A man for all seasons

FRENCH ELECTION MARC ULLMANN

Paris—The Gaullist party has outlived the General. That is the first and most obvious lesson to be drawn from M Pompidou's electoral victory last Sunday. Obvious, no doubt: yet it is worth stressing, for so many people did not believe it could happen. How- ever, a Gaullist party without the General is a very different animal from a Gaullist party with the General. Hence the key question we should ask this week is this: what sort of an animal is the majority party, and what will it become? The outline of an answer to this question can be extracted from an analysis of last Sunday's poll. M Pompidou trailed the General in the traditionally Catholic and conservative regions of west and east—he was still clearly ahead, but his percentage of the poll was well below that obtained by his predecessor. By contrast, he did very much better in the south, where he obtained a majority of the votes cast, a feat which de Gaulle never managed to pull off. For stu- dents of French history this is a most im- portant piece of evidence.

For more than a century now the oratory of the Midi has centred on two themes: the defence of republican liberty (perpetually under assault from the frondeurs of the right, who have never learnt, it is said,. to accept the consequences of 1789); and the defence of secular education (perpetually under assault from the Catholic church, de- termined on the corruption of the nation's youth).

Now of course neither of these themes has much reality in the modern world, but that has not interfered with their survival. With rare exceptions the mayors of the south of France owe it to themselves to be 'men of the leff—i.e. radical socialists, or commun- ists. In action, no doubt, these 'radicals' have often turned out to be well to the right of centre; but the roots of anti-clericalism go deep.

These are the traditions that M Pompidou has overturned. Certainly the fact that he himself is a son of the south, and the son of a village schoolmaster into the bargain, has helped. But what matters for the future is that a strong party of the centre-right has been born, and a party with impressive sup- port in every part of the country.

Which leads to a second question. What of the 42 per cent of the electorate which voted for M Poher? Is this a group capable of consolidating itself into an alternative government? Logic would suggest that the same forces which have produced the emer- gence of a sort of French Republican party ought now to balance it with a Democratic party. On Sunday evening M Poher, losing no time, pledged himself to try and bring this about. Two of his allies, the Catholic M Pierre Abelin, and the anti-clerical M Rene Billieres, were quick to do the same. Yet they have set themselves a tough assign- ment: for what is involved is nothing less than the dismemberment of the Socialist party, so that its modernist elements can regroup in a new political association.

Their trump card is the evident desire of the mass of the French electorate for a simplification of the political life of the nation. This influence should not be under- estimated, For this extraordinary electorate

has, in less than two months, won all its bets.

It was told that General de Gaulle would not leave the Elysde until he died—or that, if he did, it would be to leave chaos behind him. Unimpressed, it voted `no' in the refer- endum on 27 April, and by so doing it opened the way for the transfer of power. Then the period of interim government passed off without difficulty, and the presi- dential election campaign with considerable dignity.

We have to remind ourselves that these were by no means foregone conclusions. One distinguished British correspondent in Paris advised his readers to prepare for 'the dirtiest campaign ever'. He expected that the opposition would do its best to smear the name of M Pompidou with the Marko- vic affair. He foresaw the Gaullists, for their part, turning the spotlight on Mme Poher, whose distaste for publicity was rumoured by some to be due to her `sim- plicity'—or worse.

Nothing of the kind occurred. And it did not occur for the excellent reason that the spirit of the country was against it. It rapidly became apparent that anybody who attempted to use those sort of weapons would find that they rebounded. As a re- sult it would be nearer the truth to say that it was 'the cleanest campaign ever', ending with a polite message of congrat- ulations to the winner from the loser, who meanwhile reverted to his duties as Presi- dent of the Senate.

Not that this implies a willingness on M Pompidou's part to assist M Poher in his self-appointed task as architect of a new centre-left Democratic party. On the con- trary, M Pompidou is going to go out of his way to add to M Poher's difficulties by offering ministerial office to a number of those on whose support the defeated candi- date might otherwise have counted. The new President intends to present a very different picture of the state of the nation. He will argue that the only real oppo- sition comes from the Communist party, and that all Frenchmen who oppose the Communists must, in time, rally to his banner. The success of his advocacy is likely to depend, as much as on anything else, on the attitude of the Communists them- selves, and whether they are prepared to bide their time, or prefer to try and resume industrial trouble-making.

This, indeed, is the great uncertainty about the present situation. Most socialists voted for M Poher. Most Communists followed the instructions of their leaders and refused to 'choose between cholera and the plague'. This rupture of the traditional unity of the left will help M Poher if, during the months ahead, the industrial climate stays calm. But it will complicate his efforts if strikes and disturbances begin to push the partisans of 'law and order' in- to the President's camp. Thus M Pompidou faces the paradoxical situation that the better he handles the economy the greater will be the danger of the formation of an effective opposition.

Unfortunately the country's economic, monetary and social situation is too serious to allow M Pompidou to play for trouble. He will therefore have to fight on two fronts at the same time: he will have to try and re-establish confidence in the franc and avoid strikes; and at the same time he will have to try and win over as many as possible of M Poher's supporters.

For this purpose he was widely expected, at the time of writing, to call on M

Chaban-Delmas to become his first Prime Minister. M Chaban-Delmas's great quality is that he has friends in every camp. A Gaullist of long standing, he was neverthe- less a minister under the Fourth Republic. Eleven years President of the National Assembly, he has sought allies wherever they have been available to enable him to retain the chain of office as mayor of France's second provincial city, Bor- deaux.

A distribution of labour begins to emerge. The President himself will super- vise economic and social affairs (and this will still be the case even if, as has been suggested, M Pinay is called back from re- tirement: for at seventy-seven M Pinay can hardly be much more than a totem for those who recall his reputation as the saviour of the franc); while M Chaban- Delmas will be responsible for wooing the government's opponents among the centre parties.

It will be noted that international policies do not even figure on this list of priorities. But then foreign policy is not M Pompi- dou's speciality: he just does not think that this is where the real problems lie. I remember well the occasion of the Common Market summit meeting in Rome in June 1967. General de Gaulle played the cere- monial for all it was worth, while M Pom- pidou visited museums.

Nothing is more alien to the spirit of the new President than the long argument for and against supranationalism. He reckons himself a European—to the extent that, for a good many purposes, France is just not big enough. But he is certainly not a European by dedication. As against de Gaulle's Europe des parries, or Jean Monnet's 'United States of Europe', he is accustomed to say that he prefers 'the Europe of realities'. Realities, of course, of which the future alone will decide the shape.

M Pompidou thinks the General was too inclined to stick his neck out. For himself he intends to allow others to do the talk- ing, and to listen. This applies most of all to the British application for entry to the Common Market. There will be no Pompi- dou veto. But no more will there be a prodigal's welcome. 'It is about time,' the new President remarked the other day. 'for us to find out whether our partners are as keen as they say they are to welcome the British'.