French for Shibboleth
A rTER a month during which the whole French economy has twice been dislocated by twenty-four-hour demonstration strikes for higher wages, France is still without a government. The relection of M. Mollet by the National Assembly for both French and foreign opinion Primarily a reason to be contemptuous of French Parliamentarians. But it is the parliamentary machinery that must somehow produce a govern- ment and at all events French deputies are con- stantly thinking of their, electors—both those who supported them for narrow party or sectional reasons and those who judge by more general results. The conflicts and blindnesses of the Assembly are closely related to those of the nation. Apart from that, the whole month's search for a prime minister has been conducted by the President (with the approval of most French par- liamentary correspondents) on the assumption that M. Mollet would probably ultimately prove the man to provide a government. It is a tribute to M. Mollet's political talents that his own estimate of the situation was so widely accepted. it also shows their limitations that he had long ago failed to see the political consequences of French socialist self-righteousness, of the mon- strous reign of shibboleth that is threatening Parliamentary democracy with collapse in France. The assumption that M. Mollet would ultimately Prove 'the man' was based on several considera- tions. Within the Assembly of nearly six hundred deputies there are only four hundred who can Participate in government. The hundred and fifty Communists and forty extremists of the Right are a, perpetual opposition. Of the four hundred Republican' deputies one hundred are Socialists and one hundred are Conservatives. Between them lie the much-divided Radicals, several political splinters, the seventy-five Catholic MRP and the representatives of black Africa and other over- seas territories. The Socialists are a much more disciplined party than the Conservatives. A much larger party of the Centre would work more readily with them than with the Conservatives. the Socialists themselves have ruled out an MRP Premiership by insisting upon their own distaste for serving under a Catholic premier so long as the Catholic schools attended by about one in five °[ French school children receive a subsidy—a very small subsidy. This Socialist allergy has come to be considered as one of the fundamental facts °!. French political life. The assumption has hitherto been that though others might be invited to overcome their prejudices, it was as impossible t° expect the Socialists to overcome this particular °tie as to change the colour of their eyes. The successive defeats of the Socialist-cum- Radical government of M. Mollet last May and °C the Radical-cum-Socialist government of M. Iourges-Maunoury were, amongst other things, the rebellion of the Conservatives against this 1..sSumption, a back-bench rebellion. Hitherto the President seems to have been hoping that the Con- ervatives would learn to overcome this rebellious 'PIM The various attempts made to find a solution 'the offer of the premiership to M. Pleven, a eentre politician without a party, to M. Pinay, Conservative, and to M. Robert Schuman, so veteran an MRP statesman that he is not a party man in quite the ordinary sense—have all been genuine attempts to produce a government, but they have also been so planned as to provide, if they failed, a cumulative demonstration that it must be M. Mollet after all. M. Pinay was obviously very much aware of this and while skilfully defending his party's position he no less skilfully avoided anything that would exacerbate party passions. It is not his fault that the Con- servatives did not abstain in the vote on M. Mollet's government. But these classical man- oeuvres to induce parties to accept the necessity of tolerating Mr. X or Mr. Y as Prime Minister have a drawback. If they voted against us, why should not we vote against them? The Socialists voted against M. Pinay. Why should not the Con- servatives (they cannot be called M. Pinay's fol- lowers, for French Conservatives do not follow) vote against the Socialists? Is not equality the Republic's middle name?
This particular long-drawn-out crisis is, there- fore, in a sense a rebellion against the French Socialists' claim to be more sensitive about their principles than anybody else. The President (him- self a Conservative when he was an ordinary citizen with a party allegiance) was evidently not convinced that the Socialists could overcome their repugnance to a Catholic preMier, even after M. Mollet's failure, for his first choice in the rapidly rising urgency of the crisis was 'young M. Felix Gaillard, Radical Minister of Finance in M. Bourges-Maunoury's government—a measure of the resistance which he still supposes the Socialists would offer to the much more normal candidature of an MRP.
To British newspaper-readers this must seem a most extraordinary story. France is engaged in a vast military operation in Algeria. Her foreign exchange reserve is rapidly running out. Her price structure has come unmoored. Her wage-earners have broken with all tradition in striking for wage increases to keep pace with rising prices while there is no goernment. Yet parties are unable to come together not only because of differences on major issues, such as economic policy, which would be rational and defensible, but because of issues which at the present moment need not be raised at all.
The situation is not really so new, though it is just as bad as it seems. The Socialists have to insist upon their party colours in this odd way; they have also to cling to several unfulfilled and expensive items of the first Mollet government's programme in spite of the priority of financial soundness to pay for them, because on an essential point, the point on which the Communists un- ceasingly attack them, they have been so very un- socialist. Algeria, that painful word, has not been often spoken during the "crisis. The Right has found willing allies in the Socialists to conduct the Algerian war and cover up the self-defeating and criminal things that have been done in reply to the rebels' terrorist tactics. With belated in- dignation the Socialists discovered that the Right would not even go through the motions of being liberal when the future came up for discussion in the shape of the Algeria Bill.
It would of course be absurd to suggest that France's financial, economic and social troubles would be cured by a change of attitude over Algeria. The Communists failed to persuade the workers to demonstrate in any numbers about Algeria. They and the Catholic unions together successfully brought them out over their wages. But the idea is steadily gaining ground that 'with- out a solution in Algeria of a kind few have even dared to suggest publicly so far, these other prob- lems cannot begin to be solved. If the French Socialists were to break free from the Algerian policy to which they have yoked themselves, France might quite possibly be faced with a graver crisis than the present one, but it would be a crisis about something—and they might find unexpected allies.
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