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POLITICAL RIGHT IN FRANCE & BRITAIN.
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Analyzes & compares nature of rightist parties & leaders. History, religion, compared with left, elections, class, economics.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Analyzes & compares nature of rightist parties & leaders. History, religion, compared with left, elections, class, economics.
Paper Introduction:
La Droite and the Right in France and Britain
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2). Certainly Britain by the 199 s seemed to have lost the atmosphere ofelegaic decline that characterized it through the postwar decades. This convention can be criticized as simplistic, and as confusing orconcealing vast differences in ideology and program. Heragenda had much in common with that of Ronald Reagan in the United States,but the unitary British political system (or more precisely, perhaps, thefact that Republicans never controlled both houses of Congress during theReagan years) allowed the Thatcher program to be carried out much morecomprehensively. The two Rights will then be compared,and some conclusions will be drawn as to the significance and meaning ofthe Right in these two countries. From the turn of the century until 194 , the Right was generally onthe defensive in French politics. Nationalism thus came to the fore as the chief issue of theFrench Right. Only with de Gaulle was the Right "naturalized" into the FrenchRepublic, offering to guide it rather than abolish it. Thatcherite liberalsand totalitarian fascists are thrown together on the Right, while socialdemocrats and totalitarian Maoists are thrown together on the Left.Nevertheless, the very fact that the distinction between Right and Left hascome into such general worldwide use suggest that it have some intuitiveresonance. History seems to bear out these distinctions; while Communismand socialism have been international movements, even the radical Right atits most doctrinaire, fascism, shared common sympathies and antipathies,but not a common program. All this having been said, even the Left has in practice been rootedin the distinct experience of different countries. Of these the first, nationalism, is fairly self-explanatory, but hasa crucial implication that will be dealt with below. The second, elitism,has perhaps shifted in meaning over time. Mrs. Thatcher's cultural policies. (1992). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Yet itis something of a paradox that Thatcher herself won successive elections,and her successor John Major another, while unemployment remained higherthan it had been when she came into office (Norpoth, 1992, pp. Le Pen's main issue is immigration,particularly Muslim immigrants from Algeria, and his main bases of supporthave been in the South, where immigrants are most numerous, and in someworking-class districts of large cities (Frears, 1991, pp. The British Right also originated from privileged groups, but byceding their privileges they retained their influence. La Droite and the Right in France and Britain Introduction When the National Assembly was convened during the French Revolution,a seating pattern was established whereby the adherents of the king and theold established order sat to the right of the assembly chamber, whereas themost radical opponents of the ancien regime sat to the left (Nugent andKing, 1977, p. This fragmentation precluded any mainstream Right program,and indeed to political weakness in the Third Republic as a whole, whichwas characterized by indecisive elections and constantly shiftingministries. But in modern times there is a curious similarity betweenPowell and Le Pen, each constructing a populist far Right primarily on theimmigration issue, and thus gaining a base of frustrated and resentfulvoters who might otherwise be expected to find their political home on theLeft. To return to the first point, nationalism, the corollary of this viewis that there are as many Rights as there are nations. Each appealed to different groups for differentreasons -- roughly, arch-traditionalists, pragmatic conservatives, andnationalists, respectively. 35ff). London: Allenand Unwin. Thestatement of another American jurist, that not logic but experience is theheart of the law, could be taken as a summary of a Right perspective,reasonable but not rationalist. WhileLe Pen and the FN are sources of anxiety for both the Left and the GaullistRight (which has to balance between moving further right and losing centervotes, or losing votes to Le Pen on its right), Le Pen's movement seemspredominantly a protest vehicle, and has not developed a program going veryfar beyond the immigration issue.Britain The terms Right and Left, born in the French Revolution, did not comeinto common use in Britain till the early 2 th century (Nugent and King,1977, p. The Left isuniversal, at least in potential and principle, since it is "about" classdivisions believed to exist everywhere. 3). Labour won by itself moving sharply to theRight, abandoning most of its remaining socialist heritage and reshapingitself as a center-left party. The consequence of these experiencescan perhaps be seen in the respective foreign policies of de Gaulle andThatcher. References Anderson, M. For them the only acceptable outcome was,and long remained, the overturning of the Republic and all its works. Like their rival Lefts they developed out ofdifferent experiences, and this is only accentuated by the particularismthat is characteristic of rightist thought and sentiment. The drift of British politics through the 19th and early 2 th centurywas steadily leftward, in the sense that the franchise was steadilyexpanded, while the agenda of the mainstream Left itself moved leftward --a process that culminated in the 192 s with the decline of the LiberalParty and its replacement as a major party by the democratic-socialistLabour Party. Through most of the 19th century, the Right was primarily monarchist,and therefore anti-republican. Altogether it has thus experienced eleven changesof regime, and all but the 1947 transition from provisional government tothe Fourth Republic involved violence in some form -- revolution, coupd'etat, or defeat in war (Frears, 1991, p. 73). Does it mean anything at all, in an objective sense, oris it created by successive accidents of history? 116ff). It is true thatthe Church of England was once called "the Tory party at prayer," and thatLabour had long ties with Methodism (Tony Blair is a churchgoingMethodist). But de Gaulle transformed the Frenchpolitical system. 39ff).In reading about French politics one encounters a strong connection between"Catholics" and the Right, a connection at first confusing in view of thefact that the great majority of French are at least nominal Catholics.What is meant is more precisely a debate over the role of the Church inFrench society, and more generally an ideological division between theactively religious and the more secular (even if nominally Catholic). Through most of French history much of the French Right could becharacterized as a "far Right," while in Britain the far right wasattenuated. "Untilthe Fifth Republic, the most obvious general characteristics ofconservative societies and Right-wing politics was localism" (Anderson,1974, p. The rise of Thatcher was a social revolution within the Tory Party; ashopkeeper's daughter, she was an intruder in the gentleman's-clubatmosphere of the traditional Tory Party. What remains to be seen, however, is how far "New Labour" will gotoward reversing Thatcherism. Inthe summation of one writer "the members of the party in government arethere to serve their constituents and their country, not themselves" (King,et al., 1998, pp. Her proposed solution was theoretical and doctrinaire in a waynot seen before on the British Right, and scarcely on the British Left.She embraced the radical free-market liberalism of von Hayek, Friedman, andthe "Chicago school" of economic thought (Bradley, 1998, p. In the early nineteenth century,classical liberalism was a Left position, in rejecting a traditional socialhierarchy based on divine right or immemorial custom; today liberalism isat least in part a Right position, in resisting egalitarian restraints onthe fortunes of the gifted or lucky. By 18 , "Tory" meant not specifically a royalist but asupporter of the landed classes against the rising power of the mercantileand middle classes. Animportant segment of the far Right historically has been made up of"integral" Catholics; this term is never defined in the literature (whichseems to take familiarity with it for granted), but it appears to mean aposition that the Catholic Church should have an official, authoritativerole in French society, regulating education, social policy, moralslegislation, and the like. The analysis goes on to argue that "BenjaminDisraeli, during his leadership of the [Tory] party from 1868 to 1881,transformed the party from a sectional into a national party, appealing toall sections of society" (King, et al., 1998, pp. Religion has for example largely ceased tobe a decisive political indicator; while a trace of the old divisionappeared as recently as 1984, when the Socialists tried to cut state aid toCatholic schools, Socialists are now elected in such traditionally Catholicregions as Brittany (Frears, 1991, pp. These deep divisions have been reinforced by a long subsequenthistory of political turmoil. This far Right never gained any significantinfluence in British politics or political culture. The character of nationalism also differs sharply, and this, like theinternal fissure between Right and Left, can be attributed to nationalexperience. This distinction is reinforced by theLeft's and Right's views on rationalism. 35-37); hence for example France's long withdrawal frommilitary participation in American-led NATO, its development of anindependent nuclear strike force, and policies and rhetoric that -- thoughFrance remained essentially an ally -- annoyed American policymakers andpublic for two decades. Conclusions It is a peculiarity of history that the French and British Right,after generations of development along consistent lines, were bothtransformed in the last two generations by dominant individual figures, deGaulle and Thatcher. The French Rightinitially embodied groups (the aristocracy and Church) who had beenforcibly turned out of power and privilege, and of whose members a goodnumber went to the guillotine. 115), the Far Right has seen asignificant resurgence in France in the Front National, led by Jean-MarieLe Pen (Frears, 1991, pp. On theother hand, "Conservatives in positions of public office have viewed publicservice as a duty" (King, et al., 1998, pp. Some particular points of contrast between the French and BritishRight can also be noted. 77-78). New York: St.Martin's. The challenge to Dreyfus' conviction wasviewed by the Right as a pretext to attack the French Army (Anderson, 1974,pp. The Right has always beennationalist, but defined in ways as different as Thatcherism and Gaullism,and indeed there have been many leftist nationalists. 77-78). Instead, the British Right adapted itself to changingconditions, seeking to guide and moderate developments, and at timesleading them. The concept of the Tory paternalist has been anotable feature of British politics, the Tory grandee serving to amelioratethe conditions of the workers" (King, et al., 1998, pp. As was seen, active Catholicismwas long a major defining feature of the French Right, and though greatlyattenuated is still not entirely vanished in that respect. 5-6). 5-6), characteristic of the Fifth Republic.Although traditionally a multiparty system, the dominance of the GaullistParty on the mainstream Right, and the collapse of the Communist Party,making the Socialists the dominant party of the Left, has made contemporaryFrench politics approximate to a two-party system. 3). In doing so, though, she wholly abandoned one of the threetraditional pillars of rightism, namely anti-rationalism. (1977). In contrast, the American Right is"about" the United States, the French Right "about" France, the BritishRight "about" Britain, and so forth. In 1997, however, this New Right suffered an electoral setback ofshocking proportions. Indeed, since 1968, the last occasion on which the famous barricadesof Paris went up, the very deep divisions that previously typified Francehave substantially evaporated. The Liberation and thefall of Vichy might thus have fundamentally discredited the Right -- exceptfor the crucial circumstance that Charles de Gaulle, the hero ofResistance, was himself a man of the Right (Anderson, 1974, p. As a national figure, de Gaulle somewhat transcended party and evenideology; it has been said that "it is very doubtful whether there isreally a Gaullist electorate" (Frears, 1991, p. Even elitism is nota fully reliable guide; while it is the most distinctly rightist element ofThatcherism, there were anti-elitist strains -- at least in opposition toactual elites -- in the far Right movements of Mosely, Powell, and Le Pen. In the words of a TV commentator, "landslide" wastoo weak an expression for the magnitude of the loss; "it's more like anasteroid hitting the planet and destroying practically all life on Earth"(King, et al., 1998, p. Westmead, UK:Saxon House. Notably, however, it aroseas much or more out of some elements of the Left than from the traditionalRight; hence for example Oswald Mosely, leader of the British Union ofFascists, had previously been a figure in the Labour Party (Nugent andKing, 1977, pp. (One consequence is that therecan be a president of one party and a parliamentary majority and premier ofanother, a situation the French call cohabitation, and comparable toAmerican "divided government.") The new constitution also strengthenedpolitical parties; strong, cohesive parties are a rather new phenomenon inFrance (Frears, 1991, pp. Not until Margaret Thatcher did the British Right turnentirely away from the paternalist tradition of "Tory reform," to call forthe radical restructuring of society. 1). The British right. The remainder of this essay is a comparative study of the French andBritish Rights, as creations of and participants in their respectivepolitical cultures. 5). The questions to be addressed is how each Right arose;how each influences and is influenced by their respective nations'political systems, formal and informal; what part each plays in thepolitical culture of their respective countries; and ultimately what itmeans to be a rightist in France and in Britain. 28). (The French Rightgives only faint lip service to it; nor in the 19th century heyday ofliberalism was it a major part of the agenda of the early French Left.) Religion, long a major defining characteristic of the French Right(and recently of the American Right) is much reduced as a defining issue inFrance, and was never such in Britain. One is religion. It was uneasy with or antagonistictoward the Third Republic, but could not agree on a program. As an American judge once said of pornography, we may not beable to define it, but we know it when we see it. Definitions have nevertheless been attempted. An informal division between Tories and Whigs persisted through the18th century, and institutional parties, including the Conservatives, aroseby the early 19th century. One wasthat the party was very deeply divided over European integration (that is,in effect, over nationalism). Herprescription was deregulation of business and a radical reduction in thesocial "safety net" previously accepted by Tories as well as Labour. (1991). Frears, J. If a social system can be foundedon rational principles it should be universally applicable, but if customand tradition should be given weight, each nation has its own customs andtraditions. Thetriumph of Thatcherism and Britain's New Right seemed complete. Since 1789, France has had five republics,two monarchies, two empires, and two other regimes (Vichy and the postwarprovisional government). "Tory reform" became an active tradition throughout a majorsegment of the Right, shaped by a distinctive tradition of paternalism. Beyond this hard-line position, however,religiously active Catholics constituted a major bulwark of the FrenchRight. Confidence regained: Economics, Mrs. Thatcher,and the British voter. 68ff). 77-78). Norpoth, H. Thatcher took aRight that had always been a leading and conventional player in the Britishstate, and made it a quasi-revolutionary force. Boulder,CO: Social Science Monographs. Thus Disraeliwas able to extend "the appeal of the party beyond that of the privilegedto the working class. 8). Contributing factors were a series ofscandals, notably sex scandals which, though a perennial in Britishpolitics, were given cogency by the association of chief offenders with themoralizing "Basic Values" strand in Thatcherism (King, et al., 1998, pp. 2). 3) The Right is doubtful of rationalism in human affairs. In contrast, Britain lost no war,and while World War II deeply strained the British economy it did not wipeout a generation of young Englishmen. A more substantialfigure on the far Right, prominent for several years in the 197 s, wasEnoch Powell. (This tradition was by no means confined to the Right; TonyBenn, a leader of the Labour Left, is properly Sir Anthony Wedgewood-Benn.) A far Right did come into being in Britain, particularly amid thesocial and international tensions of the 193 s. Parties and voters in France. Though he remained within the Tory Party, his anti-emigrantfocus bears some comparison with France's more recent Le Pen (Nugent andKing, 1977, pp. While France remained a parliamentary system, the directlyelected presidency, formerly a ceremonial post, was given powersapproaching that of an American president. However, after a long period of marginalization since the beginningof the Fifth Republic (Frears, 1991, p. Britain at that time was a limited,constitutional monarchy within an oligarchical political and social order.The monarchy retained enormous political influence, but final authority laywith Parliament, elected at that time from a narrow base dominated by therural gentry. But this is even more true of theFrench and British Right. (1998). The Tory collapse could be attributed to several factors. The Right in Political CultureFrance As was noted above, the use of "Right" as a political term grew outof the French Revolution, and the original Right opposed that revolution.Thus, both the French Left and Right were born in blood and bitterness, theone looking back to generations of injustice, the other to dispossessionand Terror. It can hardly be doubted thatThatcherism also marked a social revolution of sorts within Britain itself,with a new suburban managerial class supplanting the older leadership ofBritish business much as the Thatcherites supplanted older Tories. 3). As suggested earlier in this essay, it should perhaps come as nosurprise that the Right is so different in France and in Britain, inhistory and in current state. Another issue which persisted through the 19th century and much ofthe 2 th was the role of the Catholic Church (Anderson, 1974, pp. Its weaknesswas exacerbated by the traditional weakness of French political parties(Frears, 1991, pp. Dreyfus, a Jewishofficer in the French Army, was convicted of spying for Germany on evidencethat turned out to be fabricated. In 1879 and 1883 the last Bonapartist and legitimist claimants died,leaving only the Orleanist line, but the monarchist divisions were too deepfor any real coming together. Because thetransitions in British politics and society were peaceful and gradual,British politics was not a zero-sum game, but a dialectical process inwhich the perspectives of Right and Left could be adjusted to an outcomeacceptable to both. The Right, it seems, is more easily seenthan neatly defined. The Third Republic ended with the fall of France and theestablishment of the collaborationist Vichy regime. Thatcher came to power in 1979, amid aperiod of stagnation which neither Tories nor Labour seemed able toaddress. More generally, control ofgovernment has shifted from Gaullists to Socialists and back (along withperiods of cohabitation) without either paralysis or drastic shifts inFrench public policy. 1 -14), so much so that ageneration after his death the mainstream party of the right is stillcalled Gaullist, and its ideology Gaullism.The chief feature of Gaullism was and is vigorous French nationalism(Frears, 1991, pp. The Tory vote, 3 .7 percent, was the lowestfor the party since 1832 (King, et al., 1998, p. 115-16). She came not to restore traditional Britain, but to abolish andremake it. The current agenda of Labour seems to be toameliorate rather than reverse the Thatcherite revolution; in a senseLabour has chosen for itself a form of "Tory reform." Comparison The sharpest distinctions between the French and British Right surelyarise out of their respective historical experiences. Although some partseven of the Left were present at Vichy, it was dominated by the anti-Republican Far Right (Anderson, 1974, pp. Conservative politics in France. 133ff). From this seating practice arise the convention ofusing Right and Left as general expressions of political ideology, aconvention now in worldwide use. (Nevertheless, monarchism remained a forceon the far Right well into the 2 th century.) French politics showed signsof realigning onto mainly economic issues, but this was short-circuited bythe Dreyfus affair (Nugent and King, 1977, p. Yet viewed in context, the Right in France andBritain each is comprehensible, and their common identification as rightistdoes not seem merely arbitrary. The essay will firstconsider, more or less independently, the development and current state ofthe Right, in France and in Britain. Bradley, C.H.J. This is in sharp contrast to de Gaulle; he redefined"traditional France" to incorporate the Republic, and contemporary Gaullismis strikingly devoid of the theoretical passions that characterizeThatcherism as well as much of the American Right). The sharpest departure from the Tory tradition was a rather recentone, embodied by Margaret Thatcher. A flipside of this contrast is views toward Europe; de Gaulle saw Europeanintegration as a counterweight to the United States, and both Gaullists andSocialists have been Europeanist. The third, anti-rationalism, need notimply mulish hostility to reason (though it may); it may also refer to athoughtful skepticism toward rationalist social programs, a suspicion thatsuch programs do not take the complexity of human nature into account, anda corresponding suspicion that even outwardly pointless customs orpractices may have been soundly derived from human experience. The fading of Powell as an influential figure in British politics,moreover, suggests that Le Pen and the FN may in time fade away as well. France was defeated in the War of 187 and World War II, andwas bled white in winning World War I. Nevertheless, a recognizable Right can be identified inBritain going much further back; the word "Tory," now the invariablenickname of the Conservative Party, was first used in the late 17th centuryfor supporters of broad royal authority against encroachment by Parliament. 77-78). Of the two figures,only de Gaulle was actually a conservative. 1) The Right identifies the nation, rather than socio-economic class,as being the primary element in social identity. 28-29). 2-3).Thatcher's supporters would argue that she revitalized Britainpsychologically, even if her program did not yield direct economic results. But the status of public religion has never been a center ofdispute, or a driving factor in political identification; upholding theChurch of England has not been a Tory cause, nor dis-establishing it aLabour one. In a sense, the British Right adhered through most ofits history to an agenda comparable to Gaullism, upholding the nation asits primary interest, even if necessary at the cost of its more particularinterests. 2) The Right is elitist rather than egalitarian. What, then, does it mean to be a rightist, in France or Britain orindeed anywhere? De Gaulle took a Right that had never reconcileditself to nearly two centuries of French history, and made it a leading ifconventional player in the contemporary French state. Every nation's politics are shaped by itsown circumstances, past and present, and if anything is universal on theRight it is particularism; a rightist International is almost acontradiction in terms. Thatcher, in contrast, was a"Euroskeptic" (and European policy deeply divides the British Right to thepresent day). Gaullism and Thatcherismare both "of the Right" in large part because their creators came from andidentified themselves with a previous Right that each went on to abolish.An entire ideology, free-market liberalism, originated with the Left but isnow identified with the Right, at least in Britain. The French Left aroseunder different conditions and out of different experiences than theBritish Left; they had different courses of development and still todayhave different outlooks and agendas. 91). The Right was further divided between threepossible monarchical claimants, legitimist (the direct Bourbon royal line),Orleanist (a collateral line of the old royal family), and Bonapartist(Anderson, 1974, p. Standing up to a military coup by the far Right overAlgerian independence, he then enacted a new constitution, the FifthRepublic. Nugent, N. In place of the NewRight, "New Labour" swept into power. While Thatcher was assertive (as in the Falklands), she saw noneed to define this assertion in contrast to the United States; ifanything, Anglo-American alignment has become closer than before. Save for the elitist elementof free-market liberalism (i.e., policies that "favor the rich"),Thatcherism has more the flavor of a sort of leftism; indeed free-marketliberalism was in its beginning the agenda of the British Left. Thus, after 1945, a new Right appeared in France, dominated andembodied by de Gaulle (Frears, 1991, pp. and King, R. 3-4). Thus, members of the old aristocracy remained prominent in publiclife long after their old oligarchic status had vanished; Winston Churchillfor example was a direct descendent of the 17th century Duke ofMarlborough. Asbetween Right and Left, French politics was not only a zero-sum game, itwas one that could only be resolved by total victory by one side or theother. One such definitioncharacterizes the Right in the following ways, with the Left representingthe contrary position (Nugent and King, 1977, p. 99ff). 37), i.e., one with acohesion beyond de Gaulle himself. (1974). This leftward movement might have been expected to attenuateor marginalize the Right, or drive it into militant reaction, but this wasnot the case. Thatcher's faithin free-market liberalism is more suggestive of a Communist's faith inMarxism than of the traditionalism that is the general heritage of theRight. The Right was divided among many parties, andmuch of its representation Right in the National Assembly was byindependent local notables, not strongly affiliated with any party. Triumph by either Right or Left thereforeentailed not simply a change of governing party within one framework, but afundamental change of regime.
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