"France Led By Madmen”—Behan

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 13

"France Led By Madmen”—Behan

MONTREAL, December 9. The Irish playwright, Brendan Behan, overrode a desperate attempt to cancel a scheduled lecture last night and lectured 450 McGill University students on France’s Algerian policies.

Behan turned up more than an hour late for a lecture at the university, ignored officials who told him the lecture was off, and strode on to the stage. the Canadian Press reported.

There he launched into a savage attack on France’s Algerian policies, interrupting himself to sing a few French songs, tell some bawdy jokes and to announce that his 500-dollar lecturing fee had been cancelled. Officials had tried to cancel the talk when Behan, who had been reported “incapacitated” after an afternoon spent in what he called “convivial company” at a private club, did not appear on time, the Canadian Press reported. The officials had started to refund the admission money to the audience when the playwright arrived. His collar was open, his hair dishevelled and his shirt front stained, the news agency said.

He raised his fist over his head in answer to the students’ burst of cheers and headed for the auditorium.

After giving the students and some faculty members time to return to their seats, he strode forward and announced he was giving his lecture —“which I understand I am not being paid for”—because ‘I like you and you’re people well worth speaking to.” After a chorus of a FrenchCanadian ballad, he suddenly be"an to attack France and President de Gaulle. “I don’t like Nazis. 1 don't like French Nazis any more than I do’ German Nazis.” he said. “I dislike France. They entertained me last year but now they are murdering Algerians.

“Montrealers love France, but now France is led by madmen, gangsters and collaborators.” Shaking his fist at the audience. he said: “What sort of people are you to put up with a situation where 15,000 soldiers march to Jean-Paul Sartre’s house and attack him?” Sartre had led an attack on the French Government’s Algerian policies. “I love the French people, but I don’t like what they’re doing in Algeria and anyone who says he does is a liar,” Behan said.

He said French-speaking Canadians could influence the French Government. “If you won’t who will?” he asked. “What can those other idiots (English-speaking Canadians) —I can’t call them Canadians, because they’re not—what can they do to help Algeria?” He was followed by 100 students as he left the university building later to return to his hotel for what friends said would be “a rest.”