In recent years, the UK has made a concerted effort to address a number of contentious historical issues. We have:

• returned an Enigma machine to Poland in a high-profile ceremony;
  
• installed twin Enigma plaques at Bletchley Park, UK and Warsaw celebrating the Polish role in cracking the code;
  
• made all the documents we have on General Sikorski available to Polish scholars;
  
• ensured Polish veterans had a place of honour in the WW2 commemorations in 2005; 17 veterans took part;
  
• published a full report in 2003 of the approach successive governments took to the Katyn massacre with a Foreword by the then Foreign Secretary,  the late Robin Cook.

Report by the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee: Intelligence Co-operation between Poland and Great Britain during World War II

The UK worked hard with Polish experts to produce the collection of intelligence papers and assessments published in 2005 which finally bring out the significant secret contribution of Poles to the Allied WW2 effort. The document was launched on the 66th anniversary of the start of the September Campaign in WW2 when Nazi forces tried to invade Poland at Westerplatte and the heroic Poles held out for 7 days against the might of the Nazis and their Schleswig Holstein battleship.

The report provides important statistics demonstrating the high volume of Polish intelligence activity e.g. 80,000 reports provided by Polish stations throughout the war, nearly 45% of the total wartime traffic of which 85% were given a very high quality or high quality assessment.

The Polish role in the breaking of the Enigma codes, the scale of intelligence reporting provided by Poland regarding German preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, its crucial work in transferring information on the development of V1 and V2 weapons are already widely known. The Report, however, also provides intriguing information about other activities virtually unknown, including Polish intelligence activity in the North African campaign and the role of a Polish double agent in the successes of the D-Day operation.

It also reports the enormous quantity of military and industrial information which Poles provided not only from throughout occupied Europe but on a global scale - from Switzerland, North Africa, the Middle East, Far East, the Americas including a very interesting chapter in Anglo-Polish intelligence co-operation in Afghanistan.

This is why Commander Dunderdale said in his report to Churchill at the end of the war: 'The Polish Intelligence Service has made an invaluable contribution to the ultimate victory of the allied forces'.