DEFFERRE CAUGHT IN SQUEEZE PLAY
By Pierre Frank
- PARIS, Feb. 7 ~~ The municipal elections in France are a little more than a month off, The slates of candidates have been drawn up almost everywhere. We have previously explained the impor~ tance of these elections [see World-Outlook December 18, January 15] not only on the local level but also as a prelude to the presidential election toward the end of the year. .We likewise explained the aim of the electoral regulations established by the Gaullist government for cities having a population higher than 30,000 -- to compel combinations to be polarized before the first round of votes as much as possible around the Union pour la Nouvelle République [UNR] or the French Communist party [PcF], so as to put greater pressure on the traditional bourgeois parties and to place the Socialist party LSFIO] under the shadow of the PCF. oe
The Socialist party has sought solutions to fit each local situation in order to maintain its municipal positions, Each departmental federation was authorized to act as it thought best in the light of its local interests. Thus in the Seine an agreement was reached with the PCF. The Socialist Federation of the Seine even imposed this decision on local sections where opposition was registered to-the agreement. (Thus at Boulogne-Billancourt, the socialist mayor Le Gallo was not put on the joint Socialist-Communist slate; at Villejuif, the Socialist section opposed putting its candidates on the same slate as the PCF candidates and so the Federation refused ta give it funds to run an independent electoral campaign. ) But elsewhere the Socialist leaders have formed alliances with bourgeois parties, refusing any agreement with the PCF. There is the example of Guy Mollet himself, who, to hold the Arras mayor's office, made a common slate with the MRP [Mouvement Républicain Populaire],
All the commentators have poked fun at the "bat" character of the SFIO tactic:
"Itm a bird; see my wings.
"Itm a mouse; hurrah for the rats."
The Communist party is denouncing this policy of the SFIO and advocating slates “of the left"; that is, including bourgeois candidates but excluding parties of the right or supporters of the Gaullist regime, This. propaganda has been of little consequence save in one town. But what a town -- Marseille,, France's second biggest city. And,-still more, against whom -- Defferre, mayor of Marseille and candidate for president of the republic,
Gaston Defferre has refused any kind of dialogue with the -PCOF since his candidature was announced. He has dealt with all kinds of people and groups, but deliberately ignored the PCF. Re-
Solved to seek the maximum number of votes from the right, he has said that in the final analysis the PCF would have to vote for him and that there was no need to pay anything for this even by way of exchange, This general orientation was also expressed in Marséflle where he failed to reply to the proposals of the PCF and oriented toward a wide coalition with the Independents, the MRP, representatives of the "pieds-noirs" [reactionary white French born in: Algeria], who have settled in large numbers in Marseille, and ‘So On. | =
But the PCF is not without resources in Marseille, and the leadership of the party, if it does not shine in the field of the class struggle, needs no lessons from the slickest combinationists on the purely electoral level,
The electorate in Marseille is divided in eight sectors, In the 1959 municipal elections, the PCF candidates received around 96,000 votes; the SFIO, 92,000, a total of 68 per cent of the bal lots. A Communist-Socialist agreement would thus be certain of a majority in the elections. On November 3, 1964, the Communist Federation made a proposal along these lines to the Socialist Federation, offering in addition to accept a Socialist as candidate for mayor (that is, Defferre), asking only for a fair division of posts and functions in the municipal government. Defferre turned a deaf ear to the proposal although it was twice offered,
But suddenly on January. 31 it was announced that an agreement had been reached among “the candidates and leaders of the Marseille Socialists, republican personalities and the Bouches~du-Rhéne Federation of the French Conmunist party" for the purpose "of constituting united slates of the democratic forces in Marseille." In plain language, this meant that the PCF had reached agreement with a wing of the Socialist party of Marseille to present slates claim ing to represent a Conmmunist-—Socialist agreement against the slates made up by Defferre on which the names of reactionaries, clericals and pleds-noirs appear.
This agreement is of great importance due to the fact that the Socialists who signed it are not obscure individuals or people with a reputation of being more or less crypto-Communists. Quite the contrary. There is D. Matalon, an SFIO deputy, general councillor, town councillor, member of the executive commission of the Socialist Federation of Bouches«du-Rh6éne; M. Massias, vice-president of the general council, town councillor, secretary of the ninth Socialist. section, member of the executive commission of the .Federation; F., Sifredi, secretary of the fourth section, former member of the federal bureau; Briole, assistant to the mayor of Marseille, The signed agreement contains the same proposals that were offered to Defferre; namely -- in the first place -- a Socialist as mayor of the town. in case of victory.
Why did these Socialist candidates accept this agreement? The question is probably of secondary importance so far as the effect
on the coming elections is concerned, but it is not devoid of interest. -Why did men who in all probability were on Defferre's slate accept an agreement that puts them in opposition to him in such an extreme way? We do not know if personal conflicts were involved. The most likely explanation is that these men, as well as the "republican personalities" who placed their stakes on this agreement, be-~ long to a clan among the Free Masons which was offended by Defferre's agreement with the clericals in Marseille and by the equivocal position he has taken, during his presidential campaigning, on the problem. of relations between the secular schools and the so-called free (denominational) schools. . ,
Whatever the reason, the announcement of the agreement was a very stiff blow for Defferre, and his reaction was immediate and violent. In a short declaration made the day he heard of it he heaped insults on those who "make pacts" with the Communists -traitors, cowards, office-seekers, renegades from socialism. One can smile and even laugh at this in view of the fact that Defferre himself, out of "fidelity". to socialism, made an agreement to present a slate including "32 candidates named by the Socialists, 31 candi~ dates named by the Independents, the MRP, the Radicals and repatri~ ated persons." (Defferre in Le Soir, February 1.) Defferre's anger was all the greater because he. had been unaware of an operation that had been going on for some weeks in the offices of his own town hall, within the very Socialist Federation which he controls, The following day, he told the press: "The alliance of a few Socialists with the Communists of Marseille has provoked a very favorable reaction in regard to.me-.among the Marseillais Socialists and democrats for whom: Sreason is inadmissible," ~ . OA few Socialists? But the Bureau of the Socialist Federation hastened to dissolve the second, fourth and ninth sections of Marseille, to expel the Socialist candidates who supported the agreement with the PCF. And Defferre has rushed to get approval from the national leadership of the Socialist party, from Guy Mollet himself, approval for his sanctions and his electoral policy in Marseille.
At the moment no one can tell what the result of the agreement will be next month in-the way of votes at Marseille, what proportion of Socialist voters will cast their ballots for the “united slates of the democratic forces," that is, with the Communists, and what proportion will back Defferre. But what-has been scored is a considerable weakening of Defferre's presidential campaign. He presented himself as the only man capable of uniting the-.entire left in order to beat de Gaulle, the main enemy. But now,.in Marseilles, he has turned his guns. The main enemy is no longer the Gaullists but the PCF, "The struggle for the town hall has narrowed," he told the press, No the slates drawn up by the Socialists and the municipal | ma jority with the exclusion of the UNR and the Communists. . ee It is now clear that we will succeed or that the town hall with fall into: “the hands of the Communist party and its hostages,"
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Thus there is a erying contradiction between this.tactic in Marseille and the one he has claimed to follow up to now on a netional scale for the presidential: election.
The. PCF move has thus weakened Defferre's candidacy; the results of the municipal elections in Marseille will enable us to see if this is a serious weakening that could force Defferre to give up his candidacy. In any case, it must be said of the PCF move —= a sharp thrustl not ~
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