Eighty years ago this week General de Gaulle and the Labour left wing display their power
A military court in Algeria sentenced industrialist and collaborator Pierre Pucheux to death in the first high profile trial of a former member of the Vichy government. Pucheux had come to North Africa under a safe conduct pass issued by General Giraud but General de Gaulle chose to ignore this. Pucheux had been minister of the interior under Vichy and thus caught by an edict of the National Liberation Committee which deemed all ministers to have committed treason. Pucheux had also personally selected 89 hostages for reprisal execution and established the Police Aux Questions Juives . Ireland declined a request from the US to expel diplomats from Axis countries on the grounds of security. Britain then banned travel to Ireland as part of precautions to preserve secrecy over the imminent Overlord landings in France. There was uproar in the House of Commons when the Conservative health minister Henry Willink made a statement on post-war housing policy. The substance was innocuous - h