Fighting the Policies of Giscard, Marchais and

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this interview, trans- political positions put 'orlated by Socialist Press from ward by Laguiller in this Le Monde 20/4/81, Patrick interview, nor those of Lutte Are you standing in order to win attention to the current you represent, to put forward your views and to measure your influence, OI do you have • precise political aim in this election?

Certainly the right-for which we pay dearly every seven years-to have an hour and ten minutes television time is going to help us make our ideas known, but I am addressing myself electors.

I am urging them to vote for me, to express something for themsleves. What? Well, to begin with my candidature is a candidature of the left, against the candidates the right, Giscard and Chirac, who are very directly the representatives of the privileged, the rich and of all those who are not suffering from the crisis.

Also, I want to show another face of the left, different to that of Marchais and Mitterand.

You cannot vote for Mitterand - without first giving him a warning; that would be to approve of his past record in governments which have conducted anti-working class policies. It would be giving him a blank cheque, since he will not deal directly with the workers. It would be giving him the go-ahead for backsliding and foreseeable betrayals in the future.

You also have to give a warning to Marchais, to say to him that he cannot play with the hopes of the workers with impunity. You can no longer tolerate Marchais' policy towards immigrant workers nor the support he gave the Russian leaders for their intervention into Afghanistan and that he will give them, perhaps tomorrow, for their intervention in Poland.

I want to offer another face of the left which has nothing to do with communism and socialism as represented by Stalin and Brezhnev on the one hand and by Schmidt in Germany and Mitterand in France on the other.

If we surpass greatly the 600,000 votes of 1974, if several million workers vote for me, this would be a real warning to everybody. It would show that the electors have had enough of being taken for fools, as halfwits to whom you can say anything you like during the election period without telling them the truth about what you are going to do during the seven year term.

At the time you announced last November, that you had gathered the 500 promises of signatures needed to go forward as a presidential candidate, you denounced 'politicians' in general.

Today you say that you do not intend to obstruct Mitterand and you draw a clearer distinction between politicians of the left and the right. How has this development come about? • I don't think there Jarreau discusses VILE Arlette Laguiller, the Lutte Ouvriere. candidate in the French Presidential Election her policies and campaign.

Socialist Press called for a vote for Laguiller in the first round and for socialist candidate Mitterand as the best placed workers' party candidate in the second round.

i nn ax lala de not ennOT InH Ane been development. In effect am a candidate against all the politicians, but I have always made a distinction between the right and the left..

I said before in 1974, that I would not stand in the way of the election of Mitterand in the second round, but it would be polit.

ically wrong to refrain from fighting him except in the second round.

• Elections are not going to change society but you can express something, and you can only do that truly in the first round by voting for a candidature like mine.

For a woman worker, the only one in these elections who speaks as a working woman, to say that people have had enough of trickIlave sters of the right and of the left.

In 1974 we called for a vote for Mitterand in the second round. Our candidature has always been of the left, but there is a kind of monopoly by the big parties over political life, and you would not like to think that you can only be left wing by approving one or sadith Navriere aenerallv.

It had been our intention to call for a vote for Alain Krivine, the candidate of the LCR-official section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International-but Krivine failed to assemble the 500 signatures of elected mayors which are required by French electoral law to permit annalinato ta in other of the the big parties.

Certainly not. There are fifteen million left wing voters. Do you think that all those people identify themselves with the Communist Party or the Socialist Party?

Sometimes they vote for one or other of these parties because there is no other alternative. We want to give them another possibility of voting for the left.

I the hope is, tor the workers, that Mitterand is elected, then you are standing yourself to give this hope certain content, certain objectives. What are they?

I am not standing to give content to Mitterand's victory.

Some people in the extreme left think that if Mitterand is elected it will be the breakthrough for the workers, etc. But we cannot know for sure, and I myself have the impression that there will be a waiting period.

It does not seem forward.

Our call for a vote for the LCR or the LO does not of course mean that we endorse the positions of either candidate.

It means that we agree with many of their criticisms of the Socialist and Communist Parties and want to see those criticisms aired and put to the electoral test.

Our position remains that we call for a joint government of the SP and the CP politically to me to base all your politics on the possibility, if Mitterand is elected, in a great enthusiasm among workers, who would take part in a struggle.

Nobody can know what there is today in the consciousness of millions of workers.

If I get lots of votes, ness of workers.

The vote for Mitterand could be simply a vote against Giscara, ana not at all a vote of hope and illusions. Have people got so many illusions?

They want a change-at least in the working class.

Are they going to demand so much following a victory of the left? I don't know so much.

First, in 1936, it did not quite happen like that. And then, does a left victory automatically lead to struggles? No, you can see the opposite.

It will be necessary to fight for the 35 hour week; Mitterand himself says even that it will need the agreeexcluaing ine | i raumas ur the MRG.

This would transform the political situation by raising enormous hopes ana expertations among French workers and peasants, leading to demands on the government which simply cannot be met within the capitalist system. In this way the door can be opened to increased struggles by the French masses.

Giscard with Prime Minister Barre ment of all the European countries, and the negotiations will be carried out plant by plant, company by company.

You see what that means, it will depend on the balance of forces.

I put myself forward so that in the first round, the electorate express something, so that the workers feel stronger, so that there will be many who say, after the elections, that they will not passively accept the situation, whichever candidate is elected.

Are you simply proposing a protest vote against the "politicians" or are you giving a content to the warning that you want to address to them?

I say that all the politiciians are in the service of the bourgeoisie ... I say: let's give them all a warning. We know very well that they are all going to manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie, to protect their profits... All, including Marchais?

M. Marchais has . no chance of being elected; it is not a problem ... They are going to continue effectively to give handouts to the trusts.

None of them-and M. Marchais neither, for example-will touch the army's budget. They all agree with giving 20% of the income of the State budget, that is more than FFr100 millions, to the army, so that it can go up in smoke.

It is not a producer of jobs. It is only used to import oil-FFr3 millions a year-so that these gentlemen can enjoy themselves carrying out big manoeuvies.

It is used to make arms which we know are already outstripped by the great powers, but it enriches Dassault and the others. It would be possible with this money to buy the surplus agriculture from the farmers and feed the third world.

What type of defence do you propose?

For 60. years the French army has been in existence to defend the country. In June 1940 we saw what good it was to finance an army-no good at all.

Since then the army Marcha Mittera only served in colonial wi not at all to defend territo and besides that, in the e it was beaten by unarn peoples who were driven by the enthusiasm to f themselves.

It is not the force dissuasion of the Polis they have none-which st the Russians intervening their country; it belief that it will caus popular insurrection. W the people want to def themselves. they have need of' sophistice weapons.

Besides another use for money spent on the ar others despite what they _but I have several id the military budgrendum I have a programmi demands for following elections. We must havi hours, for example, minimum right. It wil necessary to fight for it will have to fight toget not only the working but all popular layers those who don't exploit one. And that, whoeve elected, and even if t are Communist ministers

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Thursday May 14, Pagr John Lister reports on the W Conference discussion on persp tives for work in Britain.

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you can say to yourself that there is something that is changing in the conscious-

what else do you propose programme-neither do