After the Strikes—What ?
HAT has happened and what is happening in France ? One wonders whether, perhaps, this great upheaval—for that it is—deserves another, more fitting description than that of " strikes " ? But let us see.
In the first days of July ends the longest (six weeks) and undoubtedly the most profound government crisis of the Fourth Republic. Four successive candidates fail to get the necessary majority. Among them is one who, for the first time since the 'Liberation, speaks a different language—Mendes-France. The country listens; even stirs. Parliament also stirs. Many seem willing to rally, beyond sterile party borders, to a man and a programme that has the ring of New Deal. Many, alas, are frightened, shocked, disturbed and made to feel distinctly uncomfortable by the all-or-nothing harshness, 'by this mani- fest refusal to compromise. 'Mendes-France, " l'homme du New Deal . . . le Stafford Cripps francais," fails. There follows the routine failure of Bidault, the routine failure of Andre Marie, the cautious refusal of Antoine Pinay, and finally, the routine victory of the Fifth Man : Joseph Laniel. ca continue I The same mixture as before, largely the same names, a little more weighted to the right. The country does not seem to react one way or another: A seventh and eighth sense are needed to smell the odours of malaise. How long will this one last ? There are no answers. It is the least interesting question of the moment. Shoulders are shrugged and eyebrows raised. It's nearly holiday time, anyway.
Before the summer recess, the Assembly, on July 11th, invests M. Laniel's new government with greater " pouvoirs speciaux " than any post-war government has enjoyed; a blank cheque made out "'Do Something." But ,there are in this incoherent, emergency coalition as many views, political recipes, scraps and shades of programmes as there are port- folios. Too many things cry for solution or immediate atten- tion—above all the budget, civil and military economies, housing, the rising prices, the administrative reforms of nationalised industries and thd civil service structure (to say nothing of Indochina, Tunis, Morocco). Bits of everything will have to be done, and done soon.
M. Edgar Faure is back at the Ministry of Finance, Rue de Rivoli. He is the man, perhaps nearest to some ideas of Mendes-France—but not very near for all that. Under his guidance the first series of emergency decrees is worked out in great haste and secrecy. They concern :. the reduction (sic) of public investments; the problem of price-rings (also known as " abusive practices "); the government purchase of surplus wine; the raising of rents, and, among several other things, the raising of the retirement age for civil servants and public employees by •two years. It is a mass of complicated measures, a collection of pills and palliatives, compressions and injections for the ailing body economic—of no far- reaching consequence, but intensely irritating for the patient. Bits of news leak out but only in the vaguest, terms. No one has any precise knowledge of what exactly M. Faure's decrees say or command. This does not prevent the Com- munist-led CGT from calling for protest meetings, resolutions, one-hour strikes for August 4th. Why not ? " C'est normal " —and one day's as good as another. The fourth of August passes quietly enough with routine protests. Then the extra- ordinary begins to happen. On the evening of August 4th. and entirely without either the help or inspiration of the CGT, the Christian and Socialist postal workers' union of Bordeaux decide to strike. Not a 24- or 48-hour strike; not just a protest strike; not even,. strictly speaking, a strike against the as yet unknown decrees of Monsieur Faure; nor, finally, a strike for any clearly defined set of demands. Without' programme, central leadership or preparatory organisation, they decide on unlimited strike (" greve illirnitee "), a para- revolutionary gesture in the best, if almost forgotten, Syndi- calist tradition. At first, no one quite understands. Even the Force Ouvriere (Socialist unions) and Christian union leaders in Paris are vexed. But not for long; the mood for battle is there. By 11 o'clock on Wednesday (August 5th) the F.O. leaders of the postal workers' union proclaim a nation-wide unlimited strike. On Thursday morning, the Christian and autonomous unions follow suit. First the postal workers, then gas and electricity, then the railways, then all branches of public -services. Within forty-eight hours of the Bordeaux• decision some two million men and women are on strike. A few days later their number reaches four million.
Not until August 9th are Monsieur Faure's decrees finally published. However, the strikers seem to pay extraordinarily little attention to them. Of course, they are against them. But one feels that instinctively the aims of this vast movement are left vague to the extent of almost not being discussed. It is as if to say : we are not fighting for this or against that; we are fighting everything that has happened in France, and to us, during the past years—and we are fighting for a change.
Such an interpretation may sound over-bold and a little too sweeping. But how is one to explain this, extraordinary mixture of an almost total absence of precise aims and well-defined demands (the most popular slogans throughout the campaign remained as loose as improved living conditions," " improved purchasing power for the wage-earners ") with a degree of spontaneity, resolution, cohesion, such as has not been witnessed in France since the f•r-off days of 1936 '?
The comparison with 1936, of course, is too obvious to be neglected. Even so; there would appear to be as-many differ- ences as there are similarities. This time there is no trace of violence, no flags (red or otherwise), no revolutionary speeches, none of the almost gay robustness of the factory-occupations of 1936,\and, above all, no party politics. As against the 1936 mood, 'the mood , today is more sullen but also more disciplined and almost dignified. (This, incidentally, may in part account for the remarkable lack of anti-strike feeling among the general public that had to put up with many rather disagreeable inconveniences.) Indeed, the tanks and para- troops which Monsieur Laniel's government alerted were never less needed than during the past three weeks. What has been in evidence was the strike, not the strikers.
However, there is at least one great similarity with the events of 1936, events which paved the way for the most sweeping social changes and structural reforms in France's modern history. The spontaneous mass movement of the past three weeks, apparently springing from nowhere• and most definitely unprepared, would seem to be an eruption of long-accumulated anger and discontent rather than a strike or series of strikes for a ten per cent. wage increase or paid holidays; a reaction against the stagnation and regression of the past years rather than positive action against M. Faure's decrees. If this is at all true, as I believe it is, then we have witnessed not so much an exceptionally large and exceptionally inarticulate strike movement, but some sort of strongly emotional call for social and structural reform—if you like, for a New Deal.
M. Laniel almost certainly does not see it that way, and he may well now see his term of office through. But his shrewder Vice-Premier, Paul Reynaud, is now credited with the observation that France today requires more, and more thorough, reforms than she .did in 1789. This is true. What is less obvious are the calculable forces within the present political system of France which could combine to guarantee, at the same time, two things : long-term governmental stability, and the full preservation of parliamentary and democratic institutions. If long-term governmental stability is a sine qua non for a set of rather modest and somewhat inconsequential reforms, how much more so to accomplish the vast programme of social change without which France is certain to be reduced to another Spain. M. Reynaud means precisely that. His is a very Latin mind, and if his observation sounds a trifle too much like a bon mot it is no less true in substance for all that. There is no easy way out. The phrase " structural reform " is now the accepted jargon for what we mean by social changes. As applied to the present French situation, the jargon is perhaps the more fitting term than the plainer English. For social changes are too often understood in the limited sense of a simple redistribution of the national income. The " structural reforms " needed today in France, however, would not only have to exceed those of 1789 (as M. Reynaud says), but most certainly should exceed a mere redistribution of, the national income. This for a very simple reason. The country's present national income is far too small. To increase it very substan- tially would, in fact, have to be the main single target -of all and any " structural reforms." Their range is far too wide and deep to be here dealt with in any detail. But, negatively speaking, it can at least be said that the changes needed will not be effective in terms of suppressing a privilege here and an " abusive practice " there. To bring France into line with this century, .the changes will have to attack the very mode of liVing of the great mass of Frenchmen—the under-producing peasants; the wasteful dwarf-enterprises; the unproductive traders, middlemen and one-man businesses; the workers themselves, and the civil servants.
Changes of this nature, one imagines, would hurt Frenchmen far more deeply than most of their Western neighbours; for even the staunch conservatism of . Anglo-Saxon nations would almost seem a lighthearted and most flexible affair compared with the ingrained, stubborn, earthy, unbendable conservatism of " le petit bonhomme."
None of this is unknown in France. The minds to make the right analyses and the programme to prescribe the cure are both there, most especially in the school of thought for which M. Mendes-France spoke up so forcefully a few months ago. Basically, this programme is very simple. What is not known, to repeat it, is the political formula, the ttrategem to effect such changes which would be changes for every- body . . . but also against everybody.
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