First Pole to stand as Aberdeen council election candidate

Labour Aberdeen Council candidate, Piotr Teodorowski. Picture: Contributed

When Piotr Teodorowski arrived in Aberdeen, he was an 18-year-old student who had just left his family home in Poland for the first time to pursue his education overseas.

Standing confused and disorientated at the city’s bus station trying to find his way to his accommodation, he clearly remembers his first taste of Scottish hospitality.

“I asked a lady for help and she explained where the bus stop was and that you had to have the precise change,” he says. “She even offered to change my note.”

Six years down the line, the 25-year-old Labour activist is hoping to give something back to the city that welcomed him, by becoming the first Polish person ever to win a seat on Aberdeen Council.

Aberdeen is one of the most multicultural cities in Scotland, with around one in six residents born outside the UK, of which the largest proportion are Poles.

In Mr Teodorowski’s ward of Torry and Ferryhill alone there are 2,000 Poles, so one version of his election video is recorded in Polish with English subtitles to appeal to his countrymen and women.

However, he insists that he is not running merely to be a Polish representative on the council.

“I would like to represent everyone,” he says.

“I consider Aberdeen to be my home, I’ve always been a local guy.”