The Joan of Arc Show (or No, No, No!)

May 8^th is the day France commemorates the end of WW2 in 1945. On the Sunday following the 8^th, traffic stops while dignitaries lay wreaths of red white and blue flowers at the foot of the gold statue of Jeanne d’Arc on horseback almost below my window. I’ll be awakened by the tootling of a trumpet playing the Marseillaise. But I have so effectively sound proofed my bedroom that this morning I emerged from my 8 hours to hear shouting.

May 1^st is usually the day when the Front Nationale assembles its members around Jeanne’s statue –a symbol of French national pride--to listen to a speech by its leader Marine Le Pen.  Today, however, extremists who find Marine’s views too moderate were there. The cross roads were blocked in every direction and a relatively small group of militants were being addressed while Police Nationale stood in a line at the entrance to my street. Only a few had riot shields and their posture was relatively relaxed.

Then a more aggressive counter demo erupted. Shouting was emerging from the corner of the Place and cameras were being directed at a spot out of my line of sight and upwards. A large fire engine, ladder ready, maneuvered into position while another stood to the rear of the statue. The building on that corner houses some state offices and left wing union members were occupying its balconies. Police reinforcements now began running around and donning riot helmets. Is this unusual? No. The Joan of Arc Show often turns to riots.

I’m writing about it because a few days ago a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, and one of the leaders of the plot that removed Margaret Thatcher from office in 1990, publicly recanted on his former pro-European position. In a long article in The Times, hemadvocated that Britain get out of the EU. It is now 23 plus years since the historic moment in the Commons when Lawson’s co-conspirator Geoffrey Howe made his speech accusing Thatcher of breaking the bats with which her side were playing cricket in the negotiations to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Thatcher did not want the uk to join that precursor to the creation of the single currency. Her famous speech in which she said “No, no, no” to any concessions that would erode British sovereignty was the cause of her downfall. John Major who took office that same month (November 1990) after being elected as the new Conservative leader continued to follow the dream of the single currency until the UK was thrown out of the ERM by its failure to keep to the conditions. Base rates of 17% were avoided and the country was rescued from the folly propounded by Chancellor Lawson. But so soon after the bells from Thatcher’s funeral have ceased to toll, her so-called “Brilliant” Chancellor (who resigned in November 1989 and was replaced by John Major) has emerged from the closet as an advocate of British exit from the EU.

Does the little scrap at the Joan of Arc statue have any bearing on this? Only too clearly. The extreme right demanding stringent limits on immigration are not only the French Front Nationale. Their sentiments are echoed in other EU countries including the UK. EU policies permit free migration from poorer to richer member states, while failing to prevent illegal immigration. This means the raucous shouts of the extremists will be heard increasingly in every EU capital.

The beautiful floral wreaths that pay tribute to the French and Allied fallen in WW2 and whose touching messages bring thoughts of peace in our time, will not survive the coming conflicts. The Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, the unemployment crisis, the lack of EU democracy will bring worse than this ritual piece of French street politics.

No no no? But yes, yes, yes, the uk should start dismantling the chains that bind it to a dangerously insolvent, and frighteningly divided European Union.

For more background on the Lawson-Thatcher battle over the ERM see Chapter 1 of my biography of John Major available from Amazon and other Internet bookshops (Macdonald and Futura). And for details of Major’s role in the Black Wednesday crisis when Britain left the ERM in 1991, see the Postscript to the paperback edition (Futura).