Already a subscriber? Log in
Beginning as unknown participants in great events, steadily moving over many years to the centre of them, the lives of these two intertwined for half a century. Peter Mangold is the first to have had the idea of tracing this joint journey. It is a story concerned with those two subjects which Mr Benn and the more pious always tell us should have nothing to do with one another, but which all history tells us are inseparable: politics and personalities. Mangold has done the subject justice.
It will be found that Macmillan and de Gaulle were very different from one another, but, perhaps to some readers’ surprise, also had much in common. But first we must admit the differences.
Macmillan was a professional politician. He was good at his profession. He would have risen to the top, or near it, at any time in British parliamentary history. After ‘a good war’ and work in the family firm, he got into parliament early, as professional politicians do. But many who rise in all kinds of profession take a risk at one time or another, preferably early on. Macmillan did so in the form of becoming a backbench rebel against Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany.
The risk was that appeasement might succeed. In that case, Macmillan’s rise would have been slowed, perhaps stopped. But there was a good chance that appeasement would fail. In that case, Macmillan would receive a new prime minister’s patronage. That is what came to pass. A wartime ministerial career, prominence in opposition after 1945, a peacetime ministerial career, the premiership — all followed.
De Gaulle was not a professional politician. He was a master of politics, but that is not the same thing. He could not have risen as a professional politician in the Third Republic. He disapproved of political parties. He scorned the string-pulling needed to rise in a party, and disapproved of the system.
Only an upheaval, with the destruction of the republic, could lead to his assuming supreme power. This happened to him twice. First in 1940, when France fell, de Gaulle proclaimed himself on no authority but his own leader of Free France. By 1942, Roosevelt found him too independent, and eventually sought to replace him with General Giraud. Using his political skill, and with Macmillan’s aforementioned help, de Gaulle saw off Giraud by turning almost the whole Resistance against him, frustrating the wishes of the West’s most powerful politician, though in the end Roosevelt realised that Giraud was a political duffer. De Gaulle became head of the liberation government in Paris, but soon resigned because the new constitution gave parties too much power.
Ultimately, however, the two are more alike than unalike. Both reached the ultimate heights by manipulating a foreign crisis. In 1956, Macmillan, as chancellor, urged his prime minister, Eden, into Suez. Then, by playing up the threat to sterling, he helped force Eden to abandon the venture. Two years later came the second upheaval bringing de Gaulle to power. From exile in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, he did nothing to disabuse rebellious generals and French-Algerian settlers from believing that he would keep Algeria French. The postwar fourth republic, conceding that it could not defeat the rebellion, ceded all powers to him. He then betrayed the rebels by ending French rule in Algeria. And his new constitution curbed the parties.
Both careers had the same theme. Each sought to maintain their countries as great powers. Both believed that the Suez and Algerian withdrawals were bowings to the inevitable, and that greatness could be maintained in other ways.
This explains the policy of both even when they were on opposite sides in their final crisis: Macmillan’s application to join the Common Market and de Gaulle’s refusal of it in 1963. The two men’s policies were the same, but their countries were different. Macmillan thought that Britain could remain great, or at least influential, by being part of the new Europe. De Gaulle believed that France could remain great, or at least influential, by keeping out America’s Trojan Horse, Britain. That final crisis thus embodied the meaning of both lives.
Also in Society
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in