A new warning be better to do it 'right,, in order to prepare the way for an upturn. If capitalism was the only possible system, then better to the SP -CP government vote for the party that has the confidence of the capitalists and not for those whom the bosses threaten with a continued in France investment strike."
The most positive result of the election was the fact that the environmental-
Although the outcome of the second round of the French municipal elections on ist party, the Greens, based on the pro-
March 13 apparently differed from the first, with the left showing greater strength, test movements, topped the 5% barrier to get into parliament:
round to show their discontent went to the polls in the second to block the right.
"On election night (Green leader)
That cut the left's losses to 30 urban areas of over 30,000 population.
We will seek extraspot in this vote is that for the first time in the history of West Germany, with the exception of the immediate period, a group to the left of the SPD will be represented in parliament that clearly says that it will use its positions in parliament to promote mass mobilizations, especially against the stationing of the
The Green vote was much smaller than it could have been, however, because the leadership refused to try to build a broad left block or come out clearly in support of an SPD government against the right.
"The decisive
More fundamentally:
weakeness of the Greens is exactly the same as the SPD, the question of unem-
The Greens either said noth ing about this or did not go beyond abstractions....
"The election result is a rude awakening, moreover, for a section of the left that concentrated entirely on the question of whether the Greens could get over it in fact only confirmed the message. PARIS - The first round of the French municipal elections held March 6 showed the standard symptoms of the failure of a class-collaborationist reformist govern-
Increased abstention by disillusioned workers went hand in hand with stepped up aggressiveness and self-confidence on of the bourgeois parties, and with a shift of the middle strata to the
In cities of more than 30,000 inhabitants, the right got 51.5% of the vote, as against 46.5% for the SP-CP coalition. The right regained control of a series of key urban centers, such as Brest, Nantes, Roubaix, Tourcoing, and Arles.
There was a marked coolness to the government leaders. The premier, Pierre Mauroy; and the minister of the interior, Gaston Defferre, were hard pressed to retain their local mandates.
Neither was able to win reelection
Left voters who abstained on the first The slates headed up by the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, the right's leading national figure, averaged 64%. the two arrondissements that they failed to win on the first round the 13 and 20, they got a plurality.
The Paris electorate is overwhelmingly petty bourgeois. But it is very much affected by national swings. sults seem to reflect also the nationwide tendency of the middle strata that voted massively for the left in 1981 to shift to
It has been a long-standing bourgeois policy to push the working class out of
Of those manual workers and poor remaining, a large percentage are immigrants. They do not have a vote. And their presence and problems are used by the right to whip up reactionary fears among the poor and middle-class sections of the older French population.
There is a large immigrant population, in the first round in their respective for example in the 13 and 20 arrondisse-
5%. This goal was achieved. But the deof Lille and Marseilles. ments, where the left is strongest. In cisive thing is that there was no majority for an SPD government."
to government leaders the latter, the slate of the Front National, was absolutely clear, to such an extent a fascist-like group that specializes in
The GIM denounced the statements by that Defferre has announced that if anti-immigrant rabble rousing, got 11% of the SPD leaders that the voters had dehe is defeated in the March 13 second- the vote.
livered their verdict and it would have to be respected:
"The voters were not able to decide on the main questions in their daily lives vote, he will resign from the
The campaign for the second round in the 20 has already been marked by vio-
OUVRIERE ET LA LICU: COMM workers March 10 by a right-wing gang.
The Marseilles "Anticrime" slates got an average of 6%. In Roubaix, the antiimmigrant candidate Marcel Lecluse got 10%.
The big bourgeois parties themselves were not squeamish about immigrantbashing. Thus, in Dreux, there was a common slate between Chirac's Rally for the French Republic (RPR) and the Front National.
In the 18 arrondissement, where there was formally a left majority, the RPR candidate Juppe scored a surprise win over the SP leader Lionel Jospin. Juppe had made a point of bemoaning: "The situation has gotten considerably worse; there are the drugs, the prostitutes, and the immigrants."
In Marseilles, Defferre tried to steal the right's thunder on this question. His argument was that the right had permitted "unregulated immigration" but the left government had imposed "controls." But he had a marked lack of success in trying to beat the right at its own game.
While the overall abstention rate was only one percent higher than in the last municipal elections in 1977, its composition was different. For example, the rate goes up to 30% for towns over the paper of the Ligue ComRevolutionnaire (LCR), the French section of the Fourth International, estimated that about 10% of former left voters abstained.
In Roubaix, the overall participation rate was 93%, but only 65% in the work-
In Lille, in the right northern part, 80% voted; in the left areas it was 62%. There were 10% less voters in the left areas, 15% more in the right-
The right's greatest trump, moreover, was the demobilization of the left voters. Where it provoked a marked left-right confrontation, it tended to be blown away by the reaction of the left voters.
That was the case, for example, in Gerardmer, in the Vosges area, where the vote for the bourgeois parties dropped from 57.98% in 1977 to 47.89%. The LCR also ran a strong campaign in the area. It got 5.39% of the vote, along with 27.19% for the CP and 19.51% for the SP.
The LCR ran a joint campaign nationally with Lutte Ouvriere (LO - Workers Struggle), another Trotskyist group. In various areas, there were joint slates with other groups and independents.
Thirty-three of the slates in which the LCR participated got between 3 and 6%
Two LCR members were elected to municipal councils.
In Saint-Etienne de Rouvray, a working-class suburb of Rouen, Michelle Ernis, a high-school teacher, topped the 5% barrier with a vote of 5.13%.
In Cenon, a working-class suburb of Bordeaux, Alain Remoiville, a chemical worker, was elected with 6.83%.
Rouge asked Remoiville about the effect of his success on the credibility
STE
POUR LES L
VOTEE
IRAVAILLEURS CONTRE LAU of the LCR as an alternative for the workers at his factory. He said:
"We could see the results even before the vote. A lot of people looked to us in the struggles but not when it came to
This time the two things
We were already ary.
Now, having respected in the plant.
somebody elected to the city counc makes the party a more credible force."
Michele Ernis said that the local reaction to her election was generally favorable, especially in the women's movement. But not in the CP.
"It was pretty tense...When the mayor, a CP member, announced the results,
I wanted to make a statement.
But was physically blocked by CP activists.
They were furious.
The funny thing they congratulate themselves that it is the proportional representation law pasthe left that lets the right be represented in the city council.
Bu they accuse us of 'stealing a seat' from
On the other hand, in the town of the local CP quoted a statement calling for left unity in the second round by an LCR candidat in its campaign mailing.
Since its base is solider, the CP vote relatively better than that the winner during the rise of
SP, the big
Nonetheless, it continued its
The far left vote did not increase notably in these elections. It also did not pol-
"Can socialism' arize a broad protest vote as it did in some places in 1977.
However, something fundamental is changing even though the absolute vote totals remain roughly the same.
far left votes now come increasingly that supported the far left before, under the impact of the economic crisis and of a crisis of perspectives, tended to vote change things."
more for the
Environmentalist slates.
That is, they shifted toward a vaguer, less minds was political alternative.
These slates got significant votes generto anything?'"
ally, over 4%, for example, in the 20 ar-
"there were a lot rondissement of Paris. But the leaders of this slate gave their supporters no direction for the second round, except not to vote for the Front National.
The message of the far-left vote was