Julian T. Jackson

Julian Jackson is a professor of history at Queen Mary University and the author of 'A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle'.

The problem with Anglo-Gaullism

From our UK edition

Enoch Powell was a great admirer of General de Gaulle. That didn’t stop him, at the end of his career, rallying to the Ulster Unionist cause — rather ignoring the fact that de Gaulle happily sacrificed the French Algerians to the higher cause of France. In the same spirit as Powell, one hears talk today in conservative circles of the idea of Anglo-Gaullism; Peter Hitchens recently described himself in this way in an interview with Nigel Farage. What might this concept mean and is it true that Gaullism offers possible lessons for British conservatives today? One problem with answering that question is that even in France it is hard to say what ‘Gaullism’ means. In his lifetime de Gaulle was a highly contested figure.