The Secret Life of France

by Lucy Wadham

  So it was that with the acceptance of the Gallois report the dominant discourse shifted from La politique de la demande to La politique de l’offre, from the Keynesian economics of pre-Thatcherism to the supply-side economics of post-Thatcherism. In using phrases like ‘competitiveness pact’ Hollande is turning his back on his nation’s atavistic Keynesianism and towards a future more favourable to business.

  Why did Sarkozy not drive all this fiscal reform? It was supposed to be the flashy, dynamic ‘Rolex’, as he was known, not the soft, flavourless ‘Gouda’ who would kick France into the twenty-first century. Surely a man like Hollande would prove a liability for anyone hoping to make any money in this country? He was, after all, the politician who in 2006, during a live debate on national TV with Sarkozy’s defence minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said, ‘Yes, I don’t like the rich. I admit it.’

  Later asked to justify his words, he had the presence of mind to quote the eternally consensual Charles de Gaulle who at the end of his life admitted to André Malraux, ‘The only adversary I had was money, which never ceased to be a step ahead of me.’

  Hollande is witty and quick off the mark, and his slip about the rich has not seemed to hamper his career in any way whatsoever. I’m amazed by this, and amazed that someone like Laurent does not hold it against him. I try to imagine how someone in the finance sector in Britain would react to a politician who admitted to disliking rich people.

  Laurent points out that hostility towards the wealthy is the air we all breathe in France. The taboo here is not to dislike the rich but to want to be rich. He remembers a close girlfriend of his, one of the lovely creatures he brought with him to the Broken House, in fact, who once remarked how stinking rich someone was.

  ‘But it’s alright,’ she added. ‘He inherited his wealth.’ (Whereas Laurent only made his.)

  ‘How is that alright?’ Laurent inquired.

  ‘He hasn’t exploited anyone to get his.’

  Laurent’s friend is a highly educated Parisian woman from a bourgeois intellectual family. Her remarks are pure ideology; an ideology that spans all classes because it is part of France’s very identity, her mythology, the fabric of her selfhood. How to change this unless by stealth? And who better to act by stealth than a left-wing politician who admits to disliking the rich along with everyone else?

  Ella says that it was hard for her to own up to voting for Sarkozy in 2007.

  ‘All my friends, except for the few that I met at business school, are left wing. They’re all from relatively wealthy families working in the media, the arts, law, education, politics. No one I can think of has parents in business and they all vote as their parents do. When I say I voted Sarko the first time around they squeal with disgust.’

  Disgust is the key word. For most French people, Sarko stank of money, or at least the desire for it; and not the right kind of money, either: new money. That is why his Rolex became his emblem.

  I asked Ella why she didn’t vote for him a second time.

  ‘I just couldn’t. Not when he started flirting with the National Front. That was it for me.’

  When in November 2010 Sarkozy launched his so-called ‘national debate’ on the question of French identity it turned out to be the launch pad for a long-term strategy of purloining votes from the far right. The end result of this tactic was 18 per cent of the vote going to Marine Le Pen’s National Front in the first round of the 2012 presidential elections. In vain had people in his party warned him to stop banging on about immigration and halal meat every five minutes and to try to talk about policies. In February 2011 he launched another ‘national debate’ on the ‘place of Islam in France’, strong in the knowledge that a Franco-German poll on the subject had revealed a staggering 42 per cent of French people believed Islam to be a threat to the nation. In April 2011 he went ahead and banned the burqa.

  Unlike the law of 2004, which had banned the Islamic headscarf (hidjab) in French state schools, the wording of the law against the burqa was deceptive and underhand. ‘No one may, in a public place, wear a garment designed to conceal the face.’ No mention this time of religion, or values, or of that sacred cow, la laicité. The campaign surrounding the ban was purposefully ambiguous and designed to suggest that this was not so much about Islam or French identity as it was about some undefined form of practicality. The campaign slogan ‘La République se vit à visage découvert’ can only be loosely translated into English as ‘We live the Republic with our faces uncovered/without a mask.’ It was not surprising in this context that a list of exemptions to the law had to be drawn up and would include motorcycle couriers, carnival revellers and people with bird ’flu. One could not help wondering, too, about someone like Lady Gaga.

  I objected utterly to the ban because I didn’t see how you could fight the oppression of women who are forced to wear something by forcing them not to wear it. It just felt like another layer of oppression to me. Jack and Ella were of course in favour of the ban for, being predominantly French, they saw the burqa as a symbol of oppression.

  On this, as on many things, we agreed to differ.

  In his thirst for power, Sarkozy went too far to the right and lost his centre. His idea was to keep pressing the tender area of French Islamophobia in order to pilfer votes from Marine Le Pen and then, at the last minute, move back into the centre. His own moral bankruptcy prevented him from seeing that France, for all her love of pleasure, is still a deeply moral nation where ideas are precious to whomsoever they may belong.

  * The Economist, 17 November 2012.

  † Guardian, 16 November 2012.

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  Auden, W. H., and Anne Fremantle, The Protestant Mystics (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964)

  Bergson, Henri, Le Rire: Essai sur la Signification du Comique (Alcan, 1900)

  Bloch, Marc, L’Etrange Défaite (Poche, 1990)

  Bonnet, Yves, Nucléaire Iranien, Une Hypocrisie Internationale (Michel Lafon, 2008)

  Bourdrel, Philippe, L’Epuration Sauvage 1944–1945 (Perrin, 2002)

  Buchan, John, Oliver Cromwell (Hodder and Stoughton, 1934)

  Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (Yale University Press, 1992)

  Debord, Guy, La Société du Spectacle (Buchet/Chastel, 1967)

  Deloire, Christophe, and Christophe Dubois, Sexus Politicus (Albin Michel, 2006)

  Freud, Sigmund, and William C. Bullitt, Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967)

  d’Iribarne, Philippe, L’Etrangeté Française (Seuil, 2006)

  Jung, Carl, Aspects of the Feminine (Princeton University Press, 1982)

  Keniston McIntosh, Marjorie, Working Women in English Society 1300–1620 (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

  Michelet, Jules, Notre France (Lemerre, 1886)

  Mitterrand, François, L’Abeille et l’Architecte (Flammarion, 1978)

  Paxton, Robert, La France de Vichy 1940–1944 (Seuil, 1973)

  Peyrefitte, Alain, Le Mal Français (Plon, 1976)

  Revel, Jean-François, L’Obsession anti-Américaine (Plon, 2002)

  Rousso, Henry, Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à Nos Jours (Seuil, 1987)

  Sarkozy, Nicolas, Témoignage (XO Editions, 2006)

  de Tocqueville, Alexis, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (Flammarion, 1998)

  de Tocqueville, Alexis, De la Démocratie en Amérique (Flammarion, 1981)

  Védrine, Hubert, Les Mondes de François Mitterrand (Fayard, 1996)

  Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (Penguin Books, 2002)

  Index

  Abidou, Mohamed, 1

  Acheson, Dean, 1

  Action Française, L’, 1

  Adidas, 1

  Adjani, Isabelle, 1, 2

  Afghanistan, 1, 2, 3n

  Akhenaton, 1

/>   Al Qaeda, 1

  Algeria, Algerians, 1, 2, 3

  Algerian civil war (1991–2002), 1, 2, 3

  Alliot-Marie, Michèle, 1, 2

  Amara, Fadela, 1

  Ameziane, Sami, 1

  Amnesty International, 1

  Ancien Régime, 1, 2, 3

  Anglo-Saxon culture: capitalism, 1; and civic obedience, 1;

  collision with Catholic culture, 1;

  fashioned by Protestantism and feminism, 1;

  immigrants, 1;

  Lévy as an object of derision, 1;

  magazine culture, 1, 2;

  notion of freedom, 1;

  prurience, 1, 2;

  seen as materialistic and lacking in grandeur, 1;

  sex and love, 1;

  transparency, 1

  Angot, Christine, 1

  anti-Americanism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  anti-Arab sentiment, 1, 2

  anti-Semitism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Arab immigrants, 1, 2; youths (beurs), 1, 2

  Ardisson, Thierry, 1

  Atomic Energy Commission (US), 1

  Auden, W. H., 1, 2, 3

  Ayrault, Jean-Marc, 1

  Balladur, Prime Minister Edouard, 1, 2

  Banon, Tristane, 1

  Barbie, Klaus: 1987 trial, 1

  Bardot, Brigitte, 1, 2

  Barthes, Roland, 1

  Barthez, Fabien, 1

  Basque separatists (ETA), 1

  BBC, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Paris, 1, 2

  beauty, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Beauvoir, Simone de, 1

  Beckett, Samuel, 1

  Beckham, David, 1

  Benamou, Georges-Marc, 1

  Benziane, Sohane, 1

  Bergson, Henri, 1

  Bettelheim, Bruno, 1, 2

  Beuve Méry, Hubert, 1

  Bin Laden, Osama, 1

  Birkin, Jane, 1

  Birt, John, 1

  Black Blanc Beur, 1

  Blair, Tony, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Bloch, Marc, 1

  ‘Blue Streak’, 1

  Blum, Léon, 1, 2

  Boegner, Pastor, 1

  Bonnet, Yves, 1

  Bossuet, Bishop Jacques-Benigne, 1

  Boudiaf, General Mohammed, 1

  Boulogne, 1

  Bourdon, Lucien, 1

  Bousquet, René, 1, 2

  Bouteija, Ahmed, 1

  Boutin, Christine, 1

  Bové, José, 1, 2

  Braque, Georges, 1

  breastfeeding, 1, 2

  Breton, André, 1

  Britain: Camp David meeting (1960), 1; consumerism, 1;

  and de Gaulle, 1;

  democracy, reasonableness of, 1;

  French workers in, 1;

  healthcare, 1, 2, 3;

  hostility towards the French, 1;

  Married Women’s Property Act, 1;

  Nassau Agreement, 1, 2;

  National Health Service (NHS), 1;

  relationship with America, 1, 2;

  Second World War, 1, 2, 3

  British intelligence, 1, 2

  Brixton riots, 1

  Bruguière, Jean-Louis, 1

  Bruni, Carla, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Buchan, John, 1

  Buckley, William, 1n

  Bulganin, Premier Nikolai, 1

  Burke, Edmund, 1

  burqa, banning of, 1

  Bush, George W., 1, 2, 3n, 4

  Cameron, David, 1

  Camondo, Paris, 1

  Camp David meeting (1960), 1

  Camus, Albert, 1

  Canal+, 1, 2

  Carlos the Jackal, 1

  Castro, Roland, 1

  Catholic Church, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Catholic Inquisition, 1

  Catholicism, 1, 2, 3, 4; and anti-Semitism, 1;

  approach to faith, 1;

  Catholic We vs. Protestant I, 1, 2, 3;

  collective worship, 1, 2;

  and feminism, 1;

  and Freudian theory, 1

  Cauchon, Pierre, 1

  Cazeneuve, Bernard, 1

  celebrity culture, 1

  Cévennes Mountains, 1, 2, 3

  Cévenols, 1, 2, 3

  Chadli Benjedid, 1

  Chagrin et la Pitié, Le (The Sorrow and the Pity) (documentary film), 1, 2, 3, 4

  Channel 1, 2

  Charles VII, King of France, 1

  Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de, 1

  Chevalier, Maurice, 1

  children’s medication, 1, 2

  Chirac, Jacques, 1, 2, 3; apology for France’s role in extermination of the Jews, 1;

  a bon vivant, 1;

  and culture, 1;

  and the hidjab, 1;

  as mayor of Paris, 1, 2;

  and the media, 1;

  stasis and inaction, 1;

  at the UN, 1;

  ‘Vigipirate Plan’, 1;

  and Zidane, 1, 2

  Churchill, Sir Winston, 1

  CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 1

  Cixous, Hélène, 1, 2

  Clark, Pascale, 1, 2

  Clemenceau, Georges, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Clichy-sous-Bois, 1

  Clinton, Bill, 1

  Closer (magazine), 1

  Cold War, 1, 2, 3, 4

  collaboration, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Colley, Linda, 1

  Colombani, Jean-Marie, 1, 2

  Combat, 1

  Comédie Française, 1

  comedy, the comic, 1, 2, 3

  Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA), 1

  communism, communists, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), 1

  conformism, 1, 2, 3

  congé payé (one-month paid holiday), 1

  Corsica, 1, 2; separatists (FLNC), 1

  counter-intelligence, 1

  Cromwell, Oliver, 1

  CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel), 1

  Cusset, Catherine: Jouir (Climax), 1

  Dachau concentration camp, 1

  Dannecker, Theodor, 1

  DCSA (Direction Centrale de la Sécurité de l’Armée), 1n

  Dearlove, Sir Richard, 1

  Debord, Guy, 1, 2

  Debré, Jean-Louis, 1

  Deferre, Gaston, 1

  Deleuze, Gilles, 1, 2

  Delors, Jacques, 1

  demonstrations, mass, 1

  Deneuve, Catherine, 1

  denunciation, letters of, 1, 2

  Depardon, Raymond, 1

  Derrida, Jacques, 1

  Descartes, René, 1, 2

  Despentes, Virginie, 1

  Devaquet Project, 1

  DGSE (intelligence service), 1, 2

  Diallo, Nafissatou, 1, 2, 3

  Djorkaeff, Youri, 1

  Drancy internment camp, 1, 2

  drugs, medicines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Duras, Marguerite, 1, 2

  Ecole de la République, 1

  Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1

  Ecole Polytechnique, 1

  Ecole Publique, L’ (State school), 1

  Economist, The, 1, 2, 3

  Eden, Anthony (later Earl of Avon), 1

  education: agrégation, 1; and autism, 1;

  baccalaureate, 1, 2, 3;

  CAPES (teaching–training programme), 1;

  Church schools, 1;

  Civic Education, 1;

  the Devaquet Project, 1;

  early, 1;

  equality, 1;

  Grandes Ecoles, 1, 2;

  L’Ecole Publique (State school), 1;

  meritocracy, 1;

  and the norm, 1;

  Normale (Ecole Normale Supérieure), 1;

  psychiatric supervision, 1, 2;

  reforms, 1;

  and the republican dream, 1, 2;

  rural, 1, 2;

  Steiner schools, 1;

  subsidising, 1;

  universities, 1

  Eichmann, Adolf, 1


  Eisenhower, Dwight, 1

  Elysée Palace, Paris, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration), 1

  Épuration, L’ (purge), 1

  equality, 1, 2;

  and healthcare, 1;

  and immigrants, 1, 2, 3;

  and nobility, 1, 2;

  within a hierarchy, 1, 2, 3

  Estonia, 1

  Eté Meurtrier, L’ (film), 1

  EU agricultural quotas, 1

  Fabius, Laurent, 1, 2

  farming, 1

  Febvre, Roselyne, 1

  Fédération Paysanne, La (anti-globalisation movement), 1

  feminism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Fifth Republic, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Figures, Colin, 1

  Final Solution, 1

  First World War, 1, 2

  Fitoussi, Michèle, 1

  Fitzgerald, Francis Scott, 1

  football, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Foucault, Michel, 1

  Fouquet’s restaurant, Paris, 1

  Fourth Republic, 1

  France Télécom, 1

  France Télévisions, 1

  freedom, 1, 2, 3, 4

  French Army, 1, 2, 3

  French cinema, 1

  French Communist Party see PCF

  French language, 1, 2, 3, 4

  French literature, 1

  French nationality application, 1

  French Navy, 1

  French Public Service, 1

  French Resistance, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

  French Revolution, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

  Freud, Sigmund, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Freudian psychoanalysis, 1, 2, 3, 4

  G8 conference (St Petersburg, 2006), 1

  Gainsbourg, Serge, 1

  Gallimard, 1

  Gallois, Louis, 1

  Gallois, Pierre-Marie, 1