A number of Polish community schools in Britain have been accused of having connections with groups and individuals associated with the far right.

Photos posted on Facebook show events run by several Polish Saturday schools in England with banners and signs for groups that featured in a report by the anti-fascist watchdog Hope Not Hate this year.

The Polish School of the Mother Tongue in Southampton has advertised events on its Facebook page for the Link (Ogniwo), a cultural group that describes itself as a patriotic association.

Some of Ogniwo’s members have expressed racist sentiments online and a picture was once posted on the group’s Facebook page showing men standing behind a banner that read “Europe will be either white or uninhabited”. The picture has since been deleted.

The group has expressed support for the far-right Polish priest Jacek Międlar, who was barred from entry by the Home Office for alleged antisemitism and Islamophobia.

A Facebook post last year on the London page of the organisation said: “For writing and telling the truth the road leads to the court. Please support Jacek Międlar.”

A photo on the Southampton school’s Facebook page shows people holding a cake featuring the group’s logo. The school’s director, Rafal Sawulski, said a parent had brought the cake in to an open event, adding that “a few of our parents in fact are members of Ogniwo”. He said the school sometimes worked with organisations similar to Ogniwo to organise events.

The Julian Tuwima Polish School of Poland-Related Subjects in Essex has also been accused of having links to far-right-connected individuals. Its website features a picture of Marian Kowalski, the vice-chair of the Polish far-right political party National Movement.

Kowalski was unable to speak in London in October after a booking at Brentside high school was cancelled when the school became aware of his views. The event was moved to a Polish restaurant, Kuźnia Smaku, in west London but the authorities prevented him from speaking there too.

He appeared in the photo with Michał Nalepka, who was among three people convicted of violent disorder in Liverpool last year.

Iwona Schulz-Nalepka, the headteacher of the school, said Kowalski’s visit in 2015 was unplanned and that while he was there he encouraged students and their parents to support a campaign collecting food for war veterans.

“[Michał] Nalepka, who is a parent of one of our students, had been helping in organisation of this campaign for the last few years,” she said. “The school does not teach politics and does not organise any political events. However, we are not responsible for private political views of our staff, parents of our students and guests visiting the school.”

Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters: ‘We need to build the resilience of communities of Polish heritage’. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

The Adam Mickiewicz Polish Saturday school in Blackburn has photos on its Facebook page showing children performing above a banner for Independent Poland (Polska Niepodległa), a group that has its own “patriotic magazine” and says on its website that its aim is to encourage people to fight for an independent and sovereign state.

The group has produced magazines featuring the far-right priest Międlar on thefront page, with the headline “We are fighting for our identity”.

The group invited Rafał Ziemkiewicz, a Polish author and journalist, to the UK to speak at several events that were shut down after local MPs became aware of the nature of his views.

Independent Poland wrote on its Facebook in response: “The members of this party [Labour] in favour of communism blocked the arrival of Rafał Ziemkiewicz. I think it’s someone else promoting the system of totalitarian.”

Another picture, since deleted, on the Blackburn school’s Facebook page, shows the same banner superimposed on to a photograph of children playing. A YouTube video from two years ago includes a letter at the beginning, which says the school is honoured to invite Independent Poland to the opening of a new school year.



The school vehemently denies any links to the group, saying it was “non-political”. It noted that the photo of the banner was taken at an event on 11 November, which was attended by the Polish consul and not held at the school.



Jan Poninska, the school’s deputy head, said it would seek legal advice if “false rumours” continued to be spread, tarnishing their reputation.

However, the school did not respond to further questions about the YouTube video and why it had since deleted Facebook posts that appeared to link it to the group.

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Faith Matters, which works to reduce extremism, said that while there was no evidence that children were being taught political content, the links these schools had with groups and individuals who were associated with the far right were extremely troubling.

He said: “We need to build the resilience of communities of Polish heritage who are settled in the country and who came after the accession agreements. Some far-right groups are trying to misuse and twist the proud nationalism that is part of Polish heritage into a hatred of Jews, Muslims and migrants, and play to the view that Europe is under threat. Pluralism is at the heart of European values and not far-right hate.”

