The Conscience of a Socialist
By DARSIE GILLIE .
Paris
IT sometimes happens in history that world events turn upon the internal affairs of a minor princi- pality or a small republic per- haps no larger than a Swiss canton. By world standards the French Socialist party is not very impressive. It has behind it no more than one-sixth of French opinion. It has be- come the defender of the small state employee rather than of the proletariat. It has no leader who commands attention outside (or even inside) France by his intellectual qualities or even moral ascendancy. But it certainly organises for political action a large number of serious-minded French- men; and it has among its leaders some very respectable people.
That may not seem much as a reason for attach- ing great importance to the meeting of the Socialist Party's National Council at the end of this week. The party's National Council is an organ peculiar to it. It is a sort of monster father-confessor which keeps, or should keep, the party leadership and the party deputies on the lines of policy laid down by the party congress.
The strength of M. Guy Mollet as Secretary- General of the party has hitherto been his ability to control this many-headed director of conscience through his mastery of the party organisation, more particularly of the two strongest federations in the country, those of the Pas de Calais and Nord departments. It was Secretary-General Mollet who gave Prime Minister Mollet the necessary pivot to rule France for eighteen months and then the power to select his two successors. The former enabled the latter to back his fellow-Socialist M. Lacoste as Minister for Algeria. But M. Lacoste's policy in Algeria has in fact been wearing away the basis of the Secretary-General's authority. Not only have the doubts about the wisdom of this policy and its compatibility with French Socialist faith been growing, but the incidence of its financial and economic cost on social and tax policy is now hard to hide.
As far as Algeria itself is concerned, M. Mollet has mainly to fear an attack on the decision of the Socialist parliamentary party, taken under his leadership, to vote for the Gaillard government's new edition of the Algeria Bill. A Socialist National Council in September had declared that the first edition, put forward by the Bourges- Maunoury government, represented the limit 'of concession to the Right. The Right turned the first edition down and so precipitated a Cabinet crisis that lasted five weeks. It accepted—and so made law—the second edition, and the Algerian elec- toral law that accompanied it. Not without reason. The first Algeria Bill provided a machine for breaking Algeria into half a dozen bits, but also a rather laborious way of putting them together again. The second puts much greater obstacles in the way of reassembly. The accompanying elec- toral Bill confirms a situation by which European women have the vote, but most Moslem women do not. It is true that very few of them would make good voters, but this arrangement can give Europeans a majority in areas where in fact they are a minority. You could read both Bills through a dozen times without discovering the fact unless somebody pointed it out to you. There is no doubt that that is not the policy which the Socialist party congress of last summer recommended.
M. Mollet would have some hope of getting round that obstacle at the National Council if it were not for the financial crisis. The strength of the party, two-thirds of its membership and per- haps more of its office-bearers, lies amongst that vast class of French citizens the small state official —schoolmaster, tax-collector, postman. In the race . of prices and salaries it is this class that is being left behind, more particularly behind the em- ployees of such nationalised industries as elec- tricity and gas. A ruthless electricity and gas strike during the interregnum has brought dividends for which the Communist-led unions in this sector are claiming the credit. The signal of acute alarm for M. Mollet has been a strike of postmen in Lille, capital of the Nord department, represented in the Assembly by M. Eugene Thomas, who is Postmaster-General. That is why, with the National Council before him, M. Mollet suddenly threat- ened to withdraw the Socialist ministers from the Cabinet last week, even though one of them, M. Christian Pineau, was representing France at the United Nations Assembly in New York when its political commission was about to vote on Algeria.
The opposition within the Socialist party has been following the party whip in exemplary fashion of late, because it is hoping to become the majority and to crack the same whip over its present masters. The defeat of M. Mollet, if it occurs, will not only mean that a well-known French political figure is reduced to the ranks; it will also mean that the party directly responsible for the present Algerian policy becomes its critic, and that a party necessary for the maintenance of the present Government withdraws from the coalition—at least into neutralism. What would happen then it is difficult to predict, so difficult that it may not happen. In a two-party parliament the defeat of one party means the triumph of another. But in a multi-party parliament with extremists on either flank lying outside the range of normal coalition you may easily have a situa- tion in which there is no majority.
The Socialist demands last week for the increase of civil servants' salaries and the restoration of . some of the food subsidies are destructive of the financial austerity by which M. Pflimlin, the Catholic Minister of Finance, was preparing the way for indispensable foreign credits. The out-of- hand rejection of the Socialist demands would have destroyed not only the present Government,
but any foreseeable Government. It is difficult not to wish well to the minority within the Socialist
party that has criticised the policy pursued in Algeria for the last two years. It is equally difficult to desire a situation in which France would not have a government to pursue any 'policy at all.
That is the problem before the Socialist- National Council on the eve of the NATO meeting of Heads of Governments. It is not a problem to be solved in black and white. The refinements of French Socialist consciences will matter to all of us.
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