UK-France 1956 union proposal - old story

The proposal to unite the UK and France into a single country, made in
1956 (as also in 1940), is old news. Why is the BBC putting it out now?

Ariadne...

The 50-year rule, probably.

Don Aitken...

Which has been a thirty-year rule for a long time. The story is
comprehensively dealt with in at least one recently published work on
the Suez crisis. This simple answer to "why now" is that lazy
journalists like aniversaries - if they can't find any real stories,
they regurgitate something from their own organisation's archives of
ten, twenty or fifty years ago.

CJ Buyers...

I am afraid that the way the BBC organisation now works, they use one
part of the organisation to advertise programmes made by another part.

Consequently, when BBC2 or BBC1 have a new programme coming out,
miraculously there is a "news" item related somehow to the issue. There
are "polls" conducted on children's programmes on other channels and
journalists or stars from the new programme start appearing on chat
shows and quiz shows.

They made a series of programmes on Suez last year and they are now
probably trying to flog them to someone overseas, so are trying to hype
interest.

Ariadne...

Thank you. That's obviously what happened with Suez and
the Hungarian uprising too.

Isn't there still a 100-year rule for some things?

joblard...

Yes; things to do with 'national security' or the Royal Family (eg
papers relating to the abdication crisis in 1936 will be held back by
Oxford's Bodleian Library until 2037)

Maybe a clue lies somewhere in:

a) the line about the 'British' 'queen' being proposed to be monarch of
the united country

b) the focus on the differing relations between the UK and Israel on
one hand, and France and Israel on the other - even to the point of
mentioning the consideration in the 1950s of the possibility of war
between the UK and Israel (which is also old news, and which of course
does not take account of the proposal that Israel would itself join the
Commonwealth)

...but anyway, old news...so why now?

joblard...

I don't know. Maybe it was going to be aired last year (5oth
anniversary) but was held over to early this year.

Also, I'd like to know whether the plan involved a renewal of
friendship between French Grand Orient freemasonry and the United Grand
Lodge of England, between whom relations had been frosty since shortly
after the Fourth Republic was set up in the early 1870s.

Let us recall the building where an important part of Gaullist
intelligence was based in London in the early 1940s. Yes folks, it was
none other than 10 Duke Street, headquarters of the Ancient and
Accepted Right, what Americans would call 'Scottish Rite'' (a building
that freemasons know as 'Grand East').

CJ Buyers...

Wasn't that also the house where Diana was actually born, as opposed to
the faked birth certificate 'you know who' had issued instead?

joblard...

Yes. Her father was actually General de Gaulle. This is common
knowledge; clearly you are being kept 'out of the loop' for some reason.

CJ Buyers...

Actually, he coudn't, possibly be her father. You are totally and
utterly wrong. He was Joan of Arc, MI 27 told Churchill so.

joblard...

What exactly are you saying; that this proposed alliance between the
two countries was essentially a Freemason-driven project? If so, it
failed miserably. So much for te Masons. What's more, the resistance

banana...

No - I am just wondering whether the somewhat frosty relationship
between the two organisations would have changed, and if so, how, if
the two countries became one.

joblard...

Ah, right. These Masonic shenanigans always baffle me. I was invited
to join, once.

to Britain joining the Common Market was led by that well-known
Gaullist, General de Gaulle.

banana...

Ah but that was afterwards. And remember his reason, namely that the
British regime was a poodle of the Americans. That reason is often
'forgotten' by British commentators, who play on the image of a pompous
French guy saying 'Non', as if it was a matter of personal prejudice.

joblard...

Even back then when I was a lad I never thought it was simply a matter
of De Gaulle being contrary. There was also the fact that back then
British people regarded the Commonwealth as being more important than
Europe, especially as we regarded the French and Germans as our natural
enemies rather than our allies.

'Poodle of the Americans'. Plus ca change!

quintal...

no kidding;-)
of course major players in the political arena are high level
freemasons, but try and explain to an average french that De Gaulle
was one of them...

UK-France 1956 union proposal - old story - why now?