Socialist’s Effort to Form French Cabinet

Grey River Argus, 13 October 1949, Page 3

Socialist’s Effort to Form French Cabinet

PARIS, October 11.

The French Socialist leader, M. Jules Moch, Minister of the Interior in the outgoing Queuille Cabinet, tonight accepted the job of forming France’s 13th Government since the Liberation.

He has the full support of his own Socialist Party (99 seats in the Assembly), and for a compromise on the wages-prices problem, which was brought down last coalition.

M. Moch needs 311 votes in the Assembly to get a constitutional mandate to go ahead in forming a Government. Parliament is not expected to meet until Thursday .

Aged 56, M. Moch takes over the French leadership with a long political career behind him. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 1928. At the outbreak of war he enlisted in the Marines and took part in the Norway campaign.

When France surrendered he was one of the 80 members of the Frencli Parliament who voted against giving Marshal Petain full powers. Shortly afterwards he was arrested-. Fie was released in 1941 and helped to organise the French underground. In 1943 he joined General de Gaulle s forces

in London and fought with the French Navy in the Mediterranean. M. Moch will ask the French Parliament for a vote of confidence when It meets on Thursday. Political observeis think it doubtful whether he will get it.