page_title: Poles in the United Kingdom
section_title: Polish Resettlement Act 1947
hierarchical_section_title: Poles in the United Kingdom / Post World War II / Polish Resettlement Act 1947
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Ognisko Polskie w Londynie
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: When the Second World War ended, a communist government was installed in Poland. Most Poles felt betrayed by their wartime allies and declined to "return to Poland" either because their homeland had become a hostile foreign state or because of Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946), Soviet conduct during the 1944 Warsaw uprising, the Trial of the Sixteen, and executions of ex-members of the Home Army. To accommodate Poles unable to return to their home country, Great Britain enacted the Polish Resettlement Act 1947, the UK's first mass immigration law. Initially, a very large Polish community was centred around Swindon, where many military personnel had been stationed during the war.
  After occupying Polish Resettlement Corps camps, many Poles settled in London and other conurbations, many of them recruited as European Volunteer Workers. Many others settled in the British Empire, forming large Polish Canadian and Polish Australian communities, or in the United States and Argentina.
caption: The Polish Hearth Club in Exhibition Road, London, a Polish "hub" during and after WWII
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