The relaxation of travel restrictions to and from Poland after October 1956 saw a steady increase in Polish exchanges with the United Kingdom in the 1950s. In the 1960s a purge of communist party members and intellectuals of Jewish descent led to a further influx of Poles into the UK. Only with the accession of Edward Gierek in 1970 as First Secretary of the Polish Workers' Party (PZPR), who himself had spent time as a migrant in France and Belgium, did it become possible for Poles to leave their country with relative ease.