Very sad news this morning. Jozef Oleksy, one of Poland’s smartest politicians, has died.
Oleksy (see a Wikipedia summary here) was one of those smart former communists (he was for a while a secret informer for Poland’s communist military intelligence) who smoothly made the transition to European social democracy after the Wall came down and European communism disintegrated. He quickly rose to become Poland’s Prime Minister in 1995. This did not last long. He resigned over accusations of impropriety involving his over-close links to a notorious Russian spy.
Oleksy entered my life (or to be precise I entered his) in Spring 2004. At this point Oleksy had been brought back into the fold in the Left government led by Leszek Miller and appointed Interior Minister. It fell to me as British Ambassador to ask to meet Oleksy to give him momentous news: the decision by the Blair government on how far if at all to allow Poles to work freely in the UK after Poland joined the European Union in May.
Intense consultations had taken place across Whitehall on this one. Parts of the Blair government were nervous about a tidal wave of Poles and other central Europeans washing over the UK once we opened our labour markets unconditionally as the government had previously promised to do for all new EU member states. Most other EU governments in a show of noisy united anti-solidarity had already made clear that they would not open their labour markets unconditionally: it would happen only after a delay of some years. This, of course, meant that whatever tendency there was for millions of Poles and Czechs and Slovaks and the rest to storm out from their respective homelands to look for jobs in prosperous ‘Western’ Europe would be funnelled mainly in our direction, making the tidal wave fast, big and scary.
PM Blair took a breezy decision. Let it rip. He took the view that previous experience with Portugal and Spain showed that there would be a surge of interest (and people), but in due course it would all calm down without too many problems. Tony Blair threw a small bone to anti-immigration fears by setting up a desultory ‘registration scheme’ for new arrivals, with a view to at least having some sort of accurate numbers to use in subsequent debates on the issue. Other administrative ruses were deployed to try to stop people coming over to UK and promptly claiming benefits.
Thus I was instructed to give Interior Minister Oleksy the official news of our keenly awaited decision. I pompously told Oleksy that I had the honour to inform the Polish Government that HMG had taken an important decision concerning the UK labour market after Poland’s EU accession in May 2004, namely:
- The labour market would be opened unconditionally with immediate effect on 1 May 2004
- Any Poles who wished to travel to the UK to live or work could do so with out a visa
- Moreover, an effective amnesty would be given to all Poles who had been living in the UK and working illegally
- All Poles seeking to work in the UK would be expected to register under a new scheme, but registration was not a condition for accepting a job
Oleksy looked at me in amazement and said in Polish: “Gdzie tkwi haczyk?” What’s the catch?
“No haczyk,” I replied. “It’s as simple as that.”
Oleksy simply did not believe me. He was sure that just as most EU capitals were announcing different severe restrictions on Polish workers after Poland’s EU accession, the UK would do the same if only for reasons of obvious party political expediency. No government would act in such a way according to principle. There had to be a catch somewhere with those tricky Brits!
He kept pressing: “Gdzie tkwi haczyk?”
I assured him that there really was no haczyk. We meant it. Unconditional opening with immediate effect on the day of Poland’s accession. The Brits were simply generous, open-hearted, honest people who kept their word. The Poles might like to remember who their real European friends were after this.
And the rest is history.
Thereafter Oleksy became Marshall of the Sejm (again – he had had that senior position in the early 1990s) before that job too ended in controversy. He returned to cheery scheming within the Centre Left/SLD party.
In that latter capacity I would invite him round to the residence for a private drink and chat. He was invariably droll and perceptive. He told me with glee how he was working on his memoirs that would highly embarrass his political friends and foes alike. Sure enough in 2007 he was evicted from the SLD in a typically convoluted Polish scandal involving secret taped conversations and allegations of corruption against former President Kwasniewski (also in the SLD).
But hey, these things are just the usual fleeting rubbish of post-communist transitions! No hard feelings, comrades. Plus, ahem, it’s safer to have me in the tent, all things considered. In 2010 Oleksy duly came back to the SLD and more senior party roles.
On one of these private chats he gave me a special gift: a Polish wooden ‘rokita’ or little devil, brandishing the slogan ‘defender of the people – vote for me‘. This was a droll dig at the then prominent Centre Right politician Jan Rokita but with a self-deprecating sub-text.
That was Jozef Oleksy. Funny, acute, perceptive, different. Someone who loved the irony and witty contradictions of the ups and downs of politics and life in general, and who was clever enough to have a marvelous life enjoying the whole thing.
I recall him giving me some excellent advice in his heavily accented but amusing English: “Send a cable to London telling them that we have very exotic politics in Poland!”
So I did.
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