French Letters

by Jonathan Miller

  PROFESSIONS PROTÉGÉES

  Protected skills

  Lawyers, hairdressers, dentists, driving schools, massage therapists, pharmacists, pedicurists, insurance agents, ambulance drivers, taxi drivers and legal clerks are among the protected professions that the French government has failed to significantly reform since proposals were first mooted in 2008. The finance ministry reckons that French consumers pay at least 20 per cent too much for their services. France has ignored EU directives demanding that services be opened to competition. You cannot buy an aspirin in a supermarket in France as this would be unfair competition to the pharmacists.

  PROFS

  Schoolteachers who can never be fired

  They strike frequently. French teachers, from the maternelle reception classesthrough secondary Lycée, are called profs and they all go through rigorous and highly standardised training. Once in post, a prof enjoys the status of a titulaire, which means the job belongs to them forever. It is, essentially, impossible to be fired - certainly not for incompetence, although sexually assaulting a pupil is frowned upon. In principle, all profs are equal but the quality is of course mixed and the restrictive entry regime into the profession makes it complicated for foreigners, even from the EU, to work as teachers in France. There is a better representation of British teachers in the post-lycée technical colleges.

  PROSTITUTION

  Closing the maisons closes

  Le Chabanais, le One-Two-Two, le Sphinx, and la Fleur Blanche in Paris were in their day the most reputed maisons closes (brothels) in the world, attracting clients including Edward VII, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Humphrey Bogart and Mae West. During the war, they were reserved for the use of the occupying Germans and selected collaborators. The glory days of prostitution in France have passed and it has become a more sordid affair. Working girls now park up by the side of the road outside many towns and cities, many are immigrants and some are trafficked. Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister of national education, has attempted to ban prostitution in France but the project has descended into chaos. The prostitutes have protested that the repression of their profession will only make their life more difficult and dangerous and hundreds have taken to the streets to protest. The government’s fantasy that it can end prostitution by passing a law against it is a classic example of the French worship of principle.

  POSTES, TÉLÉGRAPHES ET TÉLÉPHONES (PTT)

  A study in idleness

  The PTT hasn’t existed in years since the telephone network was (sort of) privatised and La poste (postal service) became a paraétatique (semi-governmental) ward of the state. But PTT is still used in everyday conversations to describe the untaxing jobs performed by civil servants - un petit travail tranquille (a little quiet work). La Poste is now also cruelly known as La Pause, indicating delay.

  PRUD’HOMMES

  Why it is so hard to sack the useless

  An employment tribunal in France is in theory a council of wise men (and increasingly, women), elected by the unions and the bosses. They adjudicate in disputes between employers and employed. These forums are not generally seen as likely to take an employer’s side against that of a litigious employee, given the worker-friendly nature of the Code du Travail. It takes 25 months on average for the prud’hommes to resolve contested redundancies. Because of the likely intervention of the prud’hommes, it is difficult and costly to fire an employee in France. A small reform capping damages for unfair dismissal has been put into place but does not change the dynamic of this insane system.

  Q

  36 QUAI DES ORFÈVRES

  compromised scotland yard equivalent

  Equivalent of Scotland Yard; headquarters of the famous Police Judiciaire (PJ), the elite squad of Paris detectives charged with investigating the most serious criminal affairs. It is a curiosity that the real-life corruption at the headquarters of the PJ in Paris is even more profound than even the gritty TV series Engrenages has dared to suggest. In Engrenages, one of the principal detectives is taking cocaine. In real life in 2014, several PJ investigators were arrested accused of operating a drug ring from the evidence room, retailing 50kg of seized cocaine to their criminal accomplices. Sexual intimidation? In Engrenages, Captain Laura Berthaud orders her detectives to strip-search a teenage male suspect, while she watches, to humiliate him into talking: in reality, two detectives from the anti-gang squad have been charged with raping an Australian tourist, on the premises, in never-explained circumstances. In the show, Captain Berthaud’s boss is a publicity-hungry, grandstanding political cop who will stop at nothing to get on TV. In real life, Bernard Petit, the chief detective, has been arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.

  QUEBEC

  Inferior French

  The easiest North American bolt-hole for French exiles is Quebec. An estimated 10,000 French citizens are establishing residence in Quebec every year. Montreal has distinctively French neighbourhoods (i.e. not French-Canadian neighbourhoods but quartiers inhabited by French people from France). But the new arrivals are not always popular. Quebecois are not known for being retiring personalities and neither are the French. Locals accuse the snooty French who arrive in Montreal of arrogance and the French reckon the local dialect to be inferior.

  R

  RADIO FRANCE

  Public service radio, often on strike

  La maison de la radio, (the house of radio) is the headquarters of French public radio. Perennially overspent, on strike, politically-compromised nest of vipers, housed in great splendour on the right bank of the Seine, responsible for seven national radio networks including the hugely influential France Inter plus the France Info all-news station, the France Bleu network of 44 local radio stations, and separate stations specialising in culture, classical music and modern music. A recent documentary (La maison de la radio,Nicolas Philibert, 2013) was striking for its exposé of the Parisian elite at work. Parisian bobo and right-thinking (more accurately, left-thinking), Radio France preaches to a dwindling constituency of true believers, given the vigorous competition mounted by BFM Business which inhabits something resembling the real world. See NextRadioTV.

  #RADIOLONDRES

  Subversive French Twitter channel

  Nothing to do with London. Or radio. Just the ironic name for an occasional hashtag containing off-message news about French elections including exit polls suppressed by French broadcasters. Named after BBC broadcasts from London during World War Two with coded ‘personal messages’ to the resistance.

  RAFALE

  Fighter jet of choice for despots

  Impressive aircraft manufactured by Dassault Aviation, second largest French aviation enterprise. When you absolutely, positively want to bomb your enemies in the chiquest way possible, you would definitely want to consider the Rafale, which has defied American and British sceptics to become one of the best combat aircraft in the world. Used by the French air force and navy, and sold in dubious circumstances to Egypt, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. The Rafale is a lethal machine but whether these exotic and enormously expensive aircraft are of much relevance in a world of asymmetric warfare is another question. See armes.

  RAINBOW WARRIOR

  Greenpeace attacked pour la France

  This gaily painted ship was bombed in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, by French secret agents in 1985, killing a Greenpeace photographer. The operation was authorised by François Mitterrand, the socialist president, to stop Greenpeace from disrupting French nuclear tests in the Pacific. The French ridiculously tried to blame the British. Two French secret service officers were swiftly arrested, convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. This, by agreement with the French government, was to be served in military detention on a French island in the Pacific. France predictably reneged on the deal and released the agents after two years. Both were subsequently promoted. A curious sidelight to this incident is that Gérard Royal, one of the French agents involved in the affair (but never arrested) is the brother of Ségolène Roya
l.

  À LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

  Maybe not the greatest but at least the longest novel ever

  ‘The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book,’ summarised A.J. Liebling, the New Yorker journalist, of the iconic novel by Marcel Proust (1871-1922).‘In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite.’ In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust is the quintessential expression of French yearning for an often imagined past. The novel is claimed to be the greatest ever written in French but few of those making the claim are likely to have read all five volumes of it (it was originally published in seven). Walter Benjamin began but never finished a translation into German. ‘I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective,’ said Evelyn Waugh, the English novelist. The longest novel ever, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Said to be funnier in French than translation, a little Proust goes a long way. I have not progressed beyond halfway through volume one, with the French and English texts side by side.

  The iconic madeleine cake which triggers Proust’s masterpiece is all most people remember about this great work. Indeed, I could never buy a madeleine without thinking of Proust, so I stopped buying them and in any case they are incompatible with my régime (diet). In 1922, Proust met James Joyce at a dinner at the Majestic Hotel in Paris, organised by Violet and Sidney Schiff. The other guests included Igor Stravinsky, Serge Diaghilev, some pretty ballerinas and Clive Bell. This historic literary encounter reconstructed by Richard Davenport-Hines (A Night at the Majestic, 2006) might be better remembered had it not rapidly descended into banality. Proust arrived late and promptly informed Joyce that he had never read his books and Joyce, already drunk, told Proust he’d never read his.

  Novelist Joanna Kavenna identifies the central problem: Proust is ‘one of the most revered and least-read of all the so-called modern greats.’ He nevertheless remains an inspiring figure to generations of authors. He was a sickly chap who really never worked in anything resembling employment, but he did have a ‘job’ at the Bibliothèque Nationale (national library) and spent years collecting sick pay. An asthmatic, who gasped for days on end, he couldn’t report for duty, he said, because the paper dust in the library made him sneeze. So he stayed in bed, dosing himself with various strong medicines including opium, morphine, Stramonium cigarettes and Epinephrine, writing and writing and writing, sometimes palely venturing forth at night, before dying at the not-so-ripe age of 51.

  RÉFORMES

  Political soufflés

  Reforms are periodically announced by the government. They are introduced amidst great fanfare, watered down in the National Assembly under pressure from the unions and protected professions, subsequently adopted as law and then loudly proclaimed to the world as evidence that France is open for business. Nobody but the government itself believes these to be more than window-dressing. Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the European Union to have the power to impose ‘programme’ reforms to coerce recalcitrant countries, like France and Greece, to get serious. The Times in July 2015 quoted a ‘senior German conservative’ saying that in countries like France and Italy, the only instrument to force reforms is the programme approach. He was scathing of so-called reforms in France that ‘need reform but have no programme.’

  RENSEIGNEMENT, LOI SUR LE

  The French version of the Patriot Act

  Intrusive law passed in May 2015 following the Charlie Hebdo massacre greatly extending the authority of French intelligence services to intercept all forms of communication. Ironically, the law passed even as WikiLeaks was revealing that the French themselves were being surveilled by the Americans. See espions.

  RENTRÉE, LA

  After the summer break, the great return

  Nothing much happens in France during August (and little more in July). The rentrée (the return) marks the resumption of school (la rentrée scolaire), of political activities (la rentrée politique) and the publication of new books (la rentrée littéraire). La rentrée is presaged by gigantic traffic jams that paralyse French autoroutes as vacationing French people return to their homes from their résidences secondaires (holiday homes).

  RÉPUBLICAINS, LES

  Conservatives, part of the left consensus

  New name for the UMP, Union pour un mouvement populaire, which is the French equivalent of British Conservatives and American Republicans, but that analogy is really in appearance only.The new name is intended to put distance between the party and funding scandals that enveloped the UMP during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.The right is a party without an apparent project, only politicians. This flaw notwithstanding, it has been by default the main conservative/centrist political party in France, emerging from the candidacy of Jacques Chirac for president of the Republic. It has ever since been a party that reflects the personality of whoever its candidate at the time might be, rather than any founding ideology. Sarkozy seems to be its de facto leader in his effort to regain the presidency, but he is promising things he failed to deliver last time and French hearts have not grown any fonder in his absence from power. Indeed the problem is that the more people see of him, the less they like or trust him. The reason for existence of the UMP seems to be, or have been, that it is not the Socialist party, and that it has at least a notional respect for the efforts of businesses. In practice the UMP has played the same clientéliste politics as the Socialists and has no intention of reforming France’s sclerotic economy and its system of jobs for the boys (and, increasingly, girls).

  RÉPUBLIQUES 1, 2, 3 ET 4

  Failures

  To wreck one republic might be considered a misfortune, to wreck four suggests supreme carelesness. The first Republic was a brief affair founded in 1792 and lasted until Napoléon Bonaparte’s seizure of power in 1802, though technically it limped on for two more years until Bonaparte declared himself Emperor. After 10 years his career ended in military defeat at Waterloo and exile to St Helena. The Bourbon dynasty then returned for 34 years, making various futile attempts to wean the French onto the idea of a constitutional monarchy, before being violently replaced by the second Republic in 1848.

  The second Republic lasted but four years. The Second Empire, Napoléon III’s, took over from 1852-70, ending again in military catastrophe, before any semblance of Republicanism reappeared with the third Republic, which lasted 70 years, until the Second World War. Then it was Vichy for four years, then a provisional government, and finally in 1947 the fourth Republic, but again with little durability, collapsing in 1958 when General Charles de Gaulle led France out of the constitutional wilderness, for a while at least, as the president of the fifth Republic. Republicanism has utopian origins so it helps to be an optimist about these things.

  RÉPUBLIQUE, 5ÈME

  Superannuated French fetish

  In 1958 the French replaced the disputatious parliamentary character of previous republics with a fifth edition that came equiped with a strong executive power, which it was imagined would lead them to success. (Flaubert said the French had to be led by the sword.) Born during the 30 glorious years of economic prosperity, Johnny Hallyday provided the background music and Brigitte Bardot the glamour. With General de Gaulle at its head, France seemed to be standing tall in the world once again.

  Half a century later, the Fifth Republic has become pretty degenerate. It is not delivering much liberty, equality, fraternity, laïcité, jobs or much else to ordinary Frenchmen, but the mainstream politicians are doing very well out of it and have little incentive to change.

  The problem is that nobody has so far proposed a credible-sounding alternative. The fifth Republic was specifically architected by de Gaulle to bring stability to government and in some ways it has worked too well since stability has become sclerosis and today’s French government looks to be completely immobilised, albeit on full pay and rations.

  RÉPUBLIQUE, 6ÈME

 
Not if but when

  Coming… coming… It seems likely that a sixth attempt at constitutional renewal will arrive at some point, given the limited durability of previous efforts but there is no defined project currently before the French people and monarchisme seems unlikely to mount a significant comeback. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of the extreme left, and Marine Le Pen, leader of the nationalist Front National, both speak of repatriating powers to France from Europe and protecting French industry. Nicolas Sarkozy pays lipservice to changing the constitution to limit the size of the state. With so many snouts in the trough, there is little organic desire for change.