From the Referendum to the Elections, June 1946 to January 1947

Mason, Andrea

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4_5

Andrea Mason⁴

Part of the book series: Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World ((SCCCW))

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Abstract

This chapter covers the British response to the Polish communists’ campaign to destroy the PSL, which reached a critical point in the months leading up to the general elections in Poland in January 1947. This chapter argues that by the end of 1946 Britain had effectively relinquished its remaining influence over the political settlement in Poland. This disengagement was the result of the climax of a series of other pressures and priorities: deteriorating Anglo-Soviet relations, which threatened to break down altogether as a result of the deadlock over Germany; Britain’s declining economy, which forced Bevin reluctantly into a position of greater dependence on American assistance and goodwill, thus narrowing Bevin’s range of policy options; the pursuit of Bevin’s plans for Western European cooperation, which heightened his caution vis-à-vis Poland and throughout Eastern Europe; and finally, rising Labour party opposition to Bevin’s foreign policy, which culminated in an open revolt in the autumn of 1946.

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Notes

1.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N9328/34/55, Russell to Bevin, 18 July 1946.
2.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N9328/34/55, Foreign Office minutes, 20 July 1946; N9711/34/55, Cabinet Offices to J.S.M. Washington, 22 July 1946.
3.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N10042/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 2 August 1946.
4.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N10034/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 2 August 1946; FO 371/56445/N10332/34/55, Russell to Hankey, 31 July 1946.
5.
TNA: FO 371/56445/N10369/34/55, draft telegram by Hankey, 7 August 1946.
6.
TNA: FO 371/56445/N10369/34/55, Foreign Office to Warsaw, 10 August 1946; N10480/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 16 August 1946.
7.
TNA: FO 371/56445/N10377/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 14 August 1946; N10429/34/55, Hankey to Warner, 16 August 1946; N10480/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 16 August 1946.
8.
TNA: CAB 128/5/56, CM 56 (46), 6 June 1946; CAB 195/4/44, CM 56 (46), 6 June 1946.
9.
TNA: CAB 195/4/44, CM 56 (46), 6 June 1946.
10.
Deighton, Impossible Peace, 94–95; Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 258.
11.
TNA: CAB 195/4/44, CM 56 (46), 6 June 1946.
12.
Bevin, quoted in Deighton, Impossible Peace, 105.
13.
Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 250, 258–259. On Bevin’s frustration with American ‘stinginess’, see Folly, ‘Ernest Bevin and Anglo-American relations’, especially 153–157.
14.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N10056/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 7 August 1946; Foreign Office to Washington, 9 August 1946.
15.
TNA: FO 371/56445/N10646/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 19 August 1946.
16.
TNA: FO 371/56445/N10367/34/55, Foreign Office to Paris, 13 August 1946.
17.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N10739/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 21 August 1946.
18.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N10814/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 14 August 1946; Warner to Jebb, 24 August 1946.
19.
TNA: FO 371/56450/N15174/34/55, Warner to Jebb, 27 November 1946.
20.
Unnamed Foreign Office official, quoted in Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 252.
21.
Deighton, Impossible Peace, 110–115.
22.
Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 260.
23.
Deighton, Impossible Peace, 111.
24.
Prażmowska, ‘Polish Socialist Party’, 349.
25.
The group of leaders who favoured greater independence from the PPR were Cyrankiewicz, Drobner, Hochfeld, Obrączka, Osóbka-Morawski, Szwalbe, and Henryk Wachowicz. Kersten, Communist Rule in Poland, 295.
26.
Ibid., 295.
27.
Quoted in Ibid., 295–298.
28.
Ibid., 298.
29.
Prażmowska, ‘Polish Socialist Party’, 341.
30.
Ibid., 349–350.
31.
The occurrence of a shift in Soviet policy is given greater weight by a meeting which had taken place between Lebedev and Mikołajczyk. Until this point, Lebedev had refused even to receive Mikołajczyk. TNA: FO 371/56444/N9822/34/55, Savery to Allen, 15 July 1946; FO Minutes, 17 July 1946; Hankey to Russell, 31 July 1946; FO 371/56445/N10451/34/55, Russell to Hankey, 10 August 1946.
32.
Hochfeld was one of the PPS leaders who continued to favour ongoing cooperation with the PSL. Although he regarded true political pluralism as impossible, given the circumstances in postwar Poland, neither was he a supporter of the electoral bloc. According to Kersten: ‘In Hochfeld’s view if the PPS were to endorse the bloc, it would do so solely because it considered it the only path that would allow them to avoid a dictatorship of the proletariat, hence, the mass terror and the drastic limitations of all civil rights’. Hochfeld was concerned about the increasingly repressive measures employed by the security forces, fearing that ‘the mechanism of repression, once started, would act blindly and increase the terror to dimensions that were difficult to foresee’. Kersten, Communist Rule in Poland, 253–255.
33.
As Secretary of the Labour Party’s International Department, Healey was responsible for reestablishing links with European socialist parties and helping to form a new Socialist International. As part of this work, Healey attended socialist party conferences in Western and Eastern Europe. Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), 74–75.
34.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N12218/34/55, Healey to Hankey, 12 September 1946.
35.
Kulerski met with Sargent and Hankey in London at the end of September 1946. Bevin declined his request for a meeting. Kulerski emphasised Mikołajczyk’s concern about the situation in Poland. He would need further help from the British government ‘in order that he should succeed in securing a real democratic regime in Poland’. Kulerski reported that the PSL was subject to ‘constant persecution’, was unable to publish its newspaper, and could not hold public meetings or conduct normal electoral activity. Mikołajczyk believed that foreign observers would help to make it more difficult for the communists to fake the elections. Kulerski reported that Mikołajczyk had ‘the gravest forebodings’ about the way in which the new electoral law would be applied. Kulerski reiterated Mikołajczyk’s request that Britain take the question of Poland to the UN Security Council. Mikołajczyk was also ‘most anxious’ that Britain should maintain its policy of withholding economic help to the present Polish government. He had expressed ‘dismay’ at the American decision to implement the export–import bank credit in mid-August, approximately a week prior to the submission of the joint British and American notes regarding the elections. TNA: FO 371/56447/N12741/34/55, Hankey memo, 28 September 1946; Foreign Office to Warsaw, 11 October 1946.
36.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N12336/34/55, Hankey to Cavendish-Bentinck, 25 September 1946.
37.
Prażmowska, ‘Polish Socialist Party’, 350–351.
38.
John Coutouvidis and Jaime Reynolds, Poland, 1939–1947 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986), 263.
39.
Quoted in Norman M. Naimark, ‘Post-Soviet Russian Historiography on the Emergence of the Soviet Bloc’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5, 3 (Summer 2004): 572.
40.
TNA: FO 371/56451/N15295/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 27 November 1946.
41.
TNA: FO 371/56444/N9822/34/55, FO Minutes, 17 July 1946; Hankey to Russell, 31 July 1946; FO 371/56445/N10451/34/55, Russell to Hankey, 10 August 1946.
42.
TNA: FO 371/56449/N14241/34/G55, Warner memo, 1 November 1946; Cavendish-Bentinck to Hankey, 28 October 1946.
43.
TNA: FO/371/56449/N14042/34/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Hankey, 28 October 1946; Foreign Office minutes, 5 November 1946.
44.
TNA: FO 371/56449/N14227/34/55, Warner memo, 1 November 1946.
45.
TNA: FO 371/56449/N14227/34/55, Warner memo, 1 November 1946.
46.
TNA: FO 371/56450/N14980/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 22 November 1946; FO 371/56450/N14974/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 22 November 1946; Foreign Office minutes, 22 November 1946.
47.
Prażmowska, ‘Polish Socialist Party’, 350–351; Eleonora Syzdek i Bronisław Syzdek, Cyrankiewicz. Zanim zostanie zapomniany (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Projeckt, 1996), 122–123.
48.
TNA: FO 371/56451/N15295/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 27 November 1946.
49.
TNA: FO 731/56446/N10853/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 25 August 1946.
50.
The PPS opened talks with the PSL on 23 August; they offered 25 per cent of seats in an electoral bloc to the PSL. The PPR would also have 25 per cent, with 20 per cent for the PPS, and 30 per cent for the remaining three parties, a ‘formula which came very close to breaking Communist hegemony’. Mikołajczyk, however, refused to consider entering into an electoral bloc with the PPR, although he was prepared to consider ‘limited local pacts’ or an agreement which would give a ‘decisive majority’ to the PSL, the PPS, and the SP. Coutouvidis and Reynolds, Poland, 1939–1947, 263–264.
51.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N12218/34/55, Healey to Hankey, 12 September 1946.
52.
TNA: FO 371/56446/N11146/34/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 3 September 1946.
53.
TNA: FO 371/56449/N14042/34/55, Hankey to Cavendish-Bentinck, 23 November 1946.
54.
Reale kept up good relations and met regularly—both officially and socially—with Cavendish-Bentinck and Lane during his time as Italian ambassador in Poland. Reale described his first meeting with his British and American counterparts on 8 October 1945: ‘Both of them are happy to cooperate with me in spite of the fact that Italy appointed a communist as ambassador, and their governments are also not negative about that fact’. Eugenio Reale, Raporty: Polska, 1945–1946 (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1991), 12.
55.
Jones, Russia Complex, 127–129; Bullock, Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 276; Michael R. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1914–1965 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 105–106; Deighton, Impossible Peace, 13; Bew, Citizen Clem, 416.
56.
Jones, Russia Complex, 132–133; Jonathan Schneer, Labour’s Conscience: The Labour Left, 1945–51 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 30–31. See also the first-hand account by one of Bevin’s opponents: Ian Mikardo, Back-Bencher (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 95–97.
57.
The ‘Third Force’ idea was first conceived by G.D.H. Cole. Jones, Russia Complex, 136.
58.
Ibid., 136–137.
59.
Ibid., 128.
60.
Bullock, Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 61, 78, 90, 93.
61.
Hugh Dalton, High Tide and After. Memoirs, 1945–1960 (London: Frederick Muller, 1962), 168; Robert J. Jackson, Rebels and Whips: An Analysis of Dissension, Discipline and Cohesion in British Political Parties (London: Macmillan, 1968), 54–55; Hugh B. Berrington, Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons, 1945–55 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973), 56–58.
62.
Quoted in Berrington, Backbench Opinion, 58.
63.
Bullock, Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 329.
64.
Quoted in Jones, Russia Complex, 139.
65.
Ibid., 61–62.
66.
Bevin and Dixon were attending a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in New York City when the amendment was tabled. Dixon, Double Diploma, 241.
67.
Deighton, Impossible Peace, 105–109.
68.
Attlee, quoted in Smith and Zametica, ‘Clement Attlee Reconsidered’, 248.
69.
Ibid., 249–251.
70.
Coutouvidis and Reynolds, Poland, 1939–1947, 275–276, 297–299; TNA: FO 371/56451/N15240/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 27 November 1946.
71.
Gmina of Radomsko. Literal translation is ‘commune of Radomsko’.
72.
TNA: FO 371/56451/N15238/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 27 November 1946; FO 371/56451/N15835/34/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, 12 December 1946.
73.
The State Department did not even want Mikołajcyzk to inform the Yalta powers directly about the repression of the PSL, suggesting instead that he request Bierut to transmit the information. TNA: FO 371/56450/N15057/34/55, Washington to Foreign Office, 22 November 1946.
74.
TNA: FO 371/56449/N14640/34/55, Foreign Office to Warsaw, 16 November 1946; FO 371/56449/N14852/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 20 November 1946; Foreign Office to Warsaw, 22 November 1946.
75.
On 22 November, Cavendish-Bentinck and the US chargé d’affaires had delivered the protest notes from their respective governments. The British note stressed the necessity for all political parties to ‘enjoy equal facilities to conduct electoral campaigns freely without arrest or threat of arrest and without discriminatory restriction of election activities’. Further, all parties needed to be represented on all electoral commissions at all levels. TNA: FO 371/56450/N14980/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 22 November 1946; FO 371/56451/N15237/34/55, Foreign Office News Department, 29 November 1946.
76.
TNA: FO 371/66089/N6/6/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 31 December 1946; N29/6/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 31 December 1946; N451/6/55, Memorandum to Bevin, 8 January 1947; N231/6/55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 9 January 1947.
77.
Unnamed Foreign Office official, quoted in Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 252.
78.
TNA: FO 371/66089/N451/6/55, Sargent minute, 8 January 1947.
79.
Deighton, Impossible Peace, 120–121.
80.
TNA: FO 371/66089/N500/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 11 January 1947.
81.
TNA: FO 371/66090/N658/6/55, ‘British Policy towards Poland’, 10 January 1947.
82.
Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 200–201.
83.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16236/34/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, 20 December 1946.
84.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16323/34/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Attlee, 12 December 1946.
85.
Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 202; Coutouvidis and Reynolds, Poland, 1939–1947, 275.
86.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16279/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 19 December 1946.
87.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16236/34/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, 20 December 1946.
88.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16413/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 24 December 1946; Foreign Office Minutes, 31 December 1946.
89.
TNA: FO 371/56452/N16523/34/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 28 December 1946; Foreign Office minutes, 31 December 1946; FO 371/66089/N557/6/55, Report by M.B. Winch, 4 January 1947.
90.
TNA: FO 371/66089/N460/6/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 10 January 1947.
91.
TNA: FO 371/66089/N558/6/55, Report by M.B. Winch, 7 January 1947.
92.
TNA: FO 371/66090/N573/6/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 14 January 1947.
93.
TNA: FO 371/66090/N658/6/55, ‘British Policy towards Poland’, 10 January 1947.
94.
Cavendish-Bentinck accurately described the methods by which the regime controlled voting by state employees. Padraic Kenney outlines the process by which the ‘regime engineered its victory’ in the factories: ‘party leaders worked out down-to-the-minute voting schedules; workers met at assigned places and then marched together to the voting booth, sometimes with pieces of paper marked with a “3” (the number of the Democratic Bloc’s list) pinned to their coats’. Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communism, 1945–1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 54.
95.
TNA: FO 371/66090/N1159/6/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, 24 January 1947.
96.
TNA: FO 371/66090/N934/6/55, Warsaw to Foreign Office, 21 January 1947; N1159/6/55, Cavendish-Bentinck to Bevin, 24 January 1947.

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LSE Department of International History, London, UK
Andrea Mason

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Mason, A. (2018). From the Referendum to the Elections, June 1946 to January 1947. In: British Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4_5
Published: 20 November 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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