© Radonie Manor, Poland
''I confess, I am an anti-communist. During the 1970s and 1980s, anti-communists were shunned in the UK’s universities. (...) From the moment in 1980 when I came out as a defender of conservative values against the socialist orthodoxy, my life has been one long succession of attacks, designed to undermine my standing as a public intellectual. Strangely enough, my first true experience of intellectual freedom was in Poland, where I travelled to speak at conferences and private seminars, arranged by a small circle in Britain who, like me, were keen to make contact with their fellow dissidents behind the iron curtain. In Poland the universal contempt for the communist system meant that students and professors were ready to discuss all the issues of the day. Conservatism, to them, was not a sin or a heresy, but a possible worldview, all the more interesting for being condemned by the communists and despised by the Western Left. (...) I came to believe that I might be right in theory, and not merely right in practice.'' — Sir Roger Scruton, ''Can Europe learn from communism?''
"The Poles were made free by their Catholic faith, their patriotic feelings towards their country, their sense of history, and their courage to face up to the terrible system that had been imposed upon them. And they set an example to the world." — Sir Roger Scruton in Poland, June 2019
In June 2019, Sir Roger Scruton was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (the highest award that can be given to a non-Pole).
