Sarkozy’s parliamentary victory: anti-worker offensive begins (PR5)

Rarely in recent French history has an existing parliamentary majority been re-elected – the last time it happened was in 1978. Over the last thirty years, a key feature of French politics has been “l’alternance”, in which the sitting parliamentary majority loses out to the opposition every five years.

Nicolas Sarkozy has managed to change all that. Hot on the heels of his victory in the May presidential elections, his right wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) succeeded in maintaining its parliamentary majority in the June legislative elections. He will see it as providing him with a clear electoral mandate to carry out his anti-working class agenda.

However, the UMP did not get the landslide it expected. In the first round, a high rate of abstention benefited the right. Supporters of the left, the youth and new generations of workers in the working class and multi-ethnic suburbs, chose to stay away, gripped by a malaise and a sense of inevitability with regard to the outcome of the parliamentary elections.

Fortunately for the Socialist Party (PS), the arrogance and over-confidence of Sarkozy and the UMP got the better of them. They outlined their right wing programme too early, like the proposal to raise VAT by 5% to fund the gaps in the social security budget left by tax breaks for the bosses. This regressive tax on the working class was greeted with particular hostility, as were proposals to reduce the amount reimbursed to individuals for the cost of their medical care and treatment. These two measures are clearly aimed at redistributing wealth from the poorest to the richest, and resulted in a larger turnout in the second round, which benefited the Socialist Party.

As a result, the UMP now has fewer seats in parliament than it had in 2002, down from 359 to 324, despite poll predictions of a whacking 400 plus majority. One high profile casualty was ex-Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who was forced to resign in 1996.

The PS increased its number of parliamentary seats from 149 to 205, making the bitter pill of the presidential defeat easier to swallow. However, the PS still has to come to terms with failing to take power from the right. Despite taking her cue from Blair, Ségolène Royal, the failed presidential candidate, proved incapable of taking advantage of the widespread perception of corruption, sleaze and incompetence of Chirac’s regime, in the same way that Blair’s New Labour was able to do in 1997 when it smashed the Tories.

The PS campaign, from the presidential to the parliamentary elections, was lacklustre and dogged by internal divisions. But, most importantly, the SP was unable to roundly criticise Sarkozy’s programme as fundamentally reactionary, since, apart from the odd nod in the direction of the working class, Royal shared his premises concerning the role of the market, and the need to reduce the role of the state.
Turning its back on reality, and on the workers’ struggles out of which a revived political opposition could have been built, the PS is setting its sights on 2012; preparing for the next round of elections in five years time is the limit of its horizons. The navel-gazing and in-fighting that has marked the last five years since its spectacular defeat (when Lionel Jospin was pushed into third place by fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen) looks set to continue.

While the PS comforts itself with its 207 deputies and thoughts of 2012, the French Communist Party (PCF) has been forced once more to confront its continued decline. With a mere 15 deputies (down from a previous 21), it is no longer able to maintain a parliamentary group. Whilst its vote improved slightly on the presidentials, this was because of its good showing in a handful of regions which remain PCF bastions (e.g. Le Havre, Seine-Saint-Denis). The PCF’s lack of support outside these areas means it has lost any pretence of being a national force. In the first round of the elections, the PCF score was below the score of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR).

These elections confirmed that despite widespread disillusion with the political elite of the traditional right and left parties, the smaller organisations have, on the whole, been unable to present themselves as a realistic political alternative to the PS. Amongst the parties to the left of the PS, only the LCR could claim that their energetic campaigning had paid off in some of the localities where they are well implanted (Haut-Garonne, Isère, Seine-Saint-Denis and some parts of Paris). In some areas, local militants were rewarded with scores above those of the presidentials in May.

Lutte Ouvrière (LO), on the other hand, with a tired, old campaign which consciously bypassed the new layers of activists and the growing anti-Sarko sentiment in the suburbs, was not able to muster even 1% of the vote. LO has continually criticised the recent youth and anti-racist struggles for not being firmly grounded in the traditional workers’ movement (i.e. the industrial working class). This included dismissing last year’s students struggles, which scored a victory against the government, as changing nothing! For this sectarianism LO has been increasingly marginalised in recent elections.

Sarkozy’s virulent anti-immigration stance clearly paid off, taking the wind out of the National Front’s (FN) sail. Five years ago, Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the presidential election; ten years ago the FN gained a record 15% in parliamentary elections, now it is reduced to just over 4%. Only in one constituency did it get through to the second round – in Pas-de-Calais where Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, stood. For the FN, the impulse to move towards a more “respectable” racist party, dropping its neo-fascist traditions, is now likely to gain ground, which is what Marine Le Pen has been pushing for against the more hard line fascists.

Whilst the PS takes comfort from limiting the extent of the UMP’s majority, its core voters in the working class and immigrant communities will rapidly be facing the full frontal attacks that Sarkozy is already putting into place. Failure to get his crushing majority is a mere stumble for Sarkozy. As he said shortly after the results were known: “We are going to go even quicker and even further and straight away.” Already a raft of anti-working class proposals is being prepared to go before parliament during the summer, a time when parliamentary deputies are normally on holiday. The “reforms” that are to go before the July session have been enthusiastically welcomed by the bosses’ organisation, the MEDEF, particularly those that target France’s relatively high labour costs. Sarkozy’s main proposals are:

* A tax-cutting bonanza for business and the rich: Euro 11 bn in tax reductions: lower taxes for higher earners; reducing the maximum tax rate that higher earners pay, cutting inheritance tax for all bar a small number of the very super rich and decreasing the amount of tax and social security deductions paid on overtime hours (this being presented as a sweetener for workers).
* Draconian cuts in public spending: One in two public sector workers who retire will not be replaced. This will lead to 35,000 job cuts in 2008, on top of the 15,000 lost in 2007. Reimbursement of medical care expenses will be reduced, whilst the rates that practitioners can charge are being liberalised, i.e. they can charge what they want.
* Anti-strike legislation: Strikers will be forced to provide a “minimum service” in the public transport sector, to prevent unions from paralysing the country as they did in 1995.
* Criminalisation of youth: Reducing the penal age of majority to 16, so that 16 to 18 year olds can be tried and sentenced as adults. Tightening up sentencing on repeat offenders.
* University “autonomy”: Giving universities the ability to raise money through links with the private sector and opening the doors to higher levels of fees (which are currently minimal) and reducing the representation of students on boards from 25% to 15%.
* New bill on immigration: The details of which have not yet been made clear, though rules on immigration are to be toughened.

As if all this were not enough, the minimum wage will not be subject to a traditional July increase, whilst the promised 5% increase in VAT will hit the spending power of workers hard. The measures amount to a massive redistribution of wealth away from the working class towards the bosses and shareholders. The MEDEF is understandably gung-ho now that there is finally a government hell bent on imposing the programme that it has been advancing – a programme that will result in a drastic increase in the gap between the rich and the poor.

Sarkozy clearly hopes that by pushing through these measures over the holiday period, resistance will be muted. However, there are already rumblings of discontent and warning signs that the September “rentrée” could see the French workers and youth taking to the streets. The problem for Sarkozy is that, despite the UMP’s victory, France is a country that remains clearly divided along class lines. Those who voted for the PS, despite years of betrayal, as well as the hundreds of thousands who voted for organisations which stood clearly against neo-liberalism and for the various forms of “social justice”, present a real challenge to Sarkozy’s plans. Workers, youth and immigrant communities have repeatedly taken to the streets against unpopular measures in recent years, and there are plenty of unpopular measures in Sarkozy’s plans to that will them up again.

Students at Tolbiac in Paris reacted to plans to introduce selection for higher degrees, and to increase power of university presidents, by voting to take strike action and occupy their campus. Similarly, increased repression against working class immigrant youth could very easily spark more riots in the suburbs – already Sarkozy’s presidential victory in May was greeted with riots and declarations of war against the despised new president.

Another problem for Sarkozy stems from his perception of his role as President of the French Republic. French Presidents are traditionally seen as being “above the melee”, flowing from the semi-bonapartist tendencies of the French constitution introduced in 1958. This has allowed previous presidents – De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Mitterrand and Chirac – to use their Prime Ministers as a kind of political lightning rod. Popular anger could be deflected onto them as they executed unpopular political decisions and if things got out of hand they could be sacrificed.

Sarkozy, however, has very clearly put himself at the centre of a political programme to “transform” France, whilst simultaneously claiming he is above party politics. His repeated policy announcements, and his control freak, micro-management tendencies will mean that when the next political crisis hits, it will not simply be the Prime Minister who is the target. The President himself will be directly involved. In seeking to make France more “modern”, Sarkozy risks undermining the very structural features which in the past have allowed French capitalism to weather the storm of tumultuous strike waves and even revolutionary situations. This could make the next period extremely interesting.

So will the rentrée be “hot”? Can the various potential flashpoints of resistance be transformed into a united and determined fightback capable of resisting the new president and his government? This depends, on the one hand, on the attitude of the leaders of the workers’ movement and, on the other, on the readiness of militant activists to resist attempts to derail any resistance that unfurls.

Already the unions, whilst condemning measures such as the VAT increase and attacks on paid overtime hours, have begun negotiations with the bosses on a series of key questions around employment contracts, unemployment benefit and union representation in the workplace. The negotiations will be finalised in a series of conferences in September in which the bosses and the unions thrash out these key issues.
The MEDEF is optimistic about being able to push the unions into accepting a step back from the post-war consensus. Their optimism flows mainly from the post-electoral euphoria, but also from the union leaders’ recent spinelessness despite being backed up a militant workers movement.

However, the scale of the attacks on workers is such that some kind of militant resistance is inevitable. As Sarko attacks the class as a whole, the call for a general strike will have enormous resonance. Similarly, the attempts to blunt the power of the rail workers is a strategic attack on a key section of the workers’ movement, which will have consequences for the class as a whole. Workers must not wait for the signal from their union leaders; they need to start organising against these attacks now.

The students union, the UNEF, has warned that if there are not fundamental changes to the plans to reform the universities, students will take to the streets in September. However, Bruno Jullaird, the leader of UNEF has also been quick to criticise the students at Tolbiac for taking action too hastily, demonstrating that he too is ready to maneouvre and contain students’ action in return for some influence at the top table.
Clearly there is scope for widespread action. However, workers and youth need to ensure that resistance does not become a lever for the union leaders to bargain away workers’ rights and conditions, in order to reach a rotten compromise that will allow them to exert some limited influence within the framework of the new regime.

To avoid this very real threat, workers will need to build organisations that will ensure workers themselves control their struggles and their leaders. Activists and unionists should use the links made over the past two years via the “collectives” that came together, first to campaign against the referendum on the European Constitution and to unite the left at the elections (see previous articles in PR 3 and 4). These links can be reactivated to build a network of democratic local organisations with the aim of forging a strategy to scupper Sarkozy’s plans. They will need to overcome the mistrust that has surfaced over the past year due to the failure to agree a united left candidate. The stakes are too high to allow sectarianism to prevail. Rank and file militants need to work out the best way to fight via democratic debate, and above all, to unite in action.

Democratic, grassroots organisations can reach out to the youth in the suburbs, many of whom were politicised by the vigorous voter registration campaign initiated by the PS, and who subsequently turned out to vote against Sarkozy. Trade unionists also need to reach out to workers in the private sector, many of whom voted for the right in the belief that Sarkozy would introduce tax and hours reforms to their benefit. They will soon feel the full consequences of Sarkozy’s victory and need to be brought into a united struggle.
It is out of such organisations – uniting public sector with private sector workers, trade unionists with unemployed, youth, students and community activists, ready to strike when the class or sections of the class are attacked – that a strategy for struggle can be forged and a political alternative built capable of going beyond the stifling confines of reformism.

Christina Duval

Mon 08, October 2007 @ 18:55