"Better to Have Your Enemy in Front of You than Alongside!"
We were among ourselves Wednesday evening at the Communist meeting near the Porte de Pantin; the atmosphere was like that of the festival for I'Humanite. Post, Telephone, and Telegraph militants...
...don't know who's right...
...Did you see JoJo...
...All eyes are on Marchais...
...Yes, full powers were voted, but so that he'd make peace in Algeria, not build up the war...
...Do you remember the Popular Front, and Mollet's policy afterward...
...An older activist finds the Socialists exactly as he'd always known them to be...
...You want the fat capitalists to go on running the show...
...The only way to fight perseveringly for union and change, said M. Marchais...
...Aren't the Socialists better than the men who are in power now...
...With the Communists!—this being the replacement for "Union...
...Action...
...Get the facts...
...Things are going badly, for sure...
...It's 15 years we've been fighting for unity...
...27, 1977 24...
...The old Socialos haven't changed...
...Haven't you got the picture yet...
...So, we go on with the same people for another 15 or 20 years...
...they know each other, and call gaily back and forth...
...Patrick Jarreau, Le Monde, Sept...
...Don't you read the papers...
...But the Communists voted him full powers...
...the hesitant, come-togetthe-facts fellow asks...
...No, it won't," the CP militant replies, "because the idea is to indemnify only the small stockholders...
...For years they've leaned on us to betray the workers...
...That's a misleading argument...
...And it'll cost less that way...
...Clearly, the young man wants no such thing...
...Look," someone answers, "other people are as disappointed as you are...
...In the hall, a song by Yves Montand is coming over the loudspeakers...
...I'm on the fence...
...I've come to get the facts...
...Why join the French Communist party...
...a young man asks...
...He looks awful...
...The older man is annoyed...
...Maybe it's enough to control, without nationalizing everything," he says...
...Is it really over...
...In response, the audience chanted, "Union...
...And the proof...
...The name of the Federal German Chancellor will be booed when Marchais, in his speech, includes it among the Socialist leaders who "follow the same policy as Giscard and Barre...
...And, just as he had done at the I'Humanite festival, M. Gaston Plissonier, a member of the Party secretariat, announced how many had signed up during the meeting: more than 400...
...Action...
...Mention of Mitterrand will elicit nothing but silence, with maybe a whistle here or there...
...Mitterrand is going to Bonn to see Schmidt...
...There, you see...
...He is holding a membership form...
...People are arriving in groups...
...Common Program...
...The young secretary intervenes...
...Some 50 members of the Central Committee walk up onto the big platform, and are greeted by a long ovation...
...You know something," the militant oldtimer says, "I'd rather have my enemy in front of me than alongside me...
...Post, Telephone, and Telegraph militants were selling sandwiches at the Metro exit...
...others were handing out CP membership forms...
...And after what he said about us...
...They continue to talk as they walk toward the building, which is filling up rapidly...
...They're not holding any grudges...
Vol. 25 • January 1978 • No. 1
