[IN MAY 1981 Tribune described Francois Mitterrand's election…]

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IN MAY 1981 Tribune described Francois Mitterrand's election victory in France as "the first salvo in the attack to drive back the madness of monetarism"

Nine major industrial companies and 36 banks were quickly nationalised. There were new controls over foreign trade, foreign exchange movement and prices.

Public spending was increased by nearly 30%. Unemployment was rising in 1982 at a quarter of its previous rate. The minimum wage was increased by 10% and 60,000 new jobs were created in education, health, and the post office.

This version of the Alternative Economic Strategy looks a lot more radical than anything Kinnock and Hattersley will be likely to produce, still less anything Owen and Steel would be prepared to offer Professor Hobsbawm for a coalition!

Nonetheless, it left capitalist structures and values untouched.

In France, as in other countries, nationalisation is not anticapitalist. Even De Gaulle had a small go at it.

Six months after the election, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy was telling the bosses that "the government does not intend to question the right of owners to make decisions. There is no question of instituting a right of veto over redundancies.

The 35 hour week without loss of pay was first put off and then dropped. A 39 hour week was conceded after a rash of A year after coming into office, the government was in deep trouble. There was a run on the franc. Increased demand inside France pulled in imports. Exports fell because of the world slump. The government was forced to resort to borrowing and to attacks on the working class.

It was Wilson 1964 and Wilson 1974 all over again, in essence -although Wilson never tried anything as ambitious as Mitterrand.

By June 1982 Mitterrand was throwing his programme overboard.

The franc was devalued. A freeze on wages and prices was introduced, together with a tough deflationary budget.

In March 1983 a second austerity package hit the streets of Paris. There was no growth in 1983.

Unemployment at the end of the year stood at 2.3 million, a post-war high. Real wages were falling.

Defeating inflation meant defeating the workers. With unemployment rising fast and 30,000 jobs going every month, Industry Minister Laurent Fabius backed an industrial restructuring plan which will destroy 200,000 jobs in 1984.

Steel will lose 35,000; coal 20,000; shipyards 12,000; the car industry 18,000; and construction 100,000.

The left was disorientated. The Right was made stronger. For the first time fascists made gains in local elections. Racism and attacks on immigrants moved to the heart of French politics.

Mitterrand's foreign policy has included suppoit for nuclear weapons, sale of nuclear technology to Iraq, support for Thatcher over the Falklands, and maintenance of French neo-colonialism in Africa.

Mitterrand's "socialist experiment' in France has been a failure - and a British re-run would be far more catastrophic.

Unlike Wilson and unlike the way Kinnock is shaping up. Mitterrand did try to carry out some limited state capitalist policies - an alternative economic strategy. The bosses hit back.

Irritated, not really hurt, they soon dealt with a government which had no intention of mobilising the only people who could defend and extend a radical programme - the working class.

There is a clear lesson for the British left in Mitterrand's experiment. Any attempt to move towards socialism must base itself on the self-activity of the workeerS.

It must aim to replace capitalism. armed with an understanding that the bosses will hit back if their profits and prerogatives are even slightly endangered and that purely national solutions simply cannot succeed.