UNIFIED SOCIALIST PARTY (FRANCE)

The 'Unified Socialist Party' (French: ''Parti Socialiste Unifié'', ''PSU'') was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3 1960. It was led by Édouard Depreux (from its creation to 1967), and by Michel Rocard (1967-1973).

Contents

History

National Secretaries of the PSU

Members

References

See also

History

PSU was born through the fusion of the Autonomous Socialist Party (PSA), the Socialist Left Union, and the group around the journal ''Tribune du Communisme''. The latter was a splinter-group of the French Communist Party (PCF), which had left after the 1956 inner conflict caused by the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The three groups were closely linked from 1958. In 1961, the newly-formed party was joined by Pierre Mendès-France, after he left the Radical Party. Alain Savary, former SFIO member and opposed as Mendès-France to Charles de Gaulle's return to power in the turmoil of the May 1958 crisis, had created with him the PSA.
In 1965, the PSU aligned with the ''Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière'' (''SFIO'', the main socialist group, known as the ''Socialist Party'', ''PS'', after 1969) and the PCF in supporting the candidature François Mitterrand in the presidential election. In contrast with the established socialist parties, the PSU also supported the student riots of 1968; it subsequently moved away from cooperation with the PS, and developed its own program, based on ''autogestion''.
Michel Rocard was the PSU candidate for the 1969 presidential elections, obtaining 3.61% of the vote in the first round.
The party again campaigned for Mitterrand in the 1974 presidential elections — a move which encountered the opposition of the PSU's own supporters at grassroots level; the PSU did not sign Mitterrand's ''Common programme of the Left'', and a sizeable section of the party militancy, led by Michel Rocard and Robert Chapuis, left to join the Socialist Party (believing that they could better function as a leftist tendency with the PS). The PSU supported the self-managed Lip factory.
PSU introduced Huguette Bouchardeau as its candidate for the 1981 presidential elections; she obtained 1.1% of the vote in the first round. In the 1988 presidential elections, the PSU supported the communist dissident candidate Pierre Juquin, who obtained 2.1% of the votes in the first round. In 1989, PSU merged with the New Left for Socialism, Ecology and Self-management (Juquin's movement), and formed the Red and Green Alternatives (nowadays integrated in the group ''Les Alternatifs'').

National Secretaries of the PSU

★ 1960 - 1967 : Édouard Depreux

★ 1967 - 1973 : Michel Rocard

★ 1973 - 1974 : Robert Chapuis

★ 1974 - 1979 : Michel Mousel

★ 1979 - 1981 : Huguette Bouchardeau

★ 1981 - 1983 : Jacques Salvator

★ 1983 - 1984 : Serge Depaquit

★ 1984 - 1989 : Jean-Claude Le Scornet

Members

★ Jean Maitron (1917-1987)

★ Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930-2006)

References

★ Malfroy, Soïg, ''La fédération du PSU des Côtes-du-Nord face au Programme commun'', IEP Rennes 2003-2004

See also

★ Lip factory