SOCIALISTS PURGED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27443, 1 September 1954, Page 11

SOCIALISTS PURGED

Party Dispute (Rec. 9 p.m.) PARIS, August 31. The Executive Committee of 'the French Socialist Party early today dismissed three of its leading members for defying the party line and voting against E.D.C. It also bitterly criticised the Assembly for rejecting E.D.C. “through a procedural artifice.” The three dismissed Socialists are Mr Jules Moch, a former Defence Minister and Rapporteur of the Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Daniel Meyer, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Mr Max Lejeune. The executive committee in its declaration, said: “It regretted that the Government did not think it necessary in such grave hours for the future of the country and the peace of the world to assume the responsibility with which it was faced.” x No alternative to E.D.C. was defined in the course of the debate. “Worried by the isolation France risks finding herself in after a dec> sion which, in accord with the desires of the Communist Party, threatens the unity of the free world,” the party executive also said it would not allow under any form reconstitution of an autonomous Wehrmacht (German Army), which would threaten German democracy and the balance of Europe. It was reported from Socialist quarters in Paris that action might also be taken against more than 50 other Socialists who helped to kill the E.D.C. Treaty. This would split the powerful Socialist Party “right down the middle” (unofficial voting* figures from the Assembly gave 53 Socialists as voting against E.D.C. and 50 for.it). The party’s orders to ratify E.D.C. were given to the Deputies in special Congress on E.D.C. at the end of May on a Congress vote of 1969 for E.D.C. and 1215 against. However, 58 Socialist Deputies even then formerly declared themselves against the treaty. It is thought .that a few of these have since relented.

Observers said that the official Assembly voting figures of 319 against E.D.C. and 264 for it mean that the Socialist defection, sealed the fate of the treaty. Full Socialist, support for E.D.C. would have practically reversed the voting figures to 317 for and 266 against.