AN OLD MAN'S ILLUSIONS
John Laughland on how
the crisis at Air France symbolises President Mitterrand's divorce from reality
Paris IT HAS BEEN said that `Cressonism' — the appointment of the President's former mistress, Edith, to be Prime Minister of France — was the highest stage of Mater- randism. The choice seemed to be the lurid epitome of all Mitterrand's most manipula- tive and corrupt instincts. Some even applauded her nomination as evidence that the old fox had lost none of his talent to surprise, a curious illustration of how a People can actually revel in being treated with contempt But this week's crisis at Air France has shown that the highest stage of Mittertandism is, in fact, Balladurism. Air France is losing Fr6 billion a year (i700 million) and the company has total debts of Fr30 billion. With only a 4 per Cent share in the world airline market, the company makes 10 per cent of that mar- ket's losses. The restructuring plan which the government abandoned this week was the third or fourth such plan which has been mooted over the last decade. Indeed, sFeaking on television on Monday on the eve of his 77th birthday, when he said that the strikers were talking 'good sense', Pres- ident Mitterrand could not remember exactly how many plans there had been. No. ne of the reforms upon which British '14:4rwaya embarked in the early 1980s has been undertaken at Air France: now there Is to be a fifth. The climb-down could not be clearer. Ever since the election, and throughout the !slimmer, the Minister of Transport, nernard Bosson, had been emphasising that tough decisions had to be taken at Air France; he even indicated that the plan to sack 4,000 employees was 'too soft', declar- ing that the plan was 'irrevocable' and that Air France was 'in mortal danger'. But on Friday, once the fighting on the runways had started, Balladur announced that he wanted negotiations to be reopened 'in order to preserve social peace'. The merest hint of conflict is evidently unbearable to this political valetudinarian. His interven- tion resulted in the public disavowal of Bernard Attali, the managing director of Air France, by the Minister of Transport. With his voice trembling on television on Sunday night, Bosson accused the manage- ment of Air France of a 'lack of social dia- logue within the company', denounced the plan as `too tough', and within 20 minutes Attali had resigned. Like his twin brother, Bernard Attali is customarily thought of as brilliant; but his analysis of Air France's problems was little more than the usual dated parrot-talk propagated by France's politico-industrial establishment, whatever sector of the econ- omy is under discussion. He would often whinge on about competition being tough, American airlines being very big, and how Far Eastern Airlines pay low wages, natu- rally failing to mention that British Air- ways' productivity has increased by 80 per cent since 1984, or that Swissair is also a success under similar conditions.
Known in the company as 'Monsieur JDS' — je decide seul — Attali's failings underline both the paucity of received French wisdom on economics, and also a persistent failure to distinguish between the role of the public and private sectors. Despite the government's intention to pri- vatise the airline, the striking workers were invited to the Ministry of Transport for their wine and sandwiches, rather than to the offices of the board of Air France.
Moreover, at the ministry, the strikers were not received by the minister, but by his directeur de cabinet (chief personal adviser), Jean-Pierre Beysson. Like Attali, like Balladur, indeed like nearly all the actors in the drama, Beysson has spent his career flitting between government and industry, as if there were no difference between the two. A former director of Aeroports de Paris, he is widely known to covet the presidency. of Air France. Even Attali's new replacement, the former direc- tor of the Paris transport network, Chris- tian Blanc, was appointed as a result of the same confused political mentality. The man was picked because he is a 'Socialist' (pre- sumably Balladur thinks that will pacify the unions), and also because he is known for having successfully negotiated an end to the colonial uprising in New Caledonia while working for Michel Rocard at Matignon in 1988. Perhaps this is evidence that Balladur puts the strikers in the same category as revolting natives.
As Le Monde drily put it, 'Air France has always believed itself to be the Quai d'Orsay' anyway. Benefiting from govern- ment protection wherever possible (espe- cially on old colonial routes, such as to North Africa), Air France strongly resem- bles the lame ducks of British industry in the 1970s, and its parlous state has indeed been compared to that of British Airways in 1982. There is, however, an obvious dif- ference: unlike the British government at the time, the present French government's actions have only entrenched the view that France's nationalised companies will con- tinue not to be treated like ordinary com- panies, but instead like unwieldy instruments of a badly thought-out social policy.
But the confusion between running the public and private sectors is merely the most obvious manifestation of the deeply corporatist misunderstanding of govern- ment in the French political class. It is a confusion about the nature of government itself which unites Mitterrand and Bal- ladur. The embodiment of consensus poli- tics, Balladur is the theoretician of the very concept of 'cohabitation': in 1983, he was the first to suggest that a left-wing presi- dent and a right-wing prime minister at the top of France's bicephalous executive might be feasible. Under Jacques Chirac, the cohabitation was a miserable failure; his own emollience seemed better suited to make it a success.
It was in this vein that Balladur pub- lished his personal manifesto in 1992, the unutterably tedious 'Dictionary of Reform'. He evidently wanted to govern France with the same softness as that with which an Edwardian gentleman might potter into his library of an evening in search of some leather-bound encyclopaedia. In that book he wrote, 'In negotiating on means, one must avoid making compromises on ends. One needs to ally courage with prudence, and to act in a measured and progressive fashion, leaving ample occasion for expla- nation and discussion.' It is sentiments like this which led Marie-France Garaud, the would-be French Mrs Thatcher, to remark cuttingly, 'He is very firm on matters of compromise.'
Unfortunately, the search for harmony soon decays into simple complicity with the status quo, as this week's crisis has proved. In its determination not to rock the boat, the government had left Bernard Attali in place, despite his catastrophic record, because to have sacked a presidential favourite would have been too politically provocative. In its climb-down, the govern- ment has merely set itself a time-bomb, for where Air France leads, Thomson, Bull, Giat-Industries, Aerospatiale, SNECMA and the others will surely follow. But com- plicity — with Vichy, with the communists, with the Algerian putschist generals, with Christian Democrats, with Socialists, indeed with politicians of every imaginable hue — has been the single most consistent hallmark in Francois Mitterrand's own half-century in politics, a career which has been marked by a near-total absence of any political convictions whatever.
Both Balladur and Mitterrand remain popular in opinion polls, the former espe- cially so. But the secret of their success does not lie in public approval for their policies. 'Never forget,' said one French Gaullist to me recently, 'the Parisians were out in the streets cheering Marshal Petain in June 1944, only weeks before the Libera- tion.' The implication is clear: Mitterrand's Petainist tinge is becoming ever stronger. On Monday, no doubt on his own sugges- tion, he was introduced by the interviewer as 'the father of the nation'. It seems that 40 years on, France is once again enjoying being hypnotised by an old man, reassuring France that all is well in the face of evident collapse, and guiding her wisely away from the apparent threat from England and America — while all the time being domi- nated by Germany. Balladur's role in all this is merely to play second fiddle: with his monotonous tones and his perfect imper- fect subjunctives, he is popular simply because he makes the French go to sleep.
There is powerful symbolism in the extraordinary strength of British Airways — the global airline of a great maritime trading nation — and the weakness of Air
France, whose bucolic stagnation was itself symbolised by the presence of cows on the runway at Roissy, brought in support of the baggage-handlers by Coordination Rurale and other peasant groups. Indeed, in his interview on Monday President Mitterrand explicitly regretted that Britain was always tempted by the link with America and the excitement of the open sea, rather than joining France and Germany in cosy conti-
nentalism. Europe, of course, is Mitter- rand's favourite project, and it is the one for which he wishes to be remembered by history. But he will also be remembered for his other favourite project, the symbol of eternal sleep: a pyramid.
John Laughland's book, The Death of Poli- tics: France under Mitterrand, will be pub- lished by Michael Joseph next year.
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