Another May '68?
Sam White
Paris Five by-election defeats in swift succession and devastating ones at that — have taken a good deal of the glow out of President Olseard's victory in the general election last March; but they have not been without their minor compensations. The Communists have been badly mauled — they lost half their vote in the Pas de Calais by-election, for example, and although the government would prefer a larger communist vote to a smaller one the drop in their support has Inevitably meant a drop in the overall left vote in the electorates concerned. The Gaullists lost, too, and this was a matter of refreshing comfort to the President. The big winners were the Socialists, but even there there are some crumbs of comfort in the fact that their victories have sharpened rather than reduced the increasingly bitter rivalries within that party. Finally the voters have rid Giscard of a hanger-on whom he wished upon himself and is now glad to see the back of— the egregious M. Jean-Jacques Seryan-Schreiber (of whom • more later). T. he sharp drop in the communist vote is Interesting because it shows that their attacks on their former socialist allies far from weakening the Socialists have had the opposite effect of strengthening them. Some of the increased socialist vote may have been due precisely to the fact that the communist link, however involuntarily on the part of the Socialists, had been broken; but a significant part of the result was owing to Communist voters switching to the Socialists because they held their party responsible for the left's defeat last March. It is this factor which is the important one, for it immediately raises the question of George Marchais's future as the Communist party's leader. If only he would drop dead the problem would be resolved but, as it is, the process of easing him out promises to be a long-drawn-out one. The problem of leadership is a more exciting and immediate one on the socialist side, where Michel Rocard is now making an open bid — and Possibly a premature one — for the succession to Francois Mitterrand. 'Archaic' is M. Rocard's description by implication of M. Mitterrand which, coming from a man Who is only ten years his junior and who in a career spanning twenty-five years has gone from the far left to the right wing of the Socialist Party, is particularly resented by so recent a convert to socialism as the present party leader. In any case, relations between the two men are now poisonous and lend some comfort to the Elysee view that the Socialists will split and that the Communists — to whom Giscard, after all, owes his victory last March — will recover their electoral fortunes. As for M. Chirac's Gaullists, they are huffing and puffing but the more they do so the less likely it seems that they will commit electoral suicide by bringing the government down. The one voice in the party which is calling for an open break with the government is that of M. Michel Debre, a man who is now comfortably installed as the 'custodian of the Gaullist conscience'. As such he is listened to with respect, but little heeded.
Yet the fact remains that the deflationary policy being followed by Giscard's prime minister, Raymond Barre, is so intensely unpopular in the country that it is becoming dangerously so. It is all very well for the Gaullists to gloat over the humiliating defeat of their old enemy, ServanSchreiber, in Nancy but Chirac's own righthand man, de la Malene, has just suffered an equally humiliating defeat in a byelection in Paris. The restlessness and apprehension are becoming apparent even in Giscard's own party. This was shown at their recent conference, where they were only held in line after receiving a severe tongue-lashing from Barre himself at his most arrogant and professorial. And what if electoral defeats are followed up by industrial troubles? The view from on high is that they rarely occur in France in times of unemployment, but this may well turn out to be an illusion —just as it was an illusion in May '68 to think that French workers would not come out on strike on the eve of their summer holidays. A repetition of May. '68? That really is a bit scary, for this time instead of the Communist Party acting as a brake on events, as it did then, it would be the active promoter and effective leader of the movement. It would do that if only to escape from its own internal dilemmas and so reassert itself as a working-class force. At the moment the mood in the Elysee is to dismiss such speculation as unwarranted alarmism.
Meanwhile if government supporters get edgy or even panicky, if the Gaullists threaten to leave the coalition, then the sombre and sobering threat that faces them is the president's powers under de Gaulle's constitution, of which the twentieth anniversary was celebrated this week.
On this occasion Giscard took the opportunity to remind the coalition which is supposed to support him that he had the power to dissolve Parliament immediately Parliament interfered with the effective func tioning of the Executive. Here was a challenge not merely to the Gaullist conscience but to the survival instinct of the political herd which pledged itself in the recent elections to support him. Of course, when the time comes to refiate, Barre will have served his purpose and will have to go — to be replaced no doubt by Jacques ChabanDelmas, a `historic' Gaullist, thereby still further dividing and demoralising the ranks of Chirac's followers. All very clever, but the essence of the question is time. And time is comparatively short, and may be even shorter than Giscard thinks. We now come to J-J S-S, or .1-J Ex-Ex as the Canard has taken to calling him. He is now a man completely alone, having added to the long list of Giscard's ex-friends beginning with Mendes-France, then Gaston Defferre, then Mitterrand. Giscard, who hates losers anyway, has become in recent months more and more disenchanted with a friendship which at first promised all sorts of excitements and new openings, and which has brought only embarrassment instead.
He only brought Servan-Schreiber and his friend, Francoise Giroud, the then editor of his publication L'Express, into the government because he thought that they would provide a bridge to the left: only to find that he had to sack the first because of his public stand against French atom-testing in the Pacific, and the second because of her unsubstantiated — to put it mildly — claim to have been awarded the Medaille de la Resistance. Now only one post remains to Servan-Schreiber and that is his presidency over the rump of the old Radical Party which supports Giscard. He has powerful enemies even there, and it is extremely doubtful if he can hang on to the post much longer. Utterly humourless and with a vanity to match, his career has been marked by the vulgar brashness with which he has exploited all too many ephemeral friendships. Mauriac dubbed him 'our vest-pocket John F. Kennedy'. He has, too, the kind of emigre mentality which in de Gaulle's day took the form of advising the White House on how to deal with the General. I remember being told in Washington by a senior official in the Johnson administration: 'What a pity Jean-Jacques was born in France and not here. He is not appreciated in France. Here he would have gone straight to the top'. I agreed, rather feelingly, that it was indeed a pity.
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