WHY FIGARO DIDN'T
MENTION THE WAR
The paper of the French bourgeoisie has had plenty to say about its deceased owner, says
Douglas Johnson, except what he did in 1940 I BECAME a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1947. The director assured me that his distinguished establishment was the only institution in Europe that resem- bled an Oxford or Cambridge college. This being so, it was natural that I should ask my fellow students where the junior common room was. This was not immediately under- stood. Why, they asked, should one have a special room for sitting and talking? I explained that it was a place where one also read newspapers. That was different. There was a room where the day's newspapers were available, although not many people used it.
I thus discovered that, every morning, the porter Anatole took the papers to a bare and sparsely furnished room. I also discovered that this routine was accompa- nied by another. As soon as the papers were delivered, a student would enter the room and tear the communist paper Humanite into little pieces, scattering them on the floor. Another student would seize the right-wing Aspects de la France and deface it, sometimes with disgusting substances, so that it was unreadable. And yet others would steal the copy of Le Figaro — it always disappeared.
Repeater I thought I understood why the two extreme political papers were destroyed, but I did not understand why it should be accepted that Le Figaro would be stolen reg- ularly in this manner, and I said so. My com- plaints were met with mockery. 'Who wants Le Figaro?' they would ask, and when I went out and bought one, they would show me why it was worthless. This was not because of Raymond Aron's articles on the Cold War, suggesting that Stalin's Russia was an impe- rialist power armed with a crusading secular religion; it was rather because of the adver- tisements that Le Figaro carried. They would read them out loud to guffaws of laughter. One in particular struck them — the wrist- watch which could be wound up by the movement of the wearer's arm; a self-wind- ing system that would avoid fatigue for its owner. Here, they said, was the appeal to the bourgeoisie.
It would be pleasing to recount that Jean D'Ormesson, the future directeur (editor) of Le Figaro, was a member of this group since he was a normalien in 1947, but in fact he was not. Had he been with us I'm sure that he would have agreed with my argument that since the Ecole's copy of the paper was stolen every day, it must appeal to someone.
Thus there were two principles which concerned Le Figaro. One was that it should appeal to the bourgeoisie; the other that it had to have in its contents that which would please or interest a vast num- ber of people.
Had these simple principles been remem- bered, the shiver which went through the political establishment of France when Robert Hersant, who died on 21 April, acquired Le Figaro in 1975, would not have taken place. For Hersant already owned many newspapers and magazines, and there was the suspicion that he wished to add this national and influential paper to his titles as the prelude to an immediate political move. Rumours grew that he was going to imitate Francois Coty, the perfumer turned press baron, who had used Le Figaro in his attempt to establish a fascist party in France in the 1930s. The rumours did not seem entirely groundless when it was recalled that Hersant had collaborated with the Germans in 1940 and that after the Liberation he had been condemned to several years of 'nation- al indignity' (loss of civic rights).
Raymond Aron, who was the leading conservative philosopher of the postwar period, accepted Hersant's ownership, but when he learned that Hersant proposed to write political leaders himself, he resigned from the paper and sent cries of alarm all round. The pessimists felt more than justi- fied when Hersant, having created Figaro- Magazine — a colour supplement appearing on Saturdays — opened its pages to the New Right, the Nouvelle Droite. This was an intellectual movement that rejected equality and that believed in government by elites and in the scientific organisation of society. This was surely fascism. No wonder General de Gaulle had, in 1963, declared that Her- sant was 'not with us'.
When the Socialists came to power in 1981, they were determined to put a stop to Hersant. Had not Leon Blum believed in the nationalisation of the press? Were there not press monopoly laws which could be applied against Hersant? Le Figaro's attacks on the presence of communists in the gov- ernment and its criticisms of the first of Mit- terrand's prime ministers, Pierre Mauroy Noes he exist?' was the question posed by the paper), encouraged the creation of new legislation on the concentration of press ownership. But the anti-Hersant law was watered down by the Constitutional Council and repealed by Chirac when he became Prime Minister in 1986. This was not sur- prising. Hersant had been elected deputy for the Oise in 1956 under Mitterrand's (pre-Socialist) Party. He had given financial support for Mitterrand's campaign against de Gaulle in the presidential election of 1965. When in 1983 Mitterrand chose Europe as his main policy and abandoned socialism (and the communists), this had the approval of Hersant.
In the 1993 legislative elections, which saw the defeat of the Socialists and the appointment of Balladur as Prime Minis- ter, Hersant and Le Figaro supported the anti-socialists. But during the 1993-95 cohabitation between Balladur as Prime Minister and Mitterrand as President, Le Figaro gave sympathetic coverage to Mit- terrand, Jean D'Ormesson writing that he had wept at Mitterrand's final presidential speech, when in Berlin, he had praised the bravery of German soldiers during the war. In any case, by this time Hersant had appointed the former editor of a left-wing weekly, Francois-Olivier Giesbert, as edi- tor of Le Figaro.
Much other nonsense was spoken about Hersant. It was said that when he owned both Le Dauphin Libere and Le Progres de Lyon, the inhabitants of the Rhone-Alpes region had only one sort of information. This was totalitarianism, it was said by those who had forgotten about the radio, the television and other ways in which these inhabitants could know what was happening in Nigeria, as well as what was happening in Lyons or Grenoble.
But when it comes to the newspaper world in France, foolishness is very widespread. In all the obituaries and arti- cles which Le Figaro and Figaro-Magazine have published about their deceased pro- prietor, none has openly stated exactly what Hersant did in 1940. Had he not launched a publication which was not only pro-Petain but also anti-Freemason and anti-Semitic, it is possible to argue, as Her- sant did, that this was an error committed by a 20-year-old. This can be accepted (as Raymond Aron accepted it). But it should not be passed over in silence. Only one member of the Figaro-Magazine team, Alain Griotteray, alluded to it, obliquely. He said that when one had been a support- er of the Popular Front of Leon Blum, it was natural to accept the sort of socialism that was being installed in Europe in 1940. This is an extraordinary and quite unac- ceptable remark.
There is no doubt. When it comes to books, the French are fine critics. When it comes to newspapers, they are lost.
The author is Professor Emeritus of French History, University College, London. His books include France and The Dreyfus Affair.
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