Appeal of 18 June as the beginning of the Resistance and Free French, historians have shown that the appeal was heard only by a minority of French people. De Gaulle's 22 June 1940 speech on the BBC was more widely heard. General de Gaulle became the "de facto" leader of the Free French Forces that had escaped to London in June 1940. Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I, pledged to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany, and led the collaborating Vichy government while the Germans occupied the country's northern portion and several leading politicians, including Georges Mandel, Leon Blum, Pierre Mendès
Committee for a Free Britain about Gorbachev. Hart attacked Geoffrey Howe and the Foreign Office's attitude to the Soviet Union as "appeasement". The Committee for a Free Britain was still active in 1991, when a full-page advertisement for it, opposing the European Union but supporting free markets, appeared in the Conference edition of "Commentary", the glossy magazine of the Conservative Graduates'. Committee for a Free Britain The Committee for a Free Britain (also known as the Campaign for a Free Britain) was a right-wing political pressure-group in the United Kingdom. Its introductory letter to all MPs, and others, stated that it was "formed in the