World War Two: Polish Contribution

Debate between Alex Chalk and Stephen Pound

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is customary on these occasions to say what a pleasure it is to serve under the chairmanship of whoever happens to be in the Chair, and, Mr Pritchard, in this particular case it is a real pleasure as you have a true knowledge, understanding and sympathy for this subject and for the points we are discussing. I congratulate the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on securing the debate. Many a time we have stood opposite each other, divided by politics but united by our affection, respect and admiration for the heroic Poles of yesterday and today.

You may ask, Mr Pritchard, why it is necessary for us to repeat this litany of heroism. It has been done before and it may be done again. It is essential that we do so. First, I cannot think of any other example in British history where so small a group of people achieved so much. I will not quote Churchill—he was talking of something different—but in all honesty we owe so much to those few Poles who came here.

Secondly, we have come to acknowledge, respect and understand the contributions that the Poles make comparatively recently. When I was a young man growing up in Hammersmith, I remember friends who were actually called Małgosia described themselves as Margaret and every Paweł called himself Paul. Everybody seemed to conceal their Polishness; we did not understand that they were Polish. Polish history was something we did not know about or understand. It was only with the Polish millennium in 1966—which coincided with the World cup, in which the Poles supported us when we were playing against Germany—that the Poles started to emerge as a people. Even then, we did not understand about Polish history.

I am from west London, born and bred; I know the Katyn memorial and the Northolt Polish war memorial. There are still people, such as our excellent Polish ambassador, who will always wear the red and white insignia of 303 Squadron; I see some people in the Gallery are wearing it today. The contribution that that Polish squadron, based at RAF Northolt, made has been adumbrated by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham; it was extraordinary. We need say no more, except to say that anyone who knows anything about the conduct of the darkest days of the second world war will hang their head in shame if the heroic contribution and the blood sacrifice made by those Polish fighter pilots is not acknowledged.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking with his customary force and eloquence. He is right to say that those living in west London might immediately have that understanding, but does he agree that we need to ensure that that acknowledgment is felt throughout our country? In my constituency, I have been pleased to go along to Polish days where I have been at pains to emphasise that. We need a way of ensuring that everyone in our country can fully understand the sacrifice of those brave Polish airmen and women.

[Stephen Pound]

That is an excellent point. It is almost as if I had asked the hon. Gentleman to ask that question, but it has been a long time since I have been in the Whips Office. That is an important point. I will talk about Scotland particularly, in a moment.

We need say no more about the Polish contribution to the RAF—it has been said before and it must be said again—but I turn to the heroism of the Polish army. Those who fought with General Anders walked, marched and, in some cases, crawled from Siberia through the whole of Iran to north Africa, to turn the tide in El Alamein. As we have heard, they fought from Tobruk up through Sicily and into the impregnable mountain fortress and Benedictine monastery that could not be broken, Monte Cassino, which was occupied by a crack division of German paratroopers—in fact, the crack division of the Luftwaffe.

Those paratroopers held out against one of the biggest combined armies that has ever been assembled. There was a New Zealand regiment made up entirely of Māori, as well as people from north Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States; but there was one group of people—the Poles—who fought their way from hilltop to hilltop, up that precipitous mound, and planted the red and white flag in the still-smoking ruins of Monte Cassino. With the nobility that typifies those people, General Anders’s army then planted the Union flag. I have climbed that hill and seen how difficult it must have been, but my memory is not just of the beautiful and newly restored Benedictine monastery; it is of the graveyard at the foot of Monte Cassino. There is an allied graveyard and a Polish graveyard. Why? There were so many Poles who died that they could not be incorporated into the allied graveyard.

At the base of that graveyard is one grave that stands alone; it is always covered in flowers, either red roses or poppies—poppies, for the poppies in the snow. It is the grave of General Anders, one of the great heroes. Like the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, I recently had the honour of meeting Senator Anders and to briefly discuss those days. There are three sets of headstones in that graveyard: some with the Orthodox cross; some with the Star of David, because Jewish Poles fought there; and some with the Christian cross.

One of the utter tragedies is that while General Mark Clark was racing towards Rome, where the photographers were waiting for him, General Anders was told by the Supreme Commander of the British forces that there would be no return to Poland. He was told that for all the Poles had done, that was it. Because of the pact with the brutal dictator we have heard about, there would not be a British supported return to Poland. As a human being and a hero, General Anders could have done what many of us would have done; he could have said, “In that case we are going home. We are throwing down our rifles, we are taking off our packs and we are leaving.” Anders did not do that. He said, “We fight on,” and fight on they did. That typifies the strength and determination of the Polish people.

I want to touch on an area that has not been touched on in any detail, and that is the extraordinary contribution of the Polish naval forces. In 1939, the Polish navy was in quite good condition. It was a modern navy, with submarines. It managed to escape from Gdańsk and the seaports in north Poland to Leith, the port of Edinburgh, where the flagship, the Piorun—which is Polish for thunderer—was laid down in the John Brown shipyard as the HMS Narissa. She was renamed and crewed entirely by Poles. These Polish ships, which came under the command of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, made an incredible contribution in theatres of war from Narvik, Dunkirk, the Lofoten Islands and Tobruk, as well as the Murmansk convoys, where the grandfather of my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) sailed with them, to the Normandy landings.

In two particular areas, the Polish navy made an incredible contribution; I beg your indulgence, Mr Pritchard, in allowing me to mention them briefly. The first was the awful night of 13 March 1941, when more than 1,000 people in Glasgow were killed. It was called the Clydebank Blitz. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) who introduced a debate on the Floor of the House about that subject. John Brown’s shipyard and the Singer factory next to it were bombed ruthlessly, and Clydebank and Hardgate, and virtually that whole part of Glasgow, were destroyed. The opposition to the Luftwaffe was led by the Piorun. She was in harbour, undergoing repairs. She had six anti-aircraft guns and some old refitted Bofors guns—what we used to call pom-poms. She fought off the second wave of the Luftwaffe. How many lives she saved I cannot even begin to think. It is extraordinary to think that Piorun was laid down in the very shipyard that she then defended, having sailed from there to Poland and back again. It is almost as if she was born to defend her birthplace, as many a Pole would say.

The second thing is the extraordinary occurrences of May 1941 when the hinge of history was turning. The Germans had massive naval superiority. They had the two best ocean raiders in the world: Bismarck and Tirpitz. They also had the best heavy cruisers: Gneisenau and Scharnhorst. Had they got out into the north Atlantic, our supply routes from Canada and America would have been finished. There would have been no opportunity whatever for us to continue the war at sea. Tirpitz, as we know, was destroyed in the fjords of Norway by the RAF, but Bismarck had earlier that year, in the battle of the Denmark strait, not only destroyed the British taskforce, but sunk the pride of the Royal Navy: the mighty Hood. Many matelots of my father’s generation still say the old “Andrew” died with the Hood. She was the pride of our Navy and Bismarck sunk her and moved on.

In May, Admiral Tovey and taskforce H were sent, under the instructions of Churchill, to the area off the Norway coast to sink the Bismarck. Who was there at the front of that? Not just Rodney and Repulse, but Piorun, the Polish destroyer that steamed ahead as fast as she could, and, it is said, did not even wait for embarkation orders. She left Scotland and headed straight for the battlefield. Then, as we know, Bismarck had her steering gear crippled by a Fairey Swordfish torpedo and was slightly reduced in her manoeuvrability, but she still had powerful weapons: eight 15-inch guns in four turrets. Piorun was one of the ships in that taskforce that on 25 May 1941 received probably the most significant message received in the sea war in the last war, and it came from Bletchley. It came from a Polish interpreter who had managed to break the codes, and it told precisely what the German admiral was doing. Even though Piorun was then straddled at 12,000 metres by a complete bombardment from Bismarck, she carried on. Some say she delivered the coup de grace; some say she was the last torpedo fired into Bismarck.

I will close by saying two things. Betrayal is an ugly word, but I think that in some ways the Poles were betrayed at the end of the war. We compensated with the 1947 legislation, but in some ways we let the Poles down. I would say that the Poles never, ever let us down. It is not for me to make an obvious pro-European pro-EU statement, but is it not wonderful what we can achieve when we fight together in a common cause? If ever I have to fight anyone anywhere at any time, let it be with our brothers and sisters of the free republic of Poland, some of the bravest and most heroic people it has ever been my honour to know.