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The Soames Affair 63
reiterated old opinions on Anglo-European and Anglo-American relations, and
castigated Britain for failing to achieve a ‘totally independent position’ in the world
as France had. The ‘whole essence’ of a ‘European entity’ must be ‘an independent
position in world terms’. ‘Independence’ did not mean leaving NATO, but eventually
there would be no need for that institution, ‘with its American dominance’. 11
De Gaulle continued that he had no particular faith in the EC. He would like to
see it change
‘into a looser form of free trade association with arrangements by each country to
exchange agricultural produce’.
He would gladly talk to HMG about this idea, and was ‘anxious to have
political discussions with us’. There should be ‘a large European economic
association, but with a smaller inner council of a European political association
consisting of France and Britain, Germany and Italy’. First he wanted to build a
‘specifically Franco-British bond’, based on ‘a genuine desire to build something in
Europe together’. HMG should suggest talks, which he would welcome. Pressed by
Soames, de Gaulle conceded that he might issue an invitation to bilateral talks, but
he must first know if the British were interested. He hoped that
‘his proposition would be secret until we decide to have talks. If we did decide to do
so, the fact would then of course be public’.
He hoped to meet Wilson soon to discuss Europe. 12 All the factors that later led
to controversy are therefore present in Soames’ account: the replacement of the EC
by a looser association and disappearance of NATO, the creation of a political
‘inner council’ and the request for secrecy.
What was de Gaulle trying to achieve? Maurice Vaïsse noted that both de Gaulle
and the French Foreign minister, Michel Debré, stressed that Soames had pressed
for a meeting: they saw him as being keen to effect an Anglo-French reconciliation.
At the same time, however, French freedom of manoeuvre in foreign policy had
been tightly restricted by both its domestic and its international circumstances. At
home, the repercussions of May 1968 were still playing out and the value of the
franc was continually threatened. Internationally, France was isolated in Europe.
French policy towards the Soviet Union had been discredited by the Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia, while relations with the United States were still
chilly. 13 Debré, himself unusually anglophile for a French Foreign minister (and
especially in comparison to his predecessor, Maurice Couve de Murville),
suggested that the general’s proposals were the beginning of a French attempt to
forestall an impasse in the forthcoming Community discussions on a definitive
common agricultural policy. Opening the door to British accession and seeking
issues on which the French and British might take similar positions, such as
‘l’organisation d’une Europe sans supranationalité’, might be a way to end the
11. Telegram, Paris to FCO, 5 February 1969, No.123, UKNA/PREM/13/2628.
12. Telegram, Paris to FCO, 5 February 1969, No.124, UKNA/PREM/13/2628.
13. M. VAÏSSE, La grandeur: Politique étrangère du géneral de Gaulle 1958-1969, Fayard, Paris,
1998, p.613.