Let Me Make One Thing Clear About Churchill

I was talking to a Western friend the other day and he thought I hate Churchill. That’s because I said I consider the British war-time Prime Minister to blame for the 45 years of communism in Eastern Europe, the slavery and the millions of dead in the Gulag and communist prisons. And for the millions more who saw their destiny dictated not by their own abilities, skills or desires but by the whims of the communist “elite” – perpetrators of an alien ideology, imposed upon them by Stalin’s people.

I don’t hate Churchill. But I think he is to blame for this – along with Stalin but obviously much less than him – because of the percentages agreement that he concluded with the Soviet leader on October 9, 1944.

That day, Churchill was in Moscow to discuss the division of Europe after the war was won. It was Churchill who advanced the percentages of influence over Eastern Europe and the Balkans to Stalin. “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans” he told the tyrant and then proceeded to suggest who will have what influence in the area.

To people who have lived in those countries, it is remarkable how closely Stalin and his followers have met these requirements. Indeed, the Soviets’ influence – manifested in abuses of human rights, deprivations of freedom, deportations, executions, confiscation of property, various punishments for criticising communism and the smallest attempts to exercise free speech - was divided according to the percentages set out by Churchill in his bit of paper. Romania suffered the worst dictatorship, Bulgaria’s was pretty bad too, Hungary was exposed to a lot of Western influence, Yugoslavia was regarded in the communist bloc as “the West” and so on. After 1989, Bulgaria and Romania were among Europe’s poorest countries – and still are to this day.

I do not hate Churchill at all. I can understand why he sold the Eastern Europeans to Stalin – if he hadn’t, Britons would have probably been forced to learn Russian and the “values” of communism, along with everybody else in Western Europe, in the worst case; in the best case, fighting for the freedom of these people and obtaining a victory against Stalin would have been too expensive for the democratic countries, already weakened by the war.

What I cannot understand is the attitude of people today. Western Europeans – and Britons – largely regard Eastern Europeans as some sort of nuisance, backward little countries who shook off a regime that was conveniently keeping them away from the rich West and who now are “invading” these countries, stealing jobs and welfare and God knows what else. The episode of Gordon Brown being crucified for calling a woman who expressed such a view “a bigot” is well known.

There has been no public condemnation of this infamous agreement, there have been no apologies from Britain and Russia to these people. What happened in Moscow on October 9, 1944 was, in effect, the selling into slavery of millions of people in bulk – and nobody seems to have any recollection of it or remorse for it, in Western Europe.

Back to how I feel about Churchill: he did what he thought was good for his own people, so no, I don’t hate him, but I blame him for what happened to my people during the 45 years of slavery. I used to think that I don’t respect him, either, but actually there is one thing that I respect in him: the fact that he had the courage to tell the world about what he did, in his journal, so that Eastern Europeans know who decided their fate back then.

I just want to make one thing clear: by writing this, all I want is for people in Western Europe to stop and think of history the next time they complain of Eastern Europeans “flocking” into their countries. I know it’s not nice to have lots of poor people coming over looking for jobs. But hey, maybe you owe them your freedom.

Romanians and Bulgarians Invade the UK – By the Dozen

Ok, so finally the feared numbers are here, in the open, for everybody to see and be scared by. How many desperate Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians etc snatched British jobs in the first quarter?

Enough to make one go to the pub and down a quick pint, wondering what all the fuss is about.

The latest statistics on immigration from Eastern Europe have been published by the Home Office on May 20 but went largely unreported by the media. How can this be, when these people with their strange accents are, after all, to blame for the sorry state of the British job market?

Well, I am sure the fair, balanced and open-minded media kept silent on these numbers so as not to spark unnecessary panic in the country.

But I will reveal them here, without fear, since very few people are likely to stumble upon this blog anyway.

Applications from workers in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and the Czech Republic dropped to 23,000 in the first three months of 2009, compared to 48,755 during the same period in 2008, the Home Office says on its website.

In what regards Bulgarians and Romanians, 4,615 applications for registration certificates have been decided from January to March 2009, of which 3,055 have been submitted by Romanian nationals, according to the Home Office.

Read more on these truly horrifying statistics on the Home Office website.

Are They Finally Leaving the UK?

At last a balanced article about foreign workers. The Financial Times writes that overseas workers are more likely to keep their jobs during the recession than the UK-born ones, partly due to the foreigners' willingness to work harder.

"Roughly the same proportion of British nationals and foreigners are unemployed - one in 12 - but joblessness among Britons rose by 600,000, or 43 per cent, in the past year compared with a rise of 16,000, or 15 per cent, among foreign workers," research done by the FT shows.

One of the reasons, according to the article, may be that the non-British workers who couldn't find work anymore just upped and left.

Yet another may be that different categories of people – such as contractors or the self-employed – from Eastern Europe are not entitled to unemployment, thus being left out of statistics altogether.

And last but not least, it may be that Eastern Europeans in particular are famous for their total disregard for lunch and tea breaks and their modest claims in what concerns working conditions and shifts.

Not that that's a good thing.