Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

December, de Gaulle denounced the Constitution again in a communiqué to Agence France-Presse. Nine days later the draft was voted through the Assembly. Refusing to give in, de Gaulle spoke a few hours later at Épinal, urging French voters to reject it. ‘
Franchement non!
’ he exclaimed. ‘Such a compromise does not appear to us to be a framework worthy of the Republic.’ Compromise, in de Gaulle’s canon, was still a mortal sin.
    *
    Bidault’s government resigned after more legislative elections on 10 November in which the Communists once again won the greatest number of seats. Their share of the total vote had increased to 29 per cent. Maurice Thorez, as leader of ‘
le premier parti de France
’, demanded to be Prime Minister.
    The Socialist Party faced a most uncomfortable dilemma, made worse by Thorez’s studied moderation as he lobbied for support with dignity and charm. One of their leaders is said to have burst out in sobs: ‘I’d prefer to slash my wrists than vote for Thorez!’ But Gouin argued that they had no option, otherwise they would lose all credibility: the workers would not understand their supporting Bidault, a Christian Democrat, then refusing to support a Communist. Yet he was certain that, even with their support, Thorez would never receive the absolute majority necessary. Vincent Auriol, a wise and experienced Socialist of the old school, agreed with Gouin.
    They were proved right when the vote took place on 4 December. Thorez had made his bid and lost. Jacques Duclos, defending Thorez’s candidature in the National Assembly a few days later, made an uncharacteristic blunder when he lauded him as ‘a man who has stood the test of battle’. The non-Communist benches erupted with laughter at this description of France’s most famous deserter. The Communist deputies could only sit there, stony-faced and furious. After Thorez, it was Bidault’s turn, but he received even fewer votes.
    A week later, Blum having resigned, President Auriol selected Paul Ramadier to form an administration – having first made a show of asking Félix Gouin, as an expression of confidence after the wine scandal. Ramadier, with his goatee beard and fussy professorial air, provided an easy target for caricaturists. He was known as a man of compromise, and for being painstakingly slow to reach a decision; but he was untainted by ambition, and scrupulously honest in a profession not renowned for its probity. He had accepted the post of Minister of Supply in de Gaulle’s government, knowing that it would make him unpopular. He was also a hard worker, often at his desk soon after four in the morning. When he began to telephone his ministers a little later, he was surprised to find themstill in bed.
    The American Embassy, however, was deeply disturbed when the new Prime Minister nominated the Communist François Billoux as Ministerof National Defence. The fact that Ramadier managed to restrict Billoux’s position to a largely symbolic role by strengthening the three service ministries was overlooked by most of his critics on the right.
    Caffery had become much more alarmist in the course of the last nine months. In March, after a wave of strikes which included the newspaper unions and the Paris police, he warned the Secretary of State that while the Communists were not strong enough to ‘align France with the Soviets against the West’, the country could be denied to the Western powers. ‘Communist armed action combined with paralysing strikes, sabotage and other subversive activities would certainly prepare the way for Soviet intervention on a scale larger even than was the case in the Spanish Civil War.’ Not all Americans saw the strikes in such dramatic terms. ‘The French enjoyed having the police on strike,’ wrote Susan Mary Patten to a friend, ‘and had a lot of fun driving up one-way streets the wrong way. The cook says good riddance. The police were just a band of assassins anyway.’
    The Communists, from the other side of the fence, were equally suspicious of developments. The Franco-British pact which they opposed so resolutely came into effect on 4 March as the Treaty of Dunkirk, a place chosen by Bidault to symbolize the darkest moment of the war. For Socialists such as Blumand Depreux, it signified a counterbalance to the Franco-Soviet pact signed by de Gaulle. Afterwards Duff Cooper, who had worked long and hard for this expression of friendship between the two countries, felt