Poland’s exiled government

Press, 28 May 1981, Page 17

Poland’s exiled government

By

JOSEPH MARSHALL

Features International

The •'Prime Minister of Poland” walks the streets proudly sporting his Solidarity Union badge. "The Soviets may have decided to take a bite out of Poland, but thev will never swallow us.”

As Poland remains the world’s number one potential flash-point, this Polish-Prime Minister, securely in office since 1976, operates from London.

He heads the government-in-exile, originally formed during the Second World War, and which now boasts a Cabinet of 11 ministers and its own Parliament in Kensington. The Warsaw-born Kazimierz Sabbat, a South London businessman, declares that his government now represents the only truly unshackled voice that Poland possesses.

Sabbat, who says he is a moderate in polities, displaced a Socialist Prime Minister when an election was held in 1976 among the 150,000 Polish community in London. Now, he says, his

government-in-exile has representatives in most European countries, plus selfstyled National Councils in Munich and Toronto.

And Sabbat, who is answerable to his President, Count Edward Raczynski, another Polish exile in London, claims to have a highly efficient network of sympathisers within Poland. ’ "A supply of underground Polish newspapers and magazines reaches my desk regularly, and Polish broadcasts are monitored by members in eastern Europe,” he says.

Sabbat's current fear is that the Warsaw Polish authorities might crack down on the hitherto fairly liberal travel regulations under which Poles can visit their relatives in Europe, thus closing a valuable avenue of intelligence.

. Already a Soviet salvo has been fired against the exiled government: Sabbat was attacked bitterl.v in a recent edition of the Soviet journal, "Literary Gazette,” . which accused his cabinet of

"directing the counter-revo-lutionary forces ' aimed at removing the rightful government from Poland.” To which Sabbat replies: "The truth is that we do not recognise that there is a government in Poland at all. What the country does have is an oppressive administration.” The Polish parliament in London meets about half-a-dozen times a year in open session, but other meetings are private and any new faces are checked carefully. "There have been people .who have tried to join whom we have not trusted. They have mostly met- with a conspicuous lack of success,” Sabbat adds. Prime target of the exiled government's current distrust is General Mieczyslaw Moczar, a member of the Warsaw Politburo and a leader of the Union of

Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, an organisation of World War Two veterans with a membership of more than 600,000. Moczar has proposed to the British Government that the ashes of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Poland's wartime commander-in-chief, who is buried in Britain, should be returned to Poland. "General Sikorski hoped for an understanding between Poland and the Soviet Union. .His remains should be returned to Warsaw,” General, Moczar says. However, the exiled government has protested that Sikorski would only have wanted to be buried in a "free Poland.” And. President Raczynski has publicly denounced Moczar as "a dirty dog who poses as a Polish patriot.” "The return of General

Sikorski’s ashes would be an insult,” he says. The ideal of a free Poland has been pursued by the government-in-exile since June 24, 1940. Then General Sikorski arrived in Britain to a personal welcome from King George VI. A large house in London’s Eaton Place has been one of the exiled government’s residences ever since, its upkeep supported by fund-raising among expatriate Poles.

"Our government, as present constituted. has perhaps another 20 years of life. Then most of its founders and wartime sympathisers will be dead,” Sabbat says. However, before that, many of them are convinced that Communism could be in its death throes. "We would then take office, of course,” Sabbat says. "That is what many of our supporters in Warsaw want, among them the 10 million Solidarity members. Then we would hold free elections.”