De Gaulle's love of Ireland based on ideal of fatherland

Alain Peyrefitte was one of de Gaulle's closest collaborators. In his capacity as minister for information and government spokesman, not only was he allowed to take extensive notes during cabinet meetings, he also had innumerable private discussions with the founder of the French Fifth Republic in the Salon Dore on the first floor of the Elysee Palace, which remained the office of Georges Pompidou and Francois Mitterrand.

Three years ago Peyrefitte decided it was about time to publish, under the title C'etait de Gaulle, an edited version of the daily notes he took between 1958 and 1963. In spite of its length, nearly 600 pages, the book was an instant best-seller.

A second volume of 650 pages, covering the years 1963-1966, has just been published. It has received the same enthusiastic response from the public and the media. No future historian will be able to study this important phase of French contemporary politics without consulting the two volumes of C'etait de Gaulle, soon to be completed by a third covering the last years in office of the first President of the Fifth Republic.

In a fascinating chapter entitled Nations and Europe, Peyrefitte recalls exchanges of views on Yugoslavia and Ireland. For de Gaulle the former was not a nation: "As soon as Tito will have disappeared, he said, the Croats, the Serbs and the Bosnians will fight each other with the same passion with which they fought the Germans."

On the contrary, Ireland was without question a nation and one towards which he felt much sympathy. On November 27th, 1963, he stated his reasons. Having been asked by Peyrefitte, "You have received the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Frank Aiken. Did he push his country's candidature to the Common Market?", de Gaulle answered: "Not really. He urged me to accept an invitation to visit Ireland, next year if possible. I didn't say no. The Irish constitute a real nation, a true fatherland. They remained faithful to themselves, to their culture, to their religion, to their personality. They can be a counterweight to England, so great is their dislike towards their neighbour.

"They know what it is to have been a satellite and to have ceased to be so by the sheer strength of their will, even if it meant one fighting against twenty. I will probably accept this invitation, but certainly not next year as I am travelling too much already."

Peyrefitte fails to mention that de Gaulle had a few drops of Irish blood; his maternal great-grandmother, Marie-Angelique McCartan, being herself the great grand-daughter of a McCartan who, as a small child, had fled Co Down in Northern Ireland to accompany his Wild Goose father to France after the Williamite war.

But he stresses that the love of Ireland was indeed a tradition in the de Gaulle family, so much so that Josephine Maillot, the general's grandmother, had written a biography of Daniel O'Connell which may have influenced her grandson who was destined to enter history as the liberator of France.

Having discussed the state of the Irish economy, de Gaulle said abruptly to his interlocutor: "You know, Ireland's entry in the Common Market would be a good thing for Europe and a good thing for France."

Peyrefitte asked: "For historical or political reasons?" De Gaulle answered: "They are one and the same thing. Frank Aiken told me that Ireland, after having been cut off from Europe by the English during 700 years, was terribly eager to be linked to it. The English have treated the Irish somewhat like the French in Canada, which is to say like slaves."

After the cabinet meeting of June 17th, 1964, at which the minister for foreign Affairs, Couve de Murville, reported favourably on his visit to Dublin, de Gaulle gave firm instructions to the government's spokesman: "Do insist on the fact that we see Ireland as different from Britain. Ireland is not an Anglo-Saxon country! It has resisted the Anglo-Saxon pressure for centuries. It has preserved its personality."

Does it mean that there can be an association between Ireland and the Common Market, inquired Peyrefitte. "Don't go too far", said de Gaulle. "It will take shape by degrees. After, we will see. In any case, there will be a special link between Europe and Ireland. France is in favour of it. It must be said."

He emphasised this last point: "France supports the establishment of links between Ireland and Europe. It will probably be the same for Spain and Greece. Why would Ireland not become a member of the Common Market? She does not need England for that. If there is a sponsorship that Ireland doesn't want, it is the English one."

Not only was de Gaulle determined to keep Britain out of the Common Market, suggested Peyrefitte, he would have been happy to provoke her wrath by welcoming Ireland into it. This may explain why Sean Lemass and Jack Lynch did not react too critically to the 1963 and 1967 votes on Irish membership which were seen in a quite different light from Britain's rebuff. De Gaulle did not pay a state visit to Ireland, but he chose the country of his ancestors to spend the six weeks following his resignation from the Presidency of France after the failure of his referendum on the regions.

At a farewell lunch in Dublin Castle on June 19th, 1969, he said: "In the important circumstances of my life at the moment, it was a kind of instinct which brought me to Ireland. Perhaps it was because of the Irish blood which flows in my veins, for we always come back to our origins, but also because it was to Ireland, which has always held, and still holds today, a special place in the hearts of Frenchmen."

Pierre Joannon is Honorary Consul General of Ireland in the south of France and chairman of the Ireland Fund of France. The collection of essays on De Gaulle and Ireland is published by the Institute of Public Administration