Comments on: Vive la revolution sa majesté Elizabeth!

Vive la revolution sa majesté Elizabeth!

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:25:17 -0800

1956. France is losing Algeria. It's lost Indochina. Sure, it's culturally very productive, with Nouvelle Vague cinema at its height and existential philosophy gaining ground in the world at large. But to the nation of Napoléon and to one that preferred to emphasise the Résistance in its more recent history, that wasn't enough. What to do? Why, propose political union with Britain, of course.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:28:18 -0800

The prime minister of the time, Guy Mollet, was an Anglophile, and as Spiegel puts it:

'When the French prime minister, Monsieur Mollet was recently in London he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France.' The extraordinary suggestion was turned down, however, meaning that the prospect of a new Anglo-French country would remain an intriguing historial hypothesis.

Undaunted, Mollet brought up the subject again during Eden's visit to Paris in the next few months, this time proposing that France join the Commonwealth, to rub shoulders and ruminate on how much it had in common with India, Australia and Pakistan. Unfortunately for entertainment purposes of the rest of the world, Eden turned both proposals down, and the reaction of the French average Jacques and the man on the Clapham Omnibus was never to be heard. Part of me regrets this final amicable solution to the Hundred Years' War never happening, and part of me is happier for both countries that it didn't.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:31:16 -0800

(And, imagine, if you will, the title of this thread as it appeared in preview: Vive ~~la révolution~~ sa majesté Elizabeth! and now how it appears at the head of this page. )

By: plep

plep — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:32:41 -0800

Winston Churchill had proposed union with France during World War 2.

By: empath

empath — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:32:51 -0800

Damnit, beat me by two minutes.

By: empath

empath — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:36:27 -0800

I wonder if this would have had an impact on the Quebecois in Canada. I mean, they could hardly push for independence while France was pushing for dependence, could they?

By: the cuban

the cuban — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:37:16 -0800

By: j-urb

j-urb — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:44:22 -0800

Wasn't Guy Mollet the one behind the EU formation, or didn't he have something to do with it? Treaty of Paris (1951)?? European Coal and Steel Community???

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:45:58 -0800

Er, France and the UK are both members of the EU now.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:52:42 -0800

The revolution will NOT be minitel'd.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:53:26 -0800

empath writes "I wonder if this would have had an impact on the Quebecois in Canada." er, no. We're neither British subjects nor French citizens, nor were we at the time...

By: trinarian

trinarian — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:04:21 -0800

Syria and Egypt tried to do the same thing with the United Arab Republic, but it broke apart because Syria thought Egypt was throwing her weight around too much. An equal union, especially from two distinct historically rich and proud cultures, just isn't possible. At best it would have looked like a mini-EU. Economic merger with nearly full autonomy for each country.

By: stopgap

stopgap — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:10:25 -0800

j-urb: You're probably thinking of Jean Monnet.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:18:30 -0800

Churchill's proposal, as one might expect should one know the exact timing of his rise to P.M. [the day Germany swept into the Low Countries], came when the French Government was abandoning Paris and heading south. WSC's writing about this episode of the war in his 6-volume history was particulary poignant.

By: trinarian

trinarian — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:24:06 -0800

empath: though i was likely in the wrong about this story, it's about integrity. if you pulled out a great story or link by serendipity or research, take credit for it. If someone else did the work and you just copied and pasted, give credit where it's do. Some of my favorite sites (Political Theory Daily Review comes to mind) come from MeFi [via]'s

By: empath

empath — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:26:51 -0800

Nobody owns an interweb link. It's not like Drudge wrote the story. It was published by multiple news agencies simultaneously. Many of them are read by people who don't even read Drudge. The point of a [via] isn't for attribution, it's as a courtesy to folks who may not be aware of a good source of news or interesting links. I doubt there is anybody who reads metafilter who isn't aware of the drudge report, even if that is where he got the link.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:35:19 -0800

via Drudge] just because your ashamed of your source doesn't mean you shouldn't cite posted by trinarian at 2:57 PM EST on January 15 Don't ya just love these know-it-alls who magically know everybody's sources. Aidan, just ignore this crap. This was a beautiful post, and citing sources is merely a form of courtesy, not required here on MeFi.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:35:32 -0800

trinarian, I didn't link to my source because this is not a German-language site. If you want to demonstrate you're the exception in this, have at it. (And note the date the entry there was saved in case you think I'm putting that del.icio.us entry up for your benefit—if you're curious about the exact minute, have a look at the source of this RSS feed.)

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:37:16 -0800

This really is quite shocking by the way. I wonder if after being absorbed into the UK the French would have had to give up their language? Not bloddy likely.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:42:47 -0800

trinarian - 19 posts, 6 with attribution - put your money where your mouth is. By the way, with most of those being Drudge, are you employed by Drudge? Is that why this irks you?

By: R. Mutt

R. Mutt — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:43:40 -0800

oooooohhhhh.

By: Urban Hermit

Urban Hermit — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:44:23 -0800

Spend a moment, if you will, envisaging what the French state might have looked like once Margaret Thatcher got through with it. Or vice-versa. (think "Oui, Premier ministre.")

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:44:57 -0800

Aidan Kehoe: "Sure, it's culturally very productive, with Nouvelle Vague cinema at its height and existential philosophy gaining ground in the world at large." Just a little note: almost every one of the Nouvelle Vague directors and writers, from Andre Bazin to Jacques Rivette to Eric Rohmer to Francois Truffaut, was relatively conservative. True, Jean-Luc Godard spiralled into Maoism with Weekend (one of my favorite movies, politics notwithstanding), but he was in a vast minority in his left-wing communist sympathies. It's very hard, as tempting as it may be, to draw connections between that movement and French existentialism. Also, Jack Kerouac supported the Vietnam War. The 60's are a very misunderstood decade.

By: trinarian

trinarian — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:47:14 -0800

guys, i apologized 10 minutes after posting. my snark-o-meter was calibarated a little too loosely. it's over. let's get back to talking about the post. if you want a deeper discussion on the merits of sourcing, you can MeTa it [let's not] or email me.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:57:14 -0800

koeselitz, yeah, I know, and 1956 was the first stirrings of Nouvelle Vague, not its height. Something I checked in detail after posting, of course. But hey, that meant I beat ewkpates on the draw, so wahey! :-)

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:59:49 -0800

Aidan Kehoe: "koeselitz, yeah, I know, and 1956 was the first stirrings of Nouvelle Vague, not its height." Well, and they were all right-wingers, and in favor of the various wars France was fighting, was my point. Although I wasn't calling you out, or trying to correct you; this is a fantastic post, and very interesting.

By: Terminal Verbosity

Terminal Verbosity — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:03:50 -0800

Wow.

By: alasdair

alasdair — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:05:03 -0800

Clevershark: [We Canadians are not] British subjects You're not? Queen Elizabeth is your head of state, right? Is that like how I'm apparently not a British subject, although I'm British, supposedly because of the 1948 British Nationality Act, but I still appear to have a Queen? (And no, republican friends, I don't get that either.)

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:21:38 -0800

alasdair, my understanding is that Canadians are Canadian subjects, of Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, as well as being Canadian citizens. And that UK citizens remain British subjects; one status does not override the other. (Though UK nationality laws have not amazingly long ago been arbitrarily and unfairly fuсked around with, so there may be senseless limitations to what that means.)

By: Urban Hermit

Urban Hermit — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:21:47 -0800

alasdair: You're not? Queen Elizabeth is your head of state, right? Yes and no. QEII remains the Canadian monarch, but (if you can wrap your head around this constitutional hair-splitting) in a capacity that is now entirely independent from her role as British head-of-state. See here and here. Short version: yes, the Queen is Canada's head-of-state. No, we are not British subjects.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:23:15 -0800

alasdair writes "Is that like how I'm apparently not a British subject, although I'm British, supposedly because of the 1948 British Nationality Act, but I still appear to have a Queen? (And no, republican friends, I don't get that either.)" Language is enormously flexible. Doubly so when wielded by lawyers.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:23:46 -0800

re: "we're not British subjects" Sorry, but you're a Canadian citizen, and that makes you a British Subject. Like it or not, Canada didn't have a bloody revolutionary conflict and secede from the British Empire, so we still (technically) hail to the Queen of England.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:23:48 -0800

Urban Hermit writes "No, we are not British subjects." But you were in 1956.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:27:56 -0800

tehloki writes "Sorry, but you're a Canadian citizen, and that makes you a British Subject. " The question "who is a British Subject" is a complicated one. But they're certainly an endangered species, and Canadian Citizens are certainly not among them.

By: Urban Hermit

Urban Hermit — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:34:22 -0800

But you were in 1956. In common parlance, perhaps, but not really.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:41:17 -0800

just because your ashamed of your source doesn't mean you shouldn't cite Just because drudge links to something, doesn't mean no one else has. And I guarantee Drudge didn't do the original research on this, so why should he get any credit?

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:42:34 -0800

Urban Hermit writes "In common parlance, perhaps, but not really." Huh. I'm not quite reading that article the same way as you are. Did the 1947 act change have any effect on the title "British Subject"? The way I'm reading it, it only added a new category of British Subject: the Canadian Citizen. (According to my reading) Canadian Citizens ceased being British Subjects in 1977, at which point they became Commonwealth Citizens. Granted, these are all purely semantic distinctions, and as far as I can tell, a post-1977 Commonwealth Citizen is functionally equivalent to a 1947-1977 Canadian British Subject. I think it is the purely semantic, lawyerly nature of the distinction that I find so fascinating.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:44:36 -0800

Citizens of Canada would be British Dependent Territories Citizens, not British subjects.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:48:56 -0800

delmoi writes "Citizens of Canada would be British Dependent Territories Citizens, not British subjects." Canada's not a Dependant Territory! In fact, there are no longer any British Dependant Territories. They've been called "British Overseas Territories" since 2002.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:49:41 -0800

I think this entire conversation goes to demonstrate the following point: France dodged a bullet back in '56.

By: Wolof

Wolof — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:57:44 -0800

Thanks very much for the post, I knew nothing of this.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 14:05:50 -0800

j-urb Wasn't Guy Mollet the one behind the EU formation, or didn't he have something to do with it? Treaty of Paris (1951)?? European Coal and Steel Community??? Actually, j-urb, that is correct. After Eden turned Mollet down and both nations were humbled in Suez, the French government turned towards Germany's Adenauer and the Treaty of Rome (whose 50th anniversary is to be celebrated this year), establishing the European Economic Community, was signed the very next year. Adenauer's words to Mollet: "Europe will be your revenge." That much was known. Today's big news is just how far Mollet was ready to go in his association with the UK. Entering the Commonwealth under Her Gracious Majesty's headship? I don't think that would have gone down at all well at the Paris street (but then, this was before the resurgence of Gaullism and the Fifth Republic - and the governments of the Fourth Republic were a lot less chauvinistic than de Gaulle's).

By: Urban Hermit

Urban Hermit — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 14:11:03 -0800

mr_roboto, I think you are right as regards the use of the different terms in citizenship laws - both terms (British Subject and Canadian Citizen) were applied in the 1947-77 period. However, after 1949 Canadians lost the British citizenship which they had previously held: Hence, from 1949 to 1982, a person born in London, England, would have been a British subject and Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, while someone born in Sydney, Australia, would have been a British subject and Citizen of Australia. I was thinking more in terms of who had what constitutional authority over Canadian citizens at various times (rather than what those citizens were called). From my previous link: After the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, whereby each self-governing dominion of the British Empire was henceforth considered equal in status to all the others, with the Crown becoming one that is shared and operating independently in each realm rather than as a unitary British Crown under which all the dominions were subordinate, the monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution. Because of this Canadians, and others living in countries that became known as Commonwealth Realms, were known as subjects of the Crown. However in legal documents the term "British subject" continued to be used.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:13:32 -0800

[please take the [via] derail to metatalk if you need to continue it]

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:19:26 -0800

Thanks for the post Aidan Kehoe. What an astonishing story about Guy Mollet. Incredible. As Prime Minister of France he was going to hand France over to Britain?!!! What was he thinking? From Wikipedia: "Although he was a lifelong Marxist, he has a posthumous reputation as a right-wing machine politician who betrayed socialist ideals over Algeria and by supporting de Gaulle in 1958." Dang, sounds bizarre. The following paragraph in the Wikipedia essay on Mollet was darkly informative: "Eden feared that Nasser intended to cut off oil supplies to Europe. In October 1956 Mollet, Eden and the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, met in secret and agreed to make a joint attack on Egypt. The Israelis invaded Egypt, and British and French troops occupied the Suez Canal area. But the invasion met with unexpected opposition from the United States, and France and the United Kingdom were forced into a humiliating backdown. Eden resigned, but Mollet survived the crisis, despite fierce criticism from the left." Greedy and complex stuff was going down in the late 50's between the Brits, French and the folk in the Middle East. My mind was recently blown watching The Mayfair Set on Google video. I'm trying to imagine such a union between France and Britain, if the inconceivable had actually taken place. The fish and chips would taste better but would the French wear tweed?

By: gdav

gdav — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:04:50 -0800

Churchill recalled his proposal - by then already in the past - for political union with France, in the "Finest hour" speech: The House will have read the historic declaration in which, at the desire of many Frenchmen-and of our own hearts-we have proclaimed our willingness at the darkest hour in French history to conclude a union of common citizenship in this struggle. However matters may go in France or with the French Government, or other French Governments, we in this Island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people.

By: ceri richard

ceri richard — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:05:00 -0800

When I heard this first thing on Radio 4 I went and checked that it wasn't 1 April and time for another spaghetti tree style story.

By: verstegan

verstegan — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:16:59 -0800

Link to the original document. What the document proposes is 'a "common citizenship" arrangement on the Irish basis' -- i.e. modelled on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State. This would not have required France to surrender political autonomy to Britain. Eden (whose grasp of reality was never very strong) seems to have been very keen on the idea, but was firmly overruled by his civil servants -- rightly, I think, as it is a very bizarre proposal and it is hard to see how it could possibly have succeeded. (The Anglo-Irish Treaty did not require Irish MPs to swear allegiance to the British crown -- they had to swear to be 'faithful' to the monarch, but pledged 'allegiance' only to the Irish constitution. So there is some flexibility here, though one doubts whether it would have satisfied the French.)

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:48:20 -0800

we still (technically) hail to the Queen of England. I thought we were an autonomous collective. Anyhoos... very interesting, Aidan Kehoe, thanks!

By: pwedza

pwedza — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:52:58 -0800

He was quite fond of Israel also. He was instrumental in supplying the new state with NUCLEAR WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY. and here, here, and here. Supposedly quoted as saying that France owed Israel the bomb.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:35:05 -0800

so, basically, britain and france weren't even at war and france still surrendered? sounds about right

By: pwedza

pwedza — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:38:21 -0800

"so, basically, britain and france weren't even at war and france still surrendered? sounds about right" Not even close. This is a secret and unrealized proposal by a Prime Minister (by no means not France as a whole) who was knee deep in the Algerian War and the Suez Crisis.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:45:43 -0800

pwezda, don't fight the "france surrenders" monkeys, just let them flow over you like a warm, red tide. It's just like going to sleep, in a blender.

By: MrMustard

MrMustard — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:00:23 -0800

This was dealt with beautifully by Channel 4 News last night. You can watch it here.