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Subject: Should we have let france join?
paul1970    1/15/2007 5:42:17 AM
since we have this info for france wanting to join with Britain in union in 1956... should we have let them?
 
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Padfoot       1/15/2007 6:44:48 AM
Churchill suggested this in 1940.

I think an Anglo/French union could actually work.

Don't know why, must give it more thought.

Ouch!


 
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flamingknives       1/15/2007 1:30:06 PM
What was France doing at the time? Involved in any costly wars?
 
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paul1970       1/16/2007 3:46:23 AM
well the French economy was in bad trouble while the UK was a shining light of socialism (lite... conservative government)with national health service and education for all ect....
 
as for war...   well there was the whole Suez thing...    :-) and the Egyptians were helping Algerian terrorists/freedom fighters...
 
would have been interesting to see how the world would have reacted to a 'united' Britain/France invasion of Suez rather than just two 'allied' countries.
 
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paul1970       1/16/2007 3:46:48 AM
well the French economy was in bad trouble while the UK was a shining light of socialism (lite... conservative government)with national health service and education for all ect....
 
as for war...   well there was the whole Suez thing...    :-) and the Egyptians were helping Algerian terrorists/freedom fighters...
 
would have been interesting to see how the world would have reacted to a 'united' Britain/France invasion of Suez rather than just two 'allied' countries.
 
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The Lizard King       1/23/2007 12:24:14 PM
Today, it could work.  Not sure about back then.  Today's Britain is shadow of her former self in many ways...
 
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AdamB       1/25/2007 4:30:32 PM
Here's an article from the Daily Mail's Keith Waterhouse -
 

The day we nearly went off to France

18th January 2007

A favourite subject for school debating societies, when schools still had debating societies - nowadays, they're too tied up with meeting targets, like William Tell (if anyone had ever bothered to enlighten them about the William Tell legend) - used to go as follows:

 

"That in the opinion of this House, instead of the Pilgrim Fathers landing on the Plymouth Rock, it would have been better for civilisation had the Plymouth Rock landed on the Pilgrim Fathers."

Good point. For one thing, President Dubya would not now be preparing to re-invade Iraq with 20-odd thousand troops, nor his speech writers trying to freshen up variations on his triumphal 'Mission accomplished!' for future use.

The question belongs to the ever-popular 'what if?' segment of history. What if Hitler had won the war? What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo? What if the Brits had won the War of American Independence? What if women had never got the vote? What if the BBC still held a TV monopoly?

Those 'what if?' hypotheses, by the way, are a good way of teaching schoolchildren history intravenously - for before debating, say, the wisdom or lack of it behind the partitioning of India, they would have to swot up who partitioned the dominion in the first place, and why.

An excellent real-life example of the 'what if?' school of history is to be found in this week's revelations that back in 1956 the French - or anyway one of their leaders - would have been happy to join the British Commonwealth under the nominal rule of our Queen. What de Gaulle thought of this wheeze we are not told.

What emerges, however, from Cabinet papers which have lain unseen since the year of the Suez crisis is that the then French prime minister Guy Mollet approached our own then Prime Minister Anthony Eden (it was a vintage year for 'thens') with the proposal that we should take the entente cordiale a mighty leap forward and merge our two countries into one, with the Queen as head of state.

So what if we had fallen for it? The short answer is that, of course, we did - but with France, in tandem with Germany, being top dogs instead of our good selves - and the Queen - if they finally get their way with us over a common currency - being banished from her own bank notes.

The merger was first called the Common Market, and finally, after as many changes in name as a dodgy street trader trafficking in merchandise fallen off the backs of lorries - the European Union. This was not quite what M Mollet had in mind.

A year before the Common Market, then trading under the name of the European Economic Community, had begun to seize the fevered minds of its supporters, he was a devout Anglophile, who thought of us as a nation of crumpets and cricket bats.

What Gallic values he hoped to bring to his proposed amalgamation of the two powers he didn't specify. Off the top of my head, I can only think of croissants, now obtainable from Waitrose, the Napoleonic education system and continental cafes.

These last are what our romantic government ministers, having once spent a weekend in Paris, had in mind when they brought in the 24-hour licences. Dream on, is all I can say.

But at least we do not have to dream on about M Mollet's amiable Franco-British axis. Pity, in some ways. At least we'd be speaking English better than we do now, if not French.
 
dailymail.co.uk
 
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Claymore       1/26/2007 1:52:58 AM
Keith Waterhouse sure put together a paper full of nothing there.

he forgot to mention what if the US had not supported Brittan in two world wars, would they be there today?

 
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paul1970       1/26/2007 3:33:43 AM
"Keith Waterhouse sure put together a paper full of nothing there.

he forgot to mention what if the US had not supported Brittan in two world wars, would they be there today?"
 
whats that got to do with the 1956 scenario?
 
he also forgot to mention what if Britain had taken 1812 seriously or supported the Confedracy militarily...  or a billion other what if's
 
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Herald1234    Egypt/Syria as the example on the small scale.   1/26/2007 3:46:39 AM
It was actually tried as an experiment. The United Arab Republic failed. It was cobbled together as an anti-Israel counterweight.

France and Britain would have failed for exactly the same reasons. It had exactly the same[French] political impetus at its root.

Figure it out.

Herald

 
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