After the high drama of the de Gaulle years,
President Georges Pompidou restored calm to
France. Pompidou had been closely associated
with de Gaulle and had served as his prime min-
ister until the general dismissed him in July 1968.
After de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969, Pompidou
returned to power as his successor. A cautious
conservative, Pompidou was nevertheless ready to
embark on reforms designed to ease social and
regional tensions. His succession to the presidency
promised continuity without de Gaulle’s auto-
cratic style of government. He was approachable,
a symbol of the good life that France provided
for its more fortunate citizens. With a background
in finance, Pompidou had served as a director of
the merchant bank Rothschild Frères. The healing
of France’s divisions, the president believed,
would best be served by putting France once more
on the road to prosperity.
An austerity programme that was set in motion
in 1969, the devaluation of the franc and a loan
from the International Monetary Fund, realistic
steps that de Gaulle would have rejected as a slur
on French nationalism, provided the springboard
for future expansion. But they also provoked a
rash of strikes in 1969. In France the archaic
and the modern had continued to exist side by
side: the small peasant farmer and the large land-
holder, the department store and multitudes of
small shopkeepers, technologically advanced
industries and artisans. Exports lagged behind
those of other countries – much of French indus-
try was not competitive.
The Sixth Plan set out to modernise France
more rapidly by opening it to international com-
petition. It gave priority to industrial develop-
ment, but gave less scope to central control than
previous plans. Pompidou’s liberal, free-market
approach achieved good results. Until the oil
shock of 1973–4, Pompidou helped to acceler-
ate industrialisation, now stimulated by world
demand for French goods. The Gross Domestic
Product between 1969 and 1973 grew by an
annual average of 5.6 per cent, while inflation was
contained and unemployment kept low.
As industry became competitive once more in
world markets, Pompidou cleverly cushioned
French farmers, who could not be competitive. In
return for agreeing to abandon de Gaulle’s veto
on Britain’s entry to the EEC, he secured a good
deal for France’s farmers from its Common
Market partners.
Apart from a softer style and a great improve-
ment in Anglo-French relations, France’s funda-
mentally nationalist and independent outlook did
not change much in foreign affairs. The pursuit of
a European option and of detente with the Soviet
Union and the Eastern bloc was only temporarily
successful, and not of any lasting consequence.
Nor did the more friendly Gaullist policies towards
the Arab states save France from the huge oil-price
rises which the Arab oil-exporting countries
imposed on the rest of the world after the outbreak
of the Arab–Israeli War in October 1973.
Pompidou’s first prime minister, Jacques
Chaban-Delmas, wanted a more radical pro-Chapter 74
THE REVIVAL OF FRANCE