Defferre, Gaston Paul Charles (1910-1986)

French socialist politician. As interior minister 1981-86 he introduced a major decentralization and regionalization package (the ‘Defferre Laws’), breaking with the French Left's Jacobin tradition of reliance on a strong, centralized state.

Based in Marseilles, its mayor and then deputy 1945-86, Defferre sought to modernize and adapt his party, the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), to the Fifth Republic through an alliance with the centre against the Gaullists in the mid-1960s. This attempt failed. From 1971 he was eclipsed by François Mitterrand in the re-founded Socialist Party (PS), following his very weak showing on the first ballot of the 1969 presidential elections.