Are you a pole-vaulter?... No, I'm German... but how did you know my name was Walter?

When I was a boy, being Catholic, we attended mass at St. Simon’s at Partick. A mass for the Polish community - in Polish - would have just finished before the mass in English would begin. The men leaving the Polish mass would light their first cigarettes after having gone without for half-an-hour while the men waiting for the mass in English would be having their last before their enforced abstinence. My father would often stand there puffing away like a condemned man before his execution while talking to a Polish friend of his, who would be, very leisurely, smoking a pipe.

St. Simon's

The Polish man’s father had come to Scotland at the beginning of the Second World War to serve with the Polish troops, as did many of the Poles who now live in Glasgow. Many of the Poles were Catholic and St Simon’s was their chapel and Father Marian Lekawa their priest. Father Marian was a great help to Father Patrick Tierney, the old Glasgow priest who would otherwise be alone at St Simon’s.

At that time, there was only one Polish mass but three English masses and Father Marian, although his English wasn’t great, would often conduct the evening mass to give Father Tierney a break. I was an alter-boy at the time and Father Marion would go through the readings with me having underlined any word he was uncertain of, asking me what it meant and how it was pronounced. He would rehearse it a few times and then write it phonetically in his missal. Those were different times and when Father Marion invited me and one of the other alter-boys to watch wrestling at the Kelvin Hall nobody would have been suspicious of his motives as they might these days. Father Marion’s intentions were pure. He only wanted to see the wrestling. He was disappointed. The wrestling we saw was of the fairground variety that was popular on TV at the time, with a good guy and a villain to be hissed at and booed by the audience who seemed to be made up mostly of crazy old woman who took it all very seriously. Every now and again Father Marion would shake his head and mutter, ‘This is not wrestling.’ He had expected something like the Greco-Roman variety he was familiar with back home. But he saw how much we were enjoying the show and stayed till the end. On the way home he was at pains to explain to us what real wrestling was.

St. Simon's, the third oldest Catholic church in Glasgow, was founded by Father Daniel Gallagher, a priest famous for having taught David Livingstone Latin which allowed Livingstone to qualify in medicine at Glasgow University. It was built in 1858 and originally called St. Peter's, and renovated in 1956 by architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, and again refurbished in 2005-2008 for its 150th anniversary. It is a listed Category B building. St Simon's is a small building and by 1903 it was too small for the ever-growing population of dockers and their families who were mostly Irish Catholic migrants and a new church was built on Highland St. From then on St. Simon's served as an extension known as the Bridge St Chapel until the Second World War when it was used as a church for the Polish serviceman stationed at Yorkhill Barracks. In 1945, with the increase in the city's population it became an official parish church and took the name St. Simon's. In 2004, the parish priest of St. Simon's became also the parish priest of St. Peter's, restoring, once again, the situation which had  existed between 1903 and 1945. The reason for the this was that St Simon's was too small to accommodate the large number of Polish migrants to the city following Poland's entry into the EU the year previously and services were provided for them at the Highland St church, which, of course, had been built originally to serve the increased number of Catholic migrants who were, at that time, Irish. This situation existed until 2011 when St. Anne's in Dennistoun was allocated to the Polish community and St Simon's became independent of St Peter's yet again. St. Simon's still has services in Polish.     

            Scotland’s connection with Poland goes back long before the Second World War. In the 14^th and 15^th centuries Scottish merchants and mercenary soldiers made their way to Poland and, of course, many stayed. In fact, a Scot named Andrew Chalmers was, during this period, appointed the Mayor of Warsaw, the Polish capital, three times. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries a great many Scots emigrated to Poland. At the beginning of the 17^th century 30,000 Scottish families were recorded as living in Poland, and that is families, not individuals. Modestly estimating a family at four to five individuals that would equate to a Scottish population in Poland of between 120,000 to 150,000. The situation changed in the 18^th century when Poland became the scene, as Norman Davies says, of ‘endless wars, risings, invasions, famines and epidemics.’ At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Polish territory, including Warsaw, was ceded to Russia. In 1830 there was an uprising in the Polish army. It was crushed in 1831 and many involved had to flee for their lives and came to Scotland. The first Scottish-Polish Society was founded in the 1830s. Following another rising against Russia in 1863 which was, again, violently crushed, the name of Poland was abolished. Many in Scotland saw similarities in the plight of the Poles attempting to resist a far larger, stronger and belligerent neighbour with the situation between Scotland and England. In 1914 the country was divided and Poles found themselves fighting for Russia, Germany and Austria. When the Germans invaded Poland from the west in 1939, the Russians invaded from the east as part of the Soviet-Nazi pact. The Polish government-in-exile was set up in London while the Polish First Army Corps was set up in Scotland with 40,000 men. Following the war, when it was clear that Russia intended to occupy Poland, many Poles decided to stay in Scotland. As around 80 per cent were Roman Catholic they inevitably mixed with and married into the Catholic community of Scotland.

            Following Poland’s entry into the EU in 2003 and with the freedom of movement for workers in the EU, a number of Poles again made the move to Scotland. In 2015, it was estimated that 86,000 Polish born individuals were resident in Scotland, and were, in fact, the largest migrant group in Scotland. The Conservative government under Boris Johnson intends to end free movement ‘as soon as possible’ after Britain leaves the EU. Maybe Johnson forgets that his great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Turkish while his other great-grandfather on his mother’s side was a Russian-Jewish immigrant and his father’s family is German and French. But then, Boris only has objections to migrants who aren't as rich as his family were.

A shit in human form.

 Since writing this blog, St Simon's Chapel has been burnt down in an act of arson. A 24 year old has been arrested.