THE FRENCH POPULAR FRONT 1937: The role of the Radical Party

In the coalition of parties which made up the Popular Front in France in 1936-1937, a decisive role was played by the Radical Party. The alliance of the reformists and the Stalinists of the Communist Party with this party of the imperialist ruling class chained the working class to the defence of the capitalist social order.

The alliance with the Radicals was represented as an alliance with the middle class. As CP secretary Maurice Thorez put it: we must win the middle classes before the fascists do. But the Radical Party, as Leon Trotsky pointed out many times in his writings on the events in France, represented not the petty bourgeoisie, but their exploiters.

"To realize a genuine alliance between the workers and the peasants,' he wrote in 1938, 'is not possible except by teaching the petty bourgeoisie how to emancipate themselves from the Radical Party, how to cast off once and for all its yoke from their necks. Meanwhile the Popular Front acts in a directly opposite manner; entering into this "front" Socialists and Communists Fary and thus hap Radical take uDon themselves the Party and thus help it in this way to exploit and betray the masses' In the elections of May 1936, many seats were won by • the Radical Party because its electoral allies of the Popular Front stood down on the second ballot.

When the strike movement raised the spectre of revolution, Socialist Party leader Leon Blum and Thorez vied with each other in demonstrating to these capitalist allies that they had no intention of leading the working class to phe existing social order. power, but were upholders of After the strike movement had been brought to an end with the help of the Communist Party the employers began to recover their confidence. As Trotsky put it: "The Popular Front, having fulfilled its role as a brake, now represents nothing more for the bourgeoisie than a useless hindrance.' Apologists for the Communist Party speak of the period as one of great gains for the working class and claim that the Popular Front averted the danger of fascism in France. This is false.

A recent Stalinist historian dealing with the period makes a tell-tale claim. Jean Bruhat writes in 'Le Front Populaire' (Editions Sociales, 1972):

'Emerging from a long and difficult period of preparation and formation, with the Popular Front the Communist Party became-and that definitively—a fundamental part of French political life. It became the testamentory executor of a certain number of progressive national traditions.' It is on these grounds that the Communist Party presents itself today as a responsible party, opposed to adventures, a respectable part of the left coalition with Mitterand's Socialist Party-which stands to the right of Blum-and the rump of so-called 'left' Radicals, who, even less than their forebears in 1936, can be claimed to represent the middle class.

The claim that the Popular Frost put paid to the fascist danger in France is equally spurious, though Bruhat makes it an important part of his assist danger in there a no until after the ending of the strikes. The fascist leagues had been dissolved and new parties, Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Français and De La Rocque's Parti Social Français, had only just been formed.

It is true, of course, that considerable subsidies were received by these parties after May-June 1936. More dangerous was the notorious Cagoulard plot revealed in November 1937, based on an underground organization which had close contact with the administration and the army, including the secret service, called CSAR (Secret Committee for Revolutionary Action).

Preparations had been carefully laid for the taking of power by armed force. Dozens of arms caches were discovered, as well as underground cells for prisoners and lists of those who were to be rounded up. In September 1937 it organized an explosion at the headquarters of the French employers' confederation, CGPF. The right-wing Press blamed the Communist Party.

Although the Cagoulard plot was discovered, details of the police findings were soon stifled. Many of those concerned later turned up in the ranks of Vichy. It was after the defeat and during the Nazi occupation that the fascists came into their own. They provided the forces for the dreaded 'milices' which did the Gestapo's dirty work in tracking down underground workers and murdering many of them.

To claim that the Popular Front enabled France to avoid fascism is a travesty. It is only true in so far as the bourgeoisie did not need to take the gamble of a resort to fascism while the Popular Front itself was holding back

Leon (New £1.65 Spanish Revolution' By! Trotsky. Pathfinder Press York). Price {4.15 cloth. paperback.

Leon Trotsky's writings on the Spanish Revolution make an imperishable contribution to the theoretical heritage of Marxism. It is timely that they should be made available in English when their lessons again be.