The Word as a Weapon: How Polish Britain Got Its Newspaper

tydzien-polski-okladka.jpg, large, Cover of the weekly newspaper ‘Tydzień Polski’, photo: press materials

‘Dziennik Polski’ (later ‘Tydzień Polski’) was published in Britain from July 1940 to January 2026, making it the longest continuously running Polish newspaper in the country. It was launched three weeks after the Polish government-in-exile arrived in London, for a community that had not planned to be here. Its first issues are a remarkable record of what those Poles hoped, feared and expected.

Later, the paper became an essential source of support for the displaced and émigré Polish community, including providing a lifeline for the different Polish communities across Britain during the post-war. For example, it provided information on the agreement at Yalta, which had seen Poland subsumed into a Soviet orbit, commiserating on the break-up of Poolish society and culture; it also described the efforts of Polish social organisations to unite Poles across the country.

Today, the new paper, MyPolska.UK, now online, is just as vital for Poles in the UK – Britain’s largest language minority – with a website providing current news of interest to Poles; promotion of Polish institutions in Britain; and a heritage outlet, with information on Polish community organisations, as well as support for digitising family heirlooms. It also contains archives of Polish magazines in the UK, including ‘Dziennik Polski’, and ‘Głos’, ‘The Only Pictorial Magazine Published by Free Poles in Exile’, as its tagline went, first published from 1952. But to understand the story of how MyPolska is now supporting the thriving Polish community in the UK, we need to go back to 1940…

A government in exile needs a voice

Front page of the vintage Polish newspaper "Dziennik Polski" (The Polish Daily), issue No. 1, dated Friday, July 12, 1940, London. The page features columns of Polish text, a central sketch of a soldier standing with a rifle, and a handwritten letter in the top-right corner. Bold headline titles include "O ŻOŁNIERZU TUŁACZU", "Na Nowym Posterunku", and "Pierwszy Masowy Nalot Niemiecki Na Anglię". — First page of the first issue of Dziennik Polski from July 12, 1940, photo: CC BY-SA 3.0

First printed on 12th July 1940, by St Clement’s Press, which had published the Financial Times, on Portugal Street, Tydzień Polski (The Polish Week), then Dziennik Polski (The Polish Daily), was launched to meet the needs of the tens of thousands of Poles who had left for Britain by the first year of the war, as well as the Polish Government in exile, who fled to Britain after the fall of France – having been based in Paris and Angers between 1939 to June 1940.

After moving to Britain, the Polish government-in-exile decided to establish an organ of communication, and launched Dziennik Polski to print statements about the war, as well as news of relevance to the Polish community. The newspaper was in fact a continuation of a Polish newspaper, Głos Polski (The Polish Voice), published in France during the Polish government-in-exile’s stay there, with the first issue published on 28th November 1939. It joined a host of other publications in Polish in Britain, including Polska Walcząca (Fighting Poland), the first central organ of the Polish Armed Forces in the West during World War II, which had been set up in October 1939 in a training camp in Brittany by Polish volunteers and the diaspora, which included Polish writers. It then moved to Britain in June 1940, and ultimately became a veterans’ supplement to Dziennik Polski in 1949.

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