The News out of Poland.

This is really sad. Peter Hitchens describes the latest dictatorship to rape Poland:

More shocking yet, in a strange mirror image of the battles of 23 years ago, the workers who once protested against the Kremlin now riot against Brussels decrees which threaten to throw them on the dole.

Warsaw's new middle class were astonished and scared last month when miners - revered as heroes of the struggle against Russia but widely viewed as peaceable - erupted into the city centre hurling Molotov cocktails and attacking police with pickaxe handles among the city's expensive new boutiques.

The authorities, taken by surprise, eventually put down the protest with tear gas and water cannons, but not until the miners had smashed the windows of the ruling 'Democratic Left' Party, the direct descendant of the old Communist Party.

How did this happen? For decades Moscow imposed its alien will, forcing the Poles to follow stupid Marxist policies that Stalin himself admitted were about as sensible as a saddle on a cow.

The countryside was laden with disastrous collective farms, while cities were blackened by crude heavy industry. A grim elite of Party henchmen explained there was no choice. Poland was so weak she had to accept the 'protection' of the USSR.

Now the EU plans to ravage the farmlands yet again by exposing them to heavily subsidised competition from Germany and Austria. It is also demanding that the old heavy industries are deprived of state aid, meaning thousands of coal miners will head for the dole.

And a smartly-suited new elite, led by Mr Miller, explains this is all necessary because there isn't any choice. Poland is so weak she has to welcome the embrace of federal Europe.

It gets worse. Poles, and other East Europeans, are beginning to realise the new EU constitution means they have lost their independence just after regaining it.

The new voting system will leave them powerless against France and Germany on any major issue. Mr Miller is noisily complaining that the constitution is so different from what Poland voted to join that he may have to hold another ballot.

In the neighbouring Czech Republic, President Vaclav Klaus has said: 'After this there will be no more sovereign states in Europe. Basic matters will be decided by a remote federal government in Brussels.' So much for the ludicrous pretence by our own Government that this document is just a minor tidying up that doesn't require a referendum.