divide the country along regional and linguistic lines. On 13 March, Eyskens traveled to Pregny to attempt to encourage Leopold to abdicate. Paul Van Zeeland and Spaak attempted to broker a new agreement by which Leopold would abdicate in favour of his son. On 15 April 1950, Leopold announced that he was willing to temporarily delegate his authority. Many within the PSC–CVP realised that, despite the referendum's result, their party's lack of a parliamentary majority would undermine their ability to build a national reconciliation around the King as long as their Liberal coalition partners and Socialist opponents were unwilling to accept the King's return. Leopold's return to Belgium On 29 April 1950, Charles dissolved parliament pending fresh elections. His intention was probably to prevent the formation of a PSC–CVP government under Van Zeeland, a staunch Leopoldist, which would lead to the return of the King without further discussion. The following election produced an absolute PSC–CVP majority in both Chamber and Senate, and a new single-party government under Jean Duvieusart was formed. One of the first acts of the Duvieusart government was to introduce a bill bringing the "impossibility to reign" to an end. On 22 July 1950, Leopold returned to Belgium for the first time since June 1944 and resumed his functions. General strike and abdication In 1949, the FGTB–ABVV voted a special budget of ten million Belgian francs to establish a Committee of Common Action (Comité d'action commune) aimed at supporting strike action taken in event of the King's return. The union took the lead in the opposition which emerged in the summer of 1950. André Renard, a Walloon trade union leader, called for "insurrection" and "revolution" in the newspaper La Wallonie shortly after the King's return in July 1950. Modern historians have noted that "the smell of revolution was on the air" as Walloon nationalists called for the immediate secession of Wallonia and the creation of a republic. The general strike of 1950 began in the coal mining centres of Hainaut and quickly spread. Workers were soon on strike across Wallonia, Brussels, and, to a lesser extent, Flanders. The port of Antwerp was one of the key sites affected and the country was virtually paralysed. On 30 July, four workers were shot dead by the Gendarmerie at Grâce-Berleur, near Liège and the violence intensified. Staunch Leopoldists in the Government called for a stronger stance but found themselves in