Career
He was born at Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine) in a Protestant family, son of the nuclear physicist Yves Rocard, and entered politics as a student leader whilst studying at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (a.k.a. Sciences-Po). He became Chair of the French Socialist Students (linked to the main French Socialist party at the time, the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)), and studied at the École nationale d'administration (ENA), after which he chose to enter the prestigious Inspection des finances. As an anti-colonialist, he went to Algeria and wrote a report regarding the widely ignored refugee camps of the Algerian War (1954–62). This report was leaked to the newspapers Le Monde and France Observateur in April 1959, almost costing Rocard his job.
Having left the SFIO because of Guy Mollet's position towards the Algerian war, he led the dissident Unified Socialist Party (PSU) from 1967 to 1974. He was a prominent figure during the May 68 crisis, supporting the auto-gestionary project. He ran in the 1969 presidential election but obtained only 3.6% of the vote. Some months later, he was elected deputy for the Yvelines département, defeating the former Prime minister Maurice Couve de Murville. He lost his parliamentary seat in 1973, but retook it in 1978.
In 1973–74, he participated in the LIP conflict, selling watches with the workers and participating, behind the scenes, in the attempts to find an employer who would take back the factory, which was on the verge of being liquidated.
In 1974, he joined François Mitterrand and the renewed Socialist Party (PS), which had replaced the old SFIO. Most of the PSU members and a part of the French and Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT) trade union – generally known in France as the non-Marxist, "Second Left" – followed him.
Elected mayor of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in 1977, he led the opposition to Mitterrand inside the Socialist Party (as a candidate of the right-wing of the party). After the defeat of the left at the 1978 legislative election, he tried to take over the leadership of the party. In spite of his alliance with Pierre Mauroy, the number 2 of the PS, he lost the Metz Congress (1979). Being the Socialist Party's most popular politician at the time (including Mitterrand himself), he announced that he would run for president but his "Call of Conflans" did not result in majority support within the PS, and he withdrew his candidacy. Mitterrand was the successful Socialist candidate for the 1981 presidential election.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Michel Rocard's group inside the Socialist Party, known as "les rocardiens", advocated a re-alignment of French socialism through a clearer acceptance of the market economy, more decentralisation and less state control. It was largely influenced by Scandinavian social democracy, and stood in opposition to Mitterrand's initial agenda of nationalization, programmed in the 110 Propositions for France. Nonetheless, the "rocardiens" always remained a minority.
Read more about this topic: Michel Rocard
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