Jacques was all right
Sir: John Laughland's article on Jacques Delors' youth (Were you all right, Jacques?', 29 October) attributes several quotes to Delors, without sourcing them. Some of these bear an extremely close resemblance to quotes in my recently pub- lished biography (Delors: Inside the House that Jacques Built), though he gives me no credit.
Having interviewed people who knew Delors during the war, I find Laughland's cavalier attitude to facts extraordinary. He claims that Mounier, Delors' intellectual godfather, was sympathetic to fascism. Any- one who reads Mounier's books soon learns of his contempt for all totalitarian regimes. Laughland's assertion that the presence of Delors — 14 years old when the war began — in the Compagnons de France, the Vichy youth movement, meant that he sup- ported fascism is ridiculous. The Vichy gov- ernment (contrary to what Laughland says) closed the Roman Catholic youth move- ments in which Delors had been involved before the war. Delors was not active in the resistance, but his closest friends, who were a little older than he was, were. One of them, Henri Deschamps, died in Auschwitz.
Laughland says Delors opposed the set- ting up of the Common Market. In fact, he wrote enthusiastic articles in his journal, Citoyen 60, supporting the venture. Laugh- land claims that Delors is contemptuous of free markets and parliaments. Although not an economic liberal by British stan- dards, Delors has always been more pro- market than the average French politician. Indeed, he decided to make the '1992' sin- gle market programme the priority of his first term as commission president. As for parliaments, he has usually favoured more Power for the European Parliament, against the Council of Ministers: and in France he consistently championed greater powers for the National Assembly.
Laughland's argument that, because France's extreme Right and its Centre-left both rejected market liberalism and Marx- ism, there must be links between them, invites ridicule. Britain's Labour Party and National Front have, traditionally, opposed both market liberalism and Marx- ism, but that does not mean there are sinis- ter connections.
Charles Grant
29 Falkland Road, London NW5
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