Parents' revenge
ELECTIONS-1: FRANCE MARC ULLMANN
Paris—For the politicians of France, this is the week of the tactical alliances. By the time the electors go to the polls for the second time on Sunday in all the 330-odd constituencies where no candidate was returned with an outright majority on Sunday last, the leading contenders will have sought to eliminate the also-rans so as to concentrate the votes upon themselves. But whatever the realignments that may take place, and however successful the parties of the left may be in delivering their electors to whichever of their candidates appear best placed to win, it is already certain that the Gaullists will emerge from the hustings on Sun- day with a comfortable parliamentary majority. Such has been the ultimate achievement of the students' riots, the nights of, the barricades, four deaths and nine million men on strike.
The outcome could have been foreseen—in- deed it was foreseen. But the questions remain: can a composite majority made up of the faith- ful disciples of the General on the one hand, and the representatives of the traditional right on the other, prove itself capable of acting as the vehicle of reform? And if not, will the opposition now show itself capable of in- corporating the real sources of popular discon- tent into its programme instead of allowing them to build up into an explosion?
The crucial test for the majority will be the General's plan for the reform of industrial com- panies. For de Gaulle's ideas in this respect are not all shared by his troops. Broadly speaking, the Gaullists split into three camps. First there is the General himself, who seeks a `third way' between capitalism and socialism, a middle course which belongs either to the future or the past, which is either reminiscent of Peronism or offers a promising synthesis between mechanical civilisation and the dignity of the individual (and it is not clear which). At the other extreme there are the reactionaries of every description who have rallied to the General for fear of revolution, and who repre- sent all that is most hierarchical, most static, and most resistant to the transformation of human relationships in French society. And thirdly there are those, Gaullists and others, who hold that the integration of the industrial labour force in society is simply a question of bringing management up to date and persuading it to share responsibilities and tell the workers what it is doing. De Gaulle has one weapon in his armoury: the referendum he had to abandon a couple of weeks ago. The Prime Minister has a few months—let us say until next spring—to work out a compromise acceptable to the majority of the Gaullist party. If he fails, there will be a confrontation, from which two results are pos- sible.
The first result would be that the General, recognising that social peace and order had been restored and a stable parliamentary majority secured, would retire, leaving M Pom- pidou to get himself elected President of the Republic by the Conservatives. The second would be that the General would hold a referen- dum, secure a favourable verdict, sack M Pom- pidou and pick himself a more malleable Prime Minister who was also prepared to try con- clusions with the bosses. Already there is talk of M Couve de Murville for the job.
Everything we know of the state of mind of a President who is at once ageing and more than ever convinced of the rectitude of his own ideas leads one to suspect that he will rather sacrifice his Prime Minister than himself. And all we know of M Pompidou leads one to expect that he will do all in his power to avert the moment of choice. He will have his woilk cut out, fighting on two grounds, against the legislative schemes of the General and the atavistic determination of the French right to risk a return to prewar civil violence rather than engage in the adventures of reform.
The only consolation for the Prime Minister must be that the opposition looks even worse equipped to take the lead in a movement of national renewal than does the majority. The parties of the left have in fact utterly failed to give expression to the hopes which launched the May Revolution. All they have proved capable of doing has been to divert these hopes into the tired old wage claims whose satisfac- tion has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the industrial workers.
Indeed it will be a hard road for all concerned. For it is no less than a matter of dragging the structures and the attitudes of an old and still basically peasant society into the second half of the twentieth century.
It is not a paradox to say that the revolt of youth was all the fiercer for the fact that the family unit in France is still so strong. In the United States, Sweden, Germany or Britain people know what `the generation gap' means— in France they don't. Hence the widespread popular sympathy for the students when they were thought to be holding a sort of glorified rag week. Hence also the furious reactions as soon as it became clear that something far more significant was taking place.
Nor is it a paradox to say that the strikes of recent weeks have been all the more severe for the fact that the trade unions in France are so weak. The unions, who represent only one in six of French workers at the best of times, cannot hope to give lessons in political economy and to teach their followers the distinction be- tween what is possible ahd what is not in the midst of a crisis of labour relations.
Finally it is not a paradox to say that this country is all the less likely to be able to set its face towards a real revolution because of the existence of one powerful political party which describes itself as revolutionary but which in practice continues to think in terms of the nine- teenth century.
So now the climate is one of revenge. The revenge of all those who symbolise the traditional structures of the nation and who, as a result, have had a nasty fright. The revenge of the boss who likes to refer to his workers as 'a bunch of reds' and who accuses fellow-em- ployers seeking to introduce a climate of human relationships into their factories not based on military discipline of weakness. The revenge, indeed, of the father who has suddenly dis- covered that his son is out to undermine the social order.
Now it is precisely to these sons that Grand- father de Gaulle wishes to address himself in the months ahead, bypassing their parents. But unfortunately for him these young people are hardly aware of the identity of the voice which spoke out from the fogs of London on that June night before most of them were born with what was intended to be a 'historic call to battle.' These young people 'are waiting: wait- ing for somebody or something which will give life and form to their hopes. So far none of the political parties in France embodies even the embryo of a response.
Previous page
