This is an anecdote that will undoubtedly delight fans of alternate history. In 2007, the BBC exhumed from the official archives across the Channel – declassified twenty years earlier – a singular episode in Franco-British relations. In the 1950s, the rulers of the United Kingdom and France had flirted in unprecedented ways, considering a rapprochement of the two nations. “During a recent stay in London (September 10, 1956), the President of the French Council, Monsieur Mollet, raised the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France”, assures an official document of the British cabinet . A few days later, the socialist Guy Mollet, will even go so far as to propose… the entry of France into the Commonwealth. An event that would have made Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday September 8, the queen of France.
The situation is then particularly tense. London and Paris still live as great powers, but their empires are constantly cracking. In Algeria, the insurrection has already broken out for two years. In Egypt, President Nasser nationalized the Universal Company of the Suez Canal, a Franco-British co-ownership, in the middle of the summer. On both sides of the Channel, there is bewilderment. This reversal marks the end of the political domination of a region that they had divided after the First World War. The end of this era is all the more terrible for Paris since, by acting in this way, Nasser takes a symbolic decision: he brings his support to the revolt in Algeria.
The Suez Canal crisis
Haggard, Guy Mollet therefore turns to London. In the midst of the Suez Canal crisis, the two powers are preparing to go to Egypt. At the same time, tensions are rising on the border between Jordan, supported by London, and Israel, an ally of Paris. At a time when the European Community did not yet exist – it was born a few months later with the signing of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 1957 – Guy Mollet envisaged a marriage which, in his view, would make it possible to avoid a direct fight between the two European neighbours.
The Frenchman takes up here an idea… British, from Winston Churchill. In 1940, the illustrious Prime Minister had tried to establish a project of political fusion between the two countries with a French government in full rout. Sixteen years later, the proposal was however received without enthusiasm by the British Conservative Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. During the Head of Government’s visit to Paris on September 26 and 27, 1956, Guy Mollet made a more specific proposal this time: France’s entry into the Commonwealth. The Queen of England, Elizabeth II, would thus have become… the French head of state. And France would have become a monarchy again. On September 28, 1956, Eden thus estimated in a document “that France’s accession to the Commonwealth should be taken into consideration without delay; that Monsieur Mollet did not think that the acceptance of His Majesty’s sovereignty by France raises difficulties (and) that the French would be in favor of a common citizenship on the Irish model”. The idea, although examined very seriously in London, was finally rejected so as not to “weaken the Commonwealth”.
Guy Mollet the Anglophile
A French socialist would therefore have imagined – even wished -, 167 years after the Revolution, that the sovereignty of the Republic could be placed under the authority of a monarch, moreover British. A suggestion possibly explained by the tensions of the moment, but also by the profile of Guy Mollet. The man, a former English teacher at the high school in Arras, in the north of France, has never hidden his sympathy for the United Kingdom, which was also noticed by the BBC. The President of the Council “admired Great Britain for its help during the two World Wars and its flourishing welfare state”, assures English public radio, in 2007. A former resistance fighter, the socialist was also fond of the British for their unfailing support during of the two world wars.
This Anglophilia had also provoked attacks from his political adversaries, as the historian Bernard Ménager explains in his book Guy Mollet: a comrade in the Republic. In 1956, Pierre Poujade, then leader of craftsmen and traders, had been at the origin of a “campaign” ensuring that Guy Mollet could not claim to be “French”. The future Chairman of the Council had answered him through the press. “I belong to an old family of French Protestant origin, which emigrated to England when the Edict of Nantes was revoked. While part of it remained in England, my great-grandfather returned to France in beginning of the 19th century. My great-grandfather was a pastor of the Anglican Church of Canterbury”, he told the Paris-Presse The intransigent.
No trace of “Frengland”
In the wake of these revelations by the British media, French commentators expressed their astonishment, even their skepticism. Questioned by the BBC on the subject, George-Henri Soutou, professor of history at the Sorbonne, choked: “Really I stutter, because this idea is really absurd. The idea of joining the Commonwealth and accepting Her Majesty’s sovereignty would not have been well received. Had it been suggested more recently, Mollet might have found himself in court.” Jacques Myard, then deputy (UMP), had also expressed his indignation. “In truth, I am quite stunned. Previously, I had a good opinion of Mr. Mollet, but I think I will have to revise it, he told the BBC. I am surprised to learn this, because since I learned the story, I’ve never heard of it. It’s not in the textbooks.”
No trace of this episode actually seems to exist in the French archives. Guy Mollet himself does not seem to have made much noise about his initiative. As soon as it was imagined, the dream of “Frengland” was quickly abandoned anyway. If at the end of October, the French and the British tried to overthrow Nasser with the agreement of Israel, the operation was aborted due to the opposition of the United States, the new great power of the 20th century. As for Guy Mollet, failing to put the new sovereign on the throne of France, he contented himself with welcoming her to the Louvre, a few months later, for an official visit.