Giles Hart, the oldest recorded victim of the bombing outrage in London on July 7th, was a prominent and vocal UK supporter of the Solidarity movement in Poland throughout the 1980s, especially when Poland was under martial law, and a loyal supporter of its memory ever since.
For over 10 years he was an executive member of the Polish Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the most prominent group in Britain supporting the Solidarity movement and he was a member since the inception of the PSC in August 1980. In that time he served for 2 years as Treasurer, one year as Secretary and 4 years as Chairman.
During his early stint as treasurer and membership secretary, he built up the organization’s finances in the space of 18 months from £250 to £22,000 by an energetic mass membership drive and the sale of “Solidarność” T-shirts and sweatshirts by mail order.
With these funds PSC was able to finance its demonstrations, publications and leaflet campaigns at union and party conferences, as well as donations to the Solidarity underground. At each PSC demonstration his bearded face could be seen behind the platform flogging Solidarity memorabilia and publications. PSC was a colourful organization of various nationalities, including of course younger members of the Polish community and a myriad collection of political primadonnas and hardboiled activists with their own political agenda. Giles stood out as the voice of the non-politicized rank and file British sympathizers who had earned the respect and trust of the often bemused Polish members. He was a crucial ingredient in the glue that kept the organization together.
As PSC Chairman in the late 1980s, he more than any other PSC member kept the activity and the organizations alive by holding regular conferences and by picketing Communist events. Later he edited the book “For Our Freedom and Yours”, which was a compilation of individual members’ accounts of the history of PSC and was published in 1995. He continued to work tirelessly as an archivist and a keeper of the Solidarity flame even when many Poles were no longer interested. He organized annual picnics and commemorative conferences most notably on the 20th anniversary of Solidarity in year 2000 inside the same Polish Embassy building outside of which he had demonstrated so often before 1989.
He never forgot too that the Solidarity members who had found themselves beached in the UK after martial law, like his future wife Danuta, were not just fodder for political activism, but also human beings needing advice and material assistance in order to live here. Together with Nina Ozols he co-founded the Polish Refugee Rights Group which exists to this day as a very successful charitable organization assisting refugees but under the broader title of the East European Advice Centre
Giles Hart was drawn to PSC by two factors. The first was his genuine, almost obsessive, love of freedom and his hatred of any form of repression – particularly political or religious. The second was his fascination with the history of Poland with its ancient traditions of tolerance and its centuries of struggle for self-expression and freedom, about which he was very knowledgeable. He especially admired the Polish spirit during the Second World War. He gave expression to this love of Poland by his successful and happy marriage in 1983 to Danuta Gorzyńska, whom he met through his PSC activities, and who had been a member of Solidarność before martial law was imposed. He was a loving husband and father and has been survived by his wife Danuta and 2 children Maryla, aged 21 and Martin, aged 17, who had spent the last days frantically seeking news about their beloved father and husband who had been missing since Thursday morning. He is also mourned by his 85 year old mother Elsie and sister Erica and her husband Geoff.
Giles was born on November 20th 1949 in Khartoum in the Sudan, where his father Eric hart was reader in English at Gordon College Khartoum. Giles had lived in England since the age of 5. He was educated at Woodhouse Grammar School and then read mathematics at Royal Holloway College, part of the University of London. He worked for many years as an executive officer at Trinity House where he revived the Union branch for 4 years, but found himself victimized because of his union activities. In the last 15 years he was an office based engineer for British Telecom at Angel and lost his life on Thursday morning on his way to work. He fell victim to the bomb on the number 30 bus to which he had switched when his tube train failed to stop at Angel.
Giles had many other interests too. He was an active member of the Humanist Society, chairman of the H G Wells Society and a long standing supporter of the Anti-Slavery Society. He loved listening to classical music though he also enjoyed Ragtime and some Jazz and Boogie Woogie. He was an avid reader of historical and biographical books as well as of fiction and drama. His favourite writers (although he was critical of them) were George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Gerald Hanley. On the day of his death he was due to give a lecture on the lesser known works of Lewis Carroll to the Havering branch of the Humanist Society, of which he was Vice-Chairman.
Giles was also passionate and expertly knowledgeable about film history from film’s earliest days, and a long standing member of the National Film Theatre. Recently he introduced 2 films at the NFT during the HG Wells season.
To his last days, apart from his family, his main interest appeared to be the cause of Solidarity. He had recently accepted an invitation from the Solidarity Center Foundation and the Lech Walesa Institute to attend a conference at the end of August in Warsaw commemorating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Solidarity. On the Wednesday before his tragic death he had laid the groundwork with his former PSC colleagues to organize a conference in London in late October entitled “The Impact of Solidarity on Great Britain”. Those same colleagues can scarcely believe that there is no longer someone to call them at unexpected hours reminding them with relentless logic that tasks remain to be done to keep the memory of Solidarity and Solidarity’s ideals alive.
Wiktor Moszczyński