http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6261885.stm
Formerly secret documents unearthed from the National Archives have showed Britain and France considered a "union" in the 1950s.
On 10 September 1956 French Prime Minister Guy Mollet arrived in London for talks with his British counterpart, Anthony Eden.
These were troubled times for Mollet's France. Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nasser had nationalised the Suez Canal and, as if that was not enough, he was also busy funding separatists in French Algeria, fuelling a bloody mutiny that was costing the country's colonial masters dear
"When the French Prime Minister, Monsieur Mollet was recently in London he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France."
Mollet was desperate to hit back at Nasser. He was also an Anglophile who admired Britain both for its help in two world wars and its blossoming welfare state.
There was another reason, too, that the French prime minister proposed this radical plan.
Tension was growing at this time along the border between Israel and Jordan. France was an ally of Israel and Britain of Jordan. If events got out of control there, French and British soldiers could soon be fighting each other.
With the Suez issue on the boil Mollet could not let such a disaster happen.
So, when Eden turned down his request for a union between France and Britain the French prime minister came up with another proposal.
This time, while Eden was on a visit to Paris, he requested that France be allowed to join the British Commonwealth.
Seriously, was that an attempted preemptive surrender?
