THE FRENCH POPULAR FRONT 1936: CP clashes with Blum over Spanish Civil War

Leon Blum's Popular Front government was quickly faced in the summer of 1936 with a financial crisis. The flight of capital from France forced it to devalue the franc and made it increasingly dependent upon Britain for economic, and political, support.

The Communist Party voted for the devaluation, which it had always opposed, in order not to split the Popular Front and bring abouts its defeat in parliament.

The boost which the devaluation was expected to give to French exports proved to be short-lived. The concessions made to the working class after the May-June wave of strikes and sit-ins meant that costs rose and these were passed on in rising prices. Imports became dearer and this in turn. helped push up the cost of living. The franc remained a weak currency on the foreign exchanges and the bankers organized runs which kept it under constant pressure.

The flight from the franc angered and frightened middle- class people, especially the rentiers and small capitalists who saw the value of their savings diminished. They blamed not only the working class, but also Blum for capitulating to the workers, as they saw it. This feeling grew among the radical allies of the Socialist and Communist Parties inside the Popular Front. There was increasing pressure on Blum from the right.

The evolution of the situation made nonsen ie of CP secretary Maurice Thorez's attempt to launch a French Front. The kind of people to whom Thorez made his appeal shifted rapidly to the right ana miadie-class support Ior the Popular Front diminished. came from workers new to politics, who saw it as the most determined advocate of their interests and assumed that it was a revolutionary party. It consolidated its grip on the working-class suburbs of Paris and in other industrial areas where the Socialist Party was not deeply entrenched. In most areas, therefore, it became the main working-class The central leadership around Thorez had been hand-picked by Stalin and the Communist International in the early 1930s and it remained completely faithful to the Moscow line. The Party built up, in turn, a powerful bureaucracy • which imposed a tight discipline on the membership.

the class into les 1936 thousands of workers, attracted by the aspirations of the 1917 October Revolution and believing that socialism was being built in Russia, were trained in the doctrines and methods of Stalinism. Thorez became the 'French Stalin' and a personality cult was built up around him which assumed nauseous proportions.

At the same time the Party strengthened its position in the trade union. The Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) grew rapidly during the strikes and powerful unions were built up in the more advanced industries where the Party was already strong and the old-style unionists had never had much support. As new officials were appointed, most of them held Party cards and carried out faithfully the policy laid down by Thorez.

Paid officials it had in the unions gave the Party hundreds of organizers and propagandists. In addition it controlled many local councils which had jobs at their disposal, many of which went to the Party faithful, It had a big youth movement, a special women's organization, an ex-servicemen's association and organizations for teachers and intellectuals. Circulation of the Party Press flourished.

The Party presented itself as the best defender of the Popular Front, became a fervent advocate of French nationalism and of a peace front between the Soviet Union and the so-called "peace-loving' capitalist countries, especially Britain and France.

It was on foreign policy that the Party first clashed sharply with Blum. In July 1936 the Civil War broke out in Spain. The workers fought back against the military insurrection and the struggle evoked a tremendous response in France.

The Stalinist aim in Spain was to support the bourgeois