POUJADE of the "POUJADISTS"

Born: Dec. 1, 1920, in Saint-Cere (pop. 2,547) in France's Massif Central, youngest of an architect's seven children. Baptized Pierre.

Early Life: Quit Roman Catholic parochial school at 16, worked as apprentice typographer, grape picker, stevedore, professional bicycle racer, played football. Briefly a member (at 13) of Jacques Doriot's Fascist Parti Populaire Francais.

World War II: Discharged from air force; after fall of France, fled to Spain, en route to North Africa to join Free French, was imprisoned for six months. Ill in Morocco, he was nursed by black-haired Yvette Ceva, Algiers-born daughter of a French colon, married her in 1943 (they now have four children). They moved to England, where Pierre trained with the R.A.F.

Tke Struggle: Back in Saint-Cere the Poujades set up a small book-and-stationery shop, scraped along on sales of tourist postcards. Elected to municipal council on a Gaullist ticket, Poujade developed a gift for homespun speechmaking.

Tke Movement: In July 1953, some 30 Saint-Cere merchants, notified that the tax inspector was about to examine their books, appealed to Councilor Poujade, who formed a committee that threw out the tax inspectors, later organized resistance against the police. ("I cheat on my taxes. I always have. I couldn't get by otherwise.") Poujade formed the Union for the Defense of Shopkeepers and Artisans, which quickly spread throughout France. In March last year, heading a national movement of 800,000 supporters, he called a taxpayers' strike, took his fight for fiscal reform to the National Assembly, where he sat in the gallery brazenly directing the debate, won concessions from Premier Faure's government (TIME, April 11). Setting up headquarters in a villa near

Paris, he enlarged his campaign into a general attack on French political institutions.

Poujadisms (uttered genially, sentences punctuated with roars of laughter): "We want to put new blood into our Republican institutions. You wouldn't have to blow very hard right now to overturn them ... If France had been governed by an honest group of men, this movement would not exist today ... I would like to shoot everyone who has not informed the country about the financial situation . . . We should follow Portugal's example and practice a vigilant type of nationalism . . . Call me a Fascist if you like--after all, they had some good ideas."

Tke Oath: Picking candidates for election to the National Assembly, Poujade made them take an oath, "If I am elected I solemnly promise never to take a position on an issue which has not been approved by the Central National Committee. If I betray this oath I promise to submit my physical and moral person to the punishments reserved for traitors."

Tke Program: "My boys are in!" shouted a gleeful Poujade last week. He himself did not run for office. At his headquarters villa, he said that the first order of business should be the convocation of Etats Generaux, a throwback to the ancien regime before the French Revolution, when the clergy, the nobility and the lower classes were the three estates who met to advise the King. "They will be formed by delegates of different social classes ... I hope that the government itself will convoke them. I am not so naive as to believe that it will be easy to do. In any case, the Assembly must announce its intentions very quickly. If not, it will collapse." Presumably, the Etats Generaux would then abolish the National Assembly and rule in its stead--though Poujade is characteristically vague about details.

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