FRENCH TROUBLES
By D. R. GILLIE
FRENCH politics have become depressingly seasonal. This autumn as last autumn working-class patience has worn thin. This autumn like last autumn the Government's desire to
reduce the budgetary deficit and the strain on the Treasury has led it to put up the price of goods and services supplied by nationalised industries which were not paying their way, at the very moment when the rise in the cost of such foodstuffs as meat and wine have exacerbated opinion. This autumn as last autumn comprehensible discontent is being exploited by the Communists in a strike movement with political aims. This autumn as last autumn the Government is weak, with a bare majority in the Assembly and probably less than a majority in the country. It is not a cheerful prospect. It cannot be said that the differences of the present situation as compared with last year's make it appear much better than do the resemblances. Still there are differences, which is to say that the situation is evolving, that it is not merely a vicious circle.
The Communist Party seems to be more careful than it was about the discipline and orderliness of strikes. It seems to feel that working-class opinion is on the whole opposed to violence, and even in most professions disinclined to enter on long strikes. It, or rather the Communist-led C.G.T., has therefore adopted in most cases the policy of calling for a protest strike of limited dura- tion. No doubt this is in part due to the need to hold manoeuvres before entering upon a major struggle. Last year's strikes left the less militant workers with their confidence in the strike weapon badly shaken. The schism in the C.G.T,* the creation of the Socialist-led C.G.T.F.O., the strength in many industries of the Catholic-led C.F.T.C., have made it necessary for the C.G.T. leaders to go slow. But even though there are signs that the C.G.T. now feels it has recovered much of its strength, its increased caution remains noteworthy. In its most important venture, the coal strike, which was not called as a strike of limited duration but as a fight to the finish, the C.G.T. leaders were at pains to hold a referendum instead of sweeping the mines into action after meetings at which a mere show of hands was called for. The coal strike started dourly, stubbornly, but with singularly little excitement. The Government succeeded in avoiding the gas and electricity strike by negotiation, although in these two industries, as in the mines, the unions were Communist-led. It takes more work and more diplomacy to launch a strike than last year.
But this lack of fire corresponds to a general lowering of the temperature in France, a failure of confidence and an almost dis- quieting pacifism. It is only too, easy today in France to represent any policy which involves standing firm in face of Russia as war- mongering. Communist propaganda can thus associate Marshall aid, not with hope of recovery, but with fear. of being utilised by "American Imperialism " as ill-armed cannon-fodder, while France itself becomes a battlefield in which it is convenient to fight but which there is no obligation to defend. In consequence, this year the political objectives of the Communist trade-unffin leaders have been stated much more frankly than in 1947. Of the two Com- munist organisations in France, the party proper and the trade unions of the- C.G.T., it was the latter that was. the first to issue a statement declaring that France would never fight Russia. The argument is perpetually used that the Government can meet the workers' demands without difficulty by cutting down military ex- penditure. As so often, the Socialists have improvidently offered the Communists an excellent argument by themselves provoking the fall of the Schuman Government over a demand for a reduction of military credits. The C.G.T. and Communist Party declarations denouncing war with the Soviet Union as monstrous in any circumstances have aroused in other parties the comment that might be expected— namely, that they prove once and for all that the Communists are the agents of Moscow rather than citizens of France. The Com-
* Confederation Generale du Travail ; C.G.T. Force Ouvriere ; Confederation Francaise des Travailleurs Chretiens.
munists, it is true, are careful to suggest that France is being asked to fight as the ally of a restored Nazi Germany. But even without this gloss the general statement of Communist opposition to war with Russia would not necessarily startle or shock the French workman, and it has the advantage that its critics appear to be arguing in favour of such a war. At this point all the stories which were beginning to be forgotten, of atrocities and license during the first months of Soviet occupation of Germany, turn to the advantage of Communist propaganda. For who would wish to expose France to that for an American interest ? In this respect, therefore, a certain softness and timidity in French opinion at the present junc- ture plays into the Communist hands.
At the other extreme of the political spectrum the Gaullists, and in particular their leader, have become much more violent in their attacks on the present regime, as if inspired by a growing sense of urgency to replace it with something else. They simul- taneously denounce the Government for weakness, and do their bes to undermine its authority even when it is serving national and not party interests. The Gaullists, and the General in particular; have no reason to love M. Jules Moch, the Socialist Minister of the Interior, but they have some substantial reasons to respect him as a man who has shown great courage in defending the Republic against the Communists, in reorganising the police and in checking disorder. Yet the General has chosen to push his quarrel with him to the point of referring to him as "the personage representing the so-called Government in the so-called Parliament." The per- formance of the Governments of the Fourth Republic up to date has not been such that anyone has the right to reject a priori the Gaullist argument, that things cannot improve until the prese0 constitution has been reformed and new elections have been held. It is reasonable, however, to ask them how France is to be governed in the meanwhile, and how they propose to deal, when they do come into power, with those elements whose opposition to themselves, they are engaged in intensifying.
Even if the Gaullists were to achieve the sweeping majority th4 they believe would be theirs, their contempt for their opponents and their pronouncements on such questions as trade unions have; already assured them a bitterly recalcitrant opposition. The General's constitutional proposals (which are far from clear with' regard to the essential question of the relations of the Governmen to the President and to the Parliament) were put forward in a speech at Bayeux in 1946, which offered them as an alternative to a drift from governmental impotence into dictatorship. That the General himself is sincere in believing that he is offering not dictatorship but an alternative to it is certain. But it looks increasingly as if, as a result of his own actions and those of his opponents, he would have no choice but to act as a dictator if he did come into power.'
Between the General and the Communists is the chipped and dusty parliamentary regime of the Fourth Republic that was so recently brand new and associated with genuine though not very enthusiastic hopes. Is it possible for a regime which inspires so little confidence, to pull France out of her present plight, to stabilise her economy in spite of the determined sabotage of the Communists, and the parliamentary republic in spite of the resoluta hostility of the Gaullists ? Indeed, is the present constitution, which differs from that of the Third Republic principally by its designers' attempts to repress symptoms without regard for these causes, a suitable basis for French political life. The present regime in fact survives because the average Com- munist voter prefers it to a Gaullist Government just as the average supporter of the General prefers it to a Communist one. No one who looks at it can suppose that in itself it provides a solution for France's problems, but its survival suggests that neither of its rivals has solved the problem of an alternative basis for French political life. The present regime at least leaves more doors open on to the future. This is not a sufficient justification if the Queuille Government fails to solve any of the immediately urgent problems, but it should not be forgotten that this Government and this regime stand for traditions and ideas in France which are much greater than their actual representatives and which have not altogetheil lost their power to inspire.
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