10:12am Monday 15th January 2007
By Jim Greenhalf
Bradford is becoming a magnet for migrants from Eastern Europe, in particular from Poland, looking for new economic opportunities. Reporter JIM GREENHALF went out to meet some of them.
T he opening in Bradford of the Russian Restaurant and the Slovenske Potraviny U Alexa food stores is symptomatic of the most dynamic change to the city's population in 50 years - in fact since the migration from the Indian Sub-Continent in the 1950s.
Thousands of primarily economic migrants from Poland, Slovakia, Russia, the Czech Republic and Latvia and Lithuania on the Baltic have come here since the European Union expanded to 25 member states in 2004. Poles are the biggest single European migration, however.
Of the hundreds of thousands trying to make a go of life in the UK, more than 7,000 are here in Bradford, possibly more. What is not certain is how long they are likely to remain. Their situation is fluid, says Bradford-born Jan Niczyperowicz.
Mr Niczyperowicz, who works for Leeds City Council's social services department, lives in Shipley and is chairman of Bradford's Federation of Poles.
He is ambivalent about the migration from Poland, unsure of the long-term effects on Bradford in terms of schooling and the future of Roman Catholic churches.
"I would say hundreds are settling here rather than thousands - not in Bradford anyway.
"It is a very transient phenomenon, especially with young single men. As soon as they've a chance of a better job elsewhere they'll move on. I know of quite a few who have moved from Bradford to Leeds or elsewhere.
"They'll go where the jobs are.
"Most of them have a good work ethic. I think plans have to be made, but they will only settle where there is employment."
When the Poles started arriving after 2004 (the EU is now 27 states including Rumania and Bulgaria), sporadic attacks on them were reported, principally from young Asian men.
In spite of welcoming efforts by Bradford Council, Bradford Vision and bodies like the Eastern European Working Group, unpleasantness is still experienced by some - principally through ignorance.
Thirty-five-year-old Maciej (say it Matchy') Urban from Poznan, is one of them. He has been living and working in Bradford for more than a year.
"I have met some not very nice people who think Poles are gipsies or Russians. They are not understanding that Poles and English peoples share the same Christian culture and stood against Hitler. Polish soldiers came here after the war; they could not go home because of the Russians," he said.
Mr Niczyperowicz, perhaps anxious to sound a more diplomatic note, said: "There are good and bad in all communities.
"The Poles have integrated very well, far better than our parents did. It's a different mentality. They are economic migrants rather than political exiles.
"With political exiles there is more baggage - a lot of bitterness, a feeling of keeping together for the sake of the cause, nationalistic. It was a different era, after the war. They always swore they would get back home.
"Economic migrants know they can always go back: borders aren't closed to them. Now they have the European Union; there's a different mentality.
"Economic conditions in parts of Poland aren't good - unemployment is 25 per cent. The transition to a free market economy is bound to have casualties.
"You don't have to invade Poland with tanks and guns now; Poland has been invaded by Western firms.
"It's only when Poland has been kicked up the backside that Poles get going.
"We pride ourselves that Poland was the first European country to have a constitution - on May 3, 1791 - and yet within a year or two Poles lost the plot completely."
After the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, which precipitated Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, Poland as an entity disappeared from the map of Western Europe for six years. The country was carved up between Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR.
In October, 1978, the election of Poland's Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the papacy as Pope John Paul II sparked off a political revolt against the Communist Government.
In June 1989, the trades union organisation Solidarity was elected to power.
The pace of change, astonishing and breath-taking as it was, was indicative of what happens when totalitarian regimes become economically untenable and politically unpopular.
Within four months the Berlin Wall was breached, both politically and physically. Communist governments fell in the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Rumania and Hungary. Two years later Communism was scrapped in the USSR.
The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance was history; the liberation of Eastern European countries eventually led to membership of the European Union and the freedom to seek a better life anywhere within the EU.
This is the historical process that led Maciej to temporarily take leave of his wife and three children and his own art shop and picture-framing business to come alone to Britain one and a half years ago.
He chose this country rather than France, Spain or Germany because, as he said: "I have a sympathy for English people and I was learning English at the university in Poznan."
And there was a compelling economic motive. Any aspiring middle class Pole can only hope to earn in a month what many here earn in a week.
"In Poland as a young teacher you could earn about £250 a month," he said. "Here it is five times more, I think. I was a teacher of art history for a year, but I did not come here as a teacher because it is not possible with the level of my English."
He went at first to London, to look around, and then to Bradford. He had learned on the Internet of a job possibility here with news agent and distribution company John Menzies.
As a driver and packer, working all sorts of hours, he says he earned about £240 a week. At times he felt estranged because if he had a problem he was not confident enough of his English to complain.
Life was less lonely when his family came over to join him. His children are now settled in schools in Bradford. Amazingly, however, due to the severe shortage of dentists, his wife and eldest son often return home for dental treatment.
"You can get a £50 return ticket with Ryan Air," he said. "Orthodontistry - is that how you say it? - is much cheaper in Poland.
"They are also not always happy here. There are not so many buildings everywhere in Poland; there are forests, lakes: it is a beautiful country. We will go back in some years' time.
"I understand why nobody here had any respect because people think if you cannot speak good English you are not educated. But we know a lot of good things about England.
"From books, Bradford looks Victorian. But the people are from all over the world. I found a big Polish community in Bradford, the Polish Club and the Church. I didn't know so many Polish soldiers from the war stayed here."
Today he is due to start work for Bradford Community Broadcasting at Rawson Road.
"It's for 20 hours a week, to make programmes for Poles, Czechs and Russians. I speak Russian as well as Polish. The contract is for one year. There are two months of training," he said.
A 23-year-old Pole said he had come to this country because the economic prospects for young people in Poland were "no good."
He had worked for a month in a glass factory and was curious to know what employment opportunities were available in Manchester, Nottingham and Liverpool.
He wanted to earn enough money to go back to Poland, marry and have a family.
He was eager to get to an employment agency in Manningham Lane where he had been told a job opportunity awaited.
e-mail: jim.greenhalf@bradford.newsquest.co.uk
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