Mendès-France, Pierre Isaac Isadore (1907–1982)

French centre-left politician. His premiership, July 1954–February 1955, secured France's negotiated withdrawal from Indochina in August 1954, the granting of political autonomy to France's Tunisian protectorate, and a major package of economic reforms, introducing a regional dimension to economic planning and also a value-added tax. Such controversial policies combined with his Jewish background to make him the target of anti-Semitic attacks from the far right (paralleling Léon Blum's experience in the 1930s).

A long-serving radical member of the French parliament 1932–40 and 1945–58, Mendès-France had served in the Free French Airforce 1942–43 before being appointed minister of finance in de Gaulle's provisional government of May 1944–May 1945. He opposed de Gaulle's return to government in 1958, campaigning against the constitution of his new Republic. A founding member of the new-left Unified Socialist Party (PSU) in 1960, he was fleetingly drawn into the political foreground when he addressed a mass meeting of students and strikng workers in Charlety stadium during the events of May 1968.

In the 1950s Mendès-France sought to ‘break the mould’ of governmental instability, using radio and the press to appeal over the heads of the parties and win public support for modernizing France's economy and her republican institutions. But he was only to serve once as prime minister under the Fourth Republic, for just seven months and seven days.