Solidarité

This time last year, I was in Paris with my family, visiting friends and exploring one of the world’s most beautiful cities. We did the usual things – climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited Sacré-Coeur, gazed at the impressionist art at Musée d’Orsay, ate in cafes and restaurants. And on an unusually warm Autumn weekend, we walked from one end of the city to another, along the Seine, over the bridges, through the parks. It was wonderful.

I thought of this visit when I saw the breaking news on Saturday morning of the terrible attacks across the city. As the details started to emerge and the death toll rose to horrific levels, I felt distraught. The first thing I did was to check that my friends were OK (they were). The second thing was to pick up the phone to contact my French colleague here in Canberra, Christophe Lecourtier, to express my deep condolences and sense of solidarity with him and the French people.

The love affair between Brits and Paris, and France more widely, runs deep. Yes, we didn’t always get on so well. But echoes of Waterloo and Trafalgar are now faint in our shared histories, and we are bound closely together by events which shaped the 20th century, especially the two world wars.

We are also close neighbours. It takes me less time to get to Paris these days, via the Eurotunnel, than it does to visit my own family in Wales. Paris is closer to my home in Tunbridge Wells than Canberra is to Melbourne. And forget all the jokes about us not getting on: us Brits love France, with 17 million of us visiting each year.

My own personal history is no different. My first overseas trip ever, aged 14 years, was to Paris. I’ve been back several times since, and to France dozens of times. I love the language, the culture, the food, the landscape, the people.

We also stand together with France when times are tough. In my last job as HR Director in the Foreign Office, I saw that. The day our Embassy in Tehran was attacked and overrun was my worst moment in the job, as we struggled to contact staff and their partners. We couldn’t have got through it without our colleagues at the French Embassy, who gave our people shelter and worked with us through the night to ensure they could leave the country safely the next day.

And after the terrorist attack in Sousse, Tunisia, earlier this year, during which scores of British tourists were gunned down on the beach, it was the French Ambassador who sought me out at an event to express his condolences, while others seemed largely oblivious to the tragedy that had struck the other side of the world.

So my overwhelming feeling today is one of ‘solidarité’. We are with you, France, in these dark days, as we are with other countries who are suffering such terrible atrocities – including Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. We are in a shared fight against a common enemy. We will prevail.

Vive la France.