Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The chief discontents came in 1960 and 1961 from those groups in the population, notably farmers, civil servants, and university students, who found that they were sharing in the economic boom less than others or were being squeezed by its dynamics. The price inflation of about 50 percent in the decade following 1953 injured government employees, whose salaries did not rise as rapidly as prices; university students were also squeezed by the inflation but were squeezed much more literally in housing, eating accommodations, and classroom space by a great increase in enrollments which was not sufficiently prepared for by government efforts to increase facilities. And the peasants, encouraged by government technocrats to modernize their methods, found that increased production led to lower farm prices and decreased incomes for themselves.

In view of the authoritarian character of the De Gaulle regime, these discontents tended to become extralegal agitations. There were sporadic strikes, protest parades, and even riots of these groups to call public attention to their grievances. Farmers were particularly violent when agricultural prices decreased and industrial prices continued to inch upward. The Gaullist government hoped to remedy the situation by reducing the costs of distribution through middlemen and thus provide French farmers with an increasing share of the reduced price of produce to the consumer, but on the whole the incredibly inefficient distribution of French farm produce, which forced most produce, regardless of source or destination, to pass through the Parisian markets, was too difficult a problem even for De Gaulle’s experts, at least in any time interval that mattered. To obtain concessions, the farmers rioted, often on a large scale, such as an outburst of 35,000 of them at Amiens in February 1960. They blocked national automobile routes with their tractors, spread unsold or unremuneratively priced farm produce over the roads or city streets, and responded with violence when efforts were made to disperse them.

Through this whole period, De Gaulle’s conduct of the government, through his handpicked prime ministers, made a shambles of the Fifth Republic constitution, which had been tailored to his specifications. Since a government could not be overthrown by defeat of a bill but only by a specific vote of censure, and this latter would lead to a general election in which all of De Gaulle’s prestige could be used against those who had voted for the censure, the ordinary deputy’s love of office and reluctance to wage an expensive and risky electoral campaign made it possible for De Gaulle’s premiers to obtain almost any law he desired. The older political leaders were very restive under this system but could mobilize no organized opposition to it, because no one could see any real alternative to De Gaulle.

A significant example of De Gaulle’s high-handed operations may be seen in the way he forced through the bill to create an independent French nuclear force without allowing the Assembly to debate the issue or to vote on the bill itself (November-December 1960). This was done under Article 49 of the constitution, which allows the government to pass a bill on its own responsibility without consideration by the Assembly unless a vote of censure is passed by a majority (277) of all the deputies. By use of this article, the three readings of the Nuclear Arms bill were replaced by three motions of censure that obtained no more than 215 votes. There seems to have been a clear majority, both in the Assembly and in the country as a whole, against the nuclear force, but few were willing to risk the fall of the government with no acceptable alternative in sight, and even fewer were willing to precipitate a general election.

As might be expected in such a system, the danger of assassination as a method for changing a government increased greatly, but De Gaulle continued on his imperturbable course in spite of a number of attempts on his life. One of the chief dangers to the Gaullist regime came from the discontent of the highest officers in the armed forces, but the mutiny and revolt of several army contingents in Algeria in April 1961 showed fairly clearly that this opposition movement was largely restricted to the highest officers, and De Gaulle was able to eliminate them and thus to reduce them, like the rest of his opponents, to angry impotence or to assassination efforts. De Gaulle’s success in retiring from public life the only surviving Marshal of France, Alphonse Juin, clinched his superiority over the army.

Equally successful, and typical of De Gaulle’s actions, were his constant appeals to public opinion, by television or on personal regional tours, or by local elections or plebiscites, against the disunited opposition, especially against the traditional political party leaders. A successful example of these techniques occurred in 1962 when De Gaulle decided to change the method of electing the president (or reelecting himself) from the constitutional method of choice by an electoral college of 80,000 “notables” to election by popular vote. To bypass the Senate, which was constitutionally entitled to vote on such matters and would unquestionably reject the change, De Gaulle announced that the amendment would be submitted to a popular referendum of the whole electorate. This method of changing the constitution by referendum was denounced as unconstitutional by all the political parties except his own, and was declared illegal by the Council of State.

Gaston Monnerville, president of the senate, who would become president of France if De Gaulle died, denounced the referendum as illegal, and accused De Gaulle of “malfeasance.” When De Gaulle’s rage at Monnerville became evident, the Senate reelected Monnerville as its presiding officer with only three dissenting votes. The Assembly, in an overnight session, October 4-5, 1962, passed a vote of censure with 280 votes. By the referendum on the constitutional change, on October 28, 1962, De Gaulle achieved his purpose with almost 62 percent of the votes registering “ayes” (this was only 46 percent of the registered votes because of the 23 percent nonvoting) in spite of the fact that his proposal was opposed by all political parties except his own. The following month, November 1962, in the general election made necessary by the vote of censure, De Gaulle’s bloc won 234 seats out of 480, with an additional 41 seats committed to his support. The Right was practically wiped out in the election, although the Communists increased slightly to 41 seats.

This pattern of personal and rather arbitrary rule, opposed by the older ruling groups but sustained by the ordinary Frenchman whenever De Gaulle asked for such support, has continued to be the pattern of De Gaulle’s political system, and will undoubtedly continue unless he meets some unforeseen sharp diplomatic defeat or a domestic economic collapse. Both of these are unlikely at the present time.

While French political life passed through these stages of superficial drama and fundamental boredom, British political life wallowed in a malaise of mediocrity. No groups were actually discontented, and certainly none was enthusiastic about the situation in Britain over the 1957-1964 period leading up to the General Election of October 1964. The Conservative Government came to office in 1951, was returned in the elections of 1955, and returned again in the elections of October 1959. Anthony Eden served a brief and rather unsuccessful prime ministership from the retirement of Winston Churchill in April 1955 until his own retirement in favor of Harold Macmillan in January 1957. The latter’s term of office had no spectacular failures such as Eden had experienced in the Suez Crisis of October 1956, but on the whole there were also no great successes.

Macmillan sought to avoid issues if possible, to strengthen contacts with the United States and the Commonwealth by personal diplomacy, to follow Washington’s policy as closely as possible without appearing openly obsequious, and to hold a fairly tight rein over the Conservative Party and the House of Commons. An endless series of nasty little problems were met and somehow disposed of, to be followed by the rise of similar problems without any significant changes of course or speed. Abroad, the chief problems arose from the demands of various areas within the Commonwealth for self-government and the intrusion of the racial issue into these disputes, especially in Central Africa, East Africa, British Guiana, and Malaya. The chief problems at home were equally endless and were concerned with the continual weakness of the pound sterling on the foreign exchange market and the social problems associated with the British economic expansion, such as increased vehicular traffic, spreading juvenile and adolescent delinquency, an apparent decline in the level of adult moral behavior, and the growing attacks, especially in industry and finance, on the economic bases of the older Establishment.