Report on the French Socialists
TAS, SAL
Report on the French Socialists By Sal Tas Paris The recent congress of the French Socialist party typified in large measure the overall political situation in France. A healthy, constructive...
...Perhaps most encouraging, an analysis of the vote showed that, of the "federations" which comprise the French Socialist party, all the large ones had backed EDC while all the small ones had opposed it...
...There is also a majority for a program of social and economic reform...
...A man like Jules Moch, who has taken the lead for years in agitating against EDC both in Parliament and out, and who was official rapporteur for the Foreign Affairs Committee when it submitted its adverse recommendation, cannot be expected to reverse himself on the final vote...
...Once EDC is ratified, however, this incubus will have been lifted from the backs of French politicians...
...It was a fight between the big, modern, well-organized proletarian federations and the small, old-fashioned, ineffectual, agrarian or artisan federations???between the France of the future and the France of the past...
...It was also a vote against chauvinism and in favor of ending the long national feud with Germany...
...and British guarantees against withdrawal from Europe, and creation of a European political authority...
...France might at last stand on the threshold of a national renewal...
...Robert Lacoste, the most serious of the anti-EDC speakers, contended that the party's three chief preliminary conditions for approval of the treaty...
...The Foreign Affairs Committee vote, incidentally, should not be taken to indicate ultimate defeat of EDC in Parliament...
...His report on the Cabinet crisis and the new government of Pierre Mendes-France will appear in a future issue...
...When he condemned Franco, Syngman Rhee and Adenauer in one breath, a storm of protest broke loose...
...The Committee was originally packed with anti-EDC Deputies in a parliamentary maneuver and is not representative...
...that is what has immobilized the French Parliament...
...The congress approved the European Defense Community by a majority of just under 60 per cent...
...He simply asked the party to block German rearmament until he tamed the Russians in the UN Disarmament Commission, where he is French delegate...
...As things now look, the majority of Socialist Deputies will probably bow to party discipline and cast their votes for the treaty...
...On the whole, the party congress was an encouraging one...
...Sal Tas filed this dispatch on the Socialist party congress before the fall of the Laniel Government...
...Eight Socialist members of the Foreign Affairs Committee have already flouted the party congress's resolution by voting to recommend disapproval of the treaty, and severe penalties have been meted out to some of them...
...A roar of approval went up when one of the delegates said: "The party has often fought against groups, cliques, classes, persons???never against an entire people...
...Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how the anti-EDC Socialists in Parliament will behave...
...The case against EDC was presented from three points of view...
...The vote for EDC was first of all a vote for internationalism...
...But special dispensation can be granted to a few men like Moch only on condition that their political allies do not demand similar treatment...
...For the way may now be open for a reassessment of French policy...
...As such, it may prove to have been a turning point in the history of the party???and perhaps of France...
...Since anti-EDC sentiment predominates in the Socialist contingent in Parliament, the delegates voted overwhelmingly (by 2,484 to 51, with 879 abstentions) to bind the Deputies to this decision...
...had not been met...
...There is a majority for EDC, in my opinion, provided the Government really throws its support to the treaty...
...But these majorities are not the same...
...The party can tolerate a dozen defectors, but not 30, for it cannot go into the next election campaign saddled with responsibility for defeat of the European Defense Community...
...Guy Mollet and Andre Philip, speaking for the majority, replied that the most important of the three had been met when President Eisenhower promised, informally but unequivocally, that American troops would remain in Europe...
...Those who support social reform but are against EDC would have to resign themselves to the will of the people, as expressed by Parliament, and could then join with other progressive groups in backing a reform program...
...However, a certain amount of indulgence may have to be shown in some cases...
...at times, they did not seem to consider Russia a danger at all...
...And, in any event, the party congress has sent a healthy shock through the political body of France...
...Daniel Mayer's attack on EDC was a pot pourri of Marxist and pseudoMarxist cliches...
...Jules Moch was even worse...
...The party leadership had hoped for 65 per cent or more...
...A healthy, constructive atmosphere was evident in many ways, but so were the deep divisions that have kept this country in a perpetual state of crisis...
...Mayer and Moch not only regarded the German danger as greater than the Russian...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 26
