Guy Alcide Mollet (; 31 December 1905 – 3 October 1975) was a French politician. He led the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) from 1946 to 1969 and was the French Prime Minister from 1956 to 1957.
As Prime Minister, Mollet passed some significant domestic reforms and worked for European integration, proposing the Franco-British Union. He became unpopular in both the left and the right in the country for his international policy, especially during the Suez Crisis and the Algerian War.
Early life
He was born in Flers in Normandy, the son of a textile worker. He was educated in Le Havre and became an English teacher in Arras Grammar School. Like most other teachers, he was an active member of the socialist SFIO, joining in 1923, and in 1928 he became SFIO Secretary for the Pas-de-Calais département.
World War II
He joined the French Army in 1939 and was taken prisoner by the Germans. Released after seven months, he joined the French Resistance, where he was a captain, in the Arras area and was three times arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo.
Early political career
In October 1945, Mollet was elected to the French National Assembly as a representative from Pas-de-Calais. In 1946, he became Secretary-General of the SFIO, standing against Daniel Mayer, the candidate supported by Léon Blum. He was also Mayor of Arras at this time. Mollet represented the left-wing of the party, which feared the dissolution of the Socialist identity in a centrist alliance.
Although he retained Marxist terminology, he accepted the alliance with the centre and centre-right parties during the Fourth Republic, and his relations with the French Communist Party (PCF), which had become the largest left-wing party, were very poor: "the Communist Party is not on the left, but in the East".
Cabinet roles
He served as deputy prime minister in 1946, in Blum's government.
From 1950 to 1951, he was Minister for European Relations in the government of the Radical René Pleven, and in 1951, he was deputy prime minister in the government of Henri Queuille.
Europe
Mollet supported a Western European Federation. He represented France at the Council of Europe, and he was President of the Socialist Group on the council's Assembly.
Socialist international
From 1951 to 1969, he was vice-president of the Socialist International.
Premiership
During the 1956 legislative campaign, Mollet created a centre-left coalition, the Republican Front, containing the Radical Party of Pierre Mendès-France, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance of François Mitterrand and the Social Gaullists of Jacques Chaban-Delmas.
The coalition won the election with a promise to re-establish the peace in Algeria. As leader of the main party of the coalition, Mollet led and formed a cabinet in January 1956.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, Mollet negotiated and signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community. Liberalising reforms were carried out in various parts of the French Empire but not in Algeria. Gaston Defferre's loi-cadre of 23 June 1956 generalised universal suffrage throughout the territories d'outre-mer and based their assemblies on a single voting roll.
The government established the BEPTOM (Bureau d'études des postes et télécommunications d'outre-mer) to support communications in the newly independent former colonies.
Suez Crisis
Despite those successes, Mollet, who wanted to concentrate on domestic issues, found himself confronted with several major foreign policy crises. Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, continued to support the Algerian rebels and also nationalised the Suez Canal, which led to the Suez Crisis.
The Anglophile Mollet and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden shared a mutual concern for maintaining their overseas possessions. Eden also feared that Nasser intended to cut off oil supplies to Europe. In October 1956 Mollet, Eden and the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, met and colluded, in the Protocol of Sèvres, in a joint attack of Egypt.
The Israelis invaded Egypt first, with British and French troops invading the northern Suez Canal area shortly afterward, under the pretext of restoring order in the area. However, the scheme met with unexpected opposition from the United States, both at the United Nations General Assembly and with economical measures. France and Britain were forced into a humiliating backdown.
Eden resigned as a result, but Mollet survived the crisis despite fierce leftist criticism.