Michael O’Loughlin: Nice attack is an assault on Europe

Bastille Day is much more than simply France's national holiday. It celebrates a day in history that ushered in a new European order.

Every terrorist attack is by definition an assault on basic human values, but the one in Nice on Thursday night is something else. There is nothing random about an attack on crowds celebrating the birth of liberty in Europe. It was an attack on France, but also a calculated attack on Europe and what it stands for.

The recent disasters that have hit Europe, from the refugee crisis to Brexit to fundamentalist terrorism, can be seen as battles in a long war. And, as so often before, the front line in that war seems be in France, the heartland of Europe.

And so, as the French mourn their dead, we should never lose sight of the simple truth that every European has two homelands: the country he or she is born in, and France.

It is not far-fetched to say that the whole notion of our modern European societies stems from the French Revolution and Napoleonic reforms. And not just the guiding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, but the separation of church and state, even though this turned out be a longer and messier business than anyone could have foreseen.

A private matter

Napoleon introduced a religious tolerance never before seen in Europe, and as a result religion became a private matter. There has recently been much debate in France about this principle of

laïcité

and, indeed, many commentators have pointed out that one positive thing emerging from the

Charlie Hebdo

massacre was that it revealed just how deeply this principle is rooted in France, especially among the young.

How can this principle be reconciled with those religious beliefs that do not accept its basic premises? For some beliefs, it is impossible to remain silent when confronted by blasphemy. The question is, how do we reconcile our basic principles of free speech with respect for minority cultures?

It is a growing issue all over Europe, and nowhere more so than in France. But the threat to the French way of life is coming from many sides, not just Islamic fundamentalism. Articles regularly appear in the New York Times, backed up by mutterings in Brussels, that the French way of life has failed and is not economically sustainable.

I am writing this in a small, extremely remote village, very much what the French call la France profonde. Its lifestyle certainly could be the envy of Europe. Most of the villagers have small gardens and orchards that produce large amounts of vegetables and fruit. Many people keep a few hens and bees. Their houses are modest and unmortgaged.

Farming lifestyle

In some ways, the villagers are replicating the subsistence farming lifestyle of their grandparents in the era before the first World War, when the population of the village was 10 times greater than it is now. But there is one crucial difference. They have been the beneficiaries of the great social contract that transformed the life of Europeans in the second half of the20th century.

Many of these people spent their working lives in the service of the state, as nurses, teachers, postmen, civil servants. They did their jobs, paid their taxes, and retired at an age when they could still enjoy the fruits of their labour, with adequate and guaranteed pensions, not to mention free and excellent healthcare.

This is why they, like so many, voted for the social democratic parties of Europe, and continue to do so, electing François Hollande as a socialist president. This is a political culture that includes the notion of quality of life.

However, France also enjoys all the imperfections and contradictions of any other nation state, as evidenced by Hollande’s faltering government and the recent massive protests against its sometimes misguided reforms.

But France is also an idea, which permeates the simplest daily transactions there.

What the people of Europe understand, particularly the older ones, is a simple fact eloquently expressed by the poet René Char: “Our inheritance was not willed to us.” That is, every extra euro in the hourly rate of pay, every free hospital bed, every year reduction in the retirement age, had to be fought for – bitterly, sometimes violently.

This social democratic base, this belief in a life of equality and dignity for all, which took shape over the past 70 years, but with its roots in 1789, and which I like to think of as the l'Europe profonde, is still there, though under attack.

One of the reasons given for people’s apparent apathy and even hostility to Europe is the lack of any positive belief to rally round. One unintended positive result of Thursday’s massacre may be to focus minds on our shared European values, and those values’ enemies, and to so forcefully remind us that we stand or fall with France. Michael O’Loughlin is a writer and poet