A strike rally called by Poles living in the UK to highlight the contribution migrant workers make to the economy has met a subdued response, with journalists and British political activists outnumbering Poles.

As an umbrella group representing Poles in Britain criticised organised attempts to stage protests, only a dozen demonstrators attended the rally outside parliament – and fewer than half of those were Polish.



The proposed strike had been highlighted by the Polish Express newspaper, which hosted a Facebook campaign urging workers to down tools in unofficial strike action. Others, opposed to the strike, called for a mass donation of blood to the NHS instead to symbolise the contribution to the UK made by Poles.

Both protests were criticised by the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, which represents more than 60 Polish member organisations. The federation said strike calls had been whipped up and that blood donation should not be hijacked as a political gesture.

Jacek Szmamski, 48, a forklift driver from London, who attended the rally in Parliament Square, felt it was important to take part. “It’s not very big but the most important thing is we are talking about immigration,” he said.

Meanwhile, Poles tweeted photographs of themselves donating blood after a separate Facebook campaign was organised by Polish groups wanting an alternative to strike action but supporting the idea of highlighting the benefits that migrants bring to the UK.

Donating blood would show Polish people as being willing to help others in need, would send a positive message, prove to Britons they should not complain about Poles and “be another important step in strengthening British-Polish relations”, it said.



Among those answering the call, one tweeted: “Today, my #polishblood goes where my love goes ... for all British people. Let’s keep together @britishpoles.”



A Twitter user called Marta said: “My attempt to change the image of Poles in the UK. We’re not all plumbers with families of 20 #polishblood.”

My attempt to save lives and to change the image of Poles in UK We're not all plumbers with families of20#PolishBlood pic.twitter.com/8ILAmZu4Ed — Marta (@Martulka_) August 20, 2015

Tadeusz Stenzel, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, said: “We are not against the giving of blood per se, but not using it as a political statement. The whole thing has been blown completely out of proportion. It’s mountains out of molehills, or, as we say in Poland, making a garden fork out of a needle.”

One complaint to the Polish Express website from an individual about treatment at work “transformed itself into a political protest on how oppressed the Polish people were and how unrecognised their input in to the UK economy was,” he said, “and that their presence is slighted and they are not liked, that kind of thing.”



He said the response to the strike call had been subdued at best, with a few “individuals jumping on the bandwagon”, and with a few hundred commenting on the Facebook page, which was not a significant amount given there were roughly 700,000 Poles in the UK, according to official figures.



The strike was “irresponsible and a divisive way of presenting arguments in the immigration debate”, Stenzel added.

The idea to donate blood as a way of positive social activism was originally instigated by Polish organisations in Scotland and England in early 2015, working together on the Bloody Foreigners campaign in order to promote the goodwill of Poles and other migrant communities in the UK, he said. But people should donate blood regularly all year round “without linking this to any political activism”.

“Striking and donating blood are two very separate activities, and the Federation of Poles in Great Britain is strongly against linking them and making a political statement out of it. Blood is universal and has no race, religion, gender or indeed political opinions, and we believe it should not be used for political purposes,” he said.

The editor of the Polish Express, Tomasz Kowalski, said that regardless of how many had answered the call to strike, the debate that the call had generated meant that “we believe we have already won”.



His paper had not organised the strike, just facilitated the debate, he said. “The organisers are the Poles themselves,” he said; “ordinary Polish immigrants” who wanted to come together to protest and show their strength and importance.



Asked about the turnout, with more cameramen and Socialist Workers party placards than Poles attending the rally, he said: “For me the most important thing and purpose of strike is that we are talking about it, and many journalists are here who want to write about it and all these examples of discrimination sometimes.”

Meanwhile, Jakub Krupa of the Polish Press Agency in London criticised the whole campaign, saying it had been blown out of proportion by the media after the Polish Express weekly published an article based on “a single comment” on a Facebook page.



In a series of tweets, Krupa said the Polish Express picked up the idea to get publicity but “refused to take responsibility for organising it” and most Polish organisations in the UK opposed it. The #polishblood campaign was then launched by some groups “seeing a media opportunity”.