An Angel on His Shoulder
| Author | Colin Greenwood |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7504800209 |
| Published date | 01 April 1975 |
| Date | 01 April 1975 |
| Subject Matter | An Angel on His Shoulder |
COLIN
GREENWOOD
AN ANGEL ON HIS SHOULDER
Assassination is topical. The attack on Princess Anne has focussed
even British attention on the problem of providing protection to
public figures, and there has been the usual crop of instant experts
in the press and on television, all able to tell the police exactly how
they should carry out this difficult task. Public discussion on methods
of
protection must clearly be limited, but it may be possible to
improve police methods by studying the successes and failures of the
past. If the protection of one public figure is to be selected for study,
that figure must surely be General Charles de Gaulle who, between
1960 and 1965, was the subject of at least 18 assassination plots or
attempts, but who survived them all. This, in itself, indicates a re-
markable degree of skill on the
part
of his protectors who faced the
problem of combating a large group of intelligent, well organized
terrorists with large numbers of professional soldiers, business-men
and politicians in their ranks; adetermined, ruthless group of men
with an implacable hatred of their target, de Gaulle.
In the face
of
this threat, de Gaulle survived both physically and
politically. His political survival has been the subject of many books
and studies, but his physical survival is usually relegated to comment-
in-passing. There must, however, be many lessons for the police in
de Gaulle's survival and this article attempts to isolate details of the
attacks and present them in terms which relate to the police problem.
It
seems certain that the list is incomplete. The French Intelligence
Service have not yet released all the information they have on this
subject.
The Protagonists
The attacks on de Gaulle arose from his Algerian policies and his
attackers were formed into various groups, loosely co-ordinated into
an extensive terrorist organization. Initially, the terrorists fell into
two categories. The Ultras were the civilian settlers of Algeria,
violently opposed to de Gaulle's policies and willing to fight in the
most ruthless fashion to maintain "Algerie Francaise". They were
supported by growing numbers of people in France itself. Even after
Algeria gained its independence, they maintained their hatred of de
Gaulle whom they considered to be personally responsible for the
loss of part of the heritage of France. The second, and possibly more
dangerous, group consisted of soldiers who were totally disillusioned
and sickened by politicians who committed them to bloody cam-
paigns and then failed to support them, putting the army in one
hopeless situation after another and selling them out each time. The
disillusion grew through Indo-China, Morocco and Tunisia. Algeria
was the last straw. De Gaulle, who had been the hero of the army,
158
April
1975
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