Polish migration to the UK is comparable to 19th- and early-20th-century Polish migrations to France. In both cases, the original mainly political migrants were drawn largely from  elite and educated strata and reflected the heterogeneity of their class, and they quickly established cultural institutions such as libraries and learned societies. They included representatives of past Polish minorities such as Jews, Germans, Armenians, Georgians, Ruthenians, and people of Muslim Tatar descent. In both cases, they were followed by waves of more socially-homogeneous economic migrants.
  Since the Second World War, Poland has lost much of its earlier ethnic diversity, with the exception of Polska Roma, a distinct ethnolinguistic group and other Polish Roma communities, and this has been reflected in recent Polish migrations to the UK. A recent study of comparative literature by Mieczysŀaw Dąbrowski, of Warsaw University, appears to bear this out.
  A key military and latterly, news and cultural role was played by broadcasts in Polish, beamed to Poland, from London by the BBC's Polish section. They began on 7 September 1939 with coded messages among prosaic material for the Polish Underground and after expansion into English by radio ended on 23 December 2005, a victim of budgetary cuts and new priorities.
  Across the mainland UK, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the original Polish communities chiefly comprised former members of the Polish Resettlement Corps. They set up Polish clubs, cultural centres, and adult and youth organisations, e.g., the Polish Youth Group (KSMP). They contributed to, and in turn were supported by, veterans' welfare charities such as veterans' SPK (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów), airmen's and naval clubs. These organisations' original aims were to provide venues for socialising and exposure to Polish culture and heritage for children of former Polish Resettlement Corps members. Many of these groups remain active, and steps are being taken to cater to more recent Polish migrants.
  The post-war phase saw a continuation of Polish intellectual and political life in microcosm in the UK, with the publication of newspapers and journals such as Dziennik Polski and Wiadomości, the establishment of independent (of the Polish "regime") publishing houses such as "Veritas" and "Odnowa", with a worldwide reach, and professional theatrical productions under the auspices of a dramatic society, "Syrena". Orbis Books (London) was a bookseller, publishing house and for a time a record producer (under the label Polonia UK), founded in Edinburgh in 1944 by Kapt. Józef Olechnowicz, brought to New Oxford Street, London in 1946 and eventually bought by Jerzy Kulczycki in 1972. Poles in London played their part in the blossoming of modern art movements during the Swinging Sixties. Chief among them were two gallery owners, the painter, Halima Nałęcz, at the Drian Gallery in Bayswater and the pharmacist and philanthropist, Mateusz Grabowski with his Grabowski Gallery in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, London. Grabowski promoted Polish and other diaspora artists, such as Pauline Boty, Frank Bowling, Jozef Czapski, Stanisław Frenkiel, Bridget Riley and Aubrey Williams.
  Concern for the maintenance of Polish language and culture in the UK was entrusted to the "Polska Macierz Szkolna" – Polish Educational Society, a voluntary organization that operated a network of Saturday schools. Parishes also organized an active Polish scout movement (ZHP pgk). Polish religious orders founded boarding schools in England. In 1947 The Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth started a school for girls, The Holy Family of Nazareth Convent School in Pitsford near Northampton. Displaced members of the Polish Marian Fathers opened a first school for boys in Herefordshire. Then with financial help from the Polish diaspora, they acquired a vacant historic property on the river Thames outside Henley-on-Thames which became "Divine Mercy College" and a heritage museum at Fawley Court, a Grade I listed building, which funct
caption: Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, a leading Polish archive and museum in London founded on 2 May 1945
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