'Compromise with reality'

George Walden

'Reality,' Jules Romains once observed, `is always on the right.' Mrs Thatcher has never doubted it. Choleric French drivers, who now wind down the window to shout 'sale socialiste, know it too. And after three years in the Elysee, President Mitterrand is catching on fast. The French Socialist government, despite its Com- munist component, is now veering heavily to the right at home, having been less than revolutionary abroad. This is not just a reason for political gloating. France mat- ters, and even if the lesson of what is hap- pening there for our own Left is as clear as it is unlikely to be learnt — which is ge- nuinely a pity — for the rest of us, and for Europe, the consequences of M. Mitter- rand's policies are more heartening.

When they meet, there are two things statesmen rarely talk about: what is most on their minds, and what they have most in common. This is because they rarely discuss their domestic affairs. That too is a pity: what would be more natural, for example, than for President Mitterrand and Mrs Thatcher to compare notes on the steel strike there and the coal stoppage here, and to ruminate hand in hand, as it were, on the structural economic challenges facing our two great countries? Their political philosophies may diverge, but the problems and responses of the two governments are .strikingly similar.

`To believe and to make others believe that you can always prevent redundancies, keep non-profitable businesses going and accept ever greater losses, is to render a disservice to the workers, to business, and to the country ...'. No, not a Central Of- fice handout, but the Elysee spokesman on the French car industry. 'Either we shall prove capable of facing international com- petition, and assure our prosperity and independence, or we shall be pulled down into decline.' Not the Prime Minister in full flood against the Spenglerian economics of the British Left, but M. Mitterrand himself on the steel conflict.

The cliche that France has 'la Droite la plus bete du monde' has been strikingly un- true in the last quarter of a century, during which the country has been run by a succes- sion of conservative statesmen who, in their different ways, were all first-rate. But the French Socialists are not very stupid either. Excluded from practical government for the same period of time, and force-fed on their own theories, something awful was bound to happen to the liver of the Socialist goose. In retrospect, a spasm of economic experiment when the Left came to power was inevitable. But the descent back to terra firma is being effected with superb aplomb. 'Restructuring' and 'industrial redeploy- ment' — for which there is now even a

Minister — are fashionable concepts.

But most deliciously and distinctively French is the talk of a 'compromise with reality'. The phrase deserves greater curren- cy. It is a brilliant nonsense, a silken tar- paulin to cover the most painful of cir- cumstances. Underneath this decorative disguise, the results on the ground are a lit- tle more messy, as the pictures of clashes between police and strikers show. Yet unlike the Britain of the Seventies, the French trade unions have a healthy, and above all intelligent, awareness of their own self-interest, and are unlikely to make life impossible for a Socialist government.

Now, you can prettify a U-turn with ex- quisite verbal arabesques till it looks like a page from the Tres Riches Heures of the Due de Berry, but a U-turn it will remain. In industrial reorganisation, the only real difference in practice between Mrs That- cher and President Mitterrand is that she always said that she would, and has, whereas he at first insisted that he would not — but is. It is a reverse of epic economic proportions. The French press can be forgiven for resurrecting some of the President's earlier remarks when he com- mended the steelmen of Longwy, shortly after taking office in 1981, for refusing to accept redundancy forced on them by a callous society which robbed them of their dignity as well as the right io work.

As the austerity programme gathers Pace, so does the pressure on Mitterrand to recant on every issue. Steel and cars are not enough, his opponents argue. The whole cult of growth regardless of inflation, the underestimation of international financial facts of life, the illusions of autarchy, and the failure to recognise the motive force of individual enterprise — all must be confess- ed and renounced.

Again the themes sound almost endear- ingly familiar to British ears. But it is not just a matter of words. Deeper, structural factors are pushing the French Left closer to Mrs Thatcher. Even the Communist Party

Spectator 2 June leader, M. Marchais, is beginning ta 1984 recognise, even if E. P. Thompson does not, that the romantic myth of the 'working class', which has served them both so well in the past, has had its day. Massive dee' toral setbacks for the French Comm i515 are there to remind him. This is no doubt why he was recently careful to include qes workers and middle managers — his employes et les cadres' — white collar definition of that privileged but abstract group, 'the workers'. Progress of a sort, suppose, towards the classless society. • In Britain, it passes for wisdom to remark on the essentially conservative nature of the Labour movement, and the same can b.e, said of aspects of French socialism. But does seem that conservatism of the .1-e", takes a more constructive and intelligent, form there than here. Mitterrand has hay, both the intellectual rigour and solia pragmatism to recognise his mistakes, as well as the political will to do someth.ing about them — including the determinatl0,11 to keep his Leftists and Communists n1 order. But his secret ingredient is It° politics or ideology at all, but Pure patriotism. The simple truth is that the President cares more about France than about his party. Sadly, this is somet111.14 which could be said about few socialists, with the honourable exception nt ci Mr Callaghan. In this sense too, Mitterraa and Mrs Thatcher have something in NM' mon — a tincture of Gaullism. The new realism is not confined to the economy. For the French, cultural coin- pentiveness matters too. They mind Par sionately about education, and are keenl aware that it reinforces national cohesiveness, as well as the nation! economy. But here Mitterrand's record ts mixed. Teachers form a large part of ht,s political clientele, and this — together wt,ta his economic about-turn — make it clifa ficult for him to backtrack on his ill-judge. assault on private education. But he got in Just ahead of Sir Keith Joseph by pronoun,. cing himself 'anguished' by the decline 01, history teaching and the subsequent loss nt 'collective memory' — patriotism again. Our own socialists would do well to take a cheap round trip to the Continent for a, quick course in economic and education realism. Much of it is pretty basic: the fact' for example, that you need a policy for pr,°- duction before you can enjoy the exclui.sitet satisfactions of distribution. This is not ins party polemics. Pi as it may seem to saY I doubt whether it is in the national interest to have an Opposition which has given tiP on the central task of creating wealth.

. What is happening in France — and in

cidentally, Italy, where Signor Craxi islear--

n" ing the language of economic necessity

gives hope for Europe too. Instant wisdorn has it that the Germans are drifting to the East, and the French into chaos. Fortunate,- ly neither is true. President Mitterrand Is now extending his sound sense on defenc.5 and foreign affairs to the economy as vvell: There seem all too few occasions when What- isugt is good for surely one. is good for us

B too.