FRANCE’S AUSTERITY BUDGET CAUSES NEW STRIKE WAVE

Evening Star, Issue 26136, 25 June 1947, Page 5

FRANCE’S AUSTERITY BUDGET CAUSES NEW STRIKE WAVE

(ltee. 9.50 a.m.) PARIS, June 24. The Assembly, after an all-night session, adopted the “ Austerity Budget ” by 302 votes to 241, with 59 abstentions. The debate lasted 16 hours, virtually non-stop, the Communists bitterly opposing the plan throughout. M. Ramndier's Government emerged so greatly weakened from the successful vote on its austerity proposals that lobbyists predicted it ivould not survive more than a few weeks The budget means that the State -will get 9 per cent, more money out of the taxpayer than was contemplated in the original Budget. It will provide the Government with about £83,000,000 of new revenue and £104,170,000 of economies. The ordinary Frenchman fears increased cost of living and the public is now back in an inflationist panic, which M. Blum checked by a price reduction campaign in December.

The strike wave is spreading as the result of the adoption of the Austerity Budget. A two-hour strike occurred at Marseilles, where tens of thousands of workers marched through the streets chanting “ Down with the Schumann plan.” Protest strikes are increasing in Northern France coalfields, where 15,000 are reported to have ceased work. A later message states that 30.000 miners are now on strike, chiefly for increased rations. Not all the 24 pits affected stopped work, as some nonmembers of the Communist Federation refused to strike. Several clashes have occurred.