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From International Socialism, No.56, March 1973, pp.15-17.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
‘The French revolution has begun’, wrote Trotsky [1] on 9 June, 1936. The great events of that period have been largely ignored, even in France. Recently, interest has revived. The attempt by the French Communist Party to recreate the Popular Front is one reason; the great strikes of May 1968 are another.
The background to June 1936 is the depression (which hit France later than Britain), and the rise of fascism. The index of industrial production (1913 – 100) fell from 140 in 1930 to 94 in 1935. Unemployment rose steadily while wages were pushed down. The hourly wage index fell from 755 in 1930 to 710 in 1935. In the Gard Departement in the South, miners who in 1929 were getting 30F for six tubs were getting 28F for 12 tubs in 1936. In the same area engineering workers’ earnings fell from 35F to 25F per day in this period. Textile workers, or those in large stores, sometimes got less than 2F an hour. [2]
The fascists’ attempt to overthrow the government and ‘the system’ by 1934 coincided with Moscow’s revision of its policy of non-cooperation with the social-democrats. The consequent last-minute decision of the Communist Party and the CGTU [3] to join the strike called by the Socialists on 12 February ensured the success of the action. Four and a half million workers struck. In Paris the two demonstrations, coming from different directions, met and mingled into a single mass down the wide Cours de Vincennes; 150,000 people chanted ‘Unity’.
As Stalin moved towards a policy of alliance with the ‘democratic’ imperialist powers, the CP broadened its policy from unity of action with the Socialists, to the Popular Front of all who stood for ‘the defence of the interests of the working masses of town and country ... the maintenance of democratic liberties and resistance to the attacks of the fascist bands’. [4] In practice this meant alliance with the Radicals (Conservative liberals), who had participated in governments whose corruption! had been denounced as vigorously by the CP as by the fascists. (On 6 February 1934 the CP had demonstrated around an ambiguous mixture of anti-fascist slogans and anti-corruption slogans identical to those of the fascists themselves.)
Under cover of an alliance with the middle classes, the CP gave its support to the party that represented the hold of big business over the lower middle class and the peasantry; a party that – as the 1936 elections were to prove – was losing support as its traditional supporters moved to the Left – or the Right. The CP halted the Radicals’ decline into impotence. The ‘Rassemblement Populaire’ included such notable defenders of the working masses as the association of ‘Masonic Employers’.
In 1935 Stalin told the reactionary Prime Minister Pierre Laval that he ‘fully approved the policy of national defence carried out by France to maintain its armed forces at an adequate level’. [5] The programme of the ‘Rassemblement’ was a confused mixture of anti-fascism, guarantees of trade-union rights, and social and economic reforms. These included reduction of the working week – amount unspecified; action against unemployment – details unspecified; ‘aid for agriculture’; ‘control of banking’. In drafting the programme, the CP had backed the Radicals’ opposition to the Socialists’ more ambitious reform proposals. But one significant achievement of the early period of the Popular Front was the re-unification of the CGT and the CGTU; from now on France was to have a single mass trade union confederation.
As the elections of 1936 approached, it became clear that the Popular Front was going to win. Between them the workers’ parties and the Radicals had a ‘natural majority’. Only a swing to the Right could defeat them. The municipal elections showed a swing Left. The Right’s only hope was to split off the Radicals, or at least a major section of them. This fact still further increased the determination of the CP to do anything to placate the Radicals. The Popular Front both responded to and encouraged a rising wave of class struggle. 1935 and the beginning of 1936 saw a steady rise in the tempo of industrial disputes. Half a million people demonstrated with the Popular Front parties on 14 July 1935.
On 16 February 1936, the Spanish Popular Front swept into power with a clear majority, unleashing a great wave of action by workers and peasants, at last aware of their own strength. The right-wing press stepped up its campaign against the ‘Bolshevik danger’ lurking behind the French Popular Front. But when the dust cleared on the evening of 3 May, the Popular Front had a decisive majority, 376 seats to 220. But, far more significant the masses had chosen between the parties of the alliance. The Socialists emerged as the largest party, with 146 seats as against 97 before the election; the CP doubled its vote from 783,098 to 1,468,949, and won 72 seats as against 10 (and it was still under-represented). The Radicals and the various right-wing socialist groups dropped from a total of 204 to 147. Millions of voters had deserted the Radicals for the Left; Socialist voters had moved to the Communists.
Everyone, particularly the CP, had expected the Popular Front government to have a Radical premier and majority. But it was Blum, the Socialist leader, who started to put together a government. The CP refused to participate, less from principle than from an openly-expressed desire to avoid embarrassing the government in the eyes of bourgeois opinion.
As Blum proceeded slowly through the rituals of consultation, the various classes of France showed their responses. The volume of capital leaving the country steadily increased. But it was the working class which really moved. On 11 May, workers occupied the Breguet factory in Le Havre in response to two victimisations. They won. The following day a Toulouse factory followed suit; that struggle too was won. But the real start of the movement came with the occupation on 14 May of the great Bloch aircraft factory in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, around demands for improved wages and conditions. Bloch gave in, and one by one Paris engineering factories put in demands and prepared for strikes. The message was reinforced by the presence of a massive contingent of Bloch workers on the 600,000-strong demonstration which commemorated the 1871 Commune on 24 May. Already several Paris engineering factories were on strike, and some occupied, when the 35,000 Renault workers came out four days later.
This was the signal for almost every major engineering plant in the Paris area to move into action. The list of factories occupied by 29 May reads like a Who’s Who of French engineering: Citroen, Fiat, Chausson, Gnome et Rhone ... L’Humanité reported 100,000 out, most of them occupying the factories. And the strikes began to spread outside engineering as workers on the International Exhibition site came out.
On Monday 1 June the movement began to spread to smaller factories. By lunchtime 66 factories were occupied, by evening 150. In the days that followed, the strikes spread rapidly in the chemical industry, textiles, transport, food, printing, furniture and oil. They spread outside Paris, to Lyons and to Lille, where workers hoisted the red flag. Unions and bosses hastened to sign local agreements, and some strikes lasted only a few hours, but others began again within hours of a settlement. By 4 June the movement had paralysed newspaper distribution, restaurants and hotels, locksmiths, jewellers, the clothing trade, gas, building, agriculture; it gripped Lille, Vierzon, Rouen, Brive, Nice, Toulouse, Marseille.
Everywhere the stoppages were distinguished by the participation of the great majority of workers who had never even been unionised, by the use of the occupation tactic, by support from the general population often organised through ‘Popular Front’ municipalities. As the strikes spread, more and more of the population became involved. The sympathy of the lower-middle classes was clearly shown: in the Paris suburb of Pre-St Gervais a shopkeeper supplied the occupied factories with radio sets; in another area the local small shopkeepers gave 15 per cent price reductions to strikers. [6] This sympathy further increased as shop-assistants came out and publicised their starvation wages.
On 4 June Blum finally formed his government. The bourgeoisie had pressed him to hurry so that something could be done. Next day the new premier spoke to the nation, and promised the rapid enactment of social reforms which would satisfy the workers’ main demands. But what were these demands? Many strikes had broken out with no precise demands or with purely local ones. The unions hastened to take control of the movement and to orientate it towards purely economic demands. Thus the main issues emerged as the 40-hour maximum working week with no loss of earnings, paid holidays and the signing of ‘collective contracts’ – the terms of these varying, of course, from industry to industry. In addition the CGT demanded measures for the ‘abnormally low-paid’. At the same time the unions tried to regain control of the movement by declaring official national, or more often regional, strikes around their own demands. In many cases this was a pure formality; most of the mines, factories and sites were already occupied. And individual factories had frequently put demands that went beyond the general targets of the unions.
Between 4 and 7 June the employers acted. Formally it was the government that acted, but Blum was later to explain that the initiative came from the employers’ associations. From tripartite talks came the ‘Matignon agreement’ of 7 June. The employers conceded the major union demands: collective contracts; union rights (a major gain in a country where the closed shop is virtually unknown); no victimisation; general wage rises, ranging from 15 per cent for the lowest-paid to seven percent for the best-paid; and, perhaps most significant in its potential, the setting-up of a system of workers’ delegates to negotiate at factory level. In return the unions were to ensure the end of the occupations where employers accepted the agreement.
But many employers (for example in the big stores) were intransigent. More important, the workers were far from happy with the return to work. Puzzled union officials found that every time they reached agreement on one demand the workers would produce a new one. The workers were moving towards demands of a quite different order; demands which the union officials, if they believed in them at all, had relegated to a distant future – demands for workers’ power. In the occupied factories the workers were beginning to feel their strength. In the assemblies of Paris engineering workers’ delegates they made their feelings quite clear. Meeting after meeting had to postpone a decision, and workers began to press for further action. Two union proposals were rejected, and by 11 June still no agreement had been signed. In building the story was the same.
In some sectors the agreement had the effect of bringing out people who had not believed they could win, and who now learnt the lesson that you win what you fight for. This was the case in insurance, where the occupations began on 8 June, and in a number of provincial towns, notably Bordeaux. In many cases the workers had no precise notion of what to demand or how to organise. Lefranc [7] describes one such strike. Out of 500 employees there was one – inexperienced – member of the CGT and a handful of members of the class-collaborationist CFTC. [8] A decision to occupy was taken without even a proper meeting, but still almost everyone took part. A committee was elected, and a collection provided a taxi to union headquarters, to find out how to draw up a list of demands. Perhaps an extreme case, but a good illustration of the sudden and spontaneous sense of revolt and of power that gripped the French working class.
In the days following Matignon, the strikes continued to spread. The cafe waiters were out, the hotels closed. The movement spread to North Africa. In the occupied factories, professional entertainment was organised by the unions, and the workers staged improvised concerts. All reports agree on the joyous but self-disciplined atmosphere. In some areas committees of delegates from the striking factories, brought together by the union locale [9] of the CGT, organised liaison and joint action – the embryos of Soviets were forming.
By 10 June over two million were on strike. Up till now the CP had encouraged the strikes. It welcomed the Matignon agreement (L’Humanité joined the social-democratic press in headlining it as a ‘victory’), but supported the continuation of strikes to ensure full implementation. CP militants had often been among the most vociferous in rejecting proposed compromises. But as the government began to talk of tough measures, at the same time rushing through laws enforcing the 40-hour week and paid holidays (10, 11 and 12 June) the party shifted. To go on now was to move towards a revolutionary confrontation. On 12 June the government seized all copies of the Trotskyist paper Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), which was calling for ‘power to the workers’. On the same day the CP published a speech of Maurice Thorez to party members containing the famous phrase ‘il faut savoir terminer une grève’ – ‘one must know when to end a strike’. [10] From now on the CP was to spearhead the return to work.
The first major return to work followed an agreement in Paris engineering. The employers made major concessions, notably for the lowest-paid, and the pressure of the CP ensured an almost unanimous acceptance by the factory delegates. One by one other industries settled, with the notable exception of the big stores where strikes dragged on into July. Even during this period, however, new sectors came out. The most important instance was the general extension of the movement in Marseille and the south-east coast; the Nice casino was occupied on 16 June! Thorez went to Marseille to renew his appeal for a return. Although spasmodic strikes (for example, by the seamen on 22 June) continued to break out, the great movement was over. The Popular Front celebrated 14 July with a one million-strong demonstration, but the real fight was over. But the joy and enthusiasm of June was recaptured in the rush of millions of workers to seaside and country on the first holidays they had ever known.
The Popular Front achieved little more in the way of reforms. Limited improvements in agriculture, and the development of state aid for mass sport and culture are the only two that spring to mind. The nationalisation of arms manufacturing, state control over railways, and reforms in banking all aided the ruling class. The government itself lasted only a year, in which time it was forced to devalue the franc, and to enforce a wage pause. It was replaced by a Radical government which in turn was to give way to a Centre-Right coalition. The parliament of 1936 was the same which was to vote full powers to Pétain in 1940.
What of the gains of 1936? By 1938 rising prices had already more than wiped out all that had been won in increased wages. The 40-hour week was fully applied by June 1937, by the end of that year the government was already beginning to pass orders exempting particular industries. By mid-1938 the 40-hour week was only a memory. What remained was the increase in union membership. This, however, soon declined from the 5 millions it reached at the end of 1936 (from less than one million in 1935), to 1,700,000 in 1939. Factory delegates were a gain but they could achieve little in a period of defeat. Concretely the only real gain was the paid holiday.
More importantly, June 1936 profoundly affected the psychology of French workers. The myth of the Popular Front as the saviour from fascism and the bringer of important social advances is important in understanding the current situation. A mood was created. The mood of May 1968, of workers ready to move spontaneously into action, with imprecise objectives. Finally, June 1936 marked the first major step in the process by which the CP became the dominant reformist leadership of the French working class.
In the absence of a revolutionary party rooted in the working-class, the movement was unable to fulfil its revolutionary potential. But this potential shines through the spontaneity, the creativity, the joy of the movement, undimmed by subsequent defeats.
1. Title of article in Whither France? New York. 1968. See also Danos and Gibelin, Juin 36, Paris 1972 (in French) and Guerin, D., Front Populaire Revolution Manquée, Paris 1970, (in French).
2. Lefranc G., Juin 36, Paris 1966 (in French), pp.13-17. In 1935: £1 equalled about 60 Francs.
3. The Confederation General de Travail (General Confederation of Labour) was founded in 1906 on a ‘revolutionary syndicalist’ basis. During the 1914-18 war it became openly reformist. Split in 1921 largely owing to the manoeuvres of the reformist leaders; the revolutionary minority (about a third) formed the CGTU (Unitary CGT). By 1929 this was thoroughly Stalinised, while the CGT was totally reformist. In 1935 the CGT had 700,000 members, the CGTU 250,000.
4. Thorez (General Secretary of the CP). speech of 10 October 1934, quoted in Lefranc, Histoire du Front Populaire, Paris 1965, p.67.
5. Danos & Gibelin, op. cit., p.24.
6. Danos & Gibelin, op. cit., vol.II, p.50.
7. Histoire, op.cit., Appendix 16, pp.455-459.
8. French Confederation of Christian Workers
9. Trades Council
10. Danos and Gibelin, op. cit., p.115.
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