It handed Greenpeace a propaganda victory and gave further impetus to a campaign which was already mustering a coalition made up of anti-nuclear campaigners, ecologists, pacifists and those of an “anti-colonial” disposition in South- east Asia and the South Pacific.France, and President Chirac in particular, appear to have underestimated the strength of these trends, but especially the coalition between the ecological and the anti-nuclear movement represented by Green- peace, which is now – in contrast to 10 years ago – a powerful and professional organisation.France also had little appreciation of the power of environmental groups to mobilise a consumer boycott. Even if Mr Chirac had not been counting on universal goodwill towards his test programme, he probably did not reckon with the reception that met his statement of 13 June that France would restart its test programme.One immediate reason for his difficulty was the coincidence of two highly emotive anniversaries soon afterwards: on 10 July, the 10th anniversary of the death of a Greenpeace photographer in Auckland harbour when French secret agents blew up the Rainbow Warrior, and, on 6 August, the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.These two anniversaries helped to keep Mr Chirac’s decision in the news, but in using strong-arm tactics against the Rainbow Warrior’s successor on the very eve of the anniversary, France hardly helped itself. Abroad, France’s nuclear status has been considered a little quirky but its historical reasons were respected. Suddenly, in 1995, despite a newly-elected president of the right who won a clear majority and sees himself in the tradition of De Gaulle, that comfortable situation is no more.

Recent French presidents have supported France’s nuclear deterrent and nuclear tests that went with it, and the argument – De Gaulle’s argument – that nuclear weapons allowed small countries to stand up to bullying from bigger ones, and that France should never again have to suffer foreign occupation.In France, that acceptance has been almost unconditional for the nearly 40 years: defence, including nuclear defence, was not an issue. It was Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Georges Pompidou, and, right at the beginning, Charles de Gaulle, with his determination that France should have its force de frappe. MARY DEJEVSKY

Paris
“But the Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand, conducted 86 tests,” said the French defence minister, Charles Millon, on a recent television programme. Exasperated by condemnation of the mere “six to eight” tests planned by Jacques Chirac, you could almost hear him wanting to add: “and there wasn’t all this fuss about it”.From the day of the decision to restart the test programme until last night, when the first went ahead, the French Government has both underestimated the international opposition to its decision and misunderstood it.It was not only Mr Mitterrand, Mr Chirac’s predecessor, who conducted tests. The Nationwide Building Society, the second-largest in Britain, escalated the mortgage price war yesterday by cutting its loan rate to a new market low of 7.95 per cent.

The Nationwide’s move came as Barclays became the first clearing bank to join in the price stampede and lower rates to 7.99 per cent for its own borrowers Other high street banks say they may follow.. The benchmark for such investment is pounds 1m to pounds 2m per life saved.About 2,500 Mk I coaches are still in use, most in the South-east, and 1,400 will still be on the rails in 2000.The leaked report, called Maintaining a Safe Passenger Railway Using Mark 1 Rolling Stock and written by Tony Roche, BR’s central services group managing director, admits that the old rolling stock is less crashworthy than new carriages, which are better able to withstand the impact of an accident.On providing new trains, it said: “Statistics show that the actual number of accidents occurring is small. This has been tolerable to customers and users of the railways so that the promise of better trains in the future has been an acceptable situation and there is not generally a demand for the immediate renewal of older vehicles simply because they are less crashworthy than new vehicles.”An order for new trains to replace several hundred of these old coaches was recently cancelled because the Government wanted it financed by the private sector and the train builders said the deal was unworkable.Michael Meacher, Labour’s transport spokesman, said delays in their replacement had recently led to the announced closure of the ABB (York) coachworks, with the loss of 750 jobs:Mr Meacher said: “The scale of the privatisation fiasco is extraordinary.”First the Government diverts hundreds of millions of pounds that could have been spent on modernisation of the railways into set-up costs for the sell-off.”Then it tries to meet the bill by ending investment in new rolling stock, destroying Europe’s most modern train manufacturer in the process.”Then it asks for a report telling it that safety improvements are all very expensive and the best thing is to do nothing,” he added.. CHRISTIAN WOLMAR

Transport Correspondent
The recommendations of the inquiry into last year’s Cowden train crash in which five people were killed look set to be ignored because they are too costly to implement.The inquiry report, published in May, recommended that old Mk I rolling stock, whose poor crash resistance contributed to the scale of the disaster, should be replaced or refurbished to more modern standards.However, a British Rail report leaked yesterday to the Labour Party suggests that safety modifications to the rolling stock would not be cost-effective.Four options are considered for refurbishing the coaches, but even the cheapest of these would cost pounds 31.5m per life saved.