France's shrinking Left
Sam White
Paris The French Left did not fare so badly in the municipal elections, but on the other hand not so well either. To have done reasonably well, as the secretary-general of the Socialist Party explained before the vote, the Left would have had to lose no more than 15 towns with populations of over 30.000. This would have been an ac- ceptable loss for a government in mid-term and in difficult times, especially as many of the municipalities it was defending were cItt by only a handful of votes in the Left landslide of five years ago. In the event it lost more than 30, saw eight of its ministers defeated and now controls only two out of the eight major cities in France. The Left's biggest losses were reserved for Paris where _iJacques Chirac — now the virtually un- utsPuted leader of the opposition — made a clean sweep of all of the city's 20 arron- dissements. It is all very well for the Prime Minister, M Mauroy, now to depict Paris as a kind of rich man's playground from Which the workers have been expelled by high rents; but there are still large areas Which until last Sunday were deepest red and suddenly have appeared to change col- Our. Nor does it explain why the Right did SO Well in the outlying suburbs to which the toilers have presumably fled, or why the famous red belt around the city has now buckled badly. The opposition have now captured, for example, such once staunch Left strongholds as Levallois, Puteaux, s tiresnes, Boulogne-Billancourt, Mon- uouge and even Le Kremlin-Bicetre. Nor does the Prime Minister's lesson in deography explain the Left's defeat in A.h former Communist strongholds as gnon
, Nimes and that most proletarian 9f cities, St Etienne. Nor why Mauroy himself should have had such a tough strug- e to hold Lille or the Finance Minister, M. Delors, to win Clichy.
Of the 30 lost cities of the Left, the Which, and Communists lost 15 apiece ‘eh,of course, proportionately makes the Communist Communist losses at least twice as heavy :ts those of their partners. Not only that, out the transfer of votes in the second round from Socialists to Communists was floe ttearly as complete as vice versa. The ecline of the Communist Party has now „eaciled such a point that it is dragging tsnf'wn with it the entire voting potential of doLeft, In fact, the advantages of the ianee are becoming more and more each of both to the Left as a whole and to of the two main parties composing it. It c." is doubtful, for example, if M Defferre vt's Ould.have had such a hard struggle to hold Marseilles if he had not for the first time in his 30 years as a mayor allied himself with the Communists. The Communists are in this respect already making plain their dissatisfaction at what they consider to be their disproportionate losses in the interests of the union of the Left. It is becoming more and more clear that the breaking point in the alliance is approaching, and that it will come over the new austerity measures the government will shortly in- troduce.
Severe strains seem all the more certain as the revolt against these measures will not be limited to the Communists but will be join- ed by a large section of the Socialist Party itself. A quarrel is already raging within the Socialist Party on how best to deal with the country's most urgent problem, that of the growing trade deficit. There are those on the Left of the party, led by the Minister for Industry, M Chevennement, who argue for a limited form of protectionism and resort to the safeguard clauses of the Rome Treaty, and those like M Delors and M Rocard who frankly state that the problem can only be met by a reduction of purchas- ing power. Then, too, there is the problem of the franc which is likely to come under renewed attack in the next few days. This is resulting in some bad blood between Paris and Bonn, with M Delors insisting that the Germans should take the first step by unilaterally upgrading the mark.
Meanwhile, there is the all-important question of what lessons President Mitter- rand will draw from last Sunday's poll. The Socialists had one hell of a fright after the first round, when the election threatened to turn into a rout for the government. They were saved from disaster by a last-minute turn-out of those who had abstained in the first round, and by the votes of the Ecologists. Nevertheless the message is clear — he has lost the million or so Chirac voters who turned to him rather than Giscard in the presidential elections, and he is facing serious defections among the working class, to say nothing of the professional classes.
Mitterrand is unlikely to ignore the result, as Giscard fatally ignored the warn- ing given him in the 1977 municipal elec- tions. Taking their wishes for realities, there is no lack of right-wing prophets who predict that he will move sharply to the Left. The evidence, however, is all to the contrary. Like Giscard before him, who sought an opening to the Left, so Mitter- rand now is actively seeking an opening to the Right. The idea is to bring into the government people like Edgar Faure and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, and possibly one or two so-called 'technicians' from the world of big business. What the President badly needs is a healthy centre party, but this he sees as impossible under the present electoral system which effective- ly polarises the French political scene. He is therefore thinking of introducing between now and the next general election in three years° time a large dose of proportional representation into the present system, similar to the one in West Germany. By this means, he thinks he could win back the sup- port he has lost in the two years of his presidency. That this support is vital to him is shown by the figures of last Sunday's vote, which make it clear that the total Left vote no longer constitutes a majority in the country.
Socialism, according to the President, has gone far enough. He intends for the re- maining years in office to consolidate the reforms he has introduced. His view is understandable. His present coalition faces defeat in three years' time while he will still have two years in power. He would like to live out those remaining two years in peace.
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