Holitical Intelligence: France: Communists, Socialists, And King Charles
Bloch-Michel, Jean
Some people have asked whether the French municipal elections of 1965 would produce another Popular Front—even if this phrase could hardly mean today what it did in 1984. More precisely,...
...Deferre means an unequal confrontation, entirely in favor of the former...
...Their first was expressed in a new electoral law which it proposed with a double purpose in mind...
...For the Gaullists the General represents, by definition, all France...
...All that he has against him are "the parties" or as he put it the other day, "the Gustave committee and the Theodule committee," an ironical phrase implying that political parties in France are anachronistic and ridiculous abstractions...
...Although some party intellectuals came out in favor of the UEC, its cause was doomed...
...His foreign policy is the exact opposite of the Communist: he believes in NATO and wants a political union of Europe— while the foreign policy of the Gen eral suits the Communists admirably...
...The congress ended with a crushing victory of the "loyalists...
...Some people have asked whether the French municipal elections of 1965 would produce another Popular Front—even if this phrase could hardly mean today what it did in 1984...
...hence he can have no antagonist...
...But there is still another reason for Communist opposition to the mayor of Marseille: they fear him as a candidate in the coming presidential elections...
...all that was at stake was a choice of efficient municipal officials...
...For a long time now the Socialists have picked their election allies to fit their political interests at election time—and nothing else...
...But not this time, thanks to the heavyfooted way in which M. Claude Fuzier, the man in charge of the Socialist organization in the Paris region, asserted his power...
...Once more its members talk only in the liturgical language which serves as a mummycase for its Marxism-Leninism...
...But, this year, the Socialists made a colossal mistake: they tried to arrange these tolerated local abuses by issuing strict instructions...
...While the Gaullists did not lose many seats, they lost control of some large cities including Le Mans and Grenoble...
...Despite an electoral law passed to defeat him, an extremely violent campaign against him and a Gaullist-Communist collusion which he did not hesitate to denounce openly, Gaston Deferre was re-elected mayor...
...It doesn't really matter if all French voters don't vote for him, as long as they don't vote for anyone else...
...And it was this consideration that made the Gaullists adopt their third attitude, which was a return to the first...
...ever since the disappearance of Maurice Thorez the party leadership has been shrouded in a kind of thick fog...
...M. le Gallo died before polling day...
...But if the Socialists have made mistakes, they pale besides those of the Gaullists...
...Hitherto it had two factions: the "right," which wanted unconditional obedience to the party, and the "Italians...
...It is, of course, true that the vote which the UNR managed to pile up in the municipal elections would in no way affect General De Gaulle's majority as presidential candidate...
...M. le Gallo, a Socialist candidate for a Parisian constituency, was expelled from the party for refusing to appear on a common list with a Communist...
...And the reason he didn't is that the French Socialist party has fought these elections in much the same way it had fought all the elections since 1945 and many before that...
...Their tactics might have had a point if certain developments within the Communist party proved that it was about to undergo a basic change...
...One such arose at the worst moment of the Algerian war...
...It permitted M. Dardel, mayor of the large Parisian suburb of Puteaux, to present a joint list with the moderates because its local experts believed that his alliance would improve his chances, whereas M. le Gallo's would not...
...This change seemed to imply that the Gaullists wanted to hasten a polarization of local policies between themselves and the Communists...
...And so the municipal elections of 1965, with a few exceptions to be noted, were fought much as they had been fought before...
...The arrogant solitude of General De Gaulle requires the disappearance of Gaston Deferre...
...The "Italians" were in the majority...
...After the new law . was adopted, the UNR seemed to lose interest in the elections...
...If Deferre stands against De Gaulle, the Communists will not be able to back a "candidate of national unity...
...And one can't help wondering whether the UNR really expects to avoid such a duel in the long run...
...He is a Socialist, and the Communists still stick to their basic strategy of fighting their enemies on the left harder than those on the right...
...This was duly achieved, and the party went back to sleep...
...At the same time, M. Massias of Marseille was expelled for appearing on such a list—a deplorable political comedy...
...Their opposition stems from the very nature of Gaullism, something which is still much misunderstood...
...Their party, the UNR, adopted three successive attitudes towards the municipal elections...
...Which is true in one sense and false in another...
...However, the Gaullists made two exceptions: one in Marseille, for obvious reasons, and the other in Paris where local elections had always been part of national politics...
...they would have to present a party candidate who would, in all likelihood, come out third...
...The leaders felt, no doubt, that no trace should be left of the subversive democracy which the students demanded...
...The elections, they said, were not political after all, and so the results can hardly be disturbing...
...Not, of course, at its head...
...The UEC received a subsidy from the party to publish its magazine, Clarte...
...What the Paris Socialists did, or tried to do, was to create a political vacuum between the Communists and the Gaullists...
...And they made a considerable effort to win them...
...But now a third faction appeared, a "left" which leaned towards China...
...But he will never admit that an opponent could cross swords with him...
...The party prepared for it by using all kinds of means—including fisticuffs—to discipline the local representatives...
...There is a much-quoted saying of Andre Malraux—it is usually quoted as a warning before the elections and as a joke afterwards—"between us and the Communists there is nothing...
...but why should the Gaullists oppose him so bitterly...
...But if De Gaulle dies, resigns or decides not to be a candidate, the odds are evened...
...The election campaign did not, however, move in the direction expected by the Gaullists...
...Premier Pompidou made a TV appearance in which he made it abundantly clear that cities which "voted properly" could be sure of plentiful government credits, while those which didn't could be equally sure of none...
...The average Socialist who votes for a Socialist-moderate list is normally quite unconcerned that his comrade in the neighboring department votes for a joint list with the Communists...
...Just as General De Gaulle claims that he has no predecessor, so he wants to have no opponent...
...More precisely, the question has been raised whether the French Socialist party, seduced by Communist sirens, would conclude a close alliance with the CP and so, in effect, sign its death warrant...
...and Gaston Deferre in Marseille defended his seat against the Communists, the Socialist candidates of the Paris region received strict orders from M. Fuzier to make electoral alliances with the Communists...
...The most unexpected thing about the Socialist electoral tactics in the Paris region was that they were exactly what the Gaullists wanted...
...I am prepared to bet that many Communist voters, if not many Communist militants, simply don't know who the party's present secretary-general is—the name of Al...
...The outcome of an electoral duel between Deferre and Pompidou, Chaban-Delmas or any other UNR leader, cannot be so easily forecast...
...Recently the UEC held its annual congress...
...While Guy Mollet at Arras made an alliance with the Catholic M.R.P...
...The new law, which was duly voted together with a wide redistricting scheme, forbade candidates in towns of over 30,000 to change lists—i.e., to make new electoral alliances—between the two ballots into which French municipal elections are divided...
...Radio and television were put to their exclusive use during the campaign...
...Cabinet ministers were persuaded to present themselves as candidates...
...but his son, who replaced him as candidate, won his seat as easily as M. Dardel...
...The experts were proved wrong...
...Clarte presented their point of view...
...The Gaullist party and the government, including the General himself, were forced to change their mind about the elections and to adopt their second attitude...
...It was severely censored by the party leaders on a number of occasions...
...Nor was the UNR chary in using the resources which the government placed at their disposal...
...The Gaullists paid special attention to the big cities...
...But things did not happen quite that way...
...It proclaimed that they should not be "politicized...
...For them, a presidential campaign of De Gaulle vs...
...It was surprising that the Gaullists used against him the same tactics as the Communists...
...Robert Lacoste, the Socialist Minister for Algeria, was arresting Algerian Communists and having them tortured in jail...
...The Communist opposition to Deferre needs no special explanation...
...The Socialists would then have been justified in encouraging these developments by helping the Communists to break out of their political isolation...
...Something has, indeed, been happening in the Communist party in the last few months...
...But so do the political calculations of his followers, who do not think in terms of heroic poetry, but are moved by more mundane considerations...
...Waldeck-Rochet means nothing to them...
...Statistically, the Gaullist failure is not very big, but it looms much larger when the means they employed are checked against the results they obtained...
...Since their candidates make electoral alliances with Communists and moderates indiscriminately, this occasionally produces paradoxical situations...
...And yet M. Lacoste permitted his Communist opponent in the Dordogne election to withdraw in his favor and kept his seat in the departmental council only because the Communists voted for him...
...but the Socialist blunders received, this time, an unfortunate publicity...
...But their actual chief objective was quite different: to defeat Gaston Deferre as Mayor of Marseille...
...the subsidy was now withdrawn...
...They have used all kinds of methods to silence the students...
...To be sure, the political situation in Marseille is rather peculiar...
...Its task was made easier by a new split within the UEC...
...But it is equally clear that the UNR is still weak on the local level, so that if it presented a candidate other than the General it would find itself in a difficult situation...
...There will always be a candidate—or some candidates— against theirs...
...In his parliamentary speeches he could find no words sufficiently insulting to describe the Communists...
...All over France, moderates made alliances with left-of-center elements, which meant that the UNR candidates were pushed toward the right...
...Unless, of course, they abandon presidential elections altogether and turn France from a monarchy de facto into a monarchy de jure...
...So the Communists have good reasons to fight Deferre...
...Still, it is worth nothing that the average Frenchman did not ask himself this question...
...On the next day, a truck was sent to the UEC offices to pick up the remaining copies of the last issue of Clarte and burn them...
...But there exists a small group, the Union of Communist Students (UEC), which has been giving the CP leadership a hard time...
...but the average Socialist voter must have been surprised by these contradictory maneuvers, especially since the party soon started watering its political wine...
...The elections, they now said, were more political than they had seemed...
...Even in the days of Thorez, the UEC openly denounced the slow deStalinization of the French CP and its lack of internal democracy...
...Communists and Socialists have always and throughout France fought local elections in accordance with local politics, which they have been careful to keep separate from national politics...
...But this might prove rather difficult...
...And, since we are back in politics, we must say that the UNR suffered its biggest defeat in Marseille...
Vol. 12 • July 1965 • No. 3
