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The French Socialist Opposition in 1969

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Harvey G. Simmons
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Extract

WHATH AS HAPPENED TO THE FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY? ONCE ONE of the largest and most influential political parties in France, heir to a tradition dating back to the French Revolution, a party with deep roots in local and national politics, the SFIO decided to dissolve itselfin 1969 and to reconstitute a new socialist party. This new party is to be built on the foundations of the old SFIO in co-operation with a number of clubs, most notably the Convention des Institutions Républicaines (CIR), a federation of clubs recently emerged from the now defunct Federation of the Left (Fédération de la gaucbe démocrate et socialiste, FGDS).

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1969 , pp. 294 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

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References

1 Parti Socialiste, Bulletin Intirieur, no. 161, November 1968, p. 10.

2 Cited in L’Oeuvre de Léon Blum, Paris, 1958, pp. 289–93.

3 At a recent patty meeting Guy Mollet stated, ‘We don’t believe in the revolutionary act, but in a kind of permanent revolution and it is that which distinguishes us from the others.’Le Monde, 5 November 1968.

4 Le Monde, 6–7 June 1965. See also the interview with Guy Mollet on the occasion of his twentieth year as party secretary-general, Le Monde Hebdomadaire, 8–14 September 1966.

5 Parti Socialiste, Bulletin IntMeur, no. 101, April 1958, p. 26.

6 Parti Socialiste, Bulletin Interieur, no. 118, January 1961, p. 24. In the anniversary interview cited above, Mollet reiterated the statement from the 1946 Declaration of Principles of the SFIO where it states that: ‘The distinctive character of the Socialist Party is to make the liberation of humanity depend on the abolition of the system of capitalist property.’ Later in the interview after sketching some general principles of socialist doctrine, Mollet stated: ‘We have absolutely nothing to change in our socialist doctrine, nothing to rethink in it, nothing to revise.’ Again, at a National Council meeting in November 1968 Mollet cautioned against altering party doctrine. SeeLe Monde, November 5 1968.

7 The ‘X’ campaign has been discussed in the literature. See, for example, Suffert, Georges, De Defferre à Mitterand, Paris 1966 Google Scholar, and Simmons, Harvey G., ‘The X Factor in French Polities’, Antioch Review, Fall, 1964, pp. 307–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 This information was obtained from interviews which were conducted in France during the summer of 1966.

9 Parti Socialiste, Bulletin Intérieur, no. 161, November 1968, p. 10.

10 Ibid., p. 6.