th Lene

RS perience

the q

‘Left to Pow

Will the French workers suc-
°eed in toppling the 10 year old
overnment of General de
Gaulle? That was the question
®ing asked throughout the
World as the Tribune went to
Press with six to ten million
Workers out on strike.

€ momentum of the strike
was still increasing. The Com-
jpunists hed called for unity of
© left to form a coalition gZOv-

“tment. The Democrats and the
Scialists were still hesitating.

€ndes France, a centrist, was
Guing for the defeat of De
a aulle. The General himself, just
turned from Rumania, was
ey conferring and throughout
a country the workers, the

Udents and the farmers were
*Manding substantial changes.
F Sign of the times was the
ae Over the main entrance of
«St. Lazare station in Paris—
Closed—for the duration”.

he speed with which events
MOved in France from a student
rotest to general strike indic-
© how close to the surface was
iscontent with De Gaullism.

Orkers have more and more
fen saying that “De Gaulle
ee some good things, but no-

ng for the workers”. Wages
ate low and what small _in-
“teases have come in the last 10
®ars have been more than eaten

P by the profiteering prices.
th Ours of work are long and
t © conditions far from satisfac-

"ing: And so the strike is spread-.

8 not only in the organized
eeOns of industry but p

unorganized workers. Particular-
ly exciting are the number of
women and young people who
are coming out on their own.

There is a consciousness too
that just a wage increase is not
enough. Above the sprawling
Renault plant in Elbeuf hangs a
banner, “The Left to power”.
Red flags are flying from the
tops of hundreds of factories.

A police union delegation told
the top official at the Interior
Ministry on Saturday that ex-
treme tension existed in all units
of the national police force.

This impatience would come
out into the open if no solution
were found soon to meet police
grievances, the union said. The
police are claiming higher pay,
but also complain that Premier
Pompidou totally disowned them
after the battles with students,
when they had simply followed
government orders.

From the beginning of the
student demonstrations, the
Communist Party of France
called for unity of the workers
with the students for their de-
mands and against the police
brutality. Out of this came the
call for a general strike of solid-
arity on May 13.

Of this great united demon-
stration the Communists said:

“After the resounding success
of May 13, when the workers, in
solidarity with the students hit
by government repression, affir-
med their demands for a demo-
cratic and modern university,
their_will to win, the pressing

demands of the workers, and be-
yond that to end the Gaullist
regime and to instal with the
least possible delay a democracy
opening the road to Socialism,
the movement has constantly
developed and grown.

“This is an explosion of dis-
content accumulated during 10
years of Gaullist power which

-ruled the country for the benefit

of the monopolies, against the
working class and all non-mono-
polist sections, against the pre-
sent and future interests of the
French nation.”

French Communist Party gen-
eral secretary Waldeck Rochet
declared on May 18, as the num-
ber of workers on strike had
risen to over two million:

“It is time to envisage the
formation of a popular and
democratic government. For its
part, the French Communist
Party is ready to assume its res-
ponsibilities.”

He said that “the events now
in progress reflect profound dis-
satisfaction accumulated in the
past decade, with the anti-social
and reactionary policy of the
regime which is at the service of
Big Business.

“The French Communist Party
reaffirms its full solidarity with
the working people fighting for
their demands in the same way
as it has declared its solidarity
with the students engaged in the
struggle for a modern and demo-

Like Mary Poppins,

lashes and listened for
cast.

paign in Canada in 1968.

in the Toronto Globe and
“... He made briefs sp

“Instead of talking,
to be offering himself to
of promises he brought

This of course is nice
is how.

stant monthly increase.

age.

electoral

national debate.
As Liberal election

Trudeau will be forced

country than they can

Only kisses
from his lips

Pierre Elliot Trudeau
floated into Toronto over last weekend. With his
revised lyrics—“A little bit of saccharine makes
the medicine go down”—he kissed his way

through suburbia. Hard on his seels the breath-
less press gushed with every flutter of his eye-
any pearls he chose to.

In his three short public Speeches that day,
Trudeau uttered a few platitudes and nothing
else. Herein lies the story of the Liberal cam.
The Liberal election strategy was explained

eeches which called for
itions of urban living.

“But he stayed clear of even the simplest re-
commendations on how it should be

improvement in the cond

Mr. Trudeau appeared
the electorate. Instead
personality.”

Thus Trudeau opened his campaign on a
rainy weekend in Toronto with nothing but kiss-
ing lips and smiling eyes and profound cliches
like, “The city of tomorrow and the country of
tomorrow will be made by all of us together.”
to know, but the question

The calculated decision of the Liberal bosses
to sweep to power by manufactured hysteria
without even a nod in‘the direction of policy or
platform is as revealing as it is dangerous.

Revealing in the sense that the establishment
feels that the situation is such that they have
simply no answers. Because of this, one gets the
feeling that if the romantic figure of Trudeau
didn’t appear on the scene, they would have had
to invent him. Anything in order to avoid deal-
ing with the crisis at hand. And crisis there is,
Unemployment figures show a steady and con-

index mounts also by the month. There is a eur-
rency crisis that Ottawa is covering-up until
after the election. Unsold wheat is clogging the
elevators on the prairies,
being throttled by a disastrous housing short-

The dangerous element in the situation is
that they may succeed in finally warping the
process in Canada into the
the absurd and strangling the much needed

strategy unfolds, the
main problem before the Left in Canada is to
cut through the fluff, and to get down to cases,
This will not be easy because the deck is stacked,
but if in the course of this election, the real Mr.
to stand up, the estab-
lishment will have more problems
possibly kiss away. But
the Canadian people will at last have the oppor-
tunity to democratically determine our future.

Mail as follows:

achieved.

The consumer price

and urban Canada is

theatre of

in this

cratic higher education.” Mr.
Rochet said.

Older workers in France re-
member the Jast time they oc-
cupied the factories — 1936 —
and the people’s front govern-
ment which followed. They re-
member that this was the only
government to take any real ac-
tion in the interest of the work-
ing class. That’s when they won
wage increases, three weeks
holiday with pay, and an annual
bonus of one months Salary.

While De Gaulle is beginning
to talk about reforms, it looks
unlikely that the workers will
settle for less than a real
change. May 13. had marked the
10th anniversary of de Gaulle’s

¥ bey

» Will determine the direction of

Power and constitutionally he
still has the power to declare a
state of emergency and take full
control of the country.

There is a great deal of doubt,
that the police and army would
g0 along with tough repressive
measures. The other possibility
is that a new election will be
called. But that for De Gaulle
could mean even further loss of
seats from last year’s election
which brought him to the posi-
tion of a minority government.
Either way it looks as if the
fight for democracy in France
has reached new heights and the
unity of workers, students, civil
Servants, teachers, police, etc.

i a Alsccat