Speaking in Full Colour - Pola’s story 

I was born and raised in the northwest of England, in Blackburn, a mill town my father always described through its chimneys. When he first arrived there, there were a hundred of them, all promising work. By the time I was ready to go to university, only one chimney remained. The place that had once drawn my parents with opportunity had become a depressed northern town, and like many schoolgirls who wanted more, I saw education as my way forward. 

I applied almost automatically to four London universities. My sister was there, family was there, and it seemed the obvious path. But something in me resisted being predictable, so I added Cardiff to the list almost on a whim. I could not afford to visit universities then, so when I arrived for the interview, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was a city glowing in spring sunshine, full of daffodils, beautiful old buildings, and a landscape that felt gentler than London’s shadows. I realised I did not yet have the confidence for London. Cardiff felt more like me, a provincial girl finding her footing in another small city. 

So, I stayed. I studied medicine in Cardiff, left for a time, and then returned. Most of my professional life unfolded in South Wales, not just in Cardiff but across the Valleys, in Swansea, Bridgend, Merthyr, Aberdare, and Mountain Ash. I trained as a GP and later worked as a palliative care consultant. That role took me into people’s homes, into kitchens and living rooms, terraced houses clinging to hillsides. It was the kind of medicine I had always imagined, rooted in community. The people I met felt very much like those I had grown up with in the North. 

My own journey, however, is only one layer of the story. My parents were born in Poland, although even that is complicated, because Poland did not exist as a country when my grandparents were born. They grew up under shifting empires, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Prussian. On the European mainland, borders move beneath ordinary people’s feet. 

The Second World War carried my parents across countries, through loss, displacement, and eventually to Britain. Because they fought in Polish battalions of the British Army, they were granted settlement rights. Some families returned after the war, but in mine there was a saying: you might survive Siberia once, but not twice. Those who went back were often treated as collaborators. My aunt returned, and her children were barred from higher education because their father had served with British forces. Displacement does not end with one generation. 

I grew up in a Polish household where the front room was England, but the threshold, my father insisted, was Poland. There were Polish schools, Polish churches, Saturday classes, associations. For years there was an unspoken expectation that we might one day return. 

Being the child of immigrants in northern England was not always easy. People stumbled over my surname and asked awkward questions. Poland was reduced to football and Auschwitz. I became self-conscious about my identity and rarely used my language, until the European Union changed everything. 

When new waves of Polish and Eastern European workers arrived in the UK, my childhood language suddenly became useful. I remember being on medical intake in Oxford when patients arrived speaking Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian. Someone would ask if anyone spoke Polish, and suddenly I mattered. 

In Wales, this happened again and again. A woman with lung cancer was labelled difficult until we spoke in Polish. She said quietly, “They think I’m stupid.” She could read and write in four languages. The problem was not her, but our failure to listen. 

In Merthyr, a man was treated as uneducated because he worked night shifts and had never had time to learn English. On his bedside table was a dense novel by Olga Tokarczuk, a Nobel Prize winner, far beyond my own reading stamina. He was judged by accent and circumstance alone. 

Professionally, I found this deeply troubling. Polish is the most widely spoken language in Wales after Welsh and English, yet Polish voices are barely present in public life. Many Polish people remain trapped in low-paid work, factories, meat processing, night shifts. The lack of opportunity is stark. 

Life in Wales has been good to me. Cardiff is a perfect size. The coast, the hills, the ease of moving from city to landscape still delights me. Home visits along the coast felt like privileges as much as responsibilities. 

What I miss from Blackburn is community, the tight Polish world of my childhood. You lose some of that unless you actively rebuild it, and I am no longer religious. I recognise the same sense of loss in people who move from rural Wales into the city. 

I have recently retired, and for the first time in decades I am not planning. No rotas, no lists, no calculations. Just time. Time to be a mother, a daughter, and a person at home in summer. 

If there is one thing I want people to understand about my story, and about migration to Wales, it is that European migration is often invisible. We speak rightly about colonial migration, but the Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese stories are rarely centred. And yet these communities staffed factories, farms, kitchens, hospitals. 

If Polish is the most common non-native language in Wales, where are those voices? Where are they in journalism, leadership, public life? 

Language is not a luxury. It is the difference between black and white and full colour. Speaking to someone in their own language restores dignity and humanity.  

That is my story. A girl from a mill town who found her home in Wales. The daughter of displaced parents who carried their homeland across a threshold. A doctor who learned that language can be a lifeline. And a woman who believes European voices deserve to be heard.