AND PREPARES FOR BATTLE
By Tom Kemp
1959The NewsletterTom Kemp Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
FRANCE BIG BUSINESS PURRS WITH SATISFACTION— From Tom Kemp PaRIS .
THE tumult of the Algiers forum in the days of May 1958 seems far away in the France of de Gaulle in the summer of 1959.
No doubt many supporters of the de Gaulle régime would like to forget how it came into being. But all the trimmings of legality and republicanism cannot wipe out the facts.
The régime issued from a threat of violence exercised by the armed forces and manipulated by a network of civilian and military plotters.
And today it exists as a coalition of interests in which big capital is a decisive factor—with de Gaulle straddling these interests as the national saviour.
But these interests are torn with jealousies. The conflicts among them find political expression in a number of parties and organizations, some old, some new.
Rumblings in the army; activity by openly fascist groups; calls for the purging of the administration; the possibility of further blackmail from Algiers: symptoms of this kind indicate that the régime might be torn apart in the event of - major strains or crisis.
Yet de Gaulle has his successes.
No other régime since 1945 has been so successful in mastering working-class dissatisfaction and imposing measures detrimental to the workers’ living standards.
‘It has improved the stability of State finances, reduced the foreign deficit and—at the expense of real wages and social Two things are missing as yet. The first is a powerful, co-, ordinated rank-and-file movement. The second is a clear understanding of the link between the workers’ economic interests and the political struggle against the de Gaulle régime.
AUSTRALIA RIGHT-WING UNION BOSSES AND STALINISTS From a. Correspondent