White Eagle Over Wimbledon: How Poland's War Affected a London Childhood

by John Phillips

Fear and suspicion of Polish immigrant workers may have led impressionable Britons to vote for Brexit. It was a different story when an earlier generation of Poles came to help defend Britain against Nazi evil. These people became the nation’s ‘first ally’ against Adolf Hitler. They were welcomed to the UK. A good few were brave pilots in the Battle of Britain. Since then hundreds of thousands of Poles have come to work in Britain following Poland’s membership of the EU in 2004. At first their presence did not generate hostility. That was whipped up by UKIP and far right parties who claimed Poles came to rob Brits of their jobs. It was not the first time that an influx of Poles had led to resentment. There was a wave of anti-Polish sentiment in the British labour movement after the war and British authorities treated Polish political refugees in the 1950s as ‘aliens’. They were placed under close surveillance for years before they could become ‘naturalised’ UK citizens. But more recent distrust festered in a dark part of the popular English imagination. It led to all migrant East Europeans being branded as ‘Poles’. It even led to violence and death. In White Eagle over Wimbledon, journalist and historian John Phillips tells how his father, Ireneusz Filipowicz, fought in the Polish Resistance as a teenager and became the first recorded Cold War defector from Poland in a daring escape from the Russian secret police before arriving in Britain. It is the story of one family, part of the thriving Anglo-Polish community in London in the 1960s and 1970s, which integrated into a gentler English society. Like so many immigrants to Britain, their contributions helped make the nation great. Ireneusz married a beautiful English girl, had a successful business career and created a loving and welcoming Wimbledon home for their children. Yet some exiles, such as hard-drinking Uncle John, failed to integrate into Britain, which he believed ‘betrayed’ Poland in 1939. The Poles and the British could be said to have enjoyed a love-hate relationship over the past 75 years. Phillips’ poring over the entrails of an often bloody European history is his attempt to illuminate and reinforce the two peoples’ deep alliance so that love may prevail in the future. Praise for White Eagle over Wimbledon ‘Fantastic, gripping and deeply human” – Jacek Palasinski, TVN John Phillips was born in Yorkshire and grew up in Wimbledon, attended King’s College School and read history at Oxford University. He became a foreign correspondent for United Press International and The Times. He is editor of The Italian Insider.

264 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 10, 2018

Reviews

[John Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written and entertaining history of a resistance fighter - probably the first Polish combatant in the Warsaw Uprising who managed to defect to the West from Communist Poland in a daring escape on a train packed with Soviet troops and with documents he forged himself. He kept his sanity and his temper throughout long and intensive periods of interrogation at the hands of the Americans, the British and finally the Poles themselves, eventually building a family, a new British identity and a highly successful business career. He is, of course, the author's father.
It's a multi-faceted tale not only of survival, and the Phillips family - who settled in salubrious Wimbledon - but also an intriguing account of the author's own life as a leading foreign correspondent who covered several conflicts only to suffer at the hands of the Times newspaper's outrageous management, leaving him completely broke and stranded in Italy with a wife and child.
John Philllips' style is fluent and informal with self-deprecating and sardonic humour. I read the book in one evening.
In his preface, Phillips points out that three generations ago, some 200,000 Poles who fought the Nazis as Britain's 'first ally' were welcomed to the UK. Hundreds of thousands of Poles came to work in the UK following Poland's membership of the EU in 2004. But the rise of the far-right in the form of the hard-right Tories and UKIP whipped up racist hostility against all East Europeans, be they Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Bulgarians or Rumanians - and all roped together by bigoted Britons as 'Poles'. This tale is of a better, more generous and gentler Britain and the thriving Anglo-Polish community in London of the 1960s and 1970s.
We were better then. I for one am deeply ashamed of what the UK has since become.

[Rod Grubb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I expected

Whilst finding the book interesting, I had expected more about the authors growing up in Wimbledon and not so much about his subsequent family research and exploits as a reporter.Having spent most of my boyhood there I was keen to compare reminiscences.
I also had a problem keeping up with the writers somewhat grasshopper mindset !