The New Poujadists

Last year, workers and students combined to create the most violent upheaval that France has endured in two decades. The very existence of the Fifth Republic was threatened as unions called crippling strikes and students took to the barricades. Now that most stable element of French society--the small businessman--is beginning to vent his violent discontent. In recent weeks, shopkeepers have paraded through Paris, burned tax forms in Lyon, fought police in Morlaix. In Nice, they refused to pay increased gas and electricity rates. Capitalizing on the discontent, the Communist daily L'Humanite has sided with the petit bourgeois tradesman against "the monopolistic powers."

Last week in Paris, France's shopkeepers staged their biggest demonstration yet. Some 25,000 grocers and hoteliers, barbers and plumbers, from as far away as Corsica, crowded into the Pare des Princes stadium to protest stiff taxes and rising competition from modern large-scale retailers. They carried banners proclaiming "Crushed to Death by the Taxman" and "We Want to Live." Some wanted to fight, too. Swarming through the streets, 2,000 of them attacked police in a 45-minute fracas that ended in 30 injuries and 13 arrests. It was the worst clash since the May 1968 riots.

Menacing Modernization. The unshaven, carpet-slippered petit commercant of legend is France's newest militant. Like the middle class in many other countries, he feels that he is not getting his due. The 2,500,000 shop owners and artisans account for almost one-fifth of the French working population --the highest proportion of self-employed in Europe. Their power was last harnessed in the mid-1950s, when a burly ex-bookseller named Pierre Poujade turned a tax protest into a movement strong enough to help topple the Fourth Republic.

Today, French shopkeepers fear that the campaign begun by Charles de Gaulle to modernize the economy will wipe out the neighborhood butcher and greengrocer. Supermarkets, shopping centers and restaurant chains are sprouting everywhere, while the country's 200,000 grocers disappear at a rate of 2,000 a year. In 1958, France's small businessmen managed to quash a move to make cash registers mandatory--and thus make tax cheating more difficult. Lately, however, they have suffered only setbacks. Social security payments have been made compulsory for the self-employed (cost: some $520 a year). Last August, Pompidou devalued the franc --and dispatched inspectors to make sure that shopkeepers did not simply raise their prices.

Pirate Plugs. Even before devaluation, the new Poujadists had found a new Poujade. He is Gerard Nicoud, a 24-year-old cafe owner who last spring launched a shopkeepers' movement at La Tour-du-Pin in France's southeastern Dauphine province. His slogan: "A class that does not defend itself is condemned to death."

Nicoud's defense tactics have been spectacularly offensive. "The Movement," as it is known, first won notice last April, when Nicoud led 400 store owners in a raid on his local tax office. Nicoud's group threatened to pitch three truckloads of records into the Isere River unless officials eased tax rules. Nicoud was seized before he could carry out his threat and jailed briefly--but he was not deterred. Late last month several masked members of the Movement kidnaped Gustave Prost, the deputy mayor of Lyon, and his 43-year-old amie to dramatize the shopkeepers' grievances. The captives were driven through the countryside and then released--Prost minus his trousers.

So far, 2,000 police and troops have been unable to find Nicoud in the mountains of the Dauphine. Yet while Nicoud is in hiding, "pirate" television announcements continue to break in on regular programs to plug the Movement, which claims 250,000 members.

Hoping to defuse the discontent, the Pompidou government has introduced, among other things, some involved subsidy arrangements to ease the social security burden. Pompidou cried "Vive le petit commerce!" in his campaign, but few shopkeepers believe his assurance that they are "not destined to disappear, because they are a humanizing factor." If they survive, it will be because they are a political factor--as Pompidou well knows. In last April's referendum, it was dissatisfaction among the bourgeoisie, including the shopkeepers, that sent Charles de Gaulle into retirement.

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