TO SURVIVE DE GAULLE
11
as opposed to 17 percent comparable medal holders within the Rassemble-
ment Démocratique (a Radical reincarnation).ιr The number of UNR medal
holders was particularly impressive in view of the youth of the UNR
deputies, many of whom were too young to have been in the resistance.
If former résistants are numerous among Gaullist deputies, they have
been even more common within the cabinet, and until recently had almost
monopolistic control over the leadership of the UNR national organization.
Among the twenty-six French ministers and secretaries of state in March,
1965, six were members of the prestigious order of Compagnons de la
Libération, and another nine held the Médaille de la Résistance. Until 1967
the key party decision-makers — Roger Frey, Jacques Chaban-Delmas,
Michel Debré, and Jacques Baumel among them — were almost all out of
the resistance.44
To be sure, not all resistance heroes are Gaullists, and not all Gaullists
leaders are resistance heroes. Yet within the UNR, those without resistance
credentials (preferably Free French credentials) are always slightly suspect
in the eyes of the old faithfuls. “In the world of Gaullism,” writes Edmond
Michelet, “there are the 'compagnons’ and those who are not compagnons,
have never been and will never be. When the RPF was at its highest tide,
it attracted a certain number of members who adorned themselves with
the title of compagnon only out of opportunism.”49 As a governing party
(at least in theory), the UNR undoubtedly has attracted more such “op-
portunists.” And even the new faithful are tiring of interminable references
to a resistance which took place a generation ago.50
After the Algerian War, there appeared increasing evidence of a chang-
ing of the guard within the Gaullist movement, as the UNR searched out
able young candidates to appeal to the unusually young French electorate
of the 1960’s. Jean Chariot has calculated that “new Gaullists” — men
without resistance decorations and without Gaullist leadership experience
in the Fourth Republic — represented 29 percent of all UNR deputies in
1958 and 40 percent in 1962. Within the party apparatus, as early as 1960
over half of the UNR federation secretaries were “new Gaullists.”51 Indica-
tive of the declining role of Gaullists of 1940-1944 in the UNR was de
Gaulle’s choice of Georges Pompidou, who was a postwar convert, to be
premier and UNR leader. The founding congress of the UD-Vc in Novem-
ber, 1967, heard only a few reminders of Gaullism’s glorious past. Its focus
clearly was on the future. When the new UD-Vc's Central Committee was
charged with selecting a secretary-general, it decided upon Robert Poujade,
who was only sixteen years old when de Gaulle first entered liberated Paris.
Among other important characteristics of UNR deputies in the first two
parliaments (1959-1967), in comparison with deputies of other parties,
arc the following: they were less experienced in national politics, younger,