Eighty years ago this week French voters move to the far left and the British government flags further expansions of socialist control

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 In the first elections to the French National Assembly under the new constitution the Communist Party emerged with the largest representation with 165 seats compared to 160 for the MRP, the largest right-of-centre group. The PCF polled half a million more votes than the MRP on a turnout of around 24.5m. The Socialists were the big losers. De Gaulle himself had turned his back on parliamentary politics after the failure of his campaign against the new constitution but a small group campaigned as the Union Gaulliste without his backing but only won eight seats.  No party was close to dominating the assembly nor was there any obvious combination which could command a majority. 

The King's Speech on behalf of Attlee's Labour government opened with grand statements about Britain extending its place in a harmonious world order and the government's commitment to national well-being. The planned law to increase the school leaving age could be fitted into the latter category, but the remainder of the legislation announced served a purely socialist agenda: inland transport and electricity industries were to be nationalised. The cotton trade would be put under state control. Exchange control would be strengthened and the government would be given the power to implement recommendations from working parties "for the better organization of a number of important industries." 

The British Royal Commission on Equal Pay for men and women which had been sitting since 1944  finally reported. Under its terms of reference it made no recommendations and sat resolutely on the fence. It did not deny that the war had bolstered the place of women in the labour force but implied that a return to peacetime economic conditions would weaken demand for workers generally and thus the need to expand the pool of labour to include women. The report also pointed to the inflationary effect of increasing wages for women.

The communist government of Poland intensified its attacks on the Polish Resettlement Corps in Britain which had been established as a temporary home for exile Polish servicemen.  The government claimed that the Corps's members were employed in agriculture at lower wages than British citizens and that the Corps was an armed forced capable of of an assault on Poland. In reality it was trying to create a smokescreen to mask the fact that many Poles preferred to remain in exile than return to a country now dominated by the Soviet Union.

 


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