Guy Mollet (31 December, 1905 - 3 October, 1975) was a French Socialist
politician. He led the SFIO party from 1946 to 1969 and was
Prime Minister in 1956-1957.
Life
Early life and WWII
He was born in Flers, in Normandy, the son of a textile
worker. He was educated in Le Havre and became a school teacher in Arras. Like most teachers, he was an active member of the French
Socialist Party, then called the SFIO, and in 1928 he became SFIO Secretary for the
Pas-de-Calais departement. He joined the French Army in 1939 and was taken prisoner by the Germans. Released after seven months, he joined the Resistance in the Arras area and was three times arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo.
Early political career
In October 1945, Mollet was elected to the National
Assembly as representative of Pas-de-Calais. In 1946 he became Secretary-General of the SFIO
against Daniel Mayer, the candidate supported by Léon
Blum. Mollet represented the left-wing of the party which faired the dissolution of the Socialist identity in a centerist
conglomerate. However, if he kept a marxist language, he accepted the alliance with the center
and center-right parties during the Fourth Republic.
In this, he served as vice-Prime minister in 1946. In 1950-51 he
was Minister for European Relations in the government of the Radical René Pleven, and in
1951 he was Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Henri
Queuille. He represented France at the Council of Europe, and was President of
the Socialist Group on the Council's Assembly. From 1951 to 1969 he
was Vice-President of the Socialist International.
Premiership
During the 1956 legislative campaign, he created a center-left
coalition called the Republican Front with the Radical Party of Pierre Mendès-France, the
Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance led by
François Mitterrand and the Social Gaullists headed by Jacques Chaban-Delmas.
It won the election in promising to re-establish the peace in Algeria. Leader of the main
party of the coalition, Mollet led and formed the cabinet
in January 1956.
Suez
Although Mollet wanted to concentrate on domestic issues, he found himself confronted with a major foreign policy issue, the
Suez Crisis, when the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalised the Suez Canal.
As the crisis escalated, previously secret British cabinet papers show that in September 1956 the Anglophile Mollet requested
to merge France and the United Kingdom and again, two weeks later, for France to join the Commonwealth of Nations.[1] Along with the crisis, the French economy was in a mess and the United Kingdom was seen as a
social and economic role model in Paris. Both requests were turned down by the British prime minister Anthony Eden, and a
year later France signed the Treaty of Rome with Germany and the other founding nations
of the Common market.
Eden feared that Nasser intended to cut off oil supplies to Europe. In October 1956 Mollet, Eden
and the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, met
in secret and agreed to make a joint attack on Egypt. The Israelis invaded Egypt, and British and French troops occupied the Suez
Canal area. But the invasion met with unexpected opposition from the United States, and
France and the United Kingdom were forced into a humiliating backdown. Eden resigned, but Mollet survived the crisis, despite
fierce criticism from the left.
Algeria
- Further information: Algerian War of Independence
Like the rest of the French left, Mollet opposed French colonialism, and had
supported Mendès-France's efforts in office to withdraw from Tunisia and Morocco (whom were granted independence in 1956 by the loi-cadre
Deferre). Mollet's government was left with the issue of the three departments of Algeria, where the presence of a
million French settlers made a simple withdrawal politically impossible.
At first, Mollet's policy was to negotiate with the FLN liberation
front. Once in office, however, he changed his mind and argued that the FLN insurgents must be defeated before
negotiations could begin. Mollet's visit to Algiers was a stormy one, with almost everyone
against him. He was pelted with rotten tomatoes at a demonstration in Algiers on 6 February 1956, a few weeks after becoming
prime minister. The French refer to this memorable event as "la journée des tomates".
He poured French troops into Algeria, where they conducted a campaign of counter-terrorism including torture, in particular during the Battle of Algiers which took place from January to October 1957. This was too much for most French,
and Mollet's government collapsed in June 1957 on the issue of taxation to pay for the Algerian War. The Secretary of State to
Foreign Affairs Alain Savary, also a SFIO member, resigned because of his opposition to
Mollet's hard-stance in Algeria.
Suggested Franco-British Union
British Government cabinet papers from September 1956, during Sir Anthony Eden's term as Prime Minister, have shown that Mollet
approached the British Government suggesting the idea of a Franco-British Union — an economic and political union
between France and the United Kingdom.[1]
Mollet's request for Union with Britain was rejected by Eden, but the additional possibility of France joining the Commonwealth of Nations was considered,
although similarly rejected.
The idea of a merger of France and Britain was previously proposed by Sir Winston
Churchill on 16 June 1940 (the date is important as the German Panzer division was then racing through France, and
Belgium had surrendered to Hitler a few days
previously).[citation needed] It was apparently agreed by de
Gaulle as a French defence liaison with Britain, one of whose advisory staff was Jean
Monnet, later prime minister and architect of the post war recovery plan for France and then of the Common Market.
When the papers were made public in January 2007, a poll conducted by the BBC with the French
public came out with a resounding note of surprise and disbelief. Almost all of the people interviewed contended the union would
have been a disaster for France's identity.
Home Policy
Mollet's cabinet led a social policy which went unnoticed in due to the international context and the Algerian War. In this,
the third week of holidays was decided. Besides, he negotiated and signed the Treaty of
Rome creating the European Economic Community.
Mollet's cabinet was the last government formed by the SFIO (soon divided into PCF and
PS), which was in increasing decline, and also the last stable government of the Fourth Republic. The Algiers coup of 1958 led by First Indochina War and Suez Crisis veterans brought
Charles de Gaulle to power from retirement and in effect seized power. Mollet
supported him on the grounds that France needed a new constitution which would allow the formation of strong governments. De
Gaulle appointed him one of four Secretaries of State in his first cabinet. This caused the creation of the Unified Socialist Party, from a split of the SFIO.
Late political career
Mollet resigned from de Gaulle's cabinet in 1959 and did not hold office again. He remained
Secretary General of the SFIO, but under de Gaulle's new system, the Fifth
Republic, it was a powerless opposition party, and by the 1960s it was in terminal decline.
During the 1965 presidential campaign, he presented himself again
like the attendant of the Socialist identity and opposed to the candidacy of Gaston
Defferre, who proposed the constitution of a "Great Federation" with the non-Gaullist center-right. He accepted to support
François Mitterrand's candidacy and participated to the center-left coalition called
Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left. But it
split three years later.
His leadership over the party was more and more challenged. He could not prevent the designation of Defferre as SFIO candidate
at the 1969 presidential election. This one obtained a disastrous
result (5%) which swallowed up the SFIO and Mollet too. The party merged with left-wing clubs in a new Socialist Party, which Mollet abandoned the leadership to Alain
Savary. However, the internal opposition accused Mollet to be stood the real leader of the party. It allied with
François Mitterrand, who joined the party during the Epinay Congress and took the lead in 1971.
Mollet and his followers were ejected in the minority of the party. He mocked the Socialist speeches of Mitterrand: "he is not
socialist, he has learned to speak socialist".
Death
Guy Mollet died in Paris in 1975. He is, until today, the more controversial of the French
Socialist leaders. His name is tied up to the SFIO decline and his repressive policy in Algeria. In the French political
language, the word molletisme means a duplicity consisting to do left-wing speeches to win the elections then lead a
conservative policy. Currently, the French Socialist politicians preferred refer to the moral authority of Pierre Mendès-France, although he was not member of the party.
Biographies
His biography, by Denis Lefebvre, was called Guy Mollet: Le mal aimé (Guy Mollet: The Unpopular Man).
See also
Mollet's Ministry, 1 February 1956 - 13 June 1957
Changes
References
- ^ a b When Britain and France nearly married, summary of Document's "A Marriage
Cordial", first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2007. The document treated was
DO 35/5264.
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