Guy Môquet
I would be very interested to know what other people think of this Guy Môquet business – I have very mixed views. For those living outside France, who probably have no idea that a huge fuss is being made today, the following may seem somewhat bewildering. Guy Môquet was a young Communist picked up by the French police on the 15th October 1940. His offence was fly-posting Communist propaganda (an action made illegal by the French Daladier Government in September 1939, well before the German occupation). A year and a week later [corrected from a week] Môquet was shot, along with 26 other Communists, by the German forces as reprisal for the assassination (by a group of Communists) of the German military commander in the Loire-Inférieure. Môquet was 17 at the time.
His father, a member of the French parliament, had been arrested a year earlier by the French police because under entirely French law (Daladier again) the CP was proscribed after the Stalin/Hitler pact. Well before the arrival of the Germans, Môquet père had been sentenced to a French concentration camp in Algeria.
Everyone in France is talking about Môquet fils today (the anniversary of his death) because Nicolas Sarkozy has decreed that the very moving letter the young martyr wrote to his mother on the eve of his execution must be read out to every class in every lycée this morning, adding that this is to become an annual event. There is no other text from France’s long history which has to be read on a particular day in every school.
Nicolas Sarkozy discovered Môquet during the election campaign: it was his plume, his speech writer Henri Guaino who first brought Môquet into the candidate’s speeches and with great effect: the young man’s last letter is quite naturally heart-rending stuff. Once elected, Sarkozy decided that he would make the letter the corner-stone of his presidency: on the morning of his investiture he took everyone into the Bois de Boulogne to have the letter read. It became at once the thing to do: the trainer of the French rugby team read it to his lads moments before their first match against Argentina. However, it had the opposite effect of the Kiwi’s Haka: instead of giving them strength it seemed to unman them totally and they lost. Immediately many blamed the letter and by implication Sarkozy. Newspapers reminded us that when he was arrested, Môquet was carrying a rabidly anti-capitalist poem (also anti-semitic because in certain quarters in the 1930’s Jews were associated with unrestrained capitalism) and this is supposed to muddy our sympathies. I am not aware that any recent commentator has reminded us that Môquet was arrested by the French under French law, that he was resisting entirely French legislation enacted by a democratically elected French government.
Many teachers are refusing to read out the letter on the grounds that they resent being told by the State what they must do. Given that every day of their working lives they adhere religiously to a national curriculum laid down in detail by the same state, I find this somewhat illogical.
Sarkozy could be said to have a thing about French martyrs of the 2nd World War: his first book was about the French Jewish politician Georges Mandel, a minister in various inter-war governments who fled France at the same time as De Gaulle (indeed was offered and refused a seat in General Spears’ plane, the seat was taken instead by De Gaulle), but went to North Africa. He was arrested, kept in the same prison as Daladier (whose law was responsible for the arrest of Môquet) from which Churchill tried unsuccessfully to rescue him, preferring him to De Gaulle as leader of the Free French. Mandel was transferred round various camps in Germany before being returned to Paris after D-Day to be a hostage and following the assassination of a Vichy minister, was taken out by the French police and shot just a few weeks before Paris was liberated.
Mandel was a conservative, his ideas closer to Sarkozy’s than Môquet’s. Mandel was arguably more heroic: throughout the 1930’s, just like Churchill, he continually warned against the rise of Hitler, while never glorifying Stalin as the PC did at that time. Both he and Môquet were killed because their compatriots had killed either a German or a French leader.
Sarkozy has decreed that Môquet’s letter shall be read out every year to serve as an example to today’s young of the combined virtues of resistance, duty to the nation and self-sacrifice. As I have said, the law Môquet was resisting was a French law, pre-dating Vichy and the arrival of the Germans. Of course we shall never know whether the young man really was willing to sacrifice his life: when he went out to post his propaganda sheets he cannot have expected that if caught he would be shot: the offense in itself was not a capital one. Probably if the German commander had not been assassinated by the French resistance at almost exactly the same time, neither he nor his 26 comrades would have been executed. Like so much in history it was pure coincidence that resulted in tragedy.
Yet, like so much in history, a simplified version of the story has been turned by a politician for his own purposes – yet I confess I don’t really see what, apart from the frisson always associated with these tragic events, Sarkozy hopes to achieve by this decree. If every day there were a different text, it would certainly make sense. But as the only one?
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:44 am
I had assumed it was part of Sarkozy’s initial gestures of political inclusiveness. I’ve been interested on occasions by the ways in which the inheritors of the different strands of WW2 resistance (never mind those who acquiesced in Vichy collaboration) have blanked each other’s experiences (see, for example, the highly partisan display at Metro Colonel Fabien, and the ambiguity of Communist attitudes and activities until the invasion of the Soviet Union - which is why, incidentally, the assassination that led to Moquet’s execution was over a year, not a week, after his arrest). Perhaps Sarkozy thinks this signifies some sort of reconciliation, though another point of interest here is that it was the Vichy Minister of the Interior that selected the people for retaliation, to forestall the execution of an even more random collection of people.
But this does seem an oddly old-fashioned form of consciousness-raising. Suppose Gordon Brown suggested there should be an annual reading in British schools of Edith Cavell’s famous last letter? These things deserve to be remembered and honoured, but can be counter-productive when rammed down people’s throats.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Silly mistake: I cut his short life even shorter. I’ve now given him another year. The Edith Cavell reminder is very good. You’re absolutely right these terrible events need to live on into the future generations
but how to present them? And why selective? Why Bastille Day and not the September massacres - or even the execution of Louis XVI?
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Is it the right of a President to impose the reading of a text, however well motivated, in schools ? As far as I know, no. If the parliement had decided that Guy Mocquet’s letter had to be read in schools and lycées, there would have been a law, and we would have had to obey it. In the present case, it is merely a “com” operation. Mr Guiano yesterday on TV explained that it is the duty of a teacher to read in class what is on the program and that a teacher has no right to refuse to do what’s on the program. But who decides what is on the program ? As far as I know, this has to be decided by a conseil National des Programmes of the Ministry of Education and various other institutions which are consulted, included the CNESER. see http://www.education.gouv.fr/syst/cnp/default.htm
The comparison between the whim of a prince and the obligation to teach Voltaire is outrageous. Of course Voltaire has to be taught, and he is on the program. But this has nothing to do with Guy Mocquet’s letter, which is not on the program, and which, by the way, if the objective is to celebrate the French communist resistance, is fairly tender minded , compared to, e.g. the group Manouchian of the “Affiche rouge” and other communists. Why not Jean Cavaillès , a mathematican and philosopher who did more to Resistance than the poor Guy Mocquet, would was only 17? ( see http://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr_compagnon/187.html and the movie by Melville l’Armée des ombres)? But even if these had to be celebrated , it is not the role of the President of the Republic to impose this celebration in class. Even if he asked us to read La Fontaine and the fable of “Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi”, we would be entitled to refuse. ( I suppose my English friends see easily that this fable is about frogs who want a king)….
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Well, as you said , Guy Môquet never resisted against Nazi oppression. He was arrested by French police for infringing a French law. Remember that at the time of his arrest, USSR and Germany were still allied. And he was not one of these communists (such as Tillon) who started resisting right after the Debacle and not after Barbarossa.
So, you could come with a better symbol. Such as Mandel. But Mandel was a short fat old guy, not a sexy Jamesdeanesque youngster. And jewish (the very reason of his refusal of Spears offer, he felt that a Jew could not unite the French would-be resistants behind him,, something sad and probably true).
October 24th, 2007 at 4:11 am
It’s like so many symbolic gestures — the intentions are probably good, but people may feel they’ve done their “bonne action” and forget to think about or, as far as teachers go, deal with other aspects of the Resistance any other time during the year. Which reminds me, my family forgot that yesterday was the day to turn our lights off for five minutes, from 7:55-8:00 pm in France, as an environmental measure…’nuff said.
By the way, I write a blog whose title you can see above and have only discovered yours recently. Strange…they are very different, though. I have been enjoying reading your political musings and I hope you will drop by the French heartlands (where not quite so much political musing goes on) from time to time.