Ex-pats summoned to Polish election stations in UK

As Scottish voters contemplate the widespread disenfranchisement of this year’s local and parliamentary elections, another community within the region has exercised its democratic rights with greater success.

The Polish general election of 21 October saw hundreds of thousands of expatriates and migrant workers cast their ballots in the United Kingdom, with voters in Britain playing an important part in ousting the controversial government of right-wing party Law and Justice in favour of moderate, pro-European Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform.

Polling stations were set up at 23 locations nationally, including Edinburgh and Kirkcaldy, and of roughly 68,000 registered voters in the UK, approximately 44,000 voted.

While this was not the first Polish election to host balloting in Britain, participation was greatly increased in comparison with the last poll in 2005, ironically at the behest of the losing party’s leader, now ex-Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The Polish National Electoral Commission put turnout in the Warsaw district in which foreign votes were counted at almost 75 per cent, the highest in the country and well ahead of the already record-breaking national participation of 53.88 per cent.

In light of recent controversy surrounding the number of immigrants living in Britain, Simon Piatek of Polish Radio London suggests that Britons can take comfort from this figure. He said: “Poles in Britain just want to make money a bit quicker, to buy a house or set up a business back home.”

Citing the spread of Polish-language publications, the growth of PRL’s listening figures, and the general disinterest of Poles in local British politics, Piatek added that migrants “usually have families back in Poland, and most come to the UK planning to return after two or three years.” He did, however, concede that his corporation’s own estimates of the number of Poles living in Britain, which he places at roughly 1 to 1.2 million, dwarfs official government figures of 200,000. He said: “Polish workers often live four or five to a flat, meaning that there are almost certainly more than anyone has counted actually in the UK.”

Campaigning saw PM-elect Tusk visit Polish communities in London and Fife; he is expected to have made a return visit to London to thank his expatriate supporters before being sworn in on 5 November in Warsaw.

Of the votes cast in Britain, over 70 per cent went to the Civic Platform and its photogenic leader. Mr Piatek called The Journal: “Young people changed the result in this election. They saw that Kaczynski had only enemies and no partners; they wanted to have their say.”

According to figures cited in The Economist, some 2 million Poles have sought employment elsewhere in the EU since their country’s accession in 2004.

Many of these are young people seeking seasonal work in hospitality and unskilled labour – areas in which students traditionally seek employment. The Office for National Statistics puts youth unemployment in Britain at roughly 14.5 per cent, almost three times the unemployment national average of 5.4 per cent.