Political commentary
The uses of rudeness
Ferdinand Mount
It is doubtful whether the poet Joachim du BeIlay was working to the right brief when he described France as 'mere des arts, des armes et des loix.' As far as the laws of the Common Market are concerned, France currently appears to be duffing them up so their own mother wouldn't know them. Du BeIlay was nearer the mark when he pointed out that les autres agneaux Wont faute de pasture' — a prophetic reference to France's illegal ban on the entry of British lamb. In general, the face France presents to the outside world has less of the `douceur Angevine' than the sour rapacity of a madame at the caisse. While our lamb is being turned away from the Brittany ports, over at Boulogne French fishermen are, it seems, busily hauling in shoals of herring in defiance of the ban on herring fishing in EEC waters, which was imposed for soundly based reasons of conservation.
Throughout the 20th century, French policy on overseas trade has been unremittingly grasping and ruthless — sorry, hardnosed and independent-minded — ever since the wretched Monsieur Klotz tried to screw the last ounce of gold out of the defeated and destitute Germans at the Paris peace negotiations. How Keynes relished the sight of Lloyd George in full cry: 'Women and children were starving, he cried, and here was Mr Klotz prating and prating of his "goold" '. These days, it seems, the children are massacred if not actually eaten, and Giscard takes payment in diamonds (ought not to go on like this, of course, grossly unfair on a valued Community partner, but the baser passions must have their outlet).
Mrs Thatcher's first modest efforts at being rough with foreigners have provoked nervous caveats in assorted quarters. No less a diplomatic authority than Mr Norman Atkinson, the left-wing heavy from Tottenham, said he had heard 'informally' that the Foreign Office was disturbed by the immaturity of her response to Mr Brezhnev — a demarche which was greeted with coarse shouts of 'Which Foreign Office?'
It does seem to be true, though, that senior British officials not a million miles from the Foreign Secretary do seem concerned that she may be taking on more than she has bargained for in demanding so unbendingly a reduction in Britain's contribution to the EEC Budget and that she may find she has .aroused expectations of next month's Dublin Summit which she can neither fulfil nor easily slide out of. She seems to have taken some notice of this warning, to judge by her emphatic pledges in the Commons on Tuesday not to take unilateral or illegal action.
The idea is to point out what good Europeans we are. We instal tachographs in our lorries when the European Court tells us to. And in the true Community spirit we sweep away all exchange controls — an exhilarating surprise with which Sir Geoffrey Howe really did stun Tory and Labour MPs alike. The surprise itself reveals how long imprisonment diminishes expectations. After all, at each stage in the removal of controls the Chancellor did say that he intended to do more. But after 40 years inside, the daylight makes you blink.
There are, all the same, few signs that any other member of the EEC is prepared to offer Britain more than sympathy, and some are not prepared to offer even that. On the Continent, the huge size of Britain's impending EEC Budget deficit in the early Eighties, rising from £1 billion (or £1,000 million in Old-Count) to £1i billion, is regarded as due to our reluctance to buy their food — bur surely the corollary is that they should buy ours. France's seasonal ban on British lamb — which, it must be remembered, has been imposed in each of the past three years — is an attack on the only sector of the British livestock industry which has not been in decline. Far from our farmers benefiting from the high price levels supported by EEC taxpayers, they, like British manufactured goods, are often kept out of European markets by a host of fiendish Continental devices. Vital forms go astray. Goods are mysteriously left on the quayside. Is it possible that we have a touch of persecution mania because we are being persecuted?
Choleric expostulation of this sort is always rebuffed by an uncomprehending and incomprehensible Eurospeak — and not just from the French. Even the great and good Luigi Barzini, when I said that, before elaborating any further grandiose dreams of One Europe, there was this little matter of £1,000 million-odd, sighed 'you English, still a nation of shopkeepers'. Any of our partners, if asked to pay this kind of money for no material return, would of course do so with a smile.
British official opinion — that is, the opinion of senior civil servants, Eurocrats and respectable politicians — has still not woken up to the advantages of being rude. And I don't mean tough-minded or hard-nosed; I mean gruff, obstructive, bloody-minded in the tradition of the Quai d'Orsay and the National Graphical Association, In fact,
Spectator 27 October 1979 rude. The most obvious advantage is that you often get what you want — not always but often. Another consistent advantage is that your adversaries then know what you want, and have no excuse for pretending that they do not know or for misinterpreting
your words and actions. •Best of all is the feeling of your constituents that they are being spoken up for and that the negotiations are not some mysterious game reserved for elites. Relative weakness is no barrier. During his London exile De Gaulle never thought of keeping quiet merely because his writ ran no further than the French pub in Dean Street and the Petit Club Francais in St James'. • Tne real fallacy of polite i opinion s to assume that expectations at best half fulfilled must necessarily induce a feeling of let-down — which might turn into an irremediable disgust with the Common Market leading to an irresistible demand for withdrawal. I think this view mistakes the nature and intensity both of British popular antipathy to the COMMIIIIity and of political expectations in general. Most people have little active dislike of the EEC; bafflement and suspicion yes, ennui certainly, but not loathing. And the expectations you have of politicians are not quite the same as the expectations you have of .a laundry; when they let you down badly, it is not solely because they have failed to deliver but because they have failed to articulate your demand or strive conspicuously on your behalf. Being nasty to the French is not simply a tactic to achieve justice; it is part of the achievement. It ts itself an act of political representation. People would feel far more let down if they thought the British case had gone by default. Besides, Mrs Thatcher enjoys a bizarre windfall, viz, the whole-hearted and undundivided support of the Labour Party. On this issue at least, Tory MPs cannot voice their usual complaints about how magnificentlY loyal they are in opposition compared with the treacherous faction on the other benches. Indeed, there was a peculiar little motion passed without a vote after a threehour debate in the Commons on 16 July to the effect that the Government was 'to press for a fundamental reform of the budgetary arrangements so that Britain's contribution to the Budget is at least not greater than the receipts.' On the question of the Budget IVIrs,. Thatcher has stumbled into the position of being able to deploy a national bipartisan policy — as the Gaullists have always could, able to, and as Callaghan never really because the Tories were always playing more-European-than-thou. And if this icy works even moderately well, it might begin to cement British public opinion permanently in favour of membership. The paradox would be that those ants Marketeers who regard our membership al, a concrete overcoat would have played dietr part in the cementing. Will the time come, when Carlton House Gardens is renamed the Boulevard of the 16 July?
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