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		France is a cross we have to bear Lincolnshire Echo - March 14 2003 Winston Churchill, looking back on the Second World War, said "The heaviest cross I had to bear was the Cross of Lorraine" (symbol of France). As the French themselves might say, Plus ça change…..! It could well be that Tony Blair and George Dubbya Bush still regard France, in 2003, as the heaviest cross they have to bear. The word in the Brussels corridors is that France's obstinate anti-American stance is prompted by a fear that the millions of Muslim immigrants in France will see an allied attack on Saddam as an attack on their religion. But why should they? Saddam has tortured Muslims, gassed Muslims and killed Muslims in thousands. Surely Muslims in France, and in Britain, should rejoice and thank God to see the Muslim population of Iraq liberated? Apparently President Chirac has said "War always represents failure". American commentator Rush Limbaugh replies: "If you're France, that's true!". My own problems with France have been at an altogether less serious level. But I do seem to keep tangling with the French gendarmerie. Back in 1999, I went with a group of colleagues and staff to Paris to march on the Champs Elysées against the French beef ban. We found our way barred by French riot police, and became engaged in scuffles with them before we were allowed to continue on our way -- and our staff were held in the street for a couple of hours. And we had another contretemps this week in Strasbourg. European dockers have been campaigning against EU deregulation of dock labour practices. To English eyes, European ports are in a 1980s time-warp. The unions have the employers by the throat, and insist on hugely out-of-date and inefficient working conditions. No one likes seeing their feather-bed taken away, so continental dockers are up in arms. Last week they demonstrated at the Brussels parliament, although curiously they chose a Friday, when no MEPs are there. On Monday, we arrived in Strasbourg to find them here. The riot police had built barricades to keep them out. But when I arrived with a group of other MEPs on the bus from Basle airport, the police refused us admission. There were no demonstrators in sight at this point, so no earthly security reason to keep the barriers closed. As a parliamentarian, I demanded the right to enter the parliament, and started climbing over the waist-high barrier. I was physically restrained by the riot police. There was some unseemly shoving and shouting. There was one policeman who was particularly aggressive. He was short and broad, with an improbably luxuriant moustache. In fact apart from the uniform, he looked like a caricature of the French cartoon character Asterix. In Britain, a member of the public has a right to ask for the identity of any policeman he deals with. Not so, apparently, in France. I asked Asterix for his name and serial number. He replied "007". At this point a Danish colleague, Ole Andreasen MEP, got out his digital camera to record the incident. Suddenly Asterix went camera-shy, and turned away. We finally had to trail our luggage best part of half a mile to get in at a different entrance, and walk back to the inside of the first barrier. Later in the day, I raised a point of order on the issue in the plenary session, and got an unusually warm round of applause. The President of the parliament will now take up the matter with the city authorities. Does it matter if a few MEPs are put to a bit of inconvenience? Actually, it does. Under the treaties, national police forces cannot obstruct MEPs in the performance of their duties. If the civil authorities can deny elected parliamentarians access to the parliament building, they are challenging a fundamental principle of democracy. "Democracy at the European level" is in any case a contradiction in terms, a travesty of the real thing. But if MEPs can be denied access and man-handled by French police, the travesty is turned to farce.