Mitterrand

by Philip Short

  2. Britain received a rebate of 1.175 billion euros in 1980 and 1.41 billion in 1981.

  3. The Euro was not created until 1999, but its predecessors, the MEUA, or European Unit of Account, and the Ecu, or European Currency Unit, which were used for internal accounting among EEC countries, had the same value against national currencies. I have therefore used the term Euro throughout.

  4. Attali quoted him as having said as early as May 1982: ‘The question of Britain’s presence in the Community is now raised.’

  5. Attali, Jacques, Verbatim, Vol. 1, 1981–86, Fayard, 1993, pp. 641–2.

  6. The memorandum on which the plan was based was prepared by Elizabeth Guigou at the Elysée.

  7. Howe made the comment during a discussion with a group of British journalists in Paris, the writer among them, shortly after the Fontainebleau summit.

  8. With the passage of time, Thatcher herself began to believe that she had triumphed. At a banquet in Buckingham Palace on October 23 1984, she told the French President, ‘I thank you for yielding to me at Fontainebleau because that enabled us to open the way for Europe . . .’, to which Mitterrand replied, ‘I don’t wish to argue with you over the word “yield”: what matters is that you believe it.’

  9. Meeting with Helmut Kohl, October 4 1982, cited in Schabert, Tilo, Mitterrand et la réunification allemande, Grasset, 2002, p. 88.

  10. Mitterrand always insisted that the gesture had been spontaneous. Christina Forsne, who questioned him at length about it, wrote that the decision had been taken some months earlier.

  11. Modest attempts had been made to increase the powers of the conseils généraux and town councils in 1871 and 1884, but important decisions remained subject to approval by the préfet, which meant that in practice they were taken by the central government.

  12. Savary’s family certainly thought so. At his death in February 1988, they let it be known that Mitterrand would not be welcome at the funeral. When the Elysée sought clarification, his widow allowed that ‘the presence of the President of the Republic would be an honour’, meaning that if Mitterrand insisted on attending, which he did, it would be in his role as Head of State not as a former colleague.

  13. Cabinet minutes, December 21 1983, cited in Favier, Pierre and Martin-Roland, Michel, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 2, Seuil, 1991, pp. 110–12.

  14. In November 1983, Mitterrand told Monseigneur Vilnet, the President of the Episcopal Conference: ‘We will let the normal parliamentary and ministerial procedures play out, but there is no question of allowing private or Catholic schools to be stifled. Count on me, I am watching!’ The following December and January, he told Cardinal Lustiger that he did not think Savary’s proposals would become law.

  15. A new law was necessary because the decentralisation programme, enacted in 1982, devolved greater powers to the communes, which could no longer be obliged by administrative fiat to subsidise private schools in their jurisdictions.

  16. Mitterrand behaved callously towards Savary, giving him no advance notice of his announcement on July 12 and refusing to receive him after he formally confirmed the withdrawal of the schools bill two days later. It is difficult to interpret that as anything other than small-minded revenge for Savary’s slights in the 1960s. The Minister told Mauroy on July 13 that he intended to resign. He sent Mitterrand his resignation letter on the 16th. Mauroy and the rest of the government followed suit on the evening of July 17.

  17. At the time of his appointment, Fabius had a 60 per cent approval rating, and his rating remained above or close to 50 per cent until November 1985. Mitterrand’s popularity was in negative territory from June 1983 to March 1986, falling to 26 per cent in November 1984. By comparison, de Gaulle consistently obtained an approval rating of more than 50 per cent (with one brief drop to 49 per cent in 1963), while Pompidou had even higher ratings until his death in 1974. Giscard was in positive territory until the last four months of his presidency, when his approval rating fell to 42 per cent. Mitterrand’s successors were even more unpopular than he had been: Jacques Chirac fell in 2006 to 16 per cent of favourable opinions and Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2010, to 20 per cent.

  18. This became more marked after Fabius took over in July 1984. According to Jean-Louis Bianco, Mitterrand thought it necessary to stress the Prime Minister’s independence because of his youth and their previous relationship as mentor and protégé. This was not without risks. In December 1985, the President, without informing Fabius beforehand, decided to receive the Polish leader, General Jaruzelski, who had been execrated in the West since he had declared martial law four years earlier. The Prime Minister was furious and told parliament he was ‘troubled’ by the President’s action, an open breach of protocol which provoked a political crisis and ended with him offering his resignation. Mitterrand, then travelling in the French West Indies, responded with a fable. There were two monkeys in a laboratory, he said, an old monkey and a young one. Both were given electric shocks. The young monkey, who received them rarely, yelped each time in distress and soon died. The old monkey, who received them constantly, thought it was normal and lived for years.

  19. De Gaulle was also a master of ‘giving time to time’, retiring to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises for a decade to write his memoirs while awaiting the call to return to power.

  20. Le Monde, April 6 1984.

  21. The catastrophic performance of Marchais’s list in 1984 almost caused his downfall. But Charles Fiterman, the Communist Transport Minister, whom the Secretary-General’s opponents on the liberal wing of the Party saw as a potential successor, refused to come out openly against him. After ten days of uncertainty, Marchais was able to reassert his authority and the last chance of bringing the French Communist Party into the modern world was definitively lost.

  22. Meeting with President Reagan, Washington, March 22 1984, in CHAN 5AG4 CD74, dossier 1.

  23. Meeting with Konstantin Chernenko, Moscow, June 21 1984, cited in Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 1, pp. 654–5.

  24. According to Charles Salzmann, who took notes, the subject was raised ‘in passing, almost discreetly’.

  25. Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 1, pp. 654–5 and Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 2, p. 226.

  26. The participants’ memories of this conversation differ. According to Salzmann, Mitterrand asked Chernenko about the state of Soviet agriculture and Gorbachev replied in his place. Favier and Martin-Roland give a different version in which Mitterrand, rather than Chernenko, asks: ‘Since when?’ The version quoted here is taken mainly from Attali, whose account in this instance appears the most reliable. All three agree on Gorbachev’s reply.

  27. Recalling their conversation, more than six years later, Mitterrand said that that was the impression Gorbachev had given him ‘between the lines’. Neither the words he quoted nor anything similar appears in the lengthy account of the conversation given by Attali, who had access to the official transcript. While it is possible that Mitterrand’s memories of the meeting were coloured by later events, Gorbachev wrote afterwards that he was already convinced before Chernenko’s death that the Soviet system could not continue as it was and that what would become known as perestroika and glasnost would be necessary to change it.

  28. The regularity with which the hand of the CIA appeared in press leaks, going back to 1983, designed to deepen the hostility between Paris and Moscow, is hard to explain as anything other than a deliberate campaign of disinformation – of the kind which all intelligence services engage in, but which, because of the importance of the media in America, has become more developed there than elsewhere.

  29. The Americans claimed that Mitterrand dismissed Bonnet because he was convinced that Farewell’s materials had been planted by the CIA and blamed the DST for failing to discover the supposed manipulation. The chronology does not hold up. Bonnet had been appointed in November 1982 – many months after Farewell had fallen silent – and could therefore have had nothing to do with any supposed CIA plot. He was fired f
or leaking information about the case without political authorisation. Among the ‘collateral damage’ resulting from the Le Monde report was Mitterrand’s decision to place Edwy Plenel, the investigative reporter who broke the story, under surveillance by Prouteau’s ‘cell’ at the Elysée. There was no legal basis for doing so and when it came to light, some years later, it triggered a long-running scandal about politically motivated phone-tapping.

  30. Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 1, pp. 806–7.

  31. Cabinet minutes, cited in Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 2, p. 248.

  32. Mitterrand acknowledged as much to Gorbachev when they met: ‘France is a country which is proud of its independence. Of course we know how the world and the balance of forces in it have evolved, and the pre-eminent weight of the United States and the USSR. But we have preserved our autonomy in decision-making’.

  33. Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 1, pp. 857–61.

  34. Ibid.

  35. At a Cabinet meeting after Gorbachev’s departure, Mitterrand wondered aloud about the possibility of a looser relationship between Moscow and its east European satellites: ‘It could mark the start of a revolution which would also be a relief [to the Soviet Union]. Certainly the Russians exploit the eastern European countries, but it has to be said that these countries also cost them a lot.’

  36. The DGSE (at that time, the SDECE) began regular surveillance of Greenpeace’s activities around Mururoa in 1972. From 1976 until 1984 there was relatively little activity. But in September 1984, the DGSE sent Hernu and Fabius an ‘information note’ on Greenpeace, describing the organisation’s alleged links with pro-Soviet interests and concluding that it posed a danger to French interests ‘because of its capacity for investigation and propaganda work’.

  37. The possibility of ‘anticipating’ the Greenpeace campaign was first discussed on November 12 1984 at a meeting attended by Fabius, Hernu and Admiral Henri Fages, the Commander of the French fleet in the Pacific.

  38. Lacoste stated afterwards that, on March 19 1985, Hernu ordered him to ‘arrange for the DGSE to stop Greenpeace carrying out its plans to intervene against the French nuclear testing programme at Mururoa’. The Minister talked to Lacoste about it again on May 6, insisting on the importance of putting the Rainbow Warrior out of action. Lacoste wrote in his memoirs that Hernu had confirmed the decision at a meeting on the morning of July 4, six days before the vessel was blown up.

  39. Lacoste said afterwards that during the meeting with Mitterrand, ‘Without entering into detail, I referred to Mr Hernu’s intentions.’

  40. The threat of a French boycott of New Zealand produce proving insufficient, the following year the Foreign Trade Minister, Michel Noir, threatened to block the renewal of New Zealand’s trade privileges with the whole of the EEC. That forced the New Zealand Prime Minister, David Lange, to agree to arbitration by the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar. Under the ‘arrangement’ which Perez de Cuellar worked out, the two agents were transferred to Hao, in French Polynesia, in July 1986, after serving only a year in a New Zealand prison.

  41. Hernu admitted as much to Roland Dumas in late July or at the beginning of August, telling him: ‘Yes, it was a wartime operation that went wrong, like many others.’

  42. Mitterrand did not lie. He was never asked point blank whether he had ordered the attack on the Rainbow Warrior and, had that question been put to him, he could have answered in all honesty that he had not. But he deliberately misled the country by making it appear that he had no knowledge of what had happened.

  43. Nonetheless, Mitterrand defended Hernu to the end. He told Attali on the eve of his ‘resignation’: ‘Hernu must go. He had nothing to do with it, but that’s how it is.’ Six days later, when Fabius publicly ascribed to Hernu the responsibility for ordering the attack, Mitterrand shook his head and said, ‘he merely covered up for it’. Why did Mitterrand try to hide, even in private, the extent of Hernu’s implication, when he knew very well that Hernu had been at the origin of the affair? One can only surmise that he was embarrassed at having had to sacrifice a loyal friend to protect his own position.

  44. According to Gilles Ménage the crucial information about the ‘third team’ came from an indiscretion by an adviser at the Elysée. Lacoste thought that Pierre Joxe had authorised the leak to Le Monde through his press adviser, Guy Perrimond, in order to force Mitterrand to confront Hernu and bring the affair to an end.

  45. Ménage, L’œil du pouvoir, Vol. 3, pp. 316 & 318.

  46. Note from Robert Badinter to Mitterrand, c. October 24 1985, cited in ibid., p. 363.

  47. Marie Seurat, cited in ibid., pp. 604–5.

  48. The first US hostage to be freed as a result of the ‘Irangate’ arms shipments, an American pastor, was released on September 14 1985. A few days later the Lebanese press quoted ‘diplomatic sources’ as saying that it was the result of an arms deal between the US, Israel and Iran. The White House immediately issued a denial. Two other US hostages were freed in 1986. When the French discovered what Reagan had been up to, they were outraged. ‘This double game,’ Ménage wrote, ‘is not only a dereliction of the solidarity and morality which they [the Americans] proclaim from the rooftops. It’s going to end by convincing the kidnappers – the fundamentalist groups and their Iranian bosses – that they can obtain more and more from the “Great Satan” – and how much more from the “Little Satan” – provided they turn up the pressure ever more harshly.’ In what way Reagan’s decision to exchange American hostages for arms was different from Mitterrand’s subsequent decision to exchange – albeit with certain face-saving conditions – French hostages for an Iranian assassination squad, Ménage did not explain.

  49. Curiously neither Mitterrand nor his advisers drew a parallel between the role of the Syrian government in the 1982 attack on the Al watan al arabi newspaper in Paris and the possible role of the Iranian government in the hostage-taking and related bomb attacks three years later. In French eyes, it was one thing for a government to seek to neutralise domestic opponents on foreign soil and quite another for it to use terror as an adjunct to diplomacy in dealings with foreign governments. To Iran, as to Libya and Syria, the two were exactly the same.

  50. Assad’s emissary, Dr Iskandar Louka, arrived in Paris on September 24. Mitterrand replied the following day.

  51. Mitterrand’s revised offer was contained in a telegram from the French Foreign Ministry to the Ambassador in Damascus, Henri Servant, on December 25 1985.

  52. Badinter to Mitterrand, January 3 1986, cited in Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 2, pp. 512–13.

  53. The chronology was as follows: on January 2, Mohamed Sadegh, an Iranian representative, spoke of Iran’s desire for clearer assurances from Mitterrand but did not give the impression that the exchange was in any way threatened; on January 5, Assad told Mitterrand that a difficulty had arisen but the deal should still go through; the following day the French felt that the Syrians were pulling back; on January 7, Sadegh was told by Teheran that the exchange was off; on January 10, Islamic Jihad issued a statement in Beirut, admitting a ‘sharp deterioration’ in the health of one of the hostages, ‘which could threaten his life’. Jean-Paul Kauffmann later reported that in mid-January there was unusual agitation among the kidnappers, after which he no longer heard Seurat coughing in a nearby cell. On February 6, GCHQ Cheltenham in Britain intercepted a message to Teheran from the Iranian Ambassador in Damascus in which he spoke of ‘a bird who has flown his cage’. The French specialists who analysed the intercept assumed that one of the hostages had died but assumed wrongly that it was Marcel Carton, who suffered from heart disease. It was not until a month later that Seurat’s death was confirmed. The inference is that the kidnappers’ handlers in Teheran must have been told that Seurat was dying at some point between January 2 and 4. Assad was clearly unaware of it when he wrote to Mitterrand on January 4. Syrian intelligence was probably informed shortly afterwards, between January 6
and 10.

  54. The Iranians claimed that Dr Reza Raad, a Lebanese-born Frenchman from Chirac’s RPR party who had acted as an intermediary between the French government and unnamed ‘associates’ of the kidnappers, had told them the opposition might agree to exchange the hostages against Naccache and all his companions, instead of against Naccache alone with the other four to follow later. Neither this nor other Iranian accounts can be taken at face value and Raad afterwards strongly denied them. However, Chirac himself confirmed on several occasions that he had ‘intervened a lot’ to try to secure the hostages’ release and told Mitterrand some months after: ‘I thought in January that I would be able to bring them back and I was getting ready to telephone you to tell you.’ That does not prove that Chirac’s emissaries undercut the government’s negotiations, but it undermines his claim that his emissaries engaged only in ‘exploratory’ discussions.

  55. In August 1981, Mitterrand described his programme as ‘radical social-democracy’. Two years later the word ‘radical’ had dropped from his vocabulary.

  56. Most serious studies have concluded that voters rarely moved directly from the Communist Party to the National Front. Instead, scholars claimed, ex-Communists switched their votes to the Socialists, to the extreme Left, to the RPR and in a few cases to centrist parties, while mainstream right-wing voters – notably the shopkeepers and artisans who twenty-five years earlier had supported Pierre Poujade – shifted to the National Front. There are reasons to question that. Until very recently, opinion polls systematically underestimated the Front’s electoral support because a sizeable proportion of those questioned were unwilling to admit voting for what was seen as a racist party. The proportion of ex-Communists voting National Front was almost certainly greater than the surveys showed.

  57. Mitterrand at Lille, February 7 1986, in http://miroirs.ironie.org/socialisme/​www.psinfo.net/entretiens/mitterrand/1986lille.html