The Left At City Hall

Even in Reims, they have stopped toasting each other

Acrimony between the feuding leaders of France's so-called Union of the Left last week bubbled to yet another boiling point. Communist Party Boss Georges Marchais threatened to destroy what remained of the troubled alliance if Franc,ois Mitterrand's Socialists continued resisting Red demands for an election platform calling for a sweeping nationalization of the French economy. But for all the political heaves caused by the Marchais-Mitterrand battle on the national level, the Union de la Gauche continued to control the governments of 153 of France's 221 largest cities, a tally rung up last March in its most impressive electoral showing to date. To assess how the deepening split within the French left at the top has affected politics on the municipal level--where the left already holds a large measure of power--TIME Paris Bureau Chief Henry Muller last week visited the left-run provincial city of Reims. His report:

To most outsiders, Reims (pop. 190,000) is best known as the world capital of champagne, 34.3 million gallons of which are produced each year from the pale white grapes of surrounding vineyards. Until 1977 the bubbly was also the local political king: Reims' mayor for the previous 18 years had been Jean Taittinger, scion of a wealthy champagne family and a prominent Gaullist. But living conditions for Reims' substantial working-class population were no cause for toasts at the end of Taittinger's reign. Since 1960, Communist membership has increased more than tenfold, and in the 1977 municipal elections a majority of voters cast their ballots for Communist Claude Lamblin, 40, a teacher at a school for retarded children.

Eight months of leftist government have brought about little visible change. The local cinema is playing Star Wars, municipal tax bills went out last month on schedule, and the jobless rate remains the same. Says Lamblin, who with his casual manner and boyish looks seems more like an up-and-coming technocrat than a militant Communist: "Our main priority was that the life of the city continue." Lamblin's team did make a few symbolic gestures. With Socialist support, they cut the price of school lunches for poor children, made public transportation free for the unemployed, subsidized telephone installation fees for the aged, and offered to pay the wages of municipal workers who went on strike.

Yet so far the Communists' most notable accomplishment is the single-mindedness with which they have tried to seize the levers of local power, often trampling on their Socialist allies in the process. Socialist Alderman Pierre Pinon, who is in charge of local cultural affairs, discovered one day that the Communists had hired one of their own--and a relative of the mayor's, at that--for a job in his department. When a Reims street was renamed in honor of Chilean Marxist Salvador Allende, the Socialists, who also pay homage to Allende's memory, were shut out of the ceremony.

Last month the Reims Socialists finally decided they had suffered enough. "We want unity of the left," said Georges Colin, leader of the local Socialist group. "But this implies being able to exercise all our responsibilities, and that has not been the case so far." To underscore their discontent, the Socialists voted against a supplementary budget requested by Lamblin. Last week, in retaliation, the Communists voted against a Socialist proposal to create a new department of urban affairs for the district.

Publicly, both parties are still trying to play down their differences. One Communist alderman says the Socialists are merely seeking to impress voters with their independence prior to the legislative elections next March. But the message coming across to voters is more fundamental. "It's a joke," says Centrist Jean-Louis Schneiter. "They have proved that Socialists and Communists cannot work together." The next act will probably be played out when Lamblin and Colin compete for leftist votes in the elections to the National Assembly. Whether or not Marchais and Mitterrand have been able to paper over their differences by then, it is a safe prediction that neither of their Reims lieutenants will base his campaign on local accomplishments during the past year of fraternal leftist rule.

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