The Man Who Gets It Done

"France will be able to love him, because France loves a man of the people. His face, his entire way of being inspires confidence." So said Franc,ois Mitterrand four years ago of the sturdy (6 ft. 2 in., 202 lbs.), diligent and impeccably tailored Socialist leader Pierre Mauroy, who is now the new President's Premier. If anything, Mitterrand's assessment rings even more true today. While Mitterrand stayed secluded, Mauroy (pronounced Mawr-wah) led the party's campaign, winning the confidence of voters with his calm advocacy of socialism and the image of a practical man more interested in solving problems than in spinning utopian visions. Says Mauroy: "To change society, you have to reject the illusion of revolution."

Mauroy, 52, has been equally reassuring as the new regime starts to make good on the Socialists' far-reaching campaign promises. Two weeks ago, he held his first meeting with France's largest employers' association to discuss a 35-hour work week. Mauroy promised the worried businessmen that "the shorter week must not entail an increase in production costs." One Socialist aim is eventually to integrate private schools into the public system. But Mauroy asserts: "There will be no state monopoly in education. We will have an open dialogue with private schools, and they will be free to reject our proposals. There will be no plundering." He has adopted the same conciliatory attitude toward further socialization of French medicine, nationalization of key industries, and other bugbears of nonleftist voters.

The grandson of a woodcutter and the son of a schoolteacher, Mauroy recalls that "we lived in equality--the equality of penury." He grew up in the working-class village of Haussy, near Lille, in northern France, where the main event of the week was the Sunday parade of the socialists. "At the age of eight," says Mauroy, "I already knew the Internationale."

At 22, while attending a teachers' college, he became national secretary of France's socialist youth organization. In 1963, with a dislike of ideological hairsplitting and a talent for creating unity, he became a member of his party's executive board. By then he had also built a power base in the labor unions.

In 1965, seeking a presidential candidate who would draw together all branches of the fractious party, Mauroy and his fellow socialists hit upon Mitterrand, who appeared to Mauroy to be a "man of destiny." But that year Mitterrand was soundly defeated by Charles de Gaulle for the presidency, and a close working relationship between the intellectual and the pragmatist did not form until the Socialists' 1971 reunification congress.

By then, Mauroy was deputy mayor of Lille and leader of the strong northern federation of the party. Mauroy helped make Mitterrand the party's first secretary, and in return, Mitterrand made Mauroy his No. 2. Mauroy was a key negotiator of the "common program" that the Socialists worked out with the Communists in a failed bid for power.

Mauroy's only real moment of friction with Mitterrand came in 1979. Impatient with the Socialists' slowness in breaking the alliance with the Communists, Mauroy, by then the mayor of Lille, briefly promoted Michel Rocard as the party's next presidential nominee. But when Mitterrand announced he would run again, Mauroy loyally swung back into line.

The aloof and enigmatic Mitterrand has long admired Mauroy's practical political skills and seemingly infinite patience. Indeed, Mitterrand has confided to friends on several occasions that "some day Mauroy will end up President of the Republic." Maybe so, but the man who once declared that "socialists cannot in 100 days change the ideology and culture of 100 years of capitalism" has plenty of work to do for his comrade-in-arms right now.

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