Last November, I attended the Libertarian International autumn convention in Prague (for a record of this, see Free Life Commentary issue 58 ). This was a good event, as anyone attending or reading about it will agree. Perhaps most important, however, was a series of private conversations that has now resulted in a close and formal affiliation between the Libertarian Alliance and the Libertarian International. Chris R. Tame and I have now joined the Board of the Libertarian International, and Hubert Jongen and Christian Michel of the Libertarian International have joined the Executive Committee of the Libertarian Alliance. How this affiliation will work remains unclear. It is agreed that the best analogy is a marriage, where at the beginning all is unsettled—who is to sleep on which side of the bed, what time dinner is to be eaten, what colour the carpets and walls are to be of the common home, and so forth—and that settlement is best reached by continuous agreement and compromise until long term harmony is reached. But an affiliation between the two most important libertarian organisations in Europe will almost certainly be good for the promotion of liberty in a part of the world where it is under routine attack from some very sinister multi-national authorities.

It was to show solidarity with out new partners, and to announce the partnership, that I attended the latest convention of the Libertarian International. Thanks to the Channel Tunnel—perhaps the only good result of recent Franco-British cooperation—Paris is now only three hours by railway from London; and the fares are remarkably cheap. My own journey was marred only by a work to rule by the French customs officials, who decided to hold up my railway train for an hour and a half at Calais; but it was otherwise a fast and pleasant ride from Waterloo straight to the Gare du Nord in the Centre of Paris.

The first event of the convention was a Libertarian International board meeting, in the Hotel Ibis on Friday afternoon the 5th April. Of course, this was a private event, and the minutes that I took will not be generally published. But I can say that it was a most productive and harmonious formal beginning to our affiliation.

The next step for me was to arrange accommodation for the weekend. Because I was busy—and because I am frequently disorganised—I had not arranged this in London. So I found myself in Paris without anywhere to stay. The Hotel Ibis, where the convention was to take place, was full, as were the hotels where my fellow Board members had booked to stay. No matter. I set off on a walk round the 13th Arrondissement in search of the tattiest and therefore the cheapest hotel I could find. I was not disappointed. Perhaps because no one running it spoke a word of English, the place I found was fairly empty. The owner was an old man with broken, yellow teeth, who between describing the delights of his establishment chain-smoked little cigars. We agreed a daily rate of 43 euros (£26), which was about half what the other hotels were charging. Since I paid cash and neither asked for nor was offered a receipt—nor was I asked to show identification—I suspect no tax was charged.

As I opened my wallet, the owner saw some £10 notes. "You are so lucky in England" he said "still to have your own money". Removing the cigar from his mouth, he pretended to spit on the euro notes I handed over. "Oh yes" said I, "I never want to see this absurd and evil currency imposed on my country. I added in my best imitation of some ranting demagogue of the 1790s: "the pound for me today, and tomorrow, and always." It sounded more dramatic in schoolboy French. Undoubtedly, it had a positive effect. I was led rom the rather horrid little room I had been given into something far grander with a bathroom and a television set. Who will say that France is altogether lost?

My own happiness was magnified by the saving of money. Mrs Gabb and I are spending virtually all our earnings on repairing our new house in Deal, and this has thrown us into continual cash flow problems. So, while the Libertarian Alliance was paying my expenses, I had arrived in Paris with limited cash, and had left all my bank cards with Mrs Gabb, so she could empty my account as well as hers over the weekend to pay for some new floors and window repairs. Any saving was welcome.

The convention began the next morning. First to speak was Johan Norberg, a young Swede who is the author of In Defence of Global Capitalism. He spoke in flawless, impassioned English about the benefits of global capitalism for both rich and poor. Poverty in the third world, he said, was seen nowadays as such a big problem only because there is a way out of it, but not everyone had been able to take that way out. All the indicators of wealth in most poor countries were moving steadily upwards. In 1980, 31 per cent of humanity were living on $1 a day. By 2000, this was down to 20 per cent.

Capitalism, he said, brought freedom of choice. It liberated women from the control of their menfolk. It liberated both men and women from the control of small scale and usually rapacious money lenders. It ensured that children received a better education from their parents than their grandparents had been able to afford for their parents.

Leading the way in this opening up of opportunities were the much maligned multi-national corporations. They were investing in poor countries, providing jobs directly and indirectly, providing new models of business organisation and management for locals to copy, providing competition and diversity of supply, and paying between twice and eight times the average local wage to their direct employees.

Free trade was the main engine of this development. And the main beneficiaries from free trade were the poor. He went on to attack protectionism, likening the European Union to the planned economies of the old Soviet Empire in its obsession with regulating and protecting. Regulating trade in agriculture and textiles—the main products of the poor world—cost the European Union nearly six per cent of its gross domestic product. On agricultural subsidies alone, the rich world as a whole was now spending $360 billion every year. This was to the benefit of no one.

I received a copy of Mr Norberg's book, and will have it reviewed in the next issue of Free Life—just as soon as I get round to producing one.

Next was Jean Gilles Malliarkis, a French publisher and media owner. He described the spirit of monopoly that was squeezing the life out of France. The difference between Colbert and the present system was more one of description than content. Instead of monopoly, the authorities now spoke about "main providers"; instead of banning competition, about regulating it. The result was the same. France was dominated by a few big, privileged corporations and an army of civil servants. A particularly sinister fact of French life was that nearly all politicians had been civil servants. Almost none had ever run let alone started private businesses.

Monopoly, he said, was an attack on all freedom, especially of those working within it. To leave one of the big companies meant losing not just an assured employment, but also a mass of benefits adding perhaps half again to the money salary.

He denounced France as a complacent, inward-looking nation, unaware of how badly the country was doing and of how contemptuous its economic arrangements appeared to most foreigners. The entire consensus was statist. The only candidate in the presidential election who dared to speak about Thatcher-style economic reform was getting between one and three per cent in the opinion polls: the others were little better than socialists, and sometimes exactly the same.

This was not just a problem for France, but for the whole European Union, as the intellectual energy for constructing a closed, continental super state came almost wholly from the French political class. This was actively seeking a French socialist empire able to keep out the liberating forces of global capitalism.

Next was Michel de Poncins, a French Catholic conservative who runs a radio station on the Internet—the French conventional media being closed to non-leftist opinions in ways hard to imagine in the English-speaking world. His speech was a long denunciation of the European Union. Any claim that this was creating free trade in Europe was a "simple lie". Free trade existed in the 19th century without an army of regulators and tax gatherers to enforce it. He mentioned the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 and the various railway and postal agreements. By contrast, the only true success of the European Union had been to make fools of those liberals who believed the project was in any sense liberal.

The European Union produced a "hurricane of laws" to regulate the minutest detail of economic life.

The true reason behind the European Union was not free trade or market liberalisation, but the enrichment of special interests. The private motto of the Eurocrats was "I control, I am enriched, I am". The first imperative of this class was to "steal immense amounts of money", and to engage in a "gigantic looting operation". M. de Poncins mentioned some scandalous cases of fraud by the Eurocrats.

The official French Government claim that the European Union cost France 27 billion euros a year—though itself a huge figure—was an underestimate. It took no account of internal spending, or of the opportunity costs of regulation, or of the legal uncertainties created by the sheer volume of laws being made. Even granting the truth of the official figure, it was bad. It was money stolen from the tax payers. The claim that most of it was recycled for spending in France was also bad. This was money spent on turning the French into welfare dependants of a socialist state.

There was no hope of reform. "Any European construction, whatever its form, means central control. Whatever promises might be made, whatever structures might be set up at the outset, will soon degenerate into socialism." He took the example of the United States—how a very liberal initial structure had been degraded into something the Founding Fathers would have rejected with horror and disgust.

Renegotiation was a "pious hope". Any attempt would be sabotaged by the special interests, or later on perverted as described. The only solution was to get France out of the European Union. Only then could France become a great power again—free and wealthy and powerful in Europe.

In the questions that followed, M de Poncins regretted that the French Catholic clergy was solidly Europhile—but this was because they were "dedicated followers of fashion". They could be changed.

Next was Henri Lepage, author of Demain le Capitalism, a co-founder of the Libertarian International, and now economic adviser to a political grouping in the European Parliament. He admitted that the European Union had been useful to break down local monopolies in the member states—look at telecommunications and financial services—but its main work had been regulation.

He explained why some opponents were able to denounce the European Union as a capitalist plot and others as socialist. The reason was the contrast between rhetoric and reality. Most regulatory proposals published in Brussels accepted in the abstract that markets were the best means of allocating resources, but that in the matter under consideration there was evidence of "market failure" and so there was need for regulation. The intellectual justification for this trick was the obsession of neo-classical economics with perfectly competitive models which did not and could not exist in the real world.

Sadly, no one seemed aware of public choice theory—that government failure is far more likely and damaging than market failure. As with free trade, the case had to be stated and proved all over again.

Next was Guido Huelsmann from Germany. He argued that politics was a discovery process very similar to market enterprise: that politicians looked for policies within a frame work of what was believed to be possible. This framework was determined by the dominant ideas of the age. To win the battle of politics, he said, it was necessary first to win the battle of ideas.

He said that two particular ides should be contested by libertarians—the state monopoly of monetary issue and state education. The first enabled massive expansions of spending that would not be possible if they had to be paid for out of current taxation. The second was a simple act of "statist brainwashing".

In fighting these ideas and others like them, libertarians should be principled opportunists—operating through a set of shifting alliances with non-libertarians; now supporting multi-national federations, now supporting secession movements. The object should always be to take power away from those most likely to abuse it.

All this is the official policy of the Libertarian Alliance, and has determined our strategy over the past 25 years. It was interesting to hear it again from someone who seemed not to be aware of what we have been doing.

Next was Jacques de Guenin, an old friend of mine and main player in the Cercle Bastiat. He gave a most interesting lecture about the strategy and success of the Anti-Corn Law League in 19th century England, showing how liberals could organise to achieve effective change. There was a discussion afterwards about how this success could be repeated today.

Last to speak was Benoit Taffin of the French Taxpayers Association. She explained that there were at least a thousand different taxes in France—so many that even the Ministry of Finance had not been able to list them all—and that many of these involved collection costs at least as great as the yield. Their purpose was often simply to give employment to officials regardless of their economic damage. She described the efforts of her association to publicise the truth about French taxes and to reduce the overall burden. They had not been greatly successful, but the situation was probably better on the whole than if they had done nothing.

After the main speakers, I stood up to announce the formal affiliation of the Libertarian Alliance and Libertarian International. This was received with surprise and pleasure; and the analogy of marriage came strongly back into my mind. This is going to be a big success.

That was the end of the first day. Though I had now almost run out of euros, I was able to sell some copies of my latest book at 20 euros each. This allowed me to go to the dinner, which had not been included in the registration fee. I would not have gone hungry, as my hotel owner had earlier offered me a meal. Otherwise, I could have borrowed, little as I liked the idea of asking. But I now had 80 euros in my wallet, which though not many pounds, goes a long way in France.

Dinner in an outside restaurant was a large and chaotic affair. Almost no one in Paris seems to speak English—certainly, no waiter I encountered spoke any. Even the French diners at our table had trouble communicating their orders. This being said, the black waitresses were decidedly pretty, and might have excited my amorous propensities—had not Mrs Gabb been continually calling me from Deal on her mobile telephone to share more horror stories about dry rot. At the end of the meal, Hubert and Rita Jongen and I worked out the cost of all we had eaten, and insisted on paying separately. Many other people did the same. I am ashamed to say that not everyone was accurate in this private reckoning, as Rene Francois Rideau—the last person to leave the restaurant—found himself hit with a supplemental bill for 100 euros. I hope he was able to recover his money the next day.

The catering failure had one benefit. Hubert and I fell into a discussion of how to improve them for the next convention in the autumn. At the board meeting of the previous day, we had decided on Bratislava as the place. It is central, cheap, and safe; and because she comes from there, Mrs Gabb could be persuaded to make at least some of the arrangements. We decided now that all meals would be included in the registration fee, which would remove a problem that - though endemic in Parisian restaurants—was marring the success of this convention.

We also agreed on suggesting the provisional title "Libertarian Perspectives on Nationalism, Immigration and War". This has the advantages of being a hot subject within the movement. There are sharply differing perspectives, and give an the opportunity for impassioned debate. Slovakia is a country that has had much experience within living memory of all three issues. East European attendees will have present experience of nationality problems and of being shut out from settling within the European Union countries. Also, there might be war with Iraq by the autumn. We can provide good speakers from both the Libertarian Alliance and the Libertarian International. Otherwise, we might be able to get high profile speakers from America. on all sides of all issues. Above all, it might be easy to get lots of "bums on seats".

I walked back part of the way to my hotel with Antoine Clarke, who was also in Paris. I asked him to which area in London the 13th Arrondissement might best be compared. He said Bayswater. This raised my opinion of what I had previously decided was a thoroughly dumpy area. I saw him off at the Metro with a better opinion of the area. It was not to last.

As I turned into the Rue Alesia, I has hit on the head with a stream of liquid. I looked up to see a woman standing at an open window with a chamber pot in her hand. "You filthy bitch!" I roared up at her in English. "Have you no toilet manners in this bloody country?" I thought of adding a few ripe comments in French, but my grasp of the language had temporarily slipped, and she had by now closed her window and put out the light.

Though not so well covered as in my younger days, I still have plenty of hair; and this fortunately absorbed most of the impact. Much of the rest I stopped by tying a handkerchief over my head. Nevertheless, I could feel warm streams running down my neck and back. I hurried off to my hotel, where I had a long shower and washed my shirt and jumper as best I could. Sadly, I had only brought a change of underwear with me, and so I hoped I could at least stop myself from smelling of urine the next day.

I was once nearly murdered by male prostitutes in Bratislava. I once spent a week in a Sudanese war zone, sleeping between dirty sheets while frogs hopped and croaked on the hotel floor around me. But I had never before had a chamber pot emptied over my head - though I understand it is still a custom in Glasgow, where the locals shout "Gardee-loo" to warn passers by. I hoped Mrs Gabb would be sympathetic when I called her to say what had happened. Though from Slovakia, her opinion of the French is very English lower middle class. She speaks of them in tones and with facial expressions that could be copied straight from the sort of character that Joan Simms used to play in the "Carry On" films. No comfort there, however. She laughed so much I thought she would have a stroke. Worse, she told her building workers what had happened, and they joined in the merriment. I went to bed in a very bad humour.

This passed away the next morning, when my hotel owner gave me a parting breakfast of sticky buns and three large brandies—one drunk to the Republic, one to Her Majesty the Queen, and another damning the European Union and all its works. He had a picture on his wall of a French politician whose name I should perhaps not mention.

Because of this, and because my clothes had taken longer to dry than expected, I missed the first speech of the day. This was by Rene Francois Rideau, and was by all accounts a good one. I also slept through most of Michel Leter's speech, which was about the damage done to French intellectual life by people like Michel Foucault, and how the French liberal tradition is better able than the English to deal with the present attacks on freedom, which are more to do with culture than economics.

I was more awake, though now sadly hungover, for the last speech, which was by Guy Milliere. This was a long moan about how France was a soft totalitarian state, where dissent was not so much punished as ignored or at best demonised. He spoke about the Gramscian project of establishing complete intellectual hegemony for socialism, so that dissent would be either impossible or could only be expressed within a socialist framework of assumptions that would blunt its impact.

This project had been most completely realised in France, which had always been ruled by intellectuals. M. Milliere mentioned the habit of naming streets after famous people, complaining that none had ever to his knowledge been named after Charlotte Corday—the only real hero of the Great Revolution. From here, he launched into a eulogy of Edmund Burke, who had seen the folly and evil of the Revolution even before the intellectuals could get their killing machine under way.

The end result of French intellectual influence, M. Milliere concluded, was the "death of all civilisation".

I thought these last points were very well made—but then, I would. My own opinions of the Revolution were shaped first by Charles Dickens and the Baroness Orczy and then by Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville. It was nice to hear them repeated by a modern Frenchman.

The question and answer session was lively. I noted down this exchange:

Hubert Jongen: The relationship between civil society and the left can be compared to that between two barrels, one full of wine, the other of shit. You take a cup of wine and add it to the shit, and there is no change. Do the opposite and the change is total.

Antoine Clarke: Gives it bouquet.

Sean Gabb: Spoken like a Frenchman.

There were some concluding remarks by Bertrand Lemennicier, and that was the end of the convention. Everyone agreed it had gone splendidly, and all looked forward to the next one in Bratislava.

Lunch, at a place called the Bistro Romain, was nice and very cheap—10 euros (£6) for a three course meal—but was procedurally a repeat of the previous evening. The waiters spoke only French and had trouble even understanding that. I hope the last person out was not hit with another supplement.

The journey home was uneventful, except for utter chaos at the Gare du Nord, where the French customs officials had caused endless delays. I waited three hours in a most unsalubrious area of Paris. When I eventually got into the queue to check in, I decided to smoke the cigar my hotel owner had given me as a parting gift. Some weedy French youth with a backpack turned and asked me to put it out. This had been my intention, as it was vile beyond belief. But I now decided otherwise, and took a long drag on the thing. "Show me a no smoking sign" I said "and I will consider putting it out". He looked despairingly round and decided to try reasoning with me. "I am a sick man" he pleaded, "and you are very impolite to smoke close to me". "On the contrary" I smoothly replied "you are impolite. You have no right to speak to a stranger without first being introduced". This set him off horribly. He raved and stamped his foot at me, his face turning a colour that might otherwise have had me worrying about his state of health. He called out piteously to one of the black security guards, who simply scowled at him and carried about his business of stopping people from jumping the queue. I arrived back in England with a somewhat better opinion of French officialdom than I should perhaps have carried away from all the denunciations of it at the convention.

I am looking forward to Bratislava in the Autumn, and invite my readers to do likewise.