The recent French elections have received a fair amount of coverage in the British press. However those reports have mainly focused on the impact of Le Pen's National Front and the crisis this is provoking for the traditional right. The rise in votes for the far left and the overall decline in the numbers voting have been largely ignored. Below we reprint an article by Christian Picquet from Rouge, paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire (LCR), French Section of the Fourth International.
France's political elite is in crisis.
P 'Only 58 per cent of voters participated in regional elections in March. And only two thirds of those voting supported the parties of the current government (Socialist, Communist and Green) or the conservative opposition (UDF and RPR), In other words, only one in three registered voters is somehow represented by the "mainstream" parties, including the Communists and the Greens.
Of course, there was enormous varicty in the motivations of those who didn't vote, or who supported one of the minor parties.
But there is clearly & suspicion, even an open defiance, of the political system.
Twenty years of crisis and unemployment have converged with popular frustration with the identical policies which left and right have applied in government.
At each cection, the challenge is clearer:
either the left responds to the urgent social situation, and gives the victims of neoliberalism new hope in politics, or there will be a further decline in civic participation, mixed with rejection of the existing political parties.
All to the benchit of the extreme right, of course Taken together, the hr-to parties scored 40.7 per cent, rather higher than in the 1992 regional clections. But the parties of the governing coalition (S ist. Co aist and Green did Thi tude towards the Jospin government, but also a growing distrust of the "Plural left" government, as a result of its refusal to listen to the demands of the unemployed movement, and its other unkept promises. Leonel Jospin's Communist and allies in government are starting to pay for their inconsistency. In many areas, the increased vote for radical left candidates [to the left of the Communist Party] was the significant decline in the Party's stable electorate, which is increasingly disoriented by their leaders' manoeuvres.
On 17 March the Communist Party newspaper L'Humanité, commented that, "the far left clearly benefited from the protest votes of a section of the left, Le.
communist, electorate: people who feel that the Jospin government is not going fast enough and far enough in its reforms in favour of the most disadvantaged groups of the population."
In these elections, the Greens benefited from the collapse of ecological rivals and splinter groups. But, wherever they stood separately from the Socialist Party, some Green voters preferred to vote for their party's national ally.
BASE 88R Party leaders have tried to their members to accept privatisation, workfare schemes for young people, and another reactionary reform of immigration and citizenship legislation.
Each time, Party leader Robert Hue has invoked the party's importance, responsibilities, and its mission as a bridge between the social movements and the government."
In the past, elections were one of the key opportunities for Party leaders to reaffirm the party's communist identity. Exeept that, for the first time, the Communist Party presented joint lists with its partners in government. Many militants refused to accept this, particularly where the common candidate was & prominent member of the Socialist Party.
A majority of Communist Party members in Lille, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais against "their" candidates. left and Not surprisingly, this also meant a lacklustre election campaign, with most of the work done by mid-level cares rather than the rank-and-file.
Paradoxically, Robert Hué has emerged from these elections stronger than before, (365 per ocat)
thanti to a ruthless selection of canditical sui dates. But he is under pressure from the Party. Green result of a themselves. Communist the parliamentary the right as a whole. port. In uring the last nine months of tive participation in govern- Only Communist one in three force registered voters is somehow represented by converged with popular frustration with the its identical policies of left and right governments The radical left per cent of members voted R Not that this will worry Prime Minister Leonel Jospin, who is relying on the Communist Party to absorb any stray voices on Growing tension on conservative RPR-UDF opposition will look back on these elections as the beginning of the end. In last year's won 34.2 percent of the vote. In these parliamentary elections, they Lutte Ouvrière regional elections, they won only 28.1 per sentative. Key personalities like Edouard Balladur and Charles Pasqua did badly, and in many regions the right's only chance for government will be some kind of agreement with either the extreme right or the Socialist The far-right National Front is now as large as each of the two conservative parties, as well as being more ideologically coherent and well organised. Fascist leaders Jean-Marie Le Pen and his deputy Bruno Megret are gracefully imposing The "classic" conservative parties must now either merge into a single liberal-conservative-republican party (which would mean sacrificing part of the leadership and superstructure, negotiate some kind of re-composition of Many local conservative politicians own group? resent their leaders' refusal to co-operate with the National Front. But, in any kind of recomposition across the "Republican line" which separates the "democratic" right parties from the fascists, Le Pen's party will be the dominant component. P The National Front maintained its share of the vote (15.3 per cent), the same score as during the 1997 parliamentary elections. In greater Paris and some other regions the fascist vote is stagnant, but in the industrially depressed north, east and south-east, the party reached new levels of voter supthe large south-eastern region of Provence-Alps-Cote d'Azur, the National Front won as many votes as the conservaparties combined. In Bouches-du-Rhone, Vaucluse and Var it did even better. This is enabling the National Front impose itself as arbiter in those 13 of the country's 21 mainland regions where the left coalition didn't win a relative majority of votes. Although the leadership of the RPR and UDF were determined to refuse co-operation with the National Front, even if this kept them out of power, the fascist strategy of offering alliances is progressively weakening the cohesion of the conservative parties. Any local split in the RPR UDF would be a step forward for the National Front in its march to power.
Radical and far-left candidates won almost one million votes (42 per cent), and imposed themselves as a new fundamenal element on the political map. This is partly the result of the popular re-mobilisation which started in winter 1995, and partly a reflection of growing rejection of the right and of neo-liberal policies, whoever implements them. France for some time. What is perhaps new is the reduced capacity of the Communist and Green parties to capture these votes, now that they are locked into the "pluralist parliamentary majority." The Trotskyist group Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle, LO), was the main benefactor of this political radicalisation, winning 4.8 percent of the vote in those regions where the group presented candidates. This impressive score is partly the result of the group's tradition of electoral participation, and the considerable portion of its energies which it devotes to elections.
also has, -10a Arlette Laguiller, a well-known and popular repreUnusually, this latest Lutte Ouvrière campaign was less crude in its characterisation of the Socialist and conservative parties as two sides of the same coin.
With 19 elected members of the new regional assemblies, LO has made significant step forward in electoral support. While their support is nation-wide, it is particulatly strong in the declining industrial areas of northern France - clear proof that there is nothing automatic in the far-right's ability to win over working class voters in these areas.
To stabilise this vote, unique in Europe for a Trotskyist group, LO needs to build links with those militants who are leading social struggles at a local level. Can LO work in and with a milieu increasingly used to pluralist practice and unity? Or will its elected representatives see them selves only as public spokespeople for their The LCR's new For the first time, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire (Revolutionary Communist League, LCR) also benefited from the leftward shift of some sections of the electorate. The LCR vote included a significant number of former Communist Party sympathisers and voters, and, to a lesser extent, frustrated Socialist Party and Green voters, looking for a genuine left alternative.
Unlike Lutte Ouvrière, the LCR managed to build broader electoral coalitions in 12 regions. These lists received an average score of 2.7 per cent, a considerable improvement on the 1.26 per cent of votes in the 1997 parliamentary elections. And this average excludes the result in Nord region, where the LCR supported a Green list which won 8.76 per cent of the vote.
Despite this success, which included the election of two LCR members to the Breton regional assembly, the group has recognised a number of shortcomings in its Unlike LO's stable voter base, the potential L.CR electorate is clearly more tempted to cast a "useful" vote for a larger party.
Another problem is the LCR's inconsistent participation in clectoral politics, and the bewildering range of names under which LCR candidates present themselves: 19 in these latest clections.
Of course, this reflects the atomisation and division of the left forces and social movements in which the LCR is active and influential. And, despite the variations of name, the growing convergence of forces which, alongside the LCR, are striving for a change in left politics, is recognisable as a national force.
Years of LCR work in building and rebuilding authentic alternative are starting to bear their first real fruit. In any case, the growing menace on the right, and the advance of the radical and far left, send a clear message to the French government: move to the left, or else!
• Source: Roure, 19 March: Jean-Louh Michel, Tres Viletin also conCIALIST
Little victories for the government
How to be a Communist and govern? D
the "mainstream" parties ...20 years of unemployment have