ABSTRACT
Despite, or perhaps because of, a relatively short ministerial career, Pierre Mendès France acquired a durable reputation as the conscience of the French Left. He entered politics as a Radical Socialist in the 1930s and quickly demonstrated the economic competence for which he became famous. His Jewish origins, and outspoken Republicanism, made him a natural target for the anti-semitic, anti-democratic Vichy regime which imprisoned him. He escaped to London and emerged in 1945 as a clear-headed modernizing political leader. It was these qualities, rather than any powerful party backing, that led to his appointment as prime minister in 1954 after the French military disaster at Dien Biên Phu. Mendès France rapidly extricated France from an impossible military situation in Indochina and began the process of disengagement from Morocco and Tunisia. His modernizing zeal led him to attack out-of-date economic attitudes and privileges. He was, by contrast, lukewarm about the cause of European integration and this contributed to his loss of office in February 1955. He opposed de Gaulle’s 1958 return to power on the grounds of democratic principle and never accepted the legitimacy of the Fifth Republic. A prestigious, but ultimately powerless, figure, he lived to see François Mitterrand gain the political benefits of his oppositionism.
