Jacques Chaban-Delmas

Jacques Chaban-Delmas (7 March 1915 to 10 November 2000) was a French Gaullist politician born Jacques Michel Pierre Delmas in Paris, who took the name Chaban from his nom de guerre in the Resistance, where he became a general of brigade and took part in the Paris insurrection of August 1944. He was Mayor of Bordeaux from 1947 to 1995 and a deputy for the Gironde between 1946 and 1997, and he presided over the National Assembly three times. He held several ministries under the Fourth Republic, including Public Works and Defence, and after 1958 backed the Fifth Republic constitution. As Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou from 1969 to 1972 he promoted a programme he called a new society, built on dialogue between social forces, with reforms in social welfare, a legal aid scheme and relaxed state control of the media. Conservative Gaullists thought him too progressive, a tax controversy and a dispute with Pompidou followed, and he was forced to resign. He lost the 1974 presidential election on the first ballot with 15.10 percent of the vote.