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The French Left and the Elections of 1968

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Frank L. Wilson
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In early spring of 1968, French political observers found the most lively issue of debate in the question of whether or not the nation was bored as a result of the political and economic stability insured by the Gaullist regime. One noted French political scientist in contributing to this debate wrote: “What is certain is that the France of 1968 does not seem able to give itself the luxury of a political scene as passionate as that of Czechoslovakia, as dramatic as that of the United States, or as glorious as that of Vietnam. Neither the agitation of a minority of the students of a few universities, nor certain workers’ demonstrations, nor the discontent which reigns in Brittany affects seriously our political life.” In a few weeks student riots and a general strike provoked the most serious political crisis in the years of the Fifth Republic and brought France to the brink of civil war.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , July 1969 , pp. 539 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

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References

1 Lavau, Georges, “La déclaration du parti communiste et de la Fédération: Une promesse,” Ésprit, XXXVI (May 1968), 920–29.Google Scholar

2 François Goguel estimates that at least 2,700,000 voters who supported the left in 1956 did not vote for the left's candidate for president in 1965. Goguel, François, “Combien y-a-t-il eu d'électeurs de gauche parmi ceux qui ont voté le 5 décembre 1965 pour le général de Gaulle?” Revue française de science politique, XVII (February 1967), 65–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Duverger, Maurice and Goguel, François, Permanence et changement dans le système de partis français (Paris 1967), 18Google Scholar.

3 In the 1968 elections, “parachuting” was not as important as in 1962 and 1967. This was because the shortness of the campaign led most parties simply to renominate the candidates of 1967. Furthermore, the Gaullists tried to form a large anti-Communist coalition and endorsed many candidates with strong local ties whom they had opposed in the past.

4 Société Française d'Enquete par Sondage (SOFRES), Étude sur les attitudes politiques des français (Paris 1967), 20–26Google Scholar. The respondents were asked to place themselves on a scale from 0 to 10 that would indicate the extent of their satisfaction with their present circumstances. Those who placed diemselves below five were considered to be frankly unhappy; those at five were considered to be generally happy; and those above five were classed as frankly happy. The figures for the sample as a whole were 18% unhappy, 39% generally happy, and 43% frankly happy.

5 Ibid., 39.

6 Le Monde, April 30, 1968 (an IFOP poll).

7 Deutsch, Emeric, Lindon, Denis, Weill, Pierre, Les families politiques aujourd'hui en France (Paris 1966)Google Scholar.

8 See the analysis of Maurice Duverger in Le Monde, June 28, 1968.

9 Goguel, François, La politique des partis sous la Hie Republique, Third Edition (Paris 1958)Google Scholar.

10 The ultimate causes of the student discontent were much more complex. See the special issue of Ésprit, XXXVI (June-July 1968)Google Scholar.

11 In spite of the defection of one Gaullist deputy, the censure motion gained fewer votes than a censure motion in April, 1968, on the government's radio and television policy (236 votes) and than a censure motion on the government's request for special powers to issue economic and social decrees in May, 1967 (237 votes).

12 Mitterrand did not intend to include leaders of the center parties such as Jean Lecanuet of the Centre Democrate or Jacques Duhamel of Progrès et Démocratie Uoderne. Instead he planned to include personalities from the center. He had asked Cornut-Gentille, a deputy not inscribed in any parliamentary group but with ties to the center, to join the provisional government and had received a tentative acceptance.

13 While the students sought a government of the left they rejected a government led by Mitterrand. There were a number of posters put up by the students that read: “Non à de Gaulle! Non à Mitterrand! Out au pouvoir populaire!”

14 The Monde, June 1, 1968.

15 The strikes continued to receive considerable public support even after they had started the third week. A poll taken after De Gaulle's second address to the nation revealed that only 27% of Parisians polled felt that work should resume immediately in all cases; 57% said that work should resume where agreements had been reached; 14% were against any return to work. International Herald Tribune, June 4, 1968.

16 The present electoral arrangement is a two-ballot majority system. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes cast on the first ballot, a second ballot is held one week later. In the run-off, the candidate receiving the most votes is elected. Between ballots, candidates with less than 10% on the first ballot are eliminated. Other candi-dates may withdraw, but no new candidates are permitted.

17 Le Figaro, June 10, 1968.

18 During May there was strong criticism of Political Bureau member Georges Marchais by several leading Central Committee members as a result of his public attack on student leaders as false revolutionaries. André Barjonet resigned from his position in the PCF and from his post as economic expert in the Communist union as a result of his opposition to the party's failure to support the students and militant workers. He subsequently joined the PSU. Later in the month two more Party leaders were expelled from the PCF because of their disagreement with the Party's efforts to keep the strikes on an economic basis. Furthermore, a large number of the Party's intellectuals were disturbed by the failure to support the student movement. Le Nouvel Observateur, June 12, 1968.

19 The good feeling between the two parties was carried to the point that the FGDS gave the PSU part of its time on the state-controlled radio and television.

20 Not all PSU members agreed with this policy. Gilles Martinet, former head of the party, withdrew his candidacy after the national PSU directors rejected an agreement that the PSU in Drôme had negotiated with the FGDS. See Le Nouvel Observateur, June 12, 1968. Pierre Mendès-France resigned from the party as a result of his disagreement with the PSU's electoral policies, although his resignation was not made public until after the elections.

21 Le Monde, June 6, 1968.

22 The PSU had 120 candidates in the 1967 elections and 325 in 1968. The PCF ran 470 candidates in both elections. The FGDS had 412 candidates in 1967 and 431 in 1968.

23 The PSU did succeed in making a dent in the traditional syndicalist attitude of the French labor unions. In a break with the tradition of the separation of politics and union affairs, several leaders of one of the non-Communist unions ran as PSU candidates or replacements. (The electoral code requires each candidate to name a suppléant or eventual replacement.)

24 In 1967 this policy came under severe criticism from CIR members and from young Socialists and Radicals. They protested giving the Federation label to men such as Félix Gaillard, Maurice Faure, Georges Bonnet, and Max Lejeune because of their past records of anti-Communism or their advocacy of Algérie Française. The pressure of time made this policy more acceptable in 1968.

25 Organization of a departmental Federation in Hauts-de-Seine had been prevented by the inability of the CIR and the SFIO to agree on the the leader of the FGDS there and on the size of each other's representation in the directing organs.

26 De Gaulle had contributed in several important ways to the integration of the Communists into the French political system. First, his foreign policy, by emphasizing the end of the Cold Wa r and by building trade and friendly relations with Communist-bloc states, had helped to reduce the fear of Communism in internal politics. Second, many French were coming to believe that De Gaulle's rejection of ideologies as an ephemeral aspect of foreign policy was also valid in domestic politics. Finally, the effort by De Gaulle and his supporters to polarize French politics between the majority and the opposition furthered the integration of the Communists into the opposition and also into the political system as a whole.

27 These statistics are from a poll taken by the Institut François d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) reported in Cahiers du Communisme, XLIV (January 1968), 22–50Google Scholar.

28 SOFRES, Attitudes des français à l'égard du Parti communiste (Paris 1968), 6Google Scholar. (This is an unpublished manuscript. A summary of the findings is reported in L'Éxpress, March 28, 1968.)

28 IFOP polls reported in Sondages, XXVIII (1966), 66.

30 SOFRES, Attitude a l'égard du Parti communiste, 41.

31 L'Humanité, June 10, 1968.

32 Le Monde, June 20, 1968.

33 For a detailed analysis of the 1967 elections, see Goguel, François, “Les élections législatives des 5 et 12 mars 1967,” Revue française de science politique, XVII (June 1967), 429–467CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 The PCF increased its share of the first ballot vote from 21.7% in 1962 to 22.5% in 1967, a gain of only 0.8%. The FGDS declined from 20.1% obtained by its Radical and Socialist precursors in 1962 to 18.9% i n 1967. This drop of 1.2% is accounted for by the inclusion in the 1962 figure of the votes of candidates who by 1967 were running as centrists or Gaullists. The PSU declined from 2.4% in 1962 to 2.2% in 1967.

35 See Barrillon, Raymond, La gauche frangaise en mouvement (Paris 1967)Google Scholar.

36 Out of a total of 95 departments, the parties of the left obtained the majority on the first ballot in only 19 departments. They were unable to keep this majority on the second and decisive ballot in 7 of these 19 departments. See Goguel, François, “Les élections législatives des 23 et 30 juin 1968,” Revue française de science politique, XVIII (October 1968), 837–858CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See the analysis of de Vireiu, F. H. in Le Monde, June 30/July 1, 1968Google Scholar. (Note that these percentages refer to increases in 1968 compared to the 1967 Gaullist votes and not to increases in the percentage of the total votes cast.

38 The decline in the number of these “gifts” did not reflect a cooling in the PCF's electoral arrangement with the FGDS. All but tw o of the Federation candidates who received “gifts” from the PCF in 1967 outdistanced their Communist rivals on the first ballot in 1968. In 1967 the FGDS asked for 25 exceptions and received 13; in 1968 it asked for five or six and got three.

39 In 1967 there were eight refusals to withdraw in favor of the best-placed candidate of the left in 398 contests, or only 2.01%. In 1939, under the Popular Front electoral agreements, there were 59 refusals to abide by the decisions to withdraw out of 480 contests, or 13.91% of indiscipline. Barrillon, 72–73.

40 The shift of Communist voters to Gaullist candidates on the second ballot might indicate that the Communist electorate is less monolithic and less ideologically committed than is usually thought.

41 There were a few isolated cases where local economic grievances led to a growth in support for the left. Fo r example, in the third district of Aisne, discontent among the dairymen had produced demonstrations and the invasion of the local prefecture. The discontent was reflected in the electoral results when the FGDS deputy gained 1200 votes and reinforced his position after a narrow victory over a Gaullist deputy in 1967.

42 The drop between ballots was 9 % since in the three districts with run-off con-tests the left ha d 57.0% of the first ballot votes.

43 SOFRES, Attitude à l'égard du Parti communiste, 49–50.

44 Ibid., 54–55

45 Le Monde, April 2, 1968 (a SOFRES poll).

46 This evidence from public-opinion polls, while indicative of a possible trend, -needs to be regarded with caution since the only legislative by-election between the February declaration and the May crisis did not show any signs of voter rejection of the FGDS-PCF cooperation. To the contrary, the by-election held in April, 1968, in Corsica showed a growth of the left compared to March, 1967. In 1967 the left had received 43.1% on the first ballot and 49.5% on the second. After the annulment of the election, the left received 52.3% on the first ballot in April, 1968, and 52.8% on the second ballot.

47 Bulletin d'information radical-socialiste, No. 73 (July 1968), 17Google Scholar.

48 The PCF does not appear to have lost any of its electoral appeal as a result of the impact of the Czechoslovak affair. A by-election held in December 1968 in the Paris suburbs showed the strengthening of the position of the Communist candidate. He increased his votes by over 1000, going from 34.8% of the first ballot vote in June to 47.8% in December. The Soviet invasion of Hungary had a similar lack of effect on the French Party's electoral appeal. See Macridis, Roy C., “The Immobility of the French Communist Party,” Journal of Politics, XX (November 1958), 613–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.