Britain should cherish its special relationship with France - Yorkshire Post Letters

The State Visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte from 8th through 10th July is the sixth such visit by a French Head of State over the past 70 years. No other country’s leader has been so frequently honoured. The visit to be made later in 2025 by the current American President is the fourth. Possibly one too many?

Those who maintain that Britain is not a European country because it’s an island nation should reflect on how deeply interwoven Britain’s history is with that of France. There’s a unique intimacy to the relationship between our two countries who this past thousand years have acted more as feuding brothers than distant cousins.

Readers might be surprised to know how close England and France came to sharing a sovereign in the Middle Ages. Shakespeare’s Henry V was a distortion. The objective of the Hundred Years War wasn’t English victory over France but the potential unity of the two countries under one king.

An Act of Union was proposed to meet the requirements of 1940. The vocabulary of English, although less the structure, is heavily influenced by French and liberty, equality and fraternity are as much British aspirations as French. I made my living as a teacher of French and relished subjecting young people for 30 years to the finer points of the imperfect subjunctive.

Britain and France were last on opposing sides in war at Waterloo in 1815. Our armies first fought together in the Crimean War some 170 years ago and then in the two world wars.

The Anglo-French attempt to capture the Suez Canal in 1956 was a disaster at a time when the two nations were busy shedding colonial responsibilities. France became a founder member of the Common Market now the European Union whereas Britain allowed its foreign policy to be determined by American voters. Incomprehensible.

If Britain has a ‘special relationship’ it’s with France, the partner European country that has been a beacon of democracy and guarantor of European defence for the last 150 years.

The folly of Brexit and the nasty xenophobic isolationist Tories who revelled in preventing French school children from visiting England damaged these links. Now is the time to rebuild with goodwill on both sides. It should be possible to make a bilateral arrangement with France so that young people can benefit from the life-enhancing experiences that come from gaining language proficiency while immersed in French culture.

Meanwhile I wish our King well in receiving the Macrons. I’m sure that he’ll be relieved at not being required to wrestle publicly with the French leader as his forebear Henry VIII did with the French king François I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold near Calais in 1520. Henry lost.