[update below]
Le 10 mai 1981. It is, as Thomas Legrand reminded us on France Inter this morning, the only election that everyone in France remembers by its full date: day, month, and year. For on that day—today being the 40th anniversary—François Mitterrand won the 2nd round of the presidential election, bringing the left to power for the first time in 23 years—and following the legislative elections the following month, enabling the left to govern without non-left coalition partners for pretty much the first time ever (even the Popular Front in 1936 included centrist Radicals). Every Frenchman and woman with the slightest political consciousness who was around on that day remembers where s/he was and how s/he felt. And for those on the left, the feeling was exhilaration.
As for moi, I wrote about the 10 mai 1981 on the 30th anniversary—in AWAV’s early days—and offered my bilan of Mitterrand’s fourteen years in the Élysée, which one may consult here. I wouldn’t modify anything I wrote then, except maybe on the Maastricht treaty (which I would now not put in the negative column). But my overall assessment of Mitterrand is now darker, with the publication in March of the report of the commission headed by Vincent Duclert and submitted to President Macron, on France, Rwanda, and the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, and what French archives reveal on this. It’s a damning indictment of Mitterrand’s role, of continuing to support the Hutu regime even as the genocide was underway, refusing to recognize that what was happening was indeed a genocide, and of his atavistic obsession—shared by part of the French military hierarchy—with an imagined “Anglo-Saxon” (i.e. American and British) threat to the French position in Africa, and which Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front was seen as the spearhead. Mitterrand’s attitude toward Rwanda in 1994 is not news but that he was afflicted with the Fashoda complex to this extent—of viewing the USA and UK, otherwise French allies, as adversaries, if not enemies—is striking, not to mention disappointing (for more on this, watch the interview with Vincent Duclert here).
The 10 mai 1981 is of course being marked today, with the usual reportages, documentaries, talk shows, and the like. The reaction of Boomer generation lefties is bittersweet, as in 1981 the left was a political and social force—constituting half the electorate, or close to it—with an ideology, a political program, and hopes for the future and a better life for all. Today the French left is a champs de ruine: a pile of rubble, speaking for at best a third of the electorate, structurally fractured, with no credible program or leaders, and with no hope of qualifying for the 2nd round of next year’s presidential election—or winning any national election in the foreseeable future. And in the PS at least, no one has any illusions about this. The French left is hardly alone here (cf. England, Spain, Italy). I have some things to say on this general subject—of the structural decline of the left in Europe (the USA is a different matter)—and will do so at the opportune moment. In the meantime, here are the thoughts on the anniversary by my friend Guillaume Duval, director of Alternatives Économiques, posted on his Facebook page, and who has not lost hope.
Le 10 mai 1981, il y a 40 ans et j’en avais 24. J’étais déjà cependant un “vieux” militant socialiste puisque j’avais rejoint ce parti en 1973, 2 ans après le congrès d’Epinay qui avait vu sa refondation.
On aurait tort de croire toutefois que les dix années qui séparent Epinay et le 10 mai 1981 ont été une marche triomphale vers la victoire. En 1981 la gauche a gagné bien qu’elle soit profondément divisée. Depuis 1978 c’était la guerre totale entre le Parti communiste (encore très puissant à l’époque) et le Parti socialiste. Et au sein même du Parti socialiste c’était la guerre civile pratiquement aussi totale entre mitterrandistes et rocardiens.
Mais après 16 années de gaullisme conservateur, autoritaire et affairiste (l’image généralement positive qu’a désormais acquis le gaullisme à gauche a de quoi faire sourire celles et ceux qui ont vécu cette période), après 7 ans d’un giscardisme très proche idéologiquement de ce qu’Emmanuel Macron nous inflige actuellement (même si Giscard était plus progressiste qu’Emmanuel Macron sur les sujets de société) la volonté de changement du peuple français a quand même été plus forte que les profondes divisions de la gauche.
Pour ma part, bien que n’ayant jamais été mitterrandiste et connaissant déjà toutes les ambiguïtés du personnage, je m’étais engagé à fond, comme jamais depuis, dans cette campagne. Et je ne le regrette pas. Il fallait aérer le pays, rompre avec ce carcan, bourgeois, conservateur, bien pensant et policier qui nous étouffait.
Même si très vite, dès 1983, appuyé sur l’énarchie qui avait déjà phagocyté les cercles dirigeants du Parti Socialiste, ce qu’on n’appelait pas encore à l’époque le social-libéralisme (que j’ai combattu dès le départ) a triomphé. Faisant ainsi qu’au final les 2 septennats de François Mitterrand ont eu surtout comme fonction historique de rétablir les profits des entreprises qui avaient fondu dans les années 1970 sous Giscard et Chirac…
40 ans plus tard le cycle ouvert avec la rénovation du Parti socialiste (que j’ai pour ma part quitté depuis bientôt trente ans à la fin d’un second septennat de Francois Mitterrand marqué par tant d’affaires sordides) est manifestement terminé.
C’est grâce en particulier à Emmanuel Macron qu’il s’est clos : avec lui la chenille du social-liberalisme énarchique qui avait progressivement dévoré le Parti socialiste s’est muée en papillon d’une nouvelle droite aussi autoritaire que les Pasqua, Poniatowski ou Sarkozy, plus favorable encore que toutes les droites classiques aux plus riches et nettement plus antisociale encore que tous les Chirac, Sarkozy, Giscard et Barre réunis…
Est-ce que la gauche, enfin débarrassée de ces parasites qui la rongeaient de l’intérieur, régénérée par le logiciel écologiste, peut revivre, et cela dès 2022 ? Le pari est évidemment très loin d’être gagné d’avance. Mais toutes celles et tous ceux qui ont vécu la période profondément démoralisante de 1978-1981 (ou celle tout aussi déprimante de 1993-1997) savent aussi qu’il n’est pas non plus nécessairement perdu d’avance. D’autant qu’ils savent également ce qu’une victoire de l’extrême droite impliquerait. Pas une minute à perdre.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary, France 5 aired a one-hour documentary yesterday, “Henri Weber, le rouge et la rose.” Henri Weber, who died of Covid last year, was a major figure on the French left of the past five decades: in May ’68, then the Trotskyist LCR, before joining the PS in the 1980s, converting to social-democracy, and becoming a personality in the party leadership and one of its intellectuals. For the anecdote, I had the opportunity to speak with him on the phone in 2017—a mutual friend put me in touch—to seek his help in organizing a visit for one of my classes (American students) to PS HQ on Rue de Solférino. He was warm and friendly and made the visit happen. A good man (and with good politics). The documentary may be watched for the next month here.
UPDATE: From INA: Revivez en direct la soirée électorale du 10 mai 1981 (h/t Guillaume Duval). N.B. Jean-Pierre Elkabbach and Alain Duhamel are still around and on TV regularly (I’ve seen both in the past two weeks).
Arun with a View 
For the anecdote, I would see President Mitterrand’s car convoy on its way to the Elysée drive every morning below my windows on rue de Rivoli, including in 1994. I remember an emergency medicine friend of mine telling me a long time ago that the really ill people were traveling the slowest in the SAMU mobile hospital. By this standard, Mitterrand must have been so gravely ill by 1994 that I doubt very much indeed whether he devoted much attention to Rwanda, yet another crime ascribed to him – why not accuse him of pedophilia next, or maybe renew the old collaboration accusations. No dirt should be left unused seems to me to be the motto of this ignorant era.
There are two kinds of people in France. One, the rare ones who evolve from right to left over the course of their life. Second, the common ones who evolve from left to right over the course of their life. Mitterrand was in the first category and that explains the hatred against him expressed by so many. The other part of the explanation is that he was never a romantic hero, unlike Castro and Che Guevara, even less a tragic romantic hero such as Weber’s Trotsky.
Mitterrand was a realist and France was lucky to have him, the list of things he gave to us in the early days is simply staggering, and it continued with the single currency which is over and above all the assurance of the end of war in Europe.
Mitterrand may have been very ill in 1994 but the Duclert report makes it clear that he was heavily invested in the Rwanda dossier and had strong feelings about it.
As for his overall bilan, I stand by what I wrote in 2011. On the single currency, my views at that moment were admittedly influenced by the Greek crisis and Germany’s intransigence, but I will readily acknowledge that without the euro France would no doubt be in a worse place economically today – and with Europe in a far weaker position vis-à-vis the USA, China, and pretty much everyone else.
I guess my initial response to your friend Guillaume Duval would be that Helmut Schmidt and the German SPD by the time 1981 had rolled around had already set the outer boundary of what acceptable leftism in Europe would be. As I like to point out to Claire Berlinski I think there is a strong case during the post Watergate Carter years that Schmidt was significantly to the right of where much of US Democratic Party was in the form of people like Ted Kennedy and Ralph Nader. Schmidt opposed for example price control on oil and gasoline which Nader and Kennedy were strong supporters(Gas lines in other parts of Europe and the US in the 1970s were in part caused by the oil producers diverting shipments to Germany where prices were uncontrolled due to Schmidt and SPD policy). Schmidt also during the Gerald Ford years also helped imposed the tough austerity conditions of the UK’s bailout from the IMF that brought down the Wilson/Callaghan Labour party and led to the winter of discontent and Maggie Thatcher.
Which to my second point perhaps in the years prior to German reunification there was a path to a more social democratic Europe centered around Britain and France with ordoliberal Germany as the odd man out(as many French socialists hoped for in the immediate post War Fourth Republic years), however, this had no chance while Thatcher was in power and then German reunification shut down the door permanently in my opinion to a Europe build without Germany. Unlike Thatcher I think you have to give Mitterand credit for accepting the inevitability of German reunification and getting the best he thought he could for France out of it. I guess the question I would have is whether there was a better or different ask Mitterand could of made of Helmut Kohl. Remember monetary union was not something that completely fell off the cabbage truck it was already being talked about as the “next” step of European integration as soon as the ink was dried on the Single Europe Act in 1986. So I guess this would tie into your point about the Maastricht Treaty.
Something else that I think is relevant is I think the American left or at least part of the American left has became much more Eurosceptic than say it was in the George W Bush years when it seemed like it was almost a badge of honor to be seen as Francophile or pro European in American left circles. I think though this goes beyond just Europe and France I think was again a certain admiration for Canada by the American left in the George W Bush years but this too has disappeared.
Admittedly there are actual causes I think behind this the Eurozone crisis in the case of France and the EU and the realization in the US of the environmental impact of the Canadian oil and gas industry. But in terms of the later the Canadian oil and gas industry for example existed long before Michael Moore released Bowling for Columbine where he repeatedly praises Canada and it’s leadership under Jean Chretien. The only rationale explanation I can come up with is the American Sanders/Warren political left is a very fickle creature.
**This tends to get me in a lot of arguments as I remember those George W Bush years a lot better than Sanders/Warren people.
**Michael Moore recently in an interview claimed that Bowling for Columbine can only be viewed as a complete failure as gun violence increased dramatically after film was released whereas the point of the film was to reduce gun violence.
To be honest, I doubt the American left thinks about Europe that much these days. It’s not like 40 years ago, when Michael Harrington’s DSOC (predecessor to DSA) could organize a weekend conference at the Capital Hilton in Washington (Nov. 1980) on Eurosocialism, and with, among others, François Mitterrand, Michel Rocard, Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, Tony Benn, and Filipe Gonzales in attendance (disclosure: I was there).