France: Reformist left make big gains in regional elections
25 March 2004

Two years ago, Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Party (PS) candidate, failed to reach the second round of the French Presidential election, leaving right-wing candidate Jacques Chirac to face the fascist Le Pen in a no-win, no-choice situation.

At the time, the collapse in the PS and Communist votes, coupled with a record 10 per cent for the two far left candidates, led many to think that French reformism was dead and almost buried.

The recent regional elections, which saw a massive swing towards the reformists, show that the announcement of the demise of the "Gauche Plurielle" - the loose coalition between the PS, PCF and the Greens - seems premature.

The electorate gave a massive slap in the face to the right-wing Raffarin government's nakedly neo-liberal policies: tax reductions for the rich, huge bribes to politically key sections of the influential French petit-bourgeoisie and, above all, the application of a "reform" programme which threatens all the post-war gains of the French working class.

Two years ago, surfing on Chirac's 80 per cent victory, the right wing got a massive majority in the subsequent parliamentary elections. The reformists were in ruins and the far-left triumphant. That popular support for Chirac rapidly evaporated as he broke virtually all his campaign promises and set up one of the most anti-working class governments for decades.

Virtually every sector of the French population has suffered, from the youth, who have seen their rights and jobs trampled upon, to public sector workers, who, at a stroke, now have to work an extra 30 months before retirement, to teachers whose working conditions have been attacked, and the poor and unemployed who are paying higher taxes or have had their meagre benefits cancelled.

The last two years have seen huge anti-government movements, as public sector workers, teachers, cultural workers and even scientific researchers have taken unprecedented action. Chirac's second term has been branded by brazen class self-interest.

But decisively, with the partial exception of the researchers (their struggle is still continuing) all these movements have been defeated, through the cowardice and complicity of the union leaders and the inability of the French far left to grasp the necessary steps that would make it possible to forge a new leadership.

In these circumstances, French workers have done the only thing they could: they have voted for the reformists. But this is not the product of a left turn by the reformists.

Over the last two years the old parties of the Gauche Plurielle have been riven by personal faction struggles and by a programmatic vacuum. Far from leading the fight against Chirac and Raffarin, they have been squabbling on the sidelines, their backs turned away from the many demonstrations that have coursed through the streets.

The explanation of the return of the reformists is simple. After the humiliating defeat of Jospin in 2002, many first-time far-left voters expressed their regret, claiming that they would have voted for Jospin "if only they had known" what was going to happen.

The tendency to vote Gauche Plurielle in the first round was reinforced by a scandalously anti-democratic "reform", which meant that any list with less than 10 per cent of the vote in the first round could not go through to the second round: the vote was thus wasted.

The other explanation lies in the lacklustre performance of Lutte Ouvrière (LO) and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire over the last two years. Neither together nor apart were LO and the LCR able to provide a clear lead to last year's mass public sector strikes. LO in particular sniggered at the call for a general strike, preferring business as usual. These tired fakers fear nothing more than a real movement upsetting their routines.

The LCR responded in a far more vigorous and vital way, but they still failed to forge both the structures and the programme necessary to win the struggle, take the leadership out of the hands of the reformists and lay the basis for a new workers party.

As a result, reformism returned to the fore. Faced with a choice of two electoralist campaigns, one which could win (the reformists) and the other of which could not (LO-LCR), workers did the obvious thing. In this sense, LO and LCR were the architects of their own defeat: overall they got slightly less than 5 per cent.

Sadly, by squandering the very real and urgent opportunity of the last two years, they have probably condemned the French working class to another cycle of reformist rule, at the very least in the regions with the PS and their allies have won.

After smashing the public sector retirement age, Chirac has now vowed to take on the major issue for the French capitalist class: the massive health system. The last time he tried this, in 1995, he nearly provoked a general strike. In the next few months he has promised to hit harder and more decisively. This attack will be the equivalent of the British miners' strike for the French working class: it will be a fight the workers must win, or the consequences will be disastrous.

Small Trotskyist organisations do not often have a chance to influence events. It is vital that the militants of LO and the LCR - and those that voted for them - draw the lessons of the last two years and apply them to the coming struggles. They should reject any suggestion that the June European elections becomes the overriding priority; instead, that priority must be to develop the social forums and revive last year's co-ordinations (councils of action) as real organising centres against Chirac's attacks.

That way, the June elections can become a barometer of the class struggle as a whole, rather than an end in themselves.

Now read: French far left agrees electoral pact for 2004 elections