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The Things We Forgot To Remember

Some events resonate, and are celebrated down the ages. Others, equally significant, are forgotten. Michael Portillo investigates The Things We Forgot To Remember.

The Things We Forgot to Remember (TTWFTR) all began with a throwaway remark on an internet discussion group. The group was, and indeed still is, soc.history.what-if, and I spent many a happy hour reading it in the 1990s, when I should have been working on my PhD. The group's topic is historical counterfactuals: debates about how events in history could have turned out differently. Among all the fine stories that we told, and questions that we prompted and answered, it rapidly became clear to me that any rational and informed discussion about 'if it had happened otherwise' soon ran up against the basic questions of historical causation.

Some events are more important than others. One very easy way to measure this importance is to conduct thought experiments about how things would have turned out had they been different. If Hitler had worn different colour trousers on March 15th 1939, very little would have changed. Had he decided not to occupy the remnants of Czechoslovakia, tearing up the 1938 Munich Agreement and setting the UK on course for war, a great deal would have been different.

The throwaway remark that started it all off was part of our interminable discussions about Operation Sealion, the projected German invasion of Britain in 1940. Our conclusion was straightforward: while the Royal Navy existed, Sealion was impossible. The outcome of the Battle of Britain didn't matter.

So if the war in the air was a strategic sideshow, where were the shots actually called? The only way that the Axis could have come was by sea, and British sea power was secure (for the moment, at least). The only force that could credibly threaten it was the French navy - which right up until the surrender had been working closely with its British counterparts, in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Most of this had fled from the German advance (often in heroic circumstances - half-finished ships had engines fitted in hours, then set sail as the shells fell around them), and significant squadrons were in British ports, in British controlled Alexandria (Egypt) and in their main fleet base, Mers-el-Kebir, near Oran on the Algerian coast.

For Britain to be safe, the French fleet had to be neutralised. Churchill made it clear to his admirals that they had little time to impose a solution on the French, and if they could not, they should attack. The RN acted swiftly: the ships in harbour in Britain were taken over, and ultimatums were delivered in Alex and Algeria. In Alex, Admiral Cunningham ignored Churchill's deadline (he was too brilliant to sack - probably the best admiral of the war), and hammered out a disarmament agreement with his opposite number. At Mers-el-Kebir, the French Admiral, Gensoul, relayed a distorted version of the ultimatum to Paris, and once he got their backing, turned it down. On July 3rd, 1940, the RN opened fire, destroying a French battleship, knocking two more out, and ending the potential threat to Britain's command of the sea.

That's the story. My involvement in it would have ended there had I not ended up working for the Open University. The OU is the best university on the planet for a number of reasons, and one of these is that we spend money on sponsoring the BBC to make good programmes on the TV and radio.

So when in 2004 I got the chance to suggest a programme that the OU could put some money into, I saw it as an opportunity to get rid of the bee in my bonnet about the Battle of Britain vs Mers-el-Kebir. It did more than that: it forced me to follow Churchill's reasoning through his papers (edited by Martin Gilbert). It also introduced me to some compelling stories of the operation. Perhaps the most forceful was the testimony of Alfred Fishlock, a sailor on the cruiser HMS Orion during the negotiations with the French fleet in Alexandria harbour, who had sent in his story to the BBC's People's War website.

'On the 1st July we were ordered to Action Stations intending to use force if necessary to prevent French ships leaving harbour. My action stations was in "B turret LH 6" gun operating the cordite hoist. We aimed our guns at the French Cruiser by opening the breech looking along the barrel with the shell striking aimed ships. so we remained in that turret for a little over two days in really hot weather taking meals in rotation. occasionally the ship ahead would raise and lower its guns and I'm sure all our hearts stopped beating, it was to, say the least traumatic.'

Sometimes, I learn about moments in time that seem to sum up major events, and Fishlock's experience is one of these. The night before he'd been out on the town with his French allies: that morning he was getting ready to kill them. If every episode of TTWFTR can bring a moment like that to life, then it's done its job.

About the author

Chris Williams is a lecturer in the History Department of the Open University. He researches on British policing, and chairs the course team for the OU course Total War and Social Change: Europe 1914-1955.