A tale of two statues
(Photo by Jack Hill - WPA pool/Getty Images)
This week’s state visit of President Macron has attracted more interest than usual. Not only is it the first such event since the coronavirus pandemic; it also marks the 80th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle’s celebrated Appeal, when the self-appointed leader of the Free French Movement called on France to resist the Nazi occupation. In recognition of the fact that De Gaulle made his broadcast on the BBC from London, and of its role throughout the war, Emmanuel Macron presented the city with the Legion d’Honneur.
President Macron’s decision to honour London with his country’s highest decoration so soon after Brexit is a generous gesture. It is also right. Without British support for De Gaulle’s government in exile, the French Resistance would never have provided an alternative rallying point to Vichy France and paved the way for the Liberation. And without Churchill’s personal loyalty to De Gaulle, the Allies would instead have backed his rival, Henri Giraud, who was based in the French North African colonies. Giraud commanded substantial French forces and was a more senior general than the hitherto unknown De Gaulle, who arrived in London after the fall of France with little more than his uniform.
What De Gaulle, like Churchill, possessed in abundance, however, was charisma. His Appeal of June 18 was a masterpiece of oratory, which holds a similar place in the French collective memory as Churchill’s great speeches during the summer of 1940 do for the British. His message was simple: “The war is not over as a result of the Battle of France. This war is a world war,” he declared. “Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.” Not many of his compatriots still in France heard De Gaulle’s Appeal, but he continued to broadcast to them during the Occupation with growing eloquence and confidence. Four long years later came the Liberation: De Gaulle marched into Paris, led France back to democracy and, a decade later, inaugurated the Fifth Republic.
On Thursday, President Macron laid a wreath at the statue of De Gaulle in Carlton Gardens, near the Free French wartime headquarters. In nearby Parliament Square, the statue of Churchill re-emerged from its protective covering, installed after a protestor daubed graffiti on the plinth. In France, two of the many memorials to De Gaulle have also been vandalised.
These two statues of Churchill and De Gaulle commemorate respectively the greatest British and French statesmen of the 20th century. Both men were highly controversial in their time and are open to legitimate criticism today. Each, as it happens, found the other difficult to work with — though Churchill never uttered the words often attributed to him, that “the hardest cross I have to bear is the cross of Lorraine” (a reference to De Gaulle’s native province).
Both men were also conservatives, nationalists and imperialists. Their words and their convictions were those of men born in the 19th century and rooted in Victorian values. Churchill has been accused of racism and even of causing famine in Bengal; unjust as these charges are, his defence of the Raj seemed anachronistic even in the 1930s. Such faults pale into insignificance compared to Churchill’s defence of freedom against totalitarian tyrannies of Left and Right. Boris Johnson is often mocked for emulating his great predecessor, but who else could provide such a powerful model for uniting the country in dark times?
Much the same considerations apply to De Gaulle, whose grandiose vision of French destiny is still dear to Emmanuel Macron. The General’s handling of the French colonial legacy was no less controversial than Churchill’s. He could also err on the side of leniency in his attitude towards Nazi collaborators and, later, those who plotted to overthrow him in a coup d’état. Given the appalling record of Vichy on the French Jews, one of De Gaulle’s worst moments came in 1967 when he shifted French foreign policy to support the Arab world against Israel. Though not anti-Semitic at a personal level, he described Jews at a notorious televised press conference as “this elite people, sure of themselves and domineering”. Churchill, by contrast, always championed Zionism and did much to make its dream come true.
Waves of opinion about these giants of the past may ebb and flow, but they cannot be ignored — least of all by politicians who seem mere pygmies by comparison. No spectacle could be more ludicrous than the attempt to wipe away the blood from the gladiatorial arena of the past, by banishing the witnesses and perpetrators from our sight. Great peoples, such as the French and British, need physical embodiments of those who loom large in their national narratives. We must have places where we can relive the struggles and sacrifices, the victories and defeats that made us who we are. Statues exist to remind us of history, not to sanitise it.
