The Renault Strike of April and May 1947
(Part 2)

Part 3: The strike

On Friday 25 April the first workers arriving at 6.15 to start work at 6.30 found a picket at the gates that was handing out a very brief leaflet. It was not an ordinary leaflet. It was an order issued by the Strike Committee. This order was given in the name of the workers who had appointed the Strike Committee for this:

‘Order to Strike

The Strike Committee, which is composed of the following comrades:

and was democratically elected by the majority of the workers at the general meeting held on 23 April 1947, and was appointed to launch the fight for a 10F pay rise, is now calling for a strike among all workers in Departments 6 and 18 on Friday 25 April at 6.30 in the morning.

The demands are as follows:

1. A 10F hourly pay rise on the basic rate;
2. Payment of strike hours.

The Strike Committee would like to warn the workers against defeatist individuals who do not hesitate to claim that we shall not win. These people are so much afraid of our victory that they have already been using grassing and police-like manoeuvres in attempts to shatter the authority of the Committee members.

The Strike Committee is asking workers on strike to conform strictly to the instructions given by the Committee.

In the fight that we are starting today, each worker will have a specific task. We must be disciplined and determined. What everyone of us does every day for the boss, we should be capable of doing for ourselves.

Such is the price of victory.

All united in our action. We shall win our just claims.

25 April 1947
The Strike Committee

On arriving the workers read the strike call. Most kept their ordinary clothes on and waited for the non-shift workers to arrive at 7.30, and then for the meeting to be held at 8.00. Some were sceptical. They were finding it difficult to get rid of their habits. These went to the cloakroom, put on their overalls and then slowly walked to their machines.

At 6.30 in the morning at the end of April, it is pretty dark still. So they tried to switch on the light and ... well! There was no light! They pressed the button to start their machines. Nothing. This time they realised that this was a real strike. Those who had believed in the strike from the start, and had kept their town clothes on, came to watch them with mocking looks, asking:

So? Didn’t you read the leaflet? Don’t you know what “strike” means? You’d better get changed. Electricity isn’t likely to come back soon. Look!
 

Cut off

At the back of the workshop, where there was a transformer with a label reading ‘5,000 volt power, danger’ the security grid had been removed, the lever was down, the power had been cut off and a 10-man picket was standing there. At one point, a supervisor, who had just arrived and could not believe his eyes, went up to the picket:

You cut off the power. You must put it back on again immediately. Some of the security devices can’t work without power; you’re going to blow up the whole place!

Unruffled, one picket retorted:

Don’t worry old man, everything’s safe; if you’re in a blue funk, why don’t you just go back to your old woman and hit the sack?

At the gates, the pickets were leafleting the strike call to all workers. Most of them would go up to the platform, where they were invited to join the meeting. Some, so very happy to see that it was ’working’, went to celebrate the event with a drink at the cafe outside the workshops.

At 8.00 the meeting started in the hall. P. Bois explained again the reasons for the strike. He explained to the strikers why the Strike Committee had had to launch the strike on the Friday: “Now action has started. It’ll last until we’ve won!”

One last time he asked the workers to confirm their decision and make it known: “If we are weaklings, it is still time to step back. Otherwise, let’s go ahead!”

For this last vote P. Bois asked the workers of the department who supported the strike to move to his left. A large majority among the workers moved to his left. Those against the strike were to move to his right. The union representatives and a few PCF members were left standing on their own to his right. Abstentions were to move to the bottom of the room. All white blouses and a few grey ones moved towards the other end of the room. The vote was positive. The strike was there for good.

The general secretary of the union, Plaisance, who had come to attend the meeting, asked to be allowed to speak. He disapproved of the strike, he said, but, being a responsible CGT militant, he had taken part in the vote (there were smiles among the audience) and he would respect the workers’ decisions. Then a delegation was formed to take the workers’ demand for a 10F pay rise on the basic rate to the general management. Plaisance, general secretary of the CGT, and a few union representatives, joined the delegation.

The members of the delegation, all workers from the Collas sector, were astounded to see how naturally the union representatives found their way around the offices, how they smiled to big shots and shook hands with them. They really seemed at home in these surroundings. However familiar the union representatives may have been with the place and the people in it, when the delegation reached the office of President Director General Lefaucheux, nobody was there to meet us. We were told that Mr Lefaucheux was in Cameroun.

We were received by the Staff Director and a few other big shots who could do nothing until Mr Lefaucheux was back. The meeting was therefore soon over. Pierre Bois then said to Staff Director Le Garrec, who was asking the members of the delegation to go back to work and wait for the President Director General’s return:

We can only note that you have limited powers. We have warned you. If Mr Lefaucheux wants the plant to go back to work, he’d better hurry back and give us this 10F pay rise on the basic rate.

At Departments 6 and 18 the Strike Committee was getting organised. It took possession of an office. It centralised information and issued orders. A few workers seemed to be spending most of their time celebrating at a nearby cafe. The Strike Committee decided that no worker would be allowed to go out unless he had an exit permit signed by the Committee. Instructions were given to the pickets, who applied them scrupulously.

The Committee was rather flexible. Exit permits were in fact easy to get, unless you seemed to be getting tight. The latter case did not occur too often, and most workers agreed with the measure. They were proud of their strike and did not want it to be spoiled by the excesses of a few individuals who had lost control over themselves. Everything went well and without clashes.

In addition, at the Strike Committee’s request, groups of workers had organised and were going round the plant, calling on other workers to strike as well. Whole shops stopped work. But CGT militants and representatives would start the engines again and exhort the workers not to be drawn into the strike.
 

Confusion

Tremendous confusion arose from this situation. In some shops workers stopped work, went back to work, and stopped again. Only at Departments 6 and 18 was the strike complete. The shops were closed, the trucks that had to pass through the sector to go from one shop to another were prevented from going any further.

Shop number 5 (cementation and quenching), the very one that had struck on its own one month earlier under the leadership of a staunch Stalinist, was the only shop that went on working normally. The strikers of Departments 6 and 18 let them go on working. Since all doors had been locked, they would sooner or later run short of parts and either join the strike or merely stop working. Already the women workers in that shop, who had to work under unbearable conditions, were showing interest in the strike.

At one point the Staff Director came round to the Department to ask the leader of the Strike Committee to let the trucks through. As he was getting a negative answer, he threatened him:

“You are taking considerable risks. This is hampering the right to work.”

“I am sorry to say that you are hampering the right to strike, but if you feel like asking the workers to sabotage their strike, please yourself.”

“If you put it this way, you certainly come off best.”

And the gentleman left the premises.

At noon, on the Place Nationale, Plaisance, the CGT general secretary, addressed the workers: “This morning a gang of Anarcho-Hitlero-Trotskyists tried to blow up the plant.” Indignant protest was voiced by those who knew what he was talking about. Those who did not expressed their surprise.

This first strike day ended with two visits. Plaisance, general secretary of the CGT, who, the same morning, had told the Collas workers that although he did not agree with the strike he would follow the workers’ decisions, had to face violent reproach for his attitude at lunchtime, when he had claimed that a group of ‘Anarcho-Hitlero-Trotskyist rowdies’ had attempted to blow up the plant.

He was violently taken to task by some workers, and tried to justify his words by claiming that “in 1936 ‘blowing up a plant’ meant going on strike. Look, comrades, don’t you remember?” What an old hypocritical scab! He was to leave the shop to the boos of the workers, especially of the women workers.

Staff Director Le Garrec also paid us a visit, to see how we were getting on and to try and influence the workers. It should be mentioned that Le Garrec had joined the PCF after the ‘Liberation’, no doubt to strengthen his authority over the staff in these difficult times, following the example set by President Director General Lefaucheux, who had also become President of the France-USSR Association.

A Spanish worker, who had taken part in the uprising of Asturian miners in 1934 and then fought in Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War, and who was on the Strike Committee, then addressed Le Garrec vehemently:

“Sir, yesterday you were the boss here, tomorrow the police may rule the place, but today we are ruling the plant. You have nothing to do here.”

Totally taken aback, the Staff Director retorted: “I will not discuss with foreigners.” Which brought him the following answer back:

“Sir, if one person here is a ‘foreigner’, then it’s got to be yourself. Here we’re all workers; the only bourgeois here, the only ‘foreigner’ is yourself because you’re not part of the same class. Workers do not recognise countries, only classes. Go on, just be off!”

This was a good lesson in internationalism given to a ‘Communist’ Director!
 

Occupied

On the Saturday and the Sunday the striking shops were occupied by a few pickets, but nothing of importance happened. The decisions were to be made public on the following Monday. The Strike Committee was getting ready for it. On the Monday morning it issued a leaflet in which it asked all workers in the plant to join the Collas workers already on strike. It called all workers to a rally on the Place Nationale at 12.30.

Groups of strikers went to the gates of the plant to hand out the leaflets. But in many sectors they were attacked by PCF militants. And this made them furious. “Not only are they against the strike, they even beat us up now!”

All morning the strikers of the Collas sector prepared for the 12.30 rally. They knew that the PCF and the CGT were likely to come in great numbers, with cars bearing loud-hailers, in order to sabotage the rally. They made their own megaphones with cardboard and sheet metal. The Strike Committee decided that if the CGT and PCF came with loud-hailer cars that masked the voice of the speakers, the rally would be held inside the plant.

Around 11 o’clock, the Collas strikers scattered around the shops to call workers to the rally (only the pickets stayed at their tasks). As had been the case on the previous Friday, work stopped, started again, and then stopped again. At 12.30, groups of people were proceeding towards the Place Nationale, which was already crowded. On the street there were four cars with loud-hailers: two belonging to the unions, one to L’Humanite, and a fourth, much more powerful one.

Pierre Bois, who was leading the march, started getting in touch with the groups that had been going round the plant:

“Here they are, they’ve brought heavy artillery with them, we’ll have to hold the rally inside the plant.”

Suddenly one comrade came up to us.

“What’s on? Why did you stop?”

“Haven’t you noticed? We’ll have to stay inside with all these loud-hailers: no one’s going to hear us!”

“Stop it! The loudest is ours! The Young Socialists are holding their Congress. This morning they came to see us. We asked them if they knew where we could find a car with a loud-hailer. They agreed to let us have theirs for free! Come on out, the Communists are green with anger!”

Indeed, we were able to hold our rally. Our loud-hailer was more powerful than the other three put together. At the end of the rally, we went to Factory O about one mile away. When we arrived there they stopped work.

When we got back to Collas, the office of the Strike Committee was overflowing with dozens of delegations. Some workers were coming on their own, others were coming on behalf of their shops, others had been elected and represented whole departments. That evening over 10,000 workers had gone on strike.

On the following day, Tuesday 29 April, there were 12,000 strikers in the morning. Then the CGT attempted a manoeuvre. It called a stoppage between 11 and 12 o’clock to support their own demands. This fooled no one. Those who were not already on strike stopped work at 11.00, but did not go back to work at 12.00. From then on the whole plant was on strike.

In the afternoon, over 2,000 Collas strikers demonstrated in front of the Head Offices. Lefaucheux was not in. He was at the Ministry. When he came back in the evening, with a much smaller number of demonstrators still there, he refused to meet the Strike Committee. He even tried to sound tough: “In the Resistance they called me Commander Gildas”, thereby conveying that no one would influence him.

The next day, the Central Strike Committee that had formed round the Collas Strike Committee called for a general strike in the whole plant. In fact the general strike had already started on the Tuesday, but the General Strike Committee, by issuing this call on behalf of the numerous delegations that had appointed its 105 members, wanted to take on a leading position in the strike movement.
 

Slanderous

The CGT printed a slanderous leaflet announcing a rally on that evening in the square Henri Barbusse. Then it finally decided to hold the rally on the Ile Seguin in order to take the situation in hand again.

In the meantime, the Central Strike Committee was meeting. But suddenly someone came to tell them that CGT commandos were ‘sweeping away’ the picket line. The Central Strike Committee then interrupted its session, and went to the Ile Seguin. There it failed to be allowed to speak in the CGT rally.

On their way back, edgy members of the CGT threatened to liquidate members of the Strike Committee by throwing them into the Seine; some workers intervened and finally the situation cooled down.

In the evening the Stalinists organised to turn out the Collas strikers who were occupying their department. Defence then got organised as well: boxes of bolts, gearwheels, compressed air to spray acid, etc. When they heard that the Collas strikers were ready to defend themselves, the CGT people gave up their plans.

On May Day the CGT parade marched from Republique to Concorde. The Strike Committee printed 100,000 copies of a leaflet to be handed out along the route taken by the march. This leaflet, which called for a general strike, was printed at the Enterprises de Presse Réaumur, and the printers gave up their pay for printing the leaflet as a sign of solidarity.

Along the May Day march there were numerous clashes, some of them violent, between the CGT teams of stewards and the strikers, who had been joined by Young Socialists.

On 2 May, the Strike Committee sent delegations to the gates of numerous plants to call on the workers to join the struggle. Everywhere they encountered sympathy on the part of workers, who, in a number of cases, decided to go on strike too. But very often PCF thugs sparked off fights and work started again. This is what happened at Citron’s Balard plant and at the Snecma Kellerman plant.

Inside the plant the CGT intensified its slanderous campaign. It organised a referendum for or against going on with the strike, warning the workers at the same time that the solution of the conflict in fact depended on a government decision.

The CGT bowed to the workers’ decision, but went on with its disparaging campaign. The Strike Committee was informed via employees working in the offices that people in ‘good positions’ could arrange a meeting with the Labour Minister Daniel Meyer. Since they wanted to seize every opportunity to settle the conflict, the Strike Committee sent a delegation to see a certain Mr Gallienne.

Very quickly the delegation members realised that they were discussing with a former right hand of Louis Renault’s, who would have liked to manoeuvre the Strike Committee into an anti-nationalisation operation. They immediately stopped any discussion with him.

On 8 May the Strike Committee obtained an appointment with MRP deputy Beugniez, President of the Labour Committee at the Assembles Nationale. This gentleman was in fact interested in checking whether the CFTC could benefit from any anti-CGT elements involved in the conflict. We told him what’s what: he was very much disappointed to see how determined we were.

On Friday 9 May the CGT issued a leaflet in which it announced that the management had granted 3F per hour on the production bonus. On this basis it was calling workers back to work.

By 12,075 votes against 6,866, the workers voted to go back to work. But at the Collas shops, where the strike had originated, a large majority of the workers were in favour of going on fighting.

On Monday 12 May work was supposed to start again. But the Strike Committee believed that if the strike was to end it should do so in an orderly manner, as it had started. It therefore called on all workers to a meeting at 8 o’clock in the morning that day. But the workers were not ready to capitulate. The leader of the Strike Committee, Pierre Bois, explained that:

If we were not able to make the management give in over the essential demand for a 10F rise on the basic rate while the whole plant was on strike, it would be unrealistic to hope for a victory by pursuing the fight in one sector only. However, we cannot accept a defeat.

He suggested continuing the strike until we obtained the payment of the strike hours.

The employee welfare officer came to try and dishearten the strikers by talking about the problems in connection with “impeding the liberty to work”. To no avail. The workers voted by a large majority for the proposal put forward by the leader of the Strike Committee.

Solidarity was organised. On the Monday, 50,000F were collected by workers in other sectors of the plant, who, though they had resumed work, thereby made it clear that they were in no way hostile to the Collas strikers.

The CGT intensified its campaign of slander and denigration, using the words ‘edgy’ and ‘dividers’ to refer to the strikers, and demanding that the Minister of Labour, Daniel Meyer, take steps to make the plant work.

The Collas shops, however, did not work, which paralysed the rest of the plant and worried the management. The latter made it known to the Strike Committee that they were ready to receive a delegation from the Strike Committee if it included “regularly elected representatives”. The Strike Committee accepted this offer.

Of course it meant that the management were trying to keep up appearances by receiving the Strike Committee unofficially. But everyone understood this juridical trick and no one saw any compromise in being accompanied by representatives who had always opposed the strike.

As to the union representatives, they did not seem to mind this compromise with the ‘Hitlero-Trotskyists’ on the Strike Committee either. Those flunkeys were only too happy with the honour bestowed on them by the boss’s request that they hold his door for these ‘edgy strikers’.

The President Director General started his speech by warning the strikers against the dangers of a prolonged conflict: dangers for the enterprise, for its nationalisation, for the workers themselves. Pierre Bois pointed out that in the present situation such dangers could easily be averted if the management agreed to pay strike hours. Pierre Lefaucheux then tried to use sentimental arguments:

“I know, Monsieur Bois, that if you tell your comrades to go back to work they will do so; and I am asking you to do this.”

Bois jumped on hearing those words:

“Are you asking me to betray my comrades? There’s no point in discussing any further.”

“Do not get angry, I didn’t meant to offend you.”

“This is just what you did. But if you believe that the workers are ready to capitulate, you can go and see for yourself.”

This in fact was a gamble. Bois thought that Lefaucheux would shy away from the proposal.

“All right. I’ll talk to them.”

“OK, we’ll tell them that you’re coming to see them.”

The members of the Strike Committee left, followed by Lefaucheux and his executives. Some comrades rushed ahead to prepare a platform for the director: the greasy platform of a truck. Once they had reached the department, Bois climbed on the improvised platform first and called the workers. Addressing Lefaucheux in front of the assembled workers, he said:

Sir, you are here in a striking sector: as the leader of the Strike Committee it is my duty to welcome you and introduce you to my comrades.

Comrades, this is Monsieur Lefaucheux who is coming here to ask you to sabotage your strike with your own hands. He does not want to pay for the strike hours, but he would like you to go back to work. He’s been claiming that you didn’t really want to go on with the strike, and that if you didn’t go back to work it was due to my influence on you. I offered him to come and try to influence you the other way round. This is what he is going to try and achieve. Sir, you may speak.

Lefaucheux had gone livid. “This isn’t really fair play, is it?” he said. Then he delivered his speech amidst icy silence. When he had finished the workers escorted him back, each one of them asking for the 10F and normal pay for the strike hours.
 

Part 4: The management gives in

On Friday 16 May the management, ‘in order to create a climate favouring production’, offered to give 1,600F for going back to work and an advance of 900F for all (this advance was in fact never taken back). This amounted to giving satisfaction in a disguised manner to the Strike Committee’s demand for the payment of strike hours.

On this basis, on Monday 19 May, one final general assembly was held by the strikers and then the Strike Committee proposed that workers go back to work. After another meeting and a vote all workers went back to work.

The workers of the Collas sector did not feel defeated. They had started before the others, stopped after the others, and, owing to their tenacity, they had obtained the unofficial payment of strike hours for all.

All workers had been on strike from 29 April until 5 May, that is eight working days. The wages of an unskilled worker were approximately 7,000F a month (i.e. 20 working days); the workers went back to work with 2,500F as a payment for strike hours. Most workers in the plant in fact did not lose a cent in the strike.

At the Collas shop, workers had been on strike from 25 April until 16 May, that is 15 working days. As for them, they had, therefore, lost some money in the process, but it was partly compensated for by the money raised to support the strike.
 

Success

The Collas workers were not disappointed at all. They had organised their strike themselves. In spite of CGT hostility they had held the fort. They had even won. Of course, whether people liked it or not, the 3F on the production bonus was one thing they had won as well. They had obtained money for the strike hours This was not a victory, but it was a success. And one of the Collas workers felt proud indeed when he told us what another worker had said to him:

“All the same, it’s thanks to you, the gearwheel guys, that we got the 1,600 Francs and the 900 Francs.”

But the Collas workers were also happy and proud because they had overcome pressures. Both those exerted by the supervisors and by the bureaucrats. For them the sector was a small Republic where freedom and democracy prevailed. “In our sector, we have no chiefs, we all take part in the decisions made”, one worker said proudly. They were proud of their strike because they were truly taking part in it.

Every morning and several times each day there was a general assembly where they decided what was to be done. First the pickets, then the delegations to the other shops in the plant during the first week, then to other plants as well during the second week.

And then there was solidarity. Groups would leave in the morning and visit shopkeepers or go to the gates of other plants with the badge of the Strike Committee and sealed trunks. Not that anyone feared that some strikers might put the money they had raised into their own pockets, but the workers wanted things to be ‘straight’. In the evening they would count the money. Delegations from other plants also brought back moral as well as financial support.

Everything was written down and posted at the Strike Committee’s office. Everything was distributed equitably at the end of the strike, since the workers had been able to live on their pay packet for the whole time that the strike lasted. Remember that the Strike Committee had been careful to launch the strike the day after pay day.

As regards the CGT, things went differently. Money was coming in as well, from collections, as well as gifts from unions. One day the CGT announced that the strikers could get one kilo of cod and one kilo of lentils! There was much talk among the Collas workers about the CGT’s lentils and cod. The CGT had also asked workers in need to write down their names.

There was a row when the leader of the Strike Committee said one day at a general assembly: “Those who had their names down for CGT help won’t be kept waiting long.” It so happened that, thanks to the team in charge of cleaning the shops, we had laid our hands on the list of those who had registered for help ... it was at the bottom of a wastepaper basket.

These are small details for sure, but they do show the difference between an action organised by the workers themselves and one organised in a bureaucratic way.

After denouncing violently the ‘irresponsible’ men composing the ‘agitators’ committee’ who had carried on the strike in spite of its call to go back to work, the CGT now claimed – as might have been expected – that it had obtained the latest concessions made by the management. It made no bones about writing that the ‘local union’ had won the 1,600F for all by “pursuing its action” (which action?). It went on to say “this victory was won by our delegation after two more hours of discussion in the office of the Labour Minister D Meyer and in the presence of the management.”

Two hours of discussion led by the CGT, or one extra week of strike led by the Collas workers? The authors of this leaflet had not shrunk from writing the most blatant and ridiculous lies.

They had become experts at fabricating after-the-fact truths. But they benefited from the enormous organisational powers of the CGT and had at their disposal considerable propaganda means. In fact this leaflet gave a good picture of what the attitude of the CGT had been throughout the strike.

As we saw, the CGT first stood up firmly and brutally against the strike. But later on it shrewdly altered its policies as often as needed, in order to avoid being outflanked. When it realised it would not be able to crush the determination of the Collas sector, it endeavoured to isolate it politically and materially. Its slanderous campaign became worse at the very time when the CGT was taking part in the strike. Through these complementary tactics the union leadership was in fact pursuing a single aim: taking over the initiative and the leadership of the movement by restricting the influence of the Strike Committee to the Collas sector, which had turned out to be unmanageable. And as we saw this was not an easy task. First the CGT thought it would reach its aims by calling a one-hour strike throughout the plant. But then the workers refused to go back to work at the end of the official strike. And when on Wednesday 30 April, the Strike Committee launched its call for a general strike in the whole plant, being confronted with the success of this call the CGT had to organise a secret vote. On Friday 2 May, once the strike had been ratified, the CGT was in a leading position in the Renault strike; and it frantically multiplied meetings with the management and the Labour Ministry so that an acceptable compromise could be found.

It appears clearly that, seeing that it could not channel workers’ discontent at Renault, the CGT decided in the evening of 2 May to take the lead of the movement in order to control it better. Such tactics have now become traditional, but in 1947 it was the result of a political choice. This choice was made by the PCF for all the political consequences that, as the PCF was well aware, would not fail to arise from it. But it was a fundamental choice which reveals accurately the contradictory nature and the policies of the French Communist Party.

The PCF had been in the government since 1944. In the last ministerial reshuffle (22 January 1947), the new President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol, a Socialist, had asked Ramadier, another Socialist, to form a new Cabinet. The PCF had obtained unprecedented jobs: Maurice Thorez, a State Minister, was Vice Premier; François Billoux got the much coveted job of Defence Minister and, of course, Ambroise Croizat kept the Ministry of Labour and National Health Service. Another Communist, Georges Marrane, was appointed Health Minister, and Charles Tillon this time got the job of Minister of Reconstruction and Urbanism.

These ministers were tied by government solidarity. That meant that they could not vote against the government, or else they would be fired. In many instances the PCF had to stand up respectfully in its press against government policies in order to spare its working class base; but it found expedients so as to go on participating in the Cabinet while claiming some divergences with the policies adopted. Thus, on the Indochina War issue, the ‘Communist’ ministers cast votes of confidence in the government while the 183 ‘Communist’ deputies abstained. Similarly, on 16 April 1947, when the Prime Minister asked that parliamentary immunity be removed for three deputies from Madagascar who were regarded as the leaders of the uprising that had started on 29 March, the Communist ministers left the Cabinet meeting in order not to have to take a stand.

Nevertheless, these demonstrations that were agreed on beforehand and accepted a priori by the government partners of the PCF did not raise the question of whether they should go on participating in the government.

But the Renault strike was a quite different case.

As early as 30 April, when the strike had not yet officially been voted on at Renault, while 20,000 workers were already on strike, following the instructions of the Strike Committee, the PCPs Political Bureau denounced “the refusal equitably to re-adjust the workers’ wages” and Maurice Thorez announced in the Cabinet meeting that the PCF was disassociating itself from the price and wage freeze policies enforced by the government.

This was the beginning of the ‘crisis’. Ramadier, the Prime Minister, pretended to believe that the PCF would seize the opportunity of the May Day parade to organise trouble! He then placed inconspicuous security forces around the Elysee and various ministries. He sent instructions to military commanders for “an alert plan preparation” and called back to Paris Edouard Herriot, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, who was sick, to replace President Auriol, who was away.

This ostentatious demonstration of panic is to be understood in the light of Ramadier’s decision to get rid of the Communist ministers. In fact, to achieve the split from the Communists he decided to have the matter debated in the Assemblée Nationale in order to compel the dissenting ministers to express their stand clearly in a public vote.

On Friday 2 May, following a scenario agreed on in advance, a Socialist deputy challenged the government (at Ramadier’s suggestion) on the problem of wages and prices. The vote of confidence was set for 4 May, and yielded 360 votes for and 186 against. The Communist ministers, just like the other Communist deputies, had voted against the government.

On that very evening, Ramadier asked the Communist ministers to resign. They refused. Ramadier then immediately withdrew the powers he had granted them. And the Journal Officiel dated 5 May recorded the decree reshuffling the Cabinet in the following terms:

The functions of Messrs Maurice Thorez, Minister of State, Vice-Prime Minister, Franqois Billoux, Defence Minister, Ambroise Croizat, Minister of Labour and National Health Service, Charles Tillon, Minister of Reconstruction and Urbanism, are considered to be terminated following the vote that they cast in the Assembles Nationals on 4 May 1947.

The fifth Communist Minister, Georges Marrane, Health Minister, was not dismissed because he had not taken part in the vote, since he was not a deputy. He resigned on the same day. The tripartite alliance was over.
 

Part 5: Conclusion

The Renault strike of April and May 1947 was an important event on several grounds. First, because through this strike workers restored their connections with the tradition wrought in past struggle, by rediscovering strike action as a class weapon. Secondly, because the Renault strike gave a renewed and tremendous impetus to the working class movement. As Pierre Monatte wrote: “Renault opened the lockgates and a wave of strikes swept through France.” After May 1947, numerous plants were to go on strike in their turn; they were followed by the railwaymen and, a few months later, by the miners. Finally, politically speaking, it was the direct cause of the end of the Communist participation in the government that had struggled along since the ‘Liberation’: with De Gaulle first and then through the Tripartite Alliance. Last, but not least, this strike, launched and organised by revolutionary militants relying on the combativeness of the workers against the management, the state and union leaderships, showed that militants could contest the PCF’s de facto monopoly on the working class in one of its working class strongholds, and that they were the only ones defending the real interests of the working class in the short term as well as in the long term.

The departure of the PCF ministers from the tripartite government is not a minor event. Even if the international situation was bound, sooner or later, to trigger this departure, it is nevertheless important that in April 1947 it was their choice if they broke up the coalition, and they did so on a national issue, this issue being the relationship between the PCF and the working class. This relationship being difficult and contradictory.

Like all reformist organisations whose fundamental rô1e is to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement, the PCF is subjected to two types of antagonistic pressures in its everyday political activity, that of its base and of the working class on the one hand, that of the bourgeoisie on the other hand. More often than not this contradiction will find a solution in ‘reasonable’ protest policies that enable workers’ discontent to express itself without jeopardising either the normal functioning of the capitalist system or the political domination of the bourgeoisie. When working class pressure becomes stronger, however, when it gets impossible to channel workers’ discontent and restrict it to limited actions under bureaucratic control, the space for the reformist bureaucracy to manoeuvre becomes even narrower.

Depending on the degree of combativeness of the working class, depending on the more or less severe threat that it carries for the social order, these organisations are compelled to go hand in hand with the workers, at least to a certain extent, and even precede them in order not to lose all their credit among them. This is what happened in May 1968. This will trigger a split with the bourgeoisie, albeit a rather limited one, mainly tactical and temporary, and comprising a whole range of degrees according to the social crisis at hand, but never reaching a definitive split. On the contrary, even. Indeed, when the working class goes as far as threatening directly the rule of the bourgeoisie, as far as setting up its own fighting organs or power structures, then, history constantly provides proof of this, reformist organisations will overtly choose to side with the bourgeoisie and oppose the workers relentlessly.

This has not yet happened in France. However powerful strike actions may have been, they never led workers to set up their own autonomous leadership to lead the struggle, and the PCF has always been in a position to bring a strike to an end. But it is nevertheless true that the PCF can launch a strike, even a general strike; this has been proved several times since 1947, be it only in May 1968.

In 1947, when compelled to choose between its participation in the government, that is, its much-desired integration into bourgeois political life, and its support for the strikes that were starting to develop, it chose the latter. Why?

Because the PCF, being suspect in the eyes of the French bourgeoisie because of its links with the Soviet Union, has only one trump card to force the bourgeoisie to recognise it: its influence on the French working class. Losing this influence means losing its only trump card. It means following in the steps of the SFIO, which is now little more than the ghost of a workers’ party. The PCF will not accept this unless a fundamental crisis occurs, that is in a directly pre-revolutionary period.

Such was not the case in May 1947, nor was it the case in May 1968. And the PCF could, even if it meant discrediting itself somewhat in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, side publicly with the strikers.

This political choice was obviously meant to strengthen and reassert its ascendancy over the working class movement; even so, it was obvious that this policy of the PCF involved open and very violent attacks on the ‘irresponsible leftists’ (the latter word was not yet fashionable in 1947) that had launched the strike, while the PCF itself was spreading and supporting this very strike. Reading the CGT leaflets distributed at Renault is indeed rather revealing. The same kind of literature was to be found again in May 1968. It is again to be found in May 1971, in the present Renault struggle. “Never will the PCF allow anyone to outflank it on its left”, Duclos is rumoured to have declared in front of the Assemblée Nationale. In any case this is the policy that it has been pursuing since, and this explains its hatred for ‘the leftists’.

But also, and the PCF is fully aware of this, this is its weak point: by pursuing a nationalist, reformist, inefficient and demoralising policy decided from day to day, the PCF is certainly likely to be criticised on its left. The respectful opposition to which it restricts itself, both politically and in its demands for the working class, is void of either efficiency or prospects. And when workers want to defend their standards of living or their security, they have to do so ‘in spite o’ the ‘Communists’ or even ‘against’ them. In this respect as well, the Renault strike that took place in April and May 1947 is full of lessons. The CGT certainly talked about defending wages, but it did not do a thing to carry the slightest demand through. The action of the militants of the Union Communiste at Renault was to bring this contradiction into broad daylight by starting a struggle, by materialising the contradiction between the mass of the workers and the policies of concerted inertia pursued by the union.

And the Renault strike of April and May 1947 showed what could be done in such a case. Certainly the divorce between the working class and the PCF was not complete, except perhaps at the Collas shops. The revolutionaries who led the struggle were not numerous enough, they were too young and too obscure to lead the experiment any further than what was achieved at Renault. But their merit was to show concretely, through a correct policy and practice and in a struggle that had national consequences, the path to be followed, the work to be done, and the prospects that were really open for revolutionaries accepting a tussle with the PCF within the working class.

These prospects still exist. They are even more obvious now. The PCF no longer is in the government, but the braking role played by the CGT and the PCF is becoming more and more obvious for ever larger numbers of workers. This consciousness is still dim, since plants are lacking in revolutionary militants who might materialise it. The role of the revolutionary vanguard today is to make up as quickly as possible for this situation. This is the task that the militants of Lutte Ouvrière have set themselves, and that they try to achieve every day. Thereby they feel they are pursuing the work initiated by the militants of the Union Communiste, work that gave rise in 1947 to the first great strike of the post-war period.

Pierre Bois

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Updated by ETOL: 6.7.2003