Protest condemns killing of Polish worker in UK

Militant/Anne Howie

HARLOW, England — Some 700 people gathered in The Stow shopping area here Sept. 3 to pay their respects to Arkadiusz “Arek” Jozwik, a 40-year-old Polish-born meat processing worker who died after being brutally beaten.

Jozwik and a friend were standing outside a pizza restaurant in The Stow Aug. 27 when a group of teenagers attacked, witnesses say, after hearing the men speaking Polish. Jozwik’s friend, who has not been named, was injured but survived.

After a vigil, protesters marched silently to St. Paul’s Church. The action was organized by Eric Hind, a friend of Jozwik, and other young Poles, as well as town chaplain Robert Findlay and the Heart 4 Harlow charity.

Members of the Communist League took part in the march.

“Since the attack there’s been a lot of media attention painting Harlow as some left-behind town, representative of everything that’s wrong with society,” Sam Watson, 22, a student and musician, told Communist League member Ögmundur Jónsson. “But we want to show today that there are good people here who stand in solidarity with the Polish community and with immigrants in general.”

“The Communist League joins in uniting working people to protest attacks like this, to resist the effects of the world crisis of capitalism and build a revolutionary movement,” said Jónsson, who is a union pharmaceutical worker in nearby Ware. “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

— Ólöf Andra Proppé