J. Enoch Powell on the
statesmanship of de Gaulle
This second volume, which takes de Gaulle's biography from 1945, where De Gaulle: The Warrior left it, up to his death in November 1970, is invaluable for an understanding of the British constitution. The word 'British' was not a slip of the mind or pen; I wrote 'British': and I meant 'British.' Every item of de Gaulle's life as a statesman, a life which will remain monumental in the history of France, is totally untranslatable into the terms of British politics; and its untranslatability illuminates the unique and peculiar nature of this country's institutions and character even more vividly than it does those of France.
In English terms de Gaulle defies classification. The nearest attempt to define the position which he sought and obtained is 'elective monarch'; but it is still hopelessly unsatisfying. A dictator de Gaulle was not: a dictator neither comes as de Gaulle came in 1958 nor, even less, departs as he departed in 1969. Legitimacy, not in the cynical sense of ex post facto legislation, was what de Gaulle Claimed and believed he had, in 1958-69 as in 1940-44. Yet the powers he exercised were conferred by a constitution of his own making, by which he felt no constraint to be bound, and which he perished in the attempt to remake yet again. The term 'monarch,' in attempting to describe a legitimate or wouldbe legitimate autocrat, creates as many difficulties as it avoids. A man who could say "de Gaulle n'a pas de successeur" is not, even metaphorically, a monarch; for it is the nature of a monarch, including an elective one, that he does have successors, even if (inconceivably for an Englishman) he has no predecessor.
De Gaulle was a democrat. When the worst has been said that can be raked up about the practices of his regime — they have much in common with an efficient Whips' Office, and nothing at all with a Gestapo headquarters — he scorned to accept or retain power not validated by the free consent of a numerical majority. At the same time he despised political parties, detested debate, and considered representative assemblies to be at best an unavoidable instrument, at worst a simple nuisance. 'La France,' which de Gaulle believed had given him legitimacy, to which he appealed and which he served, was embodied in no known set of institutions nor vocal through any voice but his own: the very People itself who took the opportunity which he offered them to dismiss him, proved thereby that it was "not worthy of France." An autocrat who is not a monarch, a democrat who is anti-parliamentarian — the paradoxes contain the clue to our British incomprehension; for by 'democracy' we mean Parliamentary government, which is absurd or impossible without party, and by 'legitimacy' we mean monarchykwhich personifies law as the product of pre-existing institutions. These assumptions are English, not French; and if they are not French, they are not European. De Gaulle only presents in personal form that phenomenon of a sister nation which the British recognise as no less passionately devoted than themselves to liberty under law,
De Gaulle: The Statesman Brian Crozier (Eyre Methuen £6.00)
yet perpetually pursuing it — and (what is more) achieving it — by quite incomprehensible means. If anyone wants convincing that France and Britain cannot form, or form part of, a political union, he need look no further than the life of de Gaulle. His "non" to Britain in the EEC had its source, all personality and prejudice laid aside, in profound and permanent political realities which have not died with him. In this it may be said of him, as in much else, that "he, being dead, yet speaketh."
The author of this biography makes at the outset a candid confession of what the reader would have d*overed himself before the end, that he has conceived a prejudice against his subject. 'Prejudice' is not the word Brian Crozier uses. "My experience," he says, "has been the opposite of that of writing Franco's life. With Franco, I started from a point of hostility, discovered how profoundly he had been misrepresented and reached the stage of 'grudging admiration.' With de Gaulle, while my admiration for the man of June 1940 remains, to compile the inventory of his later aberrations is to be deeply disillusioned." The "disillusionment," however, arises not from discrepancy between de Gaulle's professions and performance, but between his and Mr Crozier's political assumptions.
I will quote what to me was the most striking example. When President Kennedy visited Paris in May 1961, de Gaulle gave him advice against the intended involvement of America in Vietnam, which is worth recording in full: For you, intervention in that region will be an endless process. From the moment when nations are awakened, no foreign authority, whatever the means at its disposal, has any chance of imposing itself. You will soon find this out for yourselves. For
Spectator February 16, 191hI if you find rulers on the spot who consent to ol/,i YOU, out of self-interest, the peoples do not glt`,1 their consent and, for that matter, do not aPPealn you. The ideology you invoke will make difference. What is more, the masses will confaseov with your will to power. That is why, the more yo commit yourselves over there against Comm0ill,sh4 the more the Communists will appear as Hp champions of national independence, the more liiege 1 they will get, not least from their own despalr•votfl French have already experienced this Americans wanted, only yesterday, to ta us places in Indochina. Now you want to succnict to rekindle a war which we have ended. I Preini that you will get bogged down step by star) niiet bottomless military and political quagmire, desnvse" the losses and the expenditure you may disP,,e;04 What you, we and others must do in that ,;,;,ro Asia, is not to take the place of states on their to' soil, but provide them with the wherewitht,re emerge from misery and humiliation which. l'''es; as elsewhere, are the causes of totalitarian reg151 I tell you this in the name of our west. The biographer's only comment upon t"re.1 extraordinary significant expression of Matti.iliail wisdom (which he calls "a homily") i,s :01 "time was soon to show that, these words were without influence!" Brain Crozier is totally out of sY"',r,a
„,,,
with the main lines of de Gaulle's thougn` policy: the liberation of Europe, and Franc' olt particular, from the overweening influence n the United States; the retention and enna4/ cement of the nationhood of the EuroPe'as states, and of France in particular; the re11.151 to treat Russia as the unique menace i European peace and the belief that the °0i! Franco-Russian bracket remains valid, 0 might become so again. These are all issues aJh which Frenchman and foreigner trit honourably and rationally take the oPP°s views; but to hold them is not conducive it convincing biography of de Gaulle. ar)t "Had de Gaulle's assassins found their in he in 1962 he would have gone down at trip height of his power and fame, having ,ink,11 France of her Algerian burden and not had time to inflict more than slight darnag,eq.{11 the Atlantic alliance" (my italics)ap4 rejected supranational Europe nor ?.51 because it offended his French natiofla'L.. tbiuotnabei because sentiments s o f was convincedEtch that ethni_ebljer(41 would, in the last analysis, make the whori c!!) thing unworkable." We are told, at the in 1 t whole thing reeks of prejudice, like the 1,i 1 verdict that "the reason why he did nor rew`bi while the going was good is the reason Ili he cannot be ranked with the greatest of a country's statesmen." This reason turns 0at t be that "he did not know .when to stoP characteristic he shared with Napoleon I that is to be a disqualification for "ranik, with the greatest statesmen," there wi" few indeed to qualify in any country. til!1 Perhaps for the foreign student it Is 05 i events of de Gaulle's last twelve nic0' beginning with the student revolution oct)tL"t,,,i
1968, that are the least known an
least instructive: and here the biograPnerif assemblage of information is at its best,30 his assumptions least intrusive. "One 01 e Elysee's ablest counsellors, Jacques Narbonaiii had forecast in 1963 in a note to de G,a,rtio that there would be an explosion in 1968, dor underlying cause was the French poPt"surge, which increased the population bYt,e per cent between 1946 and 1968. The furtrg, constitutional revolution of`participati°i with which de Gaulle attempted to react e the explosion when it occurred, went dete into his own thinking, and can be documen4 over the previous decade and a half. In 0, light his decision to make acceptancev l...v rejection bolus bolus of the new constituti in 1969, ceases to be a bizarre act of iniPtio or pique. It can be viewed in retrospeCtur confirming the intranslatably French natro of the de Gaulle phenomenon, the c"se t tive revolutionary, the democratic,autocra the catalogue which includes this item, .,11011 "in the end, none of his objectives achieved." Is that so? Are we so sure',
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