M. Gaillard's Prospects
The difficulty that faces M. Gaillard is that the one cement he can employ to keep the parties together is the principle that the republic's govern- ment must be carried on. In the past such steering committees for keeping coalitions together have been tried at least twice—once at the beginning of the century to keep together the Left-wing coali- tion that disestablished the Church, and again in 1936 to keep together the parties of the Popular Front. In both cases they lasted just as long as there was a common policy. Today it is the com- mon policy that has to be created to keep together the parties. M. Gaillard wishes to restore the Proper functioning of the parliamentary system. But it cannot function normally so long as arith- metic requires in the present parliament that all the parties which accept it should form part of the coalition, leaving as opposition only the enemies of the regime, Communists and Pouja- dists. The true opposition is at present limited to a score or so of political privateers such as the half-dozen Mendes-ist Radicals.
In the immediate future no doubt M. Gaillard and his MRP Finance Minister, M. Pflimlin, will have their way. There will be new taxes and further econpmies. But how long will it be before the discontent of civil servants and other wage- earners makes inevitable new expenditure? If, in fact, the Government will be compelled to bottle down this discontent, what will be the result of leaving the Communist and Poujadist parties as the sole outlet for it? The first important expres- sion of it since M. Gaillard took office, the twenty-four-hour strike of the secondary and technical school teachers on November l2, pointed to another underlying problem which is more than a question of wages. M. Gaillard him- self declared the urgent necessity of a complete overhaul and a great expansion of the French educational system. He sorrowfully recalled in his investiture that France has still only one engineer to every three British. The immediate occasion of the strike, namely, the failure to attract the necessary recruits to the teaching profession, has his fullest sympathy. The presence in his Govern- ment of his fellow-Radical M. Billeres as Minister of Education in the third successive government and author of the plan of educational reform already tabled as a Bill last summer is confirming proof of this. But the reform will need money and there is no money to spare at present.
The problem of teachers' pay is only one aspect of that of civil servants'; and their salaries and wages are indissolubly connected with those of industry, both nationalised And private. The wage questions in turn are only the obverse of the price problems. And here M. Gaillard finds himself in the heart of the disputes between the Right and Left wings of his coalition, each of them deeply convinced that what matters most to the other can be in the main stabilised while what matters most to itself cannot. Agreement will be most easily reached in the Cabinet; less easily in the Assembly and still less easily in the country, where Socialist and Conservative are campaigning against each other in view of the elections which might so easily come although, as it stands at present, the constitution theoretically makes them impossible for some time. To steer a national course when the inevitable internal springs of the political system are constantly threatening to drive the two wings of the coalition asunder will re- quire all the courage, tenacity and tact that M. Gaillard possesses.
He will need the same qualities in an even greater degree to deal with Algeria. In both the speeches that he made during the investiture de- bate, what M. Gaillard had to say about Algeria was below the level of the rest. Sentiments about a great national catise covered up an essential reticence. Yet here is the point where the vicious circle must be broken. It can only be done if choices are made which are likely to shatter the coalition. The 'pacification' can claim some suc- cesses. The towns, especially Algiers, are almost free from the terrorism of last winter, and the inflow of arms over the frontiers is checked. But even in the towns there is no sign of advadce to a political solution. What terrorism has done to aggravate feelings on one side, repression with the frequent accompaniment of torture has done on the other. In the country districts there is still no sign of the re-establishment of legal authority without the presence of the huge and costly French military force. Though progress towards the idea of contact with the rebels through Morocco and Tunisia is perceptible in some French political circles, the rebel leaders are more contemptuous than ever of any negotiation which does not begin with a recognition of their claim to independence. Politically-minded leaders never entirely lost control of the fanatics in either Tunisia or Morocco, but in Algiers they seem to have lost all influence. Indeed several of them are prisoners of the French and one political issue has been exported by the rebel FLN in the shape of a murderous feud with the rival national- ist organisation MN A on the soil of France. This has been costing about two lives a day in recent monthS. Most of the dead are Algerian workers or café-keepers, but sometimes they are French policemen and recently there have been two out- rages against French civilians. This intrusion of bloodshed into France aggravates the widespread dislike of Algerians amongst the French masses and threatens to add- difficulties to the problem.
In the new Government the Socialists find themselves in a position very similar to that of the Catholic M RP in the previous two legislatures. The latter had established a ,claim to the Foreign Ministry, which they held for nearly ten years, and had also insisted on having their Minister in charge of Indo-China. The Socialists have now kept the Foreign Ministry, Algeria and the Min- istry for Overseas Territories (mainly black Africa and Madagascar) while abandoning all others. Like the MRP they are trying to combine a European policy with one of hanging on to a recalcitrant overseas territory. The European policy is once again suffering badly, and so, in the long run, will the party.
The military disaster of Dien Bien Phu came as a blessing in disguise to free the MRP of the two responsibilities it had assumed and to allow it to drift back to a Centre Left instead of a Centre Right position in French politics. There is no possibility of a purely military defeat for M. Lacoste, the Socialist Minister for Algeria, but also no visible prospect of political success. Oppo- sition within the party is growing, but it is still the prisoner of M. Mollet's and M. Lacoste's errors and weaknesses in the past two years. To open a new hope, either a Socialist leader or else, over his head, the Prime Minister will have to take a major decision of great courage but also, to be effective, needing great skill. There is no sign of the Socialist leader M. Mollet. or M. Lacoste, taking it. In this matter M. Gaillard is still a blank page.
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