France in Rebellion-Four Articles De Gaulle's Politics of Polarization

...The impact of this situation on the forthcoming elections is obvious, since Frenchmen who fear they have more to lose than to gain by voting out the regime constitute a majority...

...To reshape France, to bind up its divisive wounds, much more than economic or educational reform—or even participation by decree—is required...

...they also now called for the ouster of the Gaullist regime...

...As in the case of the students, the government now moved energetically to repair the situation...

...When the cgt president, Communist Benoit Frachon, left the Social Affairs Ministry to announce the bargaining results to the workers, he affirmed that the Grenelle agreements would "bring to millions of workers a well being they had never hoped to obtain...

...On May 27, collective bargaining sessions concluded...

...When members of its own Parliamentary coalition expressed their unhappiness with this procedure, the government once more resorted to an all-or-nothing approach...

...Again, though, events outpaced reactions: The strikes generated their own momentum and spread so swiftly that the leaders could only follow those whom they were supposed to lead...

...The hallmark of this politics is summed up in the ultimatum with which the General repeatedly confronts his countrymen: "Me and my policies or Communism and chaos...

...Police brutality in coping with the demonstrations had not only shocked the public at large...

...it had evoked the angry hostility of the regime's opponents...

...Only six weeks earlier no major nation of Western Europe appeared more stable and self confident...

...What is more, the largest trade union group in France, the Communist-controlled General Federation of Labor (cgt) , was caught completely off base by the unanticipated developments...

...Workers with whom I talked as the sitdown movement started spoke disparagingly of it...

...It was de Gaulle, the leader of that government, who named them to their posts...

...I encountered a similar reaction the next day at the Bourse, the scene of a clash between police and demonstrators the night before...

...In fact, another element underlay every stage of the crisis and contributed decisively to its unexpected escalation...

...and, most important, from de Gaulle's personal style of rule and his practice of a politics of polarization...

...The politics of polarization, which contributed so greatly to bringing France to its current pass, is once again being offered as the best way of binding up a deeply divided nation's wounds...

...It was a Socialist premier of the Fourth Republic who ousted them early in 1947...

...Indeed, the prospect is that that malaise will deepen...

...These tactics, which insist on presenting Gaullism as the only alternative to Communism, naturally infuriate the non-Communist Left and incline it to accept the Communists as partners in a common struggle...

...It declared that the planned action was an administrative matter and did not require legislative approval...

...Early this year, the pouvoir decided to introduce commercial advertising on the state-controlled television network...

...On the weekend of May 25, with Prime Minister Georges Pompidou presiding, union, management and government negotiators sat down inside the Ministry of Social Affairs on the rue de Grenelle, to hammer out agreements covering the whole range of labor-industry relations...

...It is widely rumored that cgt leaders considered disowning the strikers when the first wave of sit-downs began...

...Then the Fifth Republic, its coffers filled with gold and its prestige raised high by the Vietnam negotiations underway in Paris, slid suddenly and precipitously toward a crisis that no one had remotely anticipated...

...This assuredly did not involve the life and death of the Republic and seemed ideally suited for the give-and-take of Parliamentary debate...

...The network official in charge—a bureaucrat owing his allegiance to the government —attempted to censor the program, which would have subjected his chief to criticism rarely heard on the government-owned French airwaves...

...Thus, what had started out with student demonstrations in the Latin Quarter had finally developed into a political confrontation that carried the threat of civil war...

...In part, no doubt, this is due to the skill they have exhibited in playing their role...

...Last year, for instance, the government proposed a package of ordinances aimed at streamlining the French economy...

...On May 24, in his first public response to the crisis, de Gaulle appeared on television and announced his intention of holding a referendum...

...The grievances of the majority were widely recognized as justified...

...I happened to see de Gaulle's May 24 television appearance at the home of French friends, who were evenly divided among Gaullists and anti-Gaullists...

...Presumably, the workers were infected by the student unrest and the sense of power and enthusiasm generated on May 13...

...What France needs, above all, is to turn away from the Gaullist politics of polarization with its arbitraire, and move toward a politics of conciliation and dialogue...

...Communist and non-Communist opposition leaders re-echoed the call...

...The next day in the Atlantic port city of Nantes, a few hundred workers sat down in a government-owned aviation plant and, like the students before them, demanded a redress of grievances...

...Aware that they have no possibility of taking power on their own or through illegal means, they have conducted themselves responsibly in recent years and have concentrated their efforts on creating a popular front with the principal party of the non-Communist opposition, the Socialist-dominated Federation of the Left led by Francois Mitterand...

...Whatever the immediate causes, it is unquestionable that working class dissatisfaction in France has been festering under the more visible surface of middle class prosperity...

...unemployment is relatively high in terms of French postwar experience...

...They let it be known that they not only wanted a more generous settlement...

...Television producers planned to follow the President's appearance with a program carrying comments and reactions by prominent political personalities, including de Gaulle's opponents...

...A student minority, comprising an assorted variety of extremists, was bitterly hostile to the "establishment" and wanted nothing less than its overthrow...

...But the regime, anticipating widespread opposition to the measure, moved to bypass the Assembly...

...hours of work are overlong...

...Interestingly, too, the slogans voiced by the workers in the May 13 demonstration gave no hint of serious economic dissatisfaction...

...The maneuver was successful: The regime was upheld...

...To everyone's surprise, not least that of the labor confederation heads, the workers angrily and emphatically turned down the agreements...

...Opposition parties bitterly attacked some of the measures...

...and the ordinances put into effect...

...Me and my policies or Communism and chaos" has already become the basic Gaullist campaign theme for the forthcoming Parliamentary elections...

...By then, however, it was too late...

...And as the streets around the Sor-bonne erupted in turbulent demonstrations, the regime moved to quiet the unrest by promising a wide-ranging overhaul of the educational system...

...But the crisis was far from over...

...Student grievances provided the tinder for the first stage of the upheaval...

...Consequently, despite the economic progress of recent years that has benefitted most Frenchmen, the country is today more divided along Left-Right lines than at any time since the mid-1930s...

...ParliamentGEORGES POMPIDOU ary discussion bypassed...

...It took a series of interlocking "accidental" events to trigger the explosion and transform the month that normally marks the beginning of the French tourist season into an angry revolt against the Gaullist regime...

...Prime Minister Pompidou announced he would stake the fate of the government on the acceptability of the proposed procedure and called for a vote of confidence...

...What triggered the Nantes sit-down is unclear...

...Yet even though these grievances were quickly raised to justify the strikes, I am skeptical that they were the only or, at first, the principal causes...

...The events of May seem on the surface, then, to have been provoked mainly by an interaction of student and working-class discontent that somehow got out of hand...

...But a Gaullist victory gained on such a basis will not dispel the malaise affecting the nation...

...from the great authority vested in the French Presidency by the Fifth Republic's Constitution...

...That day, hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen paraded through the streets in one of the most impressive mass outpourings in this nation's history...

...Under de Gaulle's Fifth Republic, the Communists are no longer outcasts and enjoy respectable status on the French political left...

...This element was political —it involved an accumulating and ultimately explosive resentment against a regime whose control of French life is everywhere felt to be heavy-handed, intrusive and suffocating...

...What struck us all, without exception, was the incongruity of the spectacle offered by a 77-year-old man, looking every bit his age but nonetheless offering to lead his country in bringing about the needed reforms...

...Thereafter, until de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, the Communist party remained effectively isolated from meaningful participation in the mainstream of French political life...

...As I passed among knots of curious onlookers, surveying the damage to the Bourse and arguing passionately between themselves, I was struck by the fact that Gaullists and anti-Gaullists alike shared the same sentiment: It was time for a change, time, in particular, for "the old man" to yield the reigns of power to someone else...

...The continued exploitation of this politically profitable approach is rich with irony...

...The concessions won by the unions and embodied in the so-called Grenelle accords—salary increases, higher minimum wages, shorter hours, union organizing rights in the factories—more than satisfied the labor leaders...

...More than anything else, the May days marked a revolt against le pouvoir?the power," as the regime is frequently described in the French press—and against its arbitrage—that is, the arbitrary and oppressive authoritarianism of the Fifth Republic's ruler, President Charles de Gaulle...

...Soon strikes multiplied throughout the country...

...The power wielded by the Gaullist regime flows from many sources: from the overcentralization of state institutions created in the Napoleonic period...

...But the majority of students had more specific discontents, stemming from overcrowded facilities, impersonal teacher-student relationships, lack of jobs for graduates and, above all, the inadequacies of an educational system whose fundamental features were designed well over a century ago...

...Significantly, before the police brutality transformed the situation, the Communist party had been critical of student extremists who, in turn, had no love for the cp because they scornfully considered it a pillar of the establishment...

...Rather than entrust the fate of the bill to Parliamentary give-and-take, the government demanded special executive powers for a six-month period to institute the legislation...

...But apart from the success of their own efforts, the Communists have been a major beneficiary of the Gaullist polarization tactics...

...For the present, at least, the wish embodied in these sentiments is not about to be fulfilled...

...As the country moves now toward the June 23 general election, an essential truth about what happened remains this: The May crisis need not have happened at all...

...They will surely heed the Gaullist appeal to vote against "Communism...

...They claimed life had never been so good and expressed concern over the strike's potentially disruptive effects...

...The tactic was designed to rally the support of needed votes among resentful members of the Gaullist Parliamentary coalition...

...France in Rebellion—Four Articles De Gaulle's Politics of Polarization By Norman Jacobs Paris The upheaval that brought France close to civil war at the end of May came out of nowhere, confounding Frenchmen and foreigners alike...

...When opposition flared, the government sought a vote of confidence on the issue...

...union organizing activity in the plants is quite restricted...

...Before the week was out, millions of workers were on strike, the three principal French labor confederations had taken charge of the movement, and the Fifth Republic was face to face with the most dangerous class conflict in its 10-year history...

...and had they been individually submitted to the French Assembly for approval, it is likely that parts of the package would have been amended or rejected...

...The old man" is back in the saddle, and so are the old slogans...

...Examples of the Gaullist style of rule, and of the intense frustration it creates, abound...

...Again the tactic succeeded...

...In short, the issue was divorced from the specifics of the legislative proposals and turned into a vote for or against the regime...

...The May crisis itself provided revealing examples of the regime's arbitraire...

...The producers struck in protest, curtailing television coverage of the subsequent events...

...In 1945, for example, under the short-lived postwar provisional government, Communists assumed posts in the Cabinet for the first time in French history...

...Salary increases have not kept pace with increases in productivity...

...Afterward, the Communists joined with the regime's other political opponents and with the major trade union confederations in calling for a general strike and nationwide protest demonstration on May 13...