OBITUARY:Bernard Chenot

Who governs France? The question is constantly asked and rarely answered. But now that Bernard Chenot has died at the age of 86, one should seek an explanation by looking at his career.

Under the Third Republic, Chenot became a member of the supreme judicial body, the Conseil d'Etat, and was called upon to work in several ministerial departments. This activity continued under the government of Vichy after 1940, when he was one of the Councillors who questioned many aspects of the anti-Jewish legislation. Under the Fourth Republic he was for a time the Director of the coal-fields of North France and he was an official adviser to successive governments on economic matters.

With the coming of the Fifth Republic General de Gaulle invited Chenot to be one of several officials occupying posts in his first government, presided over by Chenot's long-standing friend Michel Debre. Chenot was Minister for Health and then Minister for Justice until 1962 when Georges Pompidou became Prime Minister. Chenot replaced him on the Constitutional Council, the powerful body that presides over the working of the Fifth Republic, for two years. He then moved into the private sector as Director of the Assurances Generales de France, before returning to the Conseil d'Etat in 1971 as its Vice-President, thereby becoming the first civil servant of France. In 1978 President Valery Giscard d'Estaing accepted that he should retire.

Thus Chenot had held official posts in the Third and Fourth Republics and under Vichy. He had served the first three Presidents of the Fifth Republic. But, believing that there should be further important constitutional changes in France, he thought that these would best be carried out by the man who was to be the fourth of the Presidents and in 1981 he announced his support for Francois Mitterrand.

Chenot was an experienced and distinguished servant of the French state, noted for his ability to take rapid decisions and respected for his independence. But he was also an academic and an intellectual. He lectured at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris; he became the secretaire perpetuel of the Academie des Sciences Morales et politiques; he was the author of several books about politics. As such he was always in favour of the strong state, one which was organised and committed. He despised the piecemeal nationalisations of de Gaulle's first government after the Liberation, describing them as "a revolution that dare not speak its name". But he was also a democrat who feared that the Fifth Republic could be distorted and deformed. He wanted the length of the Presidential mandate to be reduced, Parliament to be given greater powers, and a more frequent recourse to the referendum.

Naturally, this son of a Parisian barrister was not always popular. The Council of State under Vichy was arguing about legal detail when Jews were being deported. General de Gaulle used to glare at Debre and Chenot in cabinet meetings, complaining that he was always encountering the Council of State. Giscard d'Estaing claimed that Chenot was stopping him from making the President a man of the people.

Politicians thought him too academic, trying to follow Montesquieu in arranging a suitable balance of power. Academics thought him too political, too concerned as to how ministers should be enabled to do their jobs. There were those who thought that someone who had studied at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques in the 1920s could not collaborate with those who had more recently acquired the technical skills of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration.

But Bernard Chenot was part of the machinery of power that commands a society's destiny. It was he, and his kind, who have governed France.

Douglas Johnson

Bernard Chenot, civil servant, politician: born 20 May 1909; Secretary- General, Conseil Economique 1951-58; Minister of Public Health and Population 1958-59, 1959-61; Minister of Justice 1961-62; Vice-President, Conseil d'Etat 1971-78; books include Etre ministre 1967, L'Hopital en question 1970, Reflexions sur la cite 1981; married 1934 Clelie Schmit (one son, two daughters); died Paris 5 June 1995.