four days later 100,000 workers were already involved. On 4 June the first Popular Front Government was formed, with FIO leader Leon Blum at its head, Way should the Radicals the major bourgeois party in France, who had held governmental office for three decades - form an alliance with The two workers parties? During the early 1930s France had been rocked simultaneously by an economic crisis and a series of political scandals. One of the effects of this crisis and the devaluation of the frane was the desertion of the Radicals' petty bourgeois base to the far right - to organisations such as the Croix-de-Feu, which claimed 712,000 members.
In January 1934 a huge scandal brought down the Radical Government of Daladier, A speculator, Alexander Starisky, with the help of two Ministers in the Government, had been profiting from false bills and bonds. Stavisky was found with a bullet in the head. For the far night the affair showed how this 'corruption' must be cured with a dose of law and order.
in responding to the actions of the right the working ciass was being drawn in hehind the workers parties. Thus the Radicals, though still in Bosomment, Found themselves squeezed on both sides, The ruling class had other things on its mind, too. Fearful of the threat that Hitler's fascist Germany posed to its interests now that the rearmament programme was underway, il needed new allies - even if that meant the Soviet Union.
PACT An important section of French capital led by the bead of the Banks of Paris and of the Netherlands, Ernest Mercier, also saw the possibility of hig orders and profits in the Soviet market. The affair was sealed in the Stalin-Laval pact of mutual aid of 2 May 1935.
Laval, then Foreign Miniater, became Prime Minister the following month and immediately launched an offensive against the living standards of the working class. On 5 August workers in Toulon went on strike, to be followed in the next days by those in Brest and Tarhes. The CP decounced t Temps noted: The leading circles show no great enthusiasm .... deplore the relative decline of the Radicals. As Trotsky correctly stated at the time: What have the masses done? They have imposed on the Socialists and Communists a Blum Government. Is that not a vote directly against the politics of the Popular Front?
The working class saw this result as a great victory which spurred them on to launch an even more forceful. attack. The first demonstration after the election victory drew 600,000 people, but an even more significant event had already taken place.
At the firm of Breguet, in Le Havre, two workers were sacked. In response the workers occupied the plant - the first time such a tactic had ever been used in France. This factory was typical of the way the owners managed firms it was prohibited to smoke, whistle or make trade union propaganda; but on the other band of the Croix-de-Feu were distributed freely inside the works.
Within two days the workers had won the reinstatement of the two sacked men, plus two days full pay to cover lost wages due to the occupation. The repercussions of this struggle were enormous. On 26 May occupations began elsewhere, including the huge Renault plant. The first wave came to an end during the bank holiday- Whitsun weekend, but by 2 June 200,000 workers were on strike and the Renault plant had been reoccupied, As soon as Blum took office, however, he asked the workers to be paticot, Humanite, the daily paper of the CP, meanwhile ran a banner headline: "Discipline will ensure success'. But the workers were not in the mood for patience and discipline - they had old scores to settle with the bosses and the system that had held them under for so long.
By 7 June there were two million on strike, and the owners opened negotiations with the Blum Governnent. Realising the potential dangers of this revolutionary situation, the ruling class was prepared to make some rapid concessions: a 15 per cent pay increase: trade union recognition in the factories, no victimisations.
Bum and the bosses were happy. they grew from less than a million to nearly five million members. The CP's membership went up from in 1938.
Instead of using this strength to ber of nationalisations (of the copies of the joumal the construction of a front for all French people against the menace increasingly misled and confased in fact made the fiest call for nonthe Francoists of crises with the SFIO and the CP capitulating before the threat" of HEAVY PRICE 'national interest'. Some Tactories got off the ground.
by the ruling class when it had its the French capitalist system once and for all durine June 1936 But the rot had already ser in.
push forward working class interests, the retoratists deferred to the bourgeoisie at every turn. A small numrailways, for instance), were carried out, but when it came to dealing with the banks and the gold and money markets the CP opposed any action. supported it.
The CP's major interest became of Hitler. The working class became especially when the Popular Front refused to send arms to the Kepublicans during the Civil War in Spain, and Intervention at a time when Italy and Germany were pouring in supplies to As a result the Popular Front war. Finally, on 7 April 1938, the last Popular Front Government resigned. Diladier, leader of the Radicals, was back at the head of a new government with the backing of the conservatives The 40-hour week was ended in the were reoccupie and finally the CP called a one day general strike for 21 Novemher. But the troops were sent in; the occupations were smashed; and the general strike collapsed before it A mass exodus took place from the unions. By 1939 they had lost three million members. The concessions mad back to the wall in June 1936 were now seized back. A heavy price was being paid by the working class for the refusal of its leaders to challenge Forty years ago this month the French working class launched a strugggle that shook French capitalism to the core. The events of June 1936 prompted Trotsky to write an article entitled "The French Revolution Has Begun'. And so it had, but it was to be betrayed — as the working class in Germany had been three years earlier - by the actions of the Communist Party, Following the dictates of the Stalinised Third International.
Within the space of a few weeks the French CP turned full circle, It stopped denouncing the social democrats as 'social fascists' and supported the establishment of the As the Italian CP today takes as its symbol the Italian
Popular Front/Italy 7
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Popular Front, including the major bourgeois party, the * Radicals. Far from opposing military service, they actively