Sixty Years On, France Says Thank You
From the desk of Michael Huntsman on Fri, 2008-03-28 10:53
France’s first President born after the Second World War has paid handsome tribute to and given fulsome thanks for the double sacrifice of the flower of Britain’s youth in two world wars. It is not without irony that such has been so conspicuously and gratingly lacking in the words of his predecessors.
Nor is it without irony that such graceful comments should come not from a Frenchman of long native lineage, but from the diminutive bantam cock of a son of a Hungarian-born father and Greek Mother of the Jewish faith who contrasts so strikingly with the lofty mien of his recent more haughty predecessors (excepting always Georges Pompidou who never managed to shake off the look of the onion-seller). Whilst remaining deeply suspicious of French motives in all things, Britain should not fail to appreciate his comments:
France hasn’t forgotten, she will never forget that when she was almost annihilated, Britain was at her side.
She will never forget the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish blood mixed with the French blood in the mud of the trenches.
She will never forget the welcome the British people gave General de Gaulle and Free France.
She will never forget the heroic resistance of the British people without which all would have been lost.
She will never forget the fine young people who came from all over the British Empire and laid down their lives on the Normandy beaches and in the surrounding bocages.
It is notable that Sarkozy also gave the lie to the myth upon which France has constructed a narrative for the last sixty-seven years, a myth which began with Charles de Gaulle's claim on 18th. June 1940:
La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre. [France has lost a battle, but has not lost the war]
This bold, but ludicrous, assertion was backed by the mantra of many Frenchmen who claimed : “On nous a trahi!” – “We were betrayed!” Upon such soft sands France has built its alibi for the failings of its politicians and generals for far too long, an alibi that none of its modern executive Presidents has had, until now, the courage to disavow.
Now Sarkozy spells it out for all to see: France was close to annihilation and it was Great Britain who remained constant in the cause of restoring her to her place from the first day to the last. The myth has stood obstinately in the way of truth for far too long and one must commend Sarkozy for spelling out the stark reality for once.
But what of the rest of his speech to the British Parliament? There are three things which struck me as worthy of note.
In his opening remarks he said:
…it is an exceptional honour to address members of both Houses of the British Parliament.
It is indeed here, within these walls, that modern political life was born. Without this Parliament, would parliamentary democracy have ever existed in the world? Hasn’t this parliamentary practice, begun in this place, become the best guarantee against tyranny?
I wonder if he realised quite what he was saying. If we contemplate two facts: (1) that 70-80% of the laws which now enter into force in the United Kingdom every year emanate not from the elected representatives of the British people but from an unelected and wholly unrepresentative coterie of foreign civil servants; and (2) that with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon Britain shall yield up almost all that remains of its sovereignty to that same group who will thus acquire almost unlimited power to impose the Brussels Diktat upon British laws, is it not then right to assert that the ‘best guarantee against tyranny’ of which he spoke has been recklessly and casually thrown away? And has not thus Parliamentary Democracy, so long in the evolution, been in a few short years ruthlessly stifled?
For we should be under no illusion but that what we understand by Parliamentary Democracy, which is indeed a formidable (though not impervious) bulwark against tyranny and which we have now effectively abandoned, has been replaced by a formidable Euro-theocracy. And from them tyranny we shall have, the tyranny of laws to which neither Her Majesty’s Government nor the British Parliament has assented as more and more ‘competences’ are given up to the thrall of Qualified Majority Voting.
Of Parliament and the other institutions which have hitherto been the very fabric of the British nation Sarkozy observed:
The history of this institution today influences most contemporary political regimes. This Parliament has become what it is through the fight for the protection of essential individual freedoms and the principle of the consent to taxation.
These two fundamental conquests, which this Parliament was the first in the world to achieve, are still today the cornerstones of all our democracies. It is here that parliamentarians have gradually developed what is a party, an electoral programme and finally a majority.
It is through these institutions that the United Kingdom’s greatness has emerged. And I am so honoured to address you precisely because the political heart of the United Kingdom is beating under this roof.
I profoundly believe in the strength of politics. I profoundly believe in the ability of politics to improve the fate of the peoples. This is the whole purpose of politics.
Institutions, however much you upgrade them, exist only to serve the people. The strength of the British people has always been that of a free people who take their own decisions and are ready for the greatest sacrifices to defend their freedom.
It is precisely because the British have always been a free people, able to take their own decisions, that they have become what they are. Now that very institution is, for all legal and practical purposes, subordinated to another sovereign power: how then are the British to defend the freedoms so hard won and at such price? How then are the British to preserve their way of life when others who are not of their kind shall have the whip hand over them? And how ironic that a foreign President should come to praise Britian at the very moment of its eclipse.
Nicolas Sarkozy has, in some places, been lauded as a skillful politician. If so, his praise of Gordon Brown for railroading the Treaty of Lisbon through without a referendum in these terms:
I am not the only one in Europe who appreciates what he has done. What he has done was necessary for Europe.was surely a grave mistake, bearing as it does the clear and unambiguous implication that this has all been done not for the benefit of the British people but for the benefit of others. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
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