The French socialists and tripartisme 1944-1947
Date
1965
Authors
Graham, Bruce Desmond
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The Australian National University
Abstract
This book is concerned with a period of post-war economic recovery and political change when Socialists, Communists, Christian Democrats, and - until January 1946 - General de Gaulle were forced to work together to carry out basic reforms and draw up the Constitution of the Fourth French Republic. The alliance forged in the Resistance during the war became an alliance subject to political stresses and strains in which the Socialists were the mediators between, on the one hand, the Christian Democrats and the Communists, and, on the other, General de Gaulle. In an alliance government, conflict of party ideas and ideals seems inevitable. The Socialist leaders were convinced that parliamentary democracy would survive in France only if a regime of monolithic parties, bound together in firm alliances, were to provide the basis of stable government. The price they paid was heavy: a loss of internal stability and confidence in their organization and repudiation of the leadership that had guided the party through the ordeal of resistance against the Germans and through political reconstruction. Leon Blum, leader of the pre-war Popular Front, and Daniel Mayer tried to persuade the party of the necessity to revise its doctrine in order to command liberal middle-class support. They failed, and were succeeded by Guy Mollet. But he was soon forced to return to the Dolicies they had laid down.
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