The election of Francois Mitterrand is an important event, but not as important as occurred in France in 1936, on those previous occasions.
But it indicates very clearly a shift in the mood of the working class - a strong rise in its self-confidence. Further, from the point of view of the relation of forces between the workers and their reformist leaderships, the situation is more favourable than it was in '36 or '44.
In the first few days since Mitterand's clection this has expressed itself in severai definitely an intlos of new Wary There members into the unions There has already been the f'ac. by the workers.
Thev have raised the ques tion of a ban on new sackIngs.
In some of the larger and dulu mobile factories there were redundancies be declared in the first week bosses stopped them they took the threat of the workers seriously.
Freeze It is possible that the government will intervene and order a freeze on new redundancies.
The Mitterand government will have to make some concessions the workers, but they will do it in the least costly way for Cadills But they substantial concessions, apart ¡cuuticali!.
and the most likely thing is an increase in the national lull wagg Both these things '44 or '68. 100 lar - busness hus remain as usual So Mitterand is caught between the needs of the workers and those of the capitalists. Giscard wide meaning, and coming > happen ing in the Labour Party Britain, means that in two Cupcal countries, while the working class still economically actensive, ! is piepare political counter-blows which might take the ruling class off balance until Iwo weeks before the elections. the victory of Giscard was assumed be certain.
Mitterand's win means that an important, MOre backward section of the working generally doe vOle mobilised io vote for Was Mitterand.
The other phenomenon which is indicated by this vote is the continuaof recomposition of the labour movelucill This victory for unity is all the more amazing because up to the last moment both the CP and SP did everything possible to increase the division - the CP especially by concen trating 1IS electoral cam paign attacking terand.
Joy On the night of the election, in the explosion of joy which occurred in the Place de la Bastile anc in many provincial town mavo 350,000 people were on the streets that among all these people the desire for unity absolutely overwhelming weakest position 1936.
But should be cautious. This is oniv or the terrain of electoral results. t does not reflec organisational strength from the point of view of membership the Com munist Party is still at leasi strong the Socialist Party - and especially does not reflect implantation in the factories or unions, where the CP is much I stronger.
The CP militants will ask: how did we arrive at this situation? Why did we suffer this defeat? Al the same time the SP will find difficult to imple ment reformis So a whole number of CP and SP are likely distance themselves leader ships. Return will happen ir the Socialis: Party is likel to be determined by the ar tions government. hap in the CP is more structurally determined it's likely to be a return to eurocommunisi policies of Marchais attack divisive deciding whether there wil The bis facior be a CP-SP government is whether there will be an agreement bet the (WO main workers parties. I there is agreement, InCH seems likely that the parliamentary tion of the Communist Party could be drasticall reduced around 40 deputies In that situation Mit terand could govern rely. ing on the left radicals and 'left' Gaullists easier to manoeuvre against the workers
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time being it is only an electoral shift rather than a wave of mass struggles as happened
From a political point Mitterrand gets some advice