Monday, January 15, 2007

Sacre Bleu!

Just occasionally a news story comes up that makes you just say "NO WAY! That must be an April Fools Joke but its not April 1st!"

On September 10th 1956 the French Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, arrived in London for talks with the British PM, Sir Anthony Eden. Mollet needed British help with Egyptian President Nasser over Suez and Algeria. Tension was also growing between Israel (an ally of France) and Jordan (an ally of Britain). If events got out of control there, French and British soldiers could soon be fighting each other.

Mollet's proposal was, shall we say, radical. He proposed a Union between Britain and France

So, when Eden turned down his request for a union between France and Britain the French prime minister came up with another proposal. When Eden visited Paris, Mollet requested that France be allowed to join the British Commonwealth with the Queen as nominal head of state.

Can you imagine it?

There is a program on Radio 4 at 8pm tonight about this and more information can be found here.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I heard this on the news this morning, and it sounded so strange I decided I must have imagined it because I was still half asleep.

St Jude said...

I've been listening to this as well, I wonder how it would have affected us had it happened?

Jan said...

I like French accents. :D

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