Britain and France, almost one country.
They fought each other for centuries. Napoleon spent most of his career trying to beat Britain. And yet, twice in the 20th century, Britain and France came close to becoming a single country.
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June 1940: France is falling
In May 1940 Germany attacked in the west, and within weeks the French army was collapsing. Paris fell on 14 June. The French government had fled to Bordeaux, and its ministers were split between fighting on from the empire and asking Germany for terms.
In London, a small group was looking for anything that might keep France in the war. It included Jean Monnet, a French businessman and diplomat who would later help create what became the European Union.
"No longer two nations, but one"
On 16 June 1940, Winston Churchill's War Cabinet approved an extraordinary text, the Declaration of Union. It said France and Great Britain would no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. There would be joint citizenship, joint bodies for defence, foreign policy, finance and the economy, and a single war cabinet for the duration of the war.
Charles de Gaulle, then a junior French minister in London, read the text down the telephone to the French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, in Bordeaux. Reynaud was delighted.
Rejected in an evening
His cabinet was not. Many ministers saw it as a British trick to take over France's empire. Marshal Philippe Pétain is reported to have called it fusion with a corpse. That night Reynaud resigned, Pétain became head of government, and he asked Germany for an armistice, which was signed on 22 June 1940. De Gaulle stayed in London and started the Free French.
1956: France asks again
The idea came back sixteen years later, from the other side. In 1956, during the tension that led to the Suez crisis, the French prime minister Guy Mollet raised the idea of a union between France and Britain with the British prime minister Anthony Eden, and then the idea of France joining the Commonwealth. Eden was not interested.
The story stayed largely forgotten until British government papers released in 2007 brought it back into the news.
- 14 June 1940 Paris falls
- 16 June 1940 Britain offers the Franco-British Union; Reynaud resigns that night
- 22 June 1940 France signs an armistice with Germany
- 1956 Guy Mollet raises a union with Britain
- 2007 British papers bring the 1956 idea to light
Sources
- Franco-British Union, Wikipedia
- When Britain and France nearly married, BBC News, 2007