The confrontation with the Popular Front has long marked French
working-class culture. June 36 and then May 68 revived an imaginary ofstruggle whose antecedents can be found in the Commune of 1871 or the
revolts of 1848. One of the deceptions of the republican vision of our
history was to attribute these "failed revolutions" to necessary stages
of social evolution: social gains. With the first paid holidays, it
draped the struggles in "just rewards", as if to better usurp the often
radical content of factory occupations. Throughout this period, the
discourse of the SFIO and the PC was to fight a revolutionary situation.
The unions launched the slogan of "knowing how to end a strike".
The hopes raised by June 36 were comparable to those raised by the
events cited above. During the period when the SFIO held parliamentary
power, its policy was to do everything to achieve a "time of pause". At
the same time, it positioned itself in front of the employers as the
only force capable of holding the helm. It used an entire state
apparatus to repress those who overflowed the CGT in which reformists
and Stalinists were reunited at the time of the events.[1]This pragmatic
transformation of social democracy took it, in three years, from the
"Popular Front" to the "French National Front" and then to the "war
front", until, finally, with the same assembly that led the Popular
Front, it voted full powers to Pétain...[2]
The Popular Front's rise to power: promises, tactics
On February 6, 1934, the fascist leagues (Croix de feu, Camelots du Roy,
Action française or veterans' organizations) marched more than 100,000
people through Paris to protest the dismissal of the police prefect
Chiappe. They tried to take the National Assembly, but were pushed back
by the cops. During the night, violent clashes took place on the Place
de la Concorde between the fascists and the police and young workers.
If, on the parliamentary side, the leagues succeeded in bringing down
the radical government of Daladier[3]and imposing a reactionary
government around Laval, the days of February 1934 initiated, through
the defeat of the leagues, a feeling of unity in the working class.
This unity was based on the rather vague basis of anti-fascism but above
all on the collective feeling of a balance of power which was certainly
the starting point of the factory occupations of June 36. Following the
persistent mobilizations which followed February 6, 34, the SFIO and the
Communist Party tried to absorb this new balance of power. To have the
Franco-Russian agreements recognized, the USSR was satisfied with the
Laval government in France which subscribed to them. So much so that to
win electoral victories and parliamentary weight, the SFIO and the PC
turned to the Radical Party, representing the middle classes, itself
very favorable to these agreements between States.
The role that Blum played, subsequently, in the campaign for the
elections of May 36, is quite representative of the positioning of
French social democracy. Between bourgeois radicalism and national
communism, Blum inserted a republican and Jacobin political discourse of
defense of democratic freedoms "conquered by the people of
France."[4]The Popular Front thus brought together the Communist Party,
the SFIO and the Radical Party. The links between the PC and the SFIO
were essentially made by the Revolutionary Left - whose main animator
was Marceau Pivert, with the presence of Daniel Guérin[5], who, since
1935, had been trying to develop a revolutionary class discourse within
the SFIO.
The union leadership of the CGT, around the reformist Léon Jouhaux, for
its part favored a rapprochement with the radical party by holding a
discourse of protection of the middle classes. The communist party
advocated an alliance with the radical-socialist party to "bring to
power a popular government." The argument seemed weak, since this
radical party had compromised itself in an antisocial and reactionary
government that had seriously damaged its prestige. To prevent the
middle classes from being attracted by the sirens of fascists, the SFIO
declared that it wanted to spare them by supporting these same
radical-socialists. But, at that time, the stakes were different. The
interest of the communist party was that of Moscow. Stalin was looking
for a government that could support the Franco-Soviet agreements of the
time against Hitler's Germany, and especially extend them to the
military level. This was refused by the Laval government. In this
perspective, for the Stalinists, the radical-socialists seemed more
reliable than the socialists. This also explains why, when the Popular
Front government fell in 1937, the Communist Party did little other than
allow the radical governments that followed to hold on. Thus, a large
part of the campaign had to be conducted only on a minimalist basis of
parliamentary alliances. In defending the republican regime, Blum
advocated an exercise of power within the established and constitutional
frameworks. For the social democrats, this orientation was justified as
a defensive and preventive policy in the face of the fascist danger.
Anti-fascism thus made it possible to be the tree that hides the forest,
since it absolutely did not call into question the functioning of
capitalism and even contributed to its development.
The events of May-June stem from the malaise caused by the gap between
political declarations and the aspiration of the working class for a
real transformation of daily life. It is this malaise that the
government resulting from the electoral victory of May 36[6]must face.
It was this malaise that social democracy and the communist party were
going to have to repress.
Looking for financial situation for middle class...
The electoral victory made the working class increasingly impatient,
who, in addition to being robbed of their jobs, were subjected to
constant harassment and violence. "For any fault, the foreman could take
two cents an hour. Some days, when you arrived in the morning, the
foreman would tell you: "There's no work, you'll come back tomorrow."
However, there were guys who came from far away. The next day, however,
you had to stay until 7 or 8 o'clock (...)".[7]However, Léon Blum did
not want to engage in a power struggle: "I prefer to hope that the month
of May passes without making an already terrible financial situation too
much worse"; and to immediately clarify the objective of his government:
to act within the current regime. The problem is whether it is possible
to extract from this social regime the amount of well-being, order,
security, and justice that it can provide for the mass of workers and
producers. Thus, the leader of the SFIO seeks neither to abolish a class
regime nor to weaken it; he seeks at best to adjust it in order to
strengthen it. Between the electoral victory and the beginning of the
mandate, the interests that the SFIO sought to protect were not those of
the workers, but rather those of finance.
...but finds determination of the working class
The real beginning of the formidable month of June began on the first
day of May. While May 1, 1935 had been a big flop, May 1, 1936 was going
to be a big success. Faced with the promises of the SFIO already called
into question by the declarations of its leadership, a part of the
working class wanted to make it known that any balance of power would be
established in the streets, and that it did not intend to give carte
blanche to a government that did not respect its interests. While Blum
and his cronies were meditating on the financial situation, the workers
of the Bréguet factory in Le Havre occupied their workplace to
officially protest against the attitude of the head of personnel. In two
days, they won their case. The metallurgists of Nieuport in Issy, Farman
in Billancourt and Hotchkiss followed suit. On May 27, the Renault
factories experienced the first walkouts.
It was the Communist Party that put the brakes on for the first time,
signing pathetic agreements to stop a movement that was beyond its
control from the start. L'Humanité on May 30th ran a headline with a
huge lie: "Victory at Renault".
What had just been born was a feeling of collective strength and an
aspiration to change things. Social democracy, which wanted to find
unity to gain power, found itself caught between a growing social
movement and a desire for class collaboration.
The bosses ask them not to wait
The Popular Front had not even been inaugurated when, on June 4 and 5,
there were already a million strikers and all the factories in the Paris
region were occupied. Marceau Pivert assured in an open forum in Le
Populaire on May 27 that "Everything is possible"; Marcel Gitton in the
editorial of L'Humanité on May 29, said that "Everything is not
possible" and recognized that the Popular Front's program was not of a
nature to frighten anyone.
But the increase in the number of strikes and occupations frightened the
employers. And it was they who sought out the social democrats to ask
them to take over the government. The latter hastened to do so with
unwavering loyalty to class collaboration. Léon Blum recounts: "On June
4, I arrived at the Élysée with my colleagues around 7 p.m. (...) Just
as we were about to leave, Mr. Albert Lebrun told us: 'I have a request
to convey to you from Mr. Sarraut, President of the Council, Minister of
the Interior, and from Mr. Frossard, Minister of Labor. They consider
the situation so serious that they ask you not to wait until tomorrow
morning for the transfer of powers.'" They urge you both to go to the
Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labor this evening at 9
o'clock, so that there is not a single moment of interruption in the
passage of services. They do not want to remain in charge of an interim
in the current circumstances any longer (...) The workers have
confidence in you." (...) I did what the President of the Republic asked
me to do, and which, from the point of view of parliamentary
correctness, was quite questionable (...). What was the state of mind of
the Head of State was also the state of mind of the employers (...). Mr.
Lambert-Ribot, with whom I had always maintained friendly relations, had
me contacted by two mutual friends, by two different intermediaries, so
that, as soon as possible, without losing a minute, I could try to
establish contact between on the one hand the supreme employers'
organizations, such as the Comité des forges and the Confédération
générale de la production, and on the other hand the Confédération
générale du travail. Without a doubt, I would have tried what was called
the Matignon agreement myself. But I must tell the truth that the first
initiative came from the big bosses. (...) The counterpart was the
evacuation of the factories. From that day on, the representatives of
the CGT said to the representatives of the big bosses, who were at
Matignon: "We undertake to do everything we can, and we will do it. But
we warn you right away: we are not sure of succeeding. When you are
dealing with a movement like this, a tide like this, you have to give it
time to spread out. And then, it is now that you will perhaps regret
having systematically taken advantage of the years of deflation and
unemployment to exclude all the union activists from your factories.
They are no longer there. They are no longer there to exercise over
their comrades the authority that would be necessary to carry out our
orders." And I can still see Mr. Richemont, who was sitting to my left,
lowering his head and saying: "It is true, we were wrong." That was the
state of mind at Matignon (...), at the time when I took power. What was
I supposed to do?[8]
The Matignon Accords: June 7, 1936
To speed up negotiations as quickly as possible, Léon Blum, who was
installed as President of the Council on June 6, 1936, brought together
the following day a delegation from the General Confederation of French
Employers (CGPF) and representatives of the CGT, 4 out of 6 of whom were
socialists. There were then a million and a half strikers. Blum
announced that reforms would be undertaken through legislation
(collective contracts, paid leave and 40-hour week), but that the
general clauses of the collective contracts still had to be
established[9]and the demands for wage increases resolved.
The employers immediately accepted the establishment of collective
employment contracts guaranteeing freedom of association, committed to
not taking any sanctions for strikes and to increasing wages by 7 to 15%.
For its part, the CGT accepted the employers' proposal to elect workers'
delegates in all establishments with more than 10 employees, and to
exercise the right to unionize without it resulting in acts contrary to
the law. It also committed to asking the strikers to return to work.
The next day, the left-wing press rushed to get people back to work as
the Matignon agreements had provided for. L'Humanité headlined: "Victory
is assured!"
But the strike movement, instead of ebbing, intensified in the following
days. And whereas, previously, many occupations had taken up the demands
of the Popular Front (paid leave, 40-hour week), the occupations that
continued or began after the Matignon agreements focused on less
specific demands, but more focused on a transformation of daily life.
One could read in front of Renault-Billancourt: "We made soviets for
less than that." "
A week after the agreements, there were two million strikers.
Joyful and determined occupations
In the factories, there was a festive atmosphere. Card games, songs,
concerts, theater... A joy of fighting that marked the collective
consciousness of the workers. The strikes affected the mines, the
automobile industry, the textile industry, the construction industry,
the food industry, and above all, an important phenomenon in the history
of the working class, the world of employees: department stores,
insurance companies, haute couture houses, cafes, theaters, cinemas and
large cabarets. The managers of small and medium-sized businesses,
stunned to see, for the first time, their very family-run "houses" run
by strikers, panicked and demanded that they be evacuated manu militari,
to enforce property rights. The prefects of Salengro, Minister of the
Interior of the Popular Front, were unable to arbitrate or impose
negotiation in the smallest businesses, to the point that Daladier,
Minister of Defense, brought in a few regiments. But while arousing
serious concerns among the middle classes and their representatives, the
strikers found sympathy among many other social classes: small
shopkeepers were often generous in the collections organized for the
strikers; church leaders spoke of the deficiencies of the established
social order[10]; cops affirmed that they would not enter occupied
factories. In a few weeks, the working class, through its determination,
imposed conditions favorable to a revolutionary movement. In his
memoirs, Marceau Pivert would write: "Yes, everything was possible!" A
proletariat in full action, an understanding peasantry, intellectuals
and technicians devoted to the cause of the people, ardently pacifist
and revolutionary veterans, small shopkeepers eager to serve workers'
solidarity, rank and file, in the police and in the army, in absolute
communion of ideas with the anti-fascist fighters, a trade union
movement suddenly standing on its feet and revealing to itself its
strength, its effectiveness, what did we not have in our hands?
You have to know how to end a strike
On June 11, when rumors were circulating that many workers were
discussing mass walkouts from factories and then restarting them, Thorez
stated at an information meeting of communists in the Paris region: "We
do not yet have the sympathy and support of the vast majority of rural
workers. In some cases, we would even risk alienating some of the
sympathies of the petty bourgeoisie and peasants of France." And he
pronounced the decisive words: "We must know how to end a strike as soon
as satisfaction has been obtained. We must even know how to agree to
compromise."
Just as de Gaulle would call on the provincial CRS and tanks in 1968,
the Popular Front government sent platoons of mobile guards to the Paris
region. At the same time, it seized the Trotskyist newspaper La Lutte
Ouvrière, which ran the headline across its front page: "In the
factories and the streets, power to the workers."
However, during the second half of June, sit-down strikes continued to
snowball until they affected agricultural workers, particularly on the
large farms of the Paris Basin.
But the strikes then subsided and Salengro, still frightened, was able
to assure on June 26: "Thus ends, without a drop of blood, the most
formidable social conflict that the Republic has known." And a few weeks
later, during the lull of paid holidays: "If tomorrow occupations of
stores, offices, construction sites, factories, farms were attempted,
the government, by all appropriate means, would know how to put an end
to them."
After the summer of paid holidays, occupations resume
Daniel Guérin emphasizes[11], the new occupations everywhere had a very
specific cause: faced with employers who were violating or diverting the
new social laws as best they could, the workers saw no other way to
impose, within the framework of the workshop, respect for their
conquests, than to retaliate with the tactics that had worked wonders in
June.
On September 29, Blum implored the working class to spare him the use of
force. A week later, he took action: 250 cops forced open the door of
the Gourmets chocolate factory in Paris, and after a tough fight
expelled the occupants. A terrible precedent had been set.
Thus, the worst thing was to make the workers believe that the Popular
Front government, with socialist leadership and radical participation,
was in some way their government. As Trotsky[12]pointed out, the workers
were thus unable to recognize the enemy, because he had been disguised
as a friend. Or, as Daniel Guérin writes: "The leaders[of social
democracy]surrounded bourgeois power with a screen that concealed its
true nature, made it unrecognizable, and therefore invulnerable and
indestructible. Because prestigious leaders had installed themselves in
a certain number of ministerial offices, the illusion was to spread that
this State was no longer a class State, but a providential State." The
working class was thus diverted from the objective of saving itself, of
going beyond the stage of a general strike with purely protest-based
factory occupations to transform it into a managerial strike and seek a
form of self-organization.
Jérôme (Strasbourg, September 1999)
Notes:
[1]Since the Tours congress in 1921, a split had occurred between the
CGT ("reformist") led by Jouhaux and the CGTU which was led by members
of the PC. Reunification took place in 1935.
[2]See the article "1940: the socialists say yes to Pétain", published
in Courant Alternatif, special issue no. 2, third quarter 1999.
[3]The Radical Party has nothing to do with the "radicality" of 1999. It
was radical in the sense that, at the beginning of the 20th century, it
sat on the left in Parliament, holding a fiercely anticlerical secular
discourse. It was the party representing the middle classes.
[4]Excerpt from the oath of the SFIO meeting at the Buffalo stadium,
July 14, 1935.
[5]Daniel Guérin, Front populaire, révolution manquée, Babel edition,
"Révolution" collection.
[6]The results of the elections of April 26 and May 3, 1936 gave the
majority to the left (147 elected to the SFIO, 106 to the Radical Party
and 72 to the Communist Party).
[7]Testimony of a non-member worker: "Everyone was fed up, everyone
marched," Critique communiste, special edition summer 1982.
[8]Excerpts from the deposition of Léon Blum before the court of Riom,
February 1942.
[9]What are today the collective agreements.
[10]Thus Mgr Verdier, Cardinal Archbishop of Paris.
[11]Cf. Daniel Guérin, op. cit.
[12]Trotsky, "The Hour of Decision Approaches," La Lutte Ouvrière,
January 6, 1939.
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