Guy Mollet

In foreign policy, Mollet negotiated and signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community. Liberalising reforms were carried out in various parts of the French Empire but not in Algeria. Gaston Defferre's loi-cadre of 23 June 1956 generalised universal suffrage throughout the territories d'outre-mer and based their assemblies on a single voting roll.[2]

The government established the BEPTOM (Bureau d'études des postes et télécommunications d'outre-mer) to support communications in the newly independent former colonies.[3]

Despite those successes, Mollet, who wanted to concentrate on domestic issues, found himself confronted with several major foreign policy crises. Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, continued to support the Algerian rebels and also nationalised the Suez Canal, which led to the Suez Crisis.[4]

The Anglophile Mollet and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden shared a mutual concern for maintaining their overseas possessions.[5] Eden also feared that Nasser intended to cut off oil supplies to Europe. In October 1956 Mollet; Eden and the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, met and colluded, in the Protocol of Sèvres, in a joint attack of Egypt.

The Israelis invaded Egypt first, with British and French troops invading the northern Suez Canal area shortly afterward, under the pretext of restoring order in the area. However, the scheme met with unexpected opposition from the United States, both at the United Nations General Assembly and with economical measures.[6] France and Britain were forced into a humiliating backdown.

Eden resigned as a result, but Mollet survived the crisis despite fierce leftist criticism.

In Michael Karpin's 2001 documentary A Bomb in the Basement, Abel Thomas, the chief of political staff for France's defense minister in 1956, said that Francis Perrin, the head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, told Mollet that Israel should be provided with a nuclear bomb. According to the documentary, France provided Israel with a nuclear reactor and staff to set it up in Israel, together with enriched uranium and the means to produce plutonium, in exchange for support in the Suez War.[7][8]

In the post-war period, Mollet was aware of, and approved of, the fraudulent elections held in French Algeria while the Socialist Naegelen was governor-general of Algeria from 1948 to 1951.[9] Like the rest of the French left, Mollet opposed French colonialism and had supported Mendès-France's efforts in office to withdraw from Tunisia and Morocco, which were granted independence in 1956 by the loi-cadre Deferre. Mollet's government was left with the issue of the three French departments of Algeria, where the presence of a million non-Muslim French residents made a simple withdrawal politically difficult.[5]

At first, Mollet's policy was to negotiate with the National Liberation Front (FLN). Once in office, however, he changed his mind and argued that the FLN insurgents must be defeated before negotiations could begin. Mollet's visit to Algiers, the capital of French Algeria, was a stormy one, with almost everyone against him. He was pelted with rotten tomatoes at a demonstration in Algiers on 6 February 1956, a few weeks after he became prime minister. The memorable event was referred to as la journée des tomates ("the day of tomatoes").

He poured French troops into Algeria, where they conducted a campaign of counterterrorism, including torture, particularly during the Battle of Algiers (January to October 1957). It was too much for most French people, and Mollet's government collapsed in June 1957 on the issue of the taxation to pay for the Algerian War. The Secretary of State to Foreign Affairs, Alain Savary, also a SFIO member, resigned because of his opposition to Mollet's hardline stance in Algeria.

Mollet's cabinet carried out a programme of progressive social reform, which was almost unnoticed because of both the international context and the Algerian War. Substantial improvements were made in welfare provision for the sick and elderly, funding for regional aid and housing was increased[10] veterans' payments were extended[11] and a third week of paid holidays was introduced. Mollet's government passed other pieces of social legislation during its time in office, including an increase in wages and improved medical benefits.[12]

The level and mechanism of state pensions to both the elderly and chronically-ill was improved, and working-class housing was also given close attention. HLMs were a top priority in the government's target of 320,000 houses in 1956.[2] Educational opportunities were increased, and wage-price levels were adjusted in favour of workers and civil servants.[13]

In June 1956, a national solidarity fund for the elderly was set up, which provided supplementary allowances for elderly people to provide them with a more adequate income.[14][15] In addition, a law of December 1956 established an allowance for the mothers of household for non-salaried workers.[16] Sales tax on essential commodities was abolished[17] while regional differences in minimum wage standards across France were reduced.[18]

A decree of November 1956 abolished written homework for children until the sixth grade, thereby lightening the load on French schoolchildren; official instructions of January 1957 also specified that nursery schools should include such facilities as a medical room and a recreational room.[19] An act was passed in April 1957 to allow people who employed domestic help in their service to form an employers' association,[20] and a law was passed for the legal status of the Agence France-Presse news agency.[21] In addition, an act in July 1957 confirmed a 1955 decree that created a complementary procedure for mediation.[22]

To encourage scientific research, a decree in March 1957 made provision for research bonuses to be awarded to research workers of the National Centre for Scientific Research and to staff of universities and technical colleges engaged in research. Under a decree in June 1956, the Atomic Energy Authority founded the National Institute of Technical Nuclear Science at Saclay. Under an act in March 1957, a National Institute of Applied Science was opened in Lyon. Under a decree in November 1956, the National Institute of Nuclear Science and Techniques was authorised "to organise courses for third-cycle doctorates in metallurgy and in accelerator physics awarded by science faculties, as well as to award the necessary certificates for the obtention of these doctorates." A ministerial decision of November 1956, instituted a course in atomic engineering at the National Institute of Nuclear Science and Techniques" that was "designed to train engineers in the construction and working of nuclear reactors."

A decree in August 1956 started a national diploma in fine arts, and a ministerial decision in December 1956 started a national certificate of oenology. A decree in February 1957 founded in each faculty of arts or science, under the dean's authority, "a training institute for secondary school teachers, run by a professor" to train future teachers for secondary, teacher training, national vocational and technical schools.[23]

Although the Mollet government introduced a broad range of reforms during its time in office, financial constraints prevented the passage of other planned reforms, such as the refunding of a higher percentage of prescription charges, extended rights for comités d'enterprise and the compulsory arbitration of works disputes.[2]

Mollet's cabinet was the last government formed by the SFIO, which was in increasing decline, and it was also the last stable government of the Fourth Republic.

The Algiers coup in May 1958, led by veterans of the First Indochina War and the Suez Crisis, brought Charles de Gaulle to power from retirement and in effect seized power. Mollet supported de Gaulle on the grounds that France needed a new constitution to allow the formation of strong governments.

De Gaulle appointed him one of four Secretaries of State in his first cabinet. That caused the creation of the PSU, the Unified Socialist Party, formed by the PSA Autonomous Socialist Party and the UGS (Union de la gauche socialiste, a split of the SFIO).