Highlights:
Quote:
In September 1956, the French Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, a Socialist and an Anglophile, proposed to the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, a Conservative and a Francophile, that the two countries should merge. The proposal was never debated publicly. Documents describing the reaction of British civil servants were among secret papers opened to the public 20 years ago but not discovered until now. Sir Anthony Eden appears to have taken the idea reasonably seriously; his civil servants less so. M. Mollet then came back with another idea: that France should join the Commonwealth, accepting the "headship" of the Queen.
Sir Anthony suggested this idea should be given "immediate consideration ". Nothing seems to have come of it. Both men were forced out of power and the discussion was forgotten.
Guy Mollet is best remembered in France as the prime minister who took the French into the Algerian war and the Suez crisis. His motives in proposing some sort of union with Britain may have been to secure British support for his foreign and colonial policy.
Sir Anthony suggested this idea should be given "immediate consideration ". Nothing seems to have come of it. Both men were forced out of power and the discussion was forgotten.
Guy Mollet is best remembered in France as the prime minister who took the French into the Algerian war and the Suez crisis. His motives in proposing some sort of union with Britain may have been to secure British support for his foreign and colonial policy.
So, after the Algerian war, and then the Suez disaster, this Prime Minister's next idea was to merge us with Britain.
I do like this bit, though:
Quote:
The fact that the ideas were never floated publicly suggest that they were never taken particularly seriously in either London or Paris. But what if they had been? Could such a marriage, between mutually jealous and perennially quarrelling siblings, ever have worked? Fifty years on, we might have blended the best of France and the best of Britain. On the other hand, we might have shared our faults. France might have had our public transport and health systems. We might have had the ramshackle, French university system. We might have had French rates of unemployment. They might have had the London Tube, instead of the Metro.
We both might have ended up with French TV, British hospital waiting lists, the French police, British estate agents, French trades unions, British school dinners, French plumbers and Scottish joie de vivre.
We both might have ended up with French TV, British hospital waiting lists, the French police, British estate agents, French trades unions, British school dinners, French plumbers and Scottish joie de vivre.
Nobby, we were almost compatriotes!
