TO SURVIVE DE GAULLE
21
self autonomous; and throughout the party membership Soustelle’s many
admirers were restless and discontent.100 The failure of UNR deputies to
vote a motion on Algerian policy at the end of their study conference of
September, I960, indicated that party unanimity was still beyond reach on
this question.101 Several more deputies resigned or were expelled over Al-
gerian policy before the party’s time of trouble ended.102
Gradually de Gaulle solved the problem for the UNR. His mastery over
the Algiers putsch of April, 1961, his overwhelming success in the two
popular referenda on Algerian policy in January, 1961, and April, 1962,
and — above all — his continuing hold over the electorate in the consti-
tutional referendum of October, 1962, and in the legislative elections of
November, 1962 (when all former UNR deputies who had left the fold
were crushingly defeated), helped the party to restore its unity around the
General. Soustelle clearly had been correct in the spring of 1960 when he
objected that he could not have violated the UNR’s Algerian policy since
the party had taken no substantive policy stand. Throughout the war years,
the UNR leadership remained fully aware that the party’s own price of
union was blind obedience to de Gaulle on Algeria.
Once the French Algeria wing of the UNR had fled or been purged by
the end of 1961, the most permanent cleavage within the party came to
center on social and economic policy. Already in 1958 and 1959 UNR
Secretary-General Albin Chalandon had pleaded — unsuccessfully —
against the government’s deflationary fiscal and economic policy.103 By
1961, as resentment grew within the party over the government’s tight cred-
it policies, its restraints on wage increases (especially in the public sector),
and its meager efforts in the social welfare field, first the UNR National
Congress, then the Central Committee, and finally the party’s Professional
and Labor Action Association all urged the government to ease the eco-
nomic plight of workers and civil servants. Perhaps the bitterest criticism
from within the party came from the pen of the director of the party daily,
La Nation. In a special issue of April 29, 1961, Joël Le Tac wrote a sting-
ing editorial against “ce régime à la Guizot.” “And to serve General de
Gaulle,” wrote Le Tac, “the man who after Liberation had accomplished
a veritable social revolution, one saw thrown up a regime of bookkeepers,
imperturbably aligning statistics in response to the demands of the work-
ers.”10' Le Tac subsequently was forced to resign as Departmental Secre-
tary of the UNR Union of the Seine, even though Albin Chalandon came
to his support.
The potential for conflict within the Gaullist camp over economic policy
was increased measurably as a result of the legislative elections of Novem-
ber, 1962. Following a clash with the National Assembly in October, 1962,
de Gaulle determined to seek a reliable parliamentary majority in the en-