The name is absent

— on the grounds that the word “social” was unnecessary and overused.¹³⁶
There were also less successful objections to the admission to membership
of longstanding critics of Gaullism, as well as to election of the national
party Secretary-General by the Central Committee rather than by the
National Congress.

In higher party circles, before 1967 there was a tendency for the mem-
bership of each body to expand and for decisions to be left in the hands of
the next higher, and less unwieldy, authority. Even the supreme party ex-
ecutive organ of the UNR, the Political Commission, rarely took decisions
on its own initiative, either of a policy or administrative nature.¹³⁷ Though
party organs, especially at the higher levels, undoubtedly have had some
long range influence on government policy (as in René Capitanfs pressure
for reforms of the comités d’entreprise), Minister of Veterans’ Affairs Ray-
mond Triboulet was probably truthful, if unnecessarily blunt, when he told
a noisy assembly of delegates at the 1961 UNR National Congress, “You
should know that motions voted by a congress have never changed anything
whatsoever in the policy of a government.”¹³⁴ Policy decisions are ultimately
the affair of the government, and organizational decisions the affair of the
party secretariat working closely with such key party leaders as Georges
Pompidou, Roger Frey, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Michel Debré, and presi-
dential aides such as Olivier Guichard and Jacques Foccart. And in both
organizational decisions and especially in policy decisions, de Gaulle is
final arbiter.

The UD-V^c administrative apparatus is now equally centralized. Soon
after former RPF Secretary-General Jacques Baumel was chosen by the
Central Committee to be the sixth Secretary-General of the UNR in Decem-
ber, 1962, the manner of selecting departmental secretaries was changed
from elections from below to appointment by the Secretary-General.¹³⁹ In
the course of the next thirty months, approximately two-thirds of all depart-
mental secretaries were replaced.¹¹" With efficiency the goal, many faithful
old Gaullists, who tended to look upon the party as a closed and private
congregation, were asked to step aside. Although resistance was met in some
departmental unions, as in Vaucluse, Pyrénées Orientales, Hérault, and
Gard (where the old departmental secretary refused replacement and took
his organization — files and all — with him out of the party), in the main
Baumel and his secretariat were able to tighten controls over the entire
party administration.¹¹¹ At his service in the well-equipped UNR head-
quarters in Paris, Baumel had a staff of approximately fifty, not including
secretaries. Though all of these men had another occupation, several were
government employees effectively on loan to the party headquarters. A
score of party representatives (chargés en mission) toured the country, help-

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