CRISIS IN FRANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26626, 24 November 1947, Page 5

CRISIS IN FRANCE

M. Schuman to Establish New Government STRIKE WAVE INCREASING Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 22. The French Assembly voted in favour of M. Robert Schuman forming a Government. The voting was 412 for M. Schuman and 184 against. M. Schuman was Finance Minister in M. Paul Ramadier’s Cabinet and a member of the Popular Republican Party. Earlier M. Yvon Delbos, Minister of State in the Ramadier Cabinet, and M. Andre Marie, who was Minister of Justice in the Ramadier Cabinet, declined premiership offers by the President of France, M. Vincient Auriol, both for health reasons. The President also received the former Premier M. Paul Reynaud and the former Finance Minister, M. Pierre Mendes-France, both Independent moderates. The strike wave in which M. Schuman takes office shows signs of growing says the Paris correspondent of the Associated Press. Over 750,000 are now idle. Lorryloads of police armed with tommyguns, which entered Paris as M. Schuman was appealing to the Assembly for a confidence vote, caused an atmosphere of uneasiness which was heightened by the report of the discovery of four clandestine arms depots in the past fortnight.

Reuter’s Paris ' correspondent says that M: Schuman, in asking for a vote of confidence to enable.him to form a Government, said that the over-riding consideration of saving the Republic must dominate the Government’s work. That meant defending freedom and ending the political exploitation of distress. M. Schuman, after indicating that he favoured certain reforms in voting procedure within the Trades Union movement, insisted that his Government would maintain order. All parties except the Communists cheered M. Schuman’s speech. M. Duclos, the Communist Party spokesman, announced that the Communists would vote against M. Schuman, whom he accused of representing a policy hostile to the working class. M. Blum’s Failure M. Blum, who had previously been commissioned tp form a new French Government, failed to gain a vote of confidence in the National Assembly. The first count of votes showed that he had failed to get sufficient support, and a recount confirmed that he was defeated. In seeking a vote of confidence. M. Blum said the country was faced with a double danger. “On the one hand,” he said, “international Communism has openly declared war on. French democracy, and on the other hand the party has been constituted with the only objective of the separation of national sovereignty, from the traditions of parliamentary government. M. Blum said he was trying to rally all those who refused to submit to impersonal dictatorship or seek refuge from this peril in the personal power of one man. He was trying to form a “ third force ’’ opposed both to Communism and General de Gaulle's Right Wing followers. Nation-wide Strikes The building workers’ strike, which began in Paris yesterday, is now general throughout France. Dockers are on strike in Paris and other cities. It is reported that saboteurs cut the telephone wire connecting two military forts on the eastern side of Paris. The railway strike -which paralysed- the south of France has spread to Paris, where all traffic at Gare de Lyon has stopped and suburban railways are steadily approaching total shutdown. Troops and extra police have been distributed throughout the south of France.

The police announced the theft of concentrated tear-gas from a Paris laboratory last night, and also reported the arrest of two workers following an explosion at the strikebound Renault motor car factory. The police alleged that the arrested .workers were making bombs there.