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| Formation | 1946 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
President | Włodzimierz Mier-Jędrzejowicz |
| Website | www.zpwb.org.uk |
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain (Polish : Zjednoczenie Polskie w Wielkiej Brytanii) is a voluntary umbrella organisation established to promote the interests of Poles in the United Kingdom and to promote the history and culture of Poland among British people. As a charity the Federation's statutes contain detailed information about its objectives and responsibilities. [1]
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain (FPGB) was formed in 1946, when the British Government formally withdrew recognition of the Polish Government in Exile, rendering many Poles in Britain effectively stateless. They were however granted special leave to remain under the provisions of the Polish Resettlement Act 1947. [2] From that time until 1990, the Federation represented the interests of Polish settlers in relation to the United Kingdom authorities.
Following the emergence in 1990 of Poland as a state no longer within the Soviet bloc, its Presidential Insignia, kept until then in London, were ceremonially transferred by President Ryszard Kaczorowski to President Lech Wałęsa in Warsaw. At that juncture certain responsibilities remained vested in The Federation. [3] The Federation became recognised by both Polish and British governments, along with other Polish organisations worldwide, as the organisation representing the Polish minority in Great Britain.
In 2008, the Federation spokesman, Wiktor Moszczynski, submitted a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission over claims that the Daily Mail had run a series of articles defamatory to Poles. The PCC arranged a compromise between the Federation and the Daily Mail, whereby the Daily Mail promised to remove the offending articles from their website. [4]
The Federation was originally set up to bring together the various Polish organisations across Great Britain. Subsequently, a change in the statutes introduced Individual Membership. This has opened membership to Poles permanently resident in Great Britain, members of their families, people of Polish heritage and anyone else supporting the aims of The Federation.
The Trial of the Sixteen was a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet authorities in Moscow in 1945. All captives were kidnapped by the NKVD secret service and falsely accused of various forms of 'illegal activity' against the Red Army.
Polonophobia, also referred to as anti-Polonism,, and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Poles as an ethnic group, Poland as their country, and their culture. These include ethnic prejudice against Poles and persons of Polish descent, other forms of discrimination, and mistreatment of Poles and the Polish diaspora.
Stanisław Skalski, was a Polish aviator and fighter ace who served with the Polish Air Force and British Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Skalski was the top Polish fighter ace of the war and chronologically the first Allied fighter ace of the war, credited, according to the Bajan's list, with 18 11/12 victories and two probable. Some sources, including Skalski himself, give a number of 22 11/12 victories.
The terms "Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" have been controversial as applied to the concentration camps and extermination camps established by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland. The terms, especially among Poles, have been widely characterized as misnomers. The terms have occasionally been used by politicians and news media in reference to the camps' geographic location in German-occupied Poland. However, Polish officials and organizations have objected to the terms as misleading, since they can be misconstrued as meaning "death camps set up by Poles" or "run by Poland". Some Polish politicians have portrayed inadvertent uses of the expression by foreigners as a deliberate disinformation campaign.
![All-Polish Youth Political party in [[Second Polish Republic|Poland]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/All-Polish_Youth.png)
The All-Polish Youth refers to two inter-linked Polish far-right ultranationalist youth organizations, with a Catholic-nationalist philosophy. Its agenda declares that its aim is "to raise Polish youth in a Catholic and patriotic spirit".
No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron "Land of Pomerania" was a Polish World War II bomber (1940-1943) and special duties squadron (1944-1946), belonging to Polish Air Forces in Great Britain. It fought alongside the Royal Air Force and operated from RAF airfields in the United Kingdom and Italy.
No. 304 Polish Bomber Squadron was a Polish World War II bomber unit. It fought alongside the Royal Air Force under their operational Command and operated from airbases in the United Kingdom, serving from April 1941 as a bomber unit in RAF Bomber Command, from May 1942 as an anti-submarine unit in RAF Coastal Command and from June 1945 as a transport unit in RAF Transport Command.
The Scouting and Guiding movement in Poland consists of about twelve independent organizations with an overall membership of about 160,000 Scouts and Guides. The largest organization by membership is Polish Scouting and Guiding Association with about 140,000 members.
British Poles, alternatively known as Polish British people or Polish Britons, are ethnic Poles who are citizens of the United Kingdom. The term includes people born in the UK who are of Polish descent and Polish-born people who reside in the UK. There are approximately 700,000 people born in Poland resident in the UK. Since the late 20th century, they have become one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country alongside Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, 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.
Związek Ludowo-Narodowy was a Polish political party aligned with the National Democracy political movement during the Second Polish Republic, gathering together right-wing politicians with conservative and nationalist opinions.
Jadwiga Piłsudska-Jaraczewska was a Polish pilot, who served in the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. She was one of two daughters of Józef Piłsudski.
Literary Association of the Friends of Poland is a British organisation of solidarity with Poles, founded February 25, 1832 in United Kingdom by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell and German lawyer Adolphus Bach. Although the creation of the LAFP was the result of deep pro-Polish sympathies of Campbell and the whole contemporary British public opinion, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski did attend a dinner for the association, in Edinburgh 1835 along with Count Zamoyski, publicised at the time.
The Polish Social and Cultural Association is a Polish cultural centre in London, England. It was funded by public subscription and founded in 1967, on the initiative of Polish engineer Roman Wajda, at 238–246 King Street, Hammersmith. The rationale was that during the Cold War, the Polish community in the United Kingdom was politically opposed to the Polish Communist authorities in its native country and could not otherwise avail itself of a continuous source of Polish history and culture and for potential future generations in exile. It replaced the venues of a number of distinct military, veterans and social associations and meeting places that had been scattered mainly across the Royal Borough of Kensington in the aftermath of World War II.
No. 318 "City of Gdańsk" Polish Fighter-Reconnaissance Squadron (Polish: 318 Dywizjon Myśliwsko-Rozpoznawczy Gdański") was a Polish tactical reconnaissance aircraft squadron formed in Great Britain as part of an agreement between the Polish Government in Exile and the United Kingdom in 1940. It was one of several Polish squadrons fighting alongside the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II.
In the contemporary English language, the nouns Polack or Polak are ethnic slurs, and derogatory references to a person of Polish descent. It is an Anglicisation of the Polish masculine noun Polak, which denotes a person of Polish ethnicity and male gender. However, the English loanword is considered by some to be an ethnic slur and therefore considered insulting in certain contemporary usages.
Michał Maciejowski DFM was a Polish fighter ace of the Polish Air Force in World War II.
The Polish-Catholic Church in United Kingdom is a Polish Old Catholici church in United Kingdom registered under number SC594199.
Mateusz Bronisław Grabowski, known as Grabowski or M.B. Grabowski, was a Polish-British pharmacist, art collector, owner of the Grabowski Gallery in Chelsea and philanthropist. His M.B. Grabowski Foundation has endowed Polish Migration and Polish Cultural History studies at University College London, and the Universities of Stirling, Cambridge and at Trinity College, Oxford. He donated his pharmaceutical and art collections to several museums in Poland.
The Grabowski Gallery was an avant-garde art gallery opened in 1959 in London's Chelsea by Mateusz Grabowski, anticipating the Swinging Sixties. It hosted some of the earliest shows of the rising pop art movement and was the first venue in London to bring op art to the public. It launched the careers of some of Britain's and the British Commonwealth's leading exponents of two- and three-dimensional art and fostered émigré artists from Europe, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth. By the time it closed its doors in 1975 it had mounted around two hundred shows. When the gallery closed Mateusz Grabowski donated his collection of works from the gallery to the Museum of Art in Łódź and the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland.
Jan Kowalski was a aircraft pilot who served in the Polish Air Force and Royal Air Force with the ranks of captain and flight lieutenant respectively. He had fought in the World War II, including the Battle of Britain.
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