1936: The Popular Front strangles the revolution

A giant strike wave confronted Socialist Party leader Leon Blum when he took office as head of a Popular Front govern. ment on June 4, 1936.

By this time most of the factories which had gone back from initial strikes after the victory of the Popular Front at the polls, were out again. That day Renault joined in again and the workers took over the factory. Citröen followed the next day.

By June 5 most of the big stores and chain stores had closed their doors. Newspaper sellers joined the strike and only papers favourable to the Popular Front were obtainable.

Many sections of workers not actually on strike threatened to come out if their demands were not met immediately. They included most workers in the public sector— gas, electricity, water, the Post Office, railways and buses.

In the occupied factories and other places of work, strike committees were elected which undertook the task of organizing security and disciplineprotection of machinery, fire precautions, security guards and supplies for the strikers. Social activities were organized and the strikers enjoyed terrific support from the rest of the population.

There was no doubt at about the illegality of occupations, which were challenge to the bosses' property rights and authority. One reason for them, of course, was to prevent the introduction of strike-breakers from among the unemployed. There was no attempt to run the factories nor to turn them into armed fortresses against the government.

But, beginning in a defensive way to win rights of bargaining which few bosses conceded at this time, and to use them to improve wages and conditions, the strikes with occupation took on a more offensive character. On the other hand they suffered from lack of leadership and policy. No General Strike call was issued and it was more a case of 12,000 more or less separate strikes in the factories and other workplaces affected.

With thousands of firms closed and the economy virtually paralysed, by late May or early June the whole country was in a ferment. The employers and the bourgeoisie were badly shaken and many believed that the revolution had come. The strike had become the dominating fact in the lives of working people and solidarity with the strikers occupying the factories was organized in every area.

It is important to stress that the strikes were not called by the trade unions or by the Communist Party. They were very much a spontaneous response of the working class and evidence of a powerful striving for power which, although not taking conscious form, had been developing ever since the threat of a fascist dictatorship had loomed on the horizon in February 1934.

As Trotsky put it: "The French Revolution has begun.' But it could only be carried through to completion if a revolutionary leadership came to the fore. The Communist Party did everything it could to block and limit the movement, although its members were necessarily often in the lead.

The party, had a strong position in the leadership of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) which had been reunified in March under conditions where communist officials held a decisive position in the unions concerned with large-scale and mass production industry. ization. They played a leading part in the strike committees.

No doubt many of these communists saw the strikes as a step towards revolution. Others, closer to the apparatus, only put themselves in the leadership of the strikes in order to keep them under control and because otherwise they would lose all influence over their fellow workers.

Moreover, Party members were generally the most experienced and best trained in dealing with the organizational problems which arose out of the strike. They were able to impose the discipline so necessary for the success of the movement, but also capable of stifling it on orders from the Party leadership.

The journalist Alexander Worth, who was on the spot, wrote that the Communist Party leaders 'were becoming greatly alarmed by the extent of the strikes. Communist deputies could be heard complaining "Nous sommes débordés" [we have been outflanked. Others blamed the Trotskyists for it-though as a Socialist deputy from Marseilles remarked, in attacking the communists a few days later: "There aren't ten Trotskyists in the whole of Marseilles"?

Meanwhile the Blum government had concentrated units of the militarized police units, the 'Gardes Mobiles' in the Paris region and the other main strike centres. The Communist Party called for negotiations