FRANCE: Socialist Crisis

Most Social Democrats are irked by a chronic crisis of indecision: they cannot make up their minds whether they are primarily Socialists or Democrats. In France last week, the Continent's key Social Democratic party split on this issue.

Led by a balding schoolteacher, Guy Mollet, and a phalanx of 60-odd associates, the left wing of the French Socialist Party rebelled against Léon Blum's moderate, anti-Communist leadership. By a vote of 2,964-to-1,363 (with 145 abstentions), the annual Party Congress rejected the Executive Bureau's activities report. General Secretary Daniel Mayer (a moderate) promptly resigned. Léon Blum pleaded with the rebels ("Participation of...

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