THE TWO SAVIOURS
Allan Massie wonders about
a second coming, as he compares Mrs Thatcher to General de Gaulle
WHO inveighed against 'a supra-national assembly sitting at Strasbourg and not caring a hang about the national interests of Paris, Rome or Brussels'? Who said, `It's easy enough to be a so-and-so making speeches about a supra-national Europe'? Who considered that the Common Market had, essentially, nothing supra-national about it, being based on international competition, agreements and comprom- ises, and added, 'If there are no amicable sentiments, there will be no Common Market; the Dutch are as national-minded as any; they've been like this ever since Louis XIV'?
Well, the absence of London from the list of capitals demonstrates that the speak- er was not Mrs Thatcher, while the pre- sence of Louis XIV will have pointed to General de Gaulle. And indeed all three remarks are his; the word which I have translated as 'so-and-so' was the far more coarsely contemptuous `Jeanfoutre'. But the point is that all these things might have been said by Margaret Thatcher, who does believe that people babbling about a supra- national Europe are Jeanfoutres, and worse.
Mrs Thatcher and de Gaulle have more in common than their hostility to the Brussels bureaucracy and the pretensions of the Strasbourg Parliament. They have been the most eloquent advocates of the idea of a Europe made up of sovereign states, while it was de Gaulle who used to speak of 'a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals', an idea she has revived in the last 12 months. Further- more, they are the only two post-war European figures to have given their name to an ideology or political movement. There is Gaullism and there is Thatcher- ism, and that's it. No other 'ism' has stuck since Stalin established his system. Powell- ism never took off, Poujadisme had the briefest of vogues, Butskellism was a weak hybrid used only by opponents, Wilsonism would be as inconceivable as Mitterran- disme. Certainly both Gaullism and Thatcherism are hard to define, but that may be said of any political label. They stand for some things clearly enough: in particular for the idea of national renewal and for faith in the enduring vitality of the sovereign nation state.
The parallel between Thatcher and de Gaulle may be pursued. Both set them- selves to combat a prevalent defeatism. De Gaulle resumed power in 1958 in the crisis of a disintegrating state. In the words of one commentator, Andre Siegfried, 'under the Fourth Republic, France was adminis- tered, rather than governed'. The same might be said of Britain in the Seventies.
The pressures were different, though a contempt for politicians was common to both countries. Fourth Republic France collapsed on account of the Algerian war and the rebellion of the army. Its political institutions were ineffective; in February, three months before the General's return, the police indulged in anti-parliamentary demonstrations in Paris. In Britain the Seventies saw economic crises, disruptive strikes, terrorism and the failure of civil order in Ulster, nationalism in Scotland and Wales, the irresponsible increase in the power of trade unions, and the miners' boast that they had brought down a gov- ernment.
De Gaulle reformed the political institu- tions of France. Mrs Thatcher left the constitution untouched (probably a mis- judgment), but uprooted the tangled weeds which, in the form of quangos, had attached themselves to the offices of state. He introduced the new franc to stabilise the currency; she abolished exchange con- trols, balanced the budget, and for some years followed a policy of monetary recti- tude. Both restored the authority of gov- ernment. De Gaulle disciplined the army, destroying it as an independent political 'Do you do a low-alcohol tequila stammer.' force; she did the same for the unions.
Eventually France tired of the General. The events of May 1968 threatened his position. He survived that crisis, but knew time was almost up. The following year he held an unnecessary referendum, perhaps to provide a pretext for his retirement. She went less willingly, but in effect for the same reason. The 19th-century politician and historian, Guizot, explained the 1848 Revolution thus: 'La France s'ennuyait'. France was bored, like Britain with Mrs Thatcher today. The General's regime and her government both lasted 11 years.
Of course 1958 was de Gaulle's second coming. He had saved France once already, during the war, resigning in 1946. An attempt to return, by means of the RPF (Rassemblement du Peuple Francais) failed. He sat in Colombey-les-Deux- Eglises, writing his memoirs, waiting the call. Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises has be- come convenient shorthand for the leader in waiting. The expression Colombey-les- Deux-Eglises-Dulwich has already been heard this last week.
There are differences. Age is one. De Gaulle's exile lasted from the age of 56 to 67, the years, more or less, of Mrs Thatch- er's power. Though she is younger than de Gaulle was in 1958 (or Churchill in 1940), it would require a turn in events, and therefore some years, before she could make a comeback. Yet age would not necessarily bar her return if she had kept at least the appearance of physical and intel- lectual vigour.
It is hard for deposed or disregarded leaders not to listen for such a call. Macmillan is said to have believed, well into the Seventies, that the day would come when the Conservative Party needed him again; Heath probably thought the same until 1983 at least. Even Sir Oswald Mosley, in old age, 'seemed to be waiting', according to his son Nicholas, 'for the crisis in Britain and Europe to materialise which he had for so long expected, and which, he believed, might cause people to turn to him as to one man who had foreseen it'. One does not know when Enoch Powell closed the shutters in his particular Colombey.
So it would be natural for Mrs Thatch- er's thoughts to run in this vein, especially if her successor does not, rather quickly, give her an important and demanding job. And it is possible to imagine the circum- stances in which the call might come. Just suppose Europe goes sour, just suppose the Jeanfoutres with their chatter about a supra-national Europe make a mess of things, just suppose national interests are ignored, then there might be a longing for Thatcher-Gaullism and eyes might turn to Dulwich.
A regular visitor to Colombey-les-Deux Eglises in the middle Fifties was the Soviet ambassador, Vinogradov. Perhaps we should watch how often the Soviet ambas- sador in London now points his car to- wards Dulwich.
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