Poland (Conditions)

Part of Bills Presented – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 7 December 1945.

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Photo of Mr John Mack Mr John Mack , Newcastle-under-Lyme 12:00, 7 December 1945

That is the purport of my remarks. I, equally with my hon. and gallant Friend and most Members of the House, honour and respect all those Poles who have fought in the great world war of liberation. We know their prowess, and we honour and respect them for that, but it would be wrong to deduce therefrom that the prewar Government of Poland was, in any sense of the term, a democratic Government. It was imbued with Nazi ideologies. It was a Government which repressed its minorities and which, which equal intent, persecuted the Jews and other minorities and democratic elements inside the country.

I would remind my hon. and gallant Friend, for example, that there was a very strained position arising out of Lithuania, and there was a similar situation in regard to Czechoslovakia and Teschen in 1938. The present Prime Minister complained in the House of Commons, in the last Parliament, that he had been receiving Christmas cards on which a vast map of Poland was produced showing its boundaries extending to the Black Sea. In a cafe in, I think, Oxford Street or nearby there is an enormous map of prewar Poland, the Poland of 150 or 200 years ago, designed to indicate that these vast territories constituted the true boundaries of Poland. In that same cafe, and in many parts of London, one can see men of the Polish Army carrying out anti-Russian propaganda calculated to exacerbate relations with that country, and bring about a war of greater intensity and suspicion. It is time that someone in this House had the courage to speak out, and, if I generate some heat, I am not ashamed of it.