From Pinay to Mayer
By D. R. GILLIE MOST French Cabinet crises are unnecessary and regrettable. The last one was particularly so. But, unnecessary and regrettable as they are, they naturally occur along the lines of tension in French politics. They cannot but happen in a significant way.
A French commentator has remarked that 1952 will be remembered as Pinay's year. That is the principal reason why he fell. One of the least attractive aspects of the French Republican tradition is Parliamentary jealousy of men who . amass personal prestige in the country. This emotion is particularly strong in an Assembly which is failing to provide a basis for steady government like the present one. On the evening that ended with M. Pinay's resignation the speeches that pleased were all those that assured the Assembly that it need not have a bad conscience and that there was some kind of anti-Parliamentary campaign in- progress. The Assembly seemed indeed to be claiming to be above criticism. This attitude became quite grotesque after M. Pinay had walked out on the Deputies, instead of waiting for the inevitable adverse vote.
M. Pinay during his nine months in power had done Parliamentary institutions in France an immense service. By splitting the Gaullists he had brought thirty more Deputies into active Parliamentary politics, thereby making it possible for the Socialists to go into opposition. No longer was every party that accepted Parliamentary government forced into a vast unnatural alliance in order that there should be a Government at all. Further, M. Pinay's own success in convincing a large part of the nation that he was a fellow-citizen doing his best, and not merely one of " them " at it again, meant indirectly an access of popular support to the institutions which had brought him into power and to which he showed undeviating loyalty. It was M. Pinay's unexpected personal impact on the political, situation in France that set going the series of events that brought him down and is continuing to bear fruit. The final blow to his premiership was, paradoxically enough, the triumphant success at a by-election in South Paris of M. Paul Coirre, who had left the Gaullists in order to support him. The Gaullists lost two-thirds of their votes as compared with January, 1951. " With municipal elections approaching this was indeed a writing on the wall for them. Their first triumph and indeed their high-water mark of success, had been in the last municipal elections, those of 1947, when they claimed to have received thirty-eight per cent. of the votes. The Parliamentary elections of 1951 had already shown a decline from this to twenty-two per cent. A further decline would have the gravest consequences for a party that was proposing to take on its shoulders the whole burden of French national renewal.
It was clear that the criticisms of the Gaullists for a negative attitude to current affairs, and for hoping to achieve power through national disaster, were having their effect. The indirect assistance given to M. Pinay by abstention was not enough to exculpate them. But to go further in support of a man who had split their party, carrying off a quarter of their deputies into the hostile camp, was a humiliation too great to be faced. The only solution which could preserve Gaullist unity was an agreement to go all out to bring M. Pinay down, and then to play a " constructive " part in the ensuing Cabinet crisis. This Gaullist decision meant that M. Pinay could only survive if all the members of all the parties forming his coalition were loyal to him. Notoriously they were not. When the wish of the Catholic M.R.P. to give a Christmas present to recipients of family allowances became too great to be con- tained by their sense of public responsibility, M. Pinay knew. he was defeated. He at last lost his sorely .tried temper, told the Assemb:y it was disgracing itself in the presence of the public galleries (which it was doing) and walked out of it. The Gaullists now found that is was not so easy to enter the game of making Governments as it had been to take part in destroying them. The Radicals were convinced that the Gaullist problem would be settled for ever by a further split if pressure was maintained, and showed no desire to enter a 'coalition with them. The only friends the Gaullists could find were the M.R.P., who were in disgrace with Radicals and Independents for having brought down M. Pinay, and were therefore themselves lonely. M.R.P. and Gaullists have also this in common—that they are both post-war parties whom the older groups—Radicals, Socialists and Independents—resent as intruders. They are no longer in a position to prevent the abandonment of pfoportional representation, and have to fear a very serious reverse without it. So, although the M.R.P. and the Gaullists are completely opposed on the issue of the European Army which was later to be made the shibboleth of the crisis, these two parties drew together.
The Gaullist leaders decided that M. Bidault would be their candidate for the premiership, and thought that even his first failure to form a Government was not final. In order to secure a united front of the party against M. Rene Mayer, the test of the European Army was chosen, and agreement was obtained from all the deputies that the severest vote-discipline would be observed. M. Mayer is a determined champion of the European idea and of Franco-German reconciliation, though critical of some of the details of the draft E.D.C. treaty. It was not thought that he could satisfy the Gaullists. It is now common knowledge that he did—aided by the Gaullist rank- and-file's dread of being again accused of playing the part of wreckers. The Gaullist leaders had to choose between avoiding another split and voting for a course that they and the General disapproved.
It is possible that things would have turned otherwise if General de Gaulle had not happened to be in a nursing-home undergoing an operation on his eye—a circumstance which only became public later. But the fact remains that this party, built to be the instrument of a man destined by Providence to renew his country, has turned out very like other French parties—that is to say with leaders who are more like chair- men than party-leaders in the English sense. It has rejected the grim views of the General, who feared that in touching pitch it would become defiled. It has been drawn into the present French system of politics, which will probably become easier (though not easy) to work in consequence. It was not only a clumsy constitution that had made the formation of Govern- ments such a problem but the refusal of a large body of deputies on the right as well as on the left to play ball. At the same time the change makes it much more likely that some constitutional reforms will in fact be carried out.
But what about the European Army ? M. Mayer has said three important things in this respect: that an agreement on the Saar should be reached before the E.D.C. treaty and the Bonn treaty are ratified; that supplementary protocols should be negotiated to secure, amongst other things, the unity and integrity of the French Army and the French Union; that the vote on the treaty should be a free vote, i.e. not a vote of con- fidence. The first of these statements is by far the most important. The second has been interpreted by M. Mayer him- self to the M.R.P. as meaning that French units serving in the European Army and in the French Overseas Army should be interchangeable, and that there should be one, not two, French officers' corps. The third can be interpreted as referring to the " question of confidence " as defined by the French constitution. Governments have threatened to resign in the past—and indeed have resigned—without applying this mechanism. If, to use M. Mayer's own words, each deputy is to be left free to follow his own conscience, the Prime Minister can claim the same freedom to resign if the Assembly rejects an important treaty—and he can tell the Assembly so in advance.
Before the crisis there was a grave problem of how to find a majority to ratify the treaty, and it was already clear that some supplementary agreements would be necessary to secure it. M. Rene Mayer has only stated this with sufficient skill to get the Gaullist votes. Perhaps he will find, at a later date, that he was too clever in the matter, when the critics of the treaty, Gaullist and others, start telling him that they reason- ably interpreted his words otherwise. M. Mayer is a philosophic man, and will no doubt reply that he had to form a Government in .order to get the Budget passed into law, and find money to pay the nation's servants—and that you cannot solve every problem at once. Perhaps, indeed, when the treaty comes up for ratification, somebody else will be Prime Minister. . It might almost be called probable. At all events, the French Government has not turned its back on its European policy. Nor is it likely to do so.
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