FR 255: Week 10 Street Politics and the Right, 1918–1945

1. FR 255: Week 10Street Politics and the Right, 1918–1945 Dr Jessica Wardhaugh

2. « C’est vers le peuple, par le peuple et pour le peuple que doit être cherchée la clef de nos lendemains. Jeanne en venait, le guidait, ne souhaitait que d’y rentrer. Ainsi, par son immolation, a-t-elle refait la Patrie. » Colonel de la Rocque, Le Flambeau, May 1936 • « Avec Jeanne, le peuple fait son entrée dans l’histoire... Elle a du peuple la mâle simplicité, le bon sens, les fines saillies, la sensibilité profonde, l’inépuisable force de piété, de foi et d’amour. » Pierre Champion, Le Flambeau, May 1936

3. Lecture plan • I. Varieties of the Right in Interwar France • Parliamentary groups • Leagues and mass movements • New parties • II. The Right, the Street, and the People • Commemoration: celebrating the patrie • Opposing the left • Honouring leadership

4. I. Varieties of the right in the 1920s • Parliamentary right (e.g. FédérationRépublicaine, shaped by Catholic ralliement to the Republic in the 1890s and led in the interwar years by Louis Marin) • Catholic right (e.g. FédérationNationaleCatholique, led by Général de Castelnau) • Nationalist leagues: Ligue des Patriotes, Légion, Faisceau, JeunessesPatriotes… • Veterans’ organizations, e.g. Croix de Feu

5. JeunessesPatriotes • Founded by deputy Pierre Taittinger, the JPs had considerable support within parliament • Yet they also paraded in uniform through the streets of Paris, and practised with military rifles • Right-wing activists saw them as a possible force for counter-revolution

6. Le Faisceau • Founded by Georges Valois (Alfred-Georges Gressent) in 1925 • Its ideas were closely modelled on Italian fascism • The faisceau (fasces) was meant to symbolize the unity of different groups under the authority of their leader

7. Varieties of the right in the 1930s (I) The Croix de Feu • Founded in 1927 for veterans; the leader from 1931 was Colonel de la Rocque • Derisive of ‘la politique’ (party politics), the movement assumed greater political importance in the 30s

8. Varieties of the right in the 1930s (II) • The SolidaritéFrançaise (founded 1934), funded by millionaire perfume manufacturer François Coty • The Francistes (1934), whose leader Marcel Bucard received subsidies from Fascist Italy • In 1936, the Croix de Feu became the Parti Social Français • The PartiPopulaireFrançais was also founded in 1936

9. II. The right, the street, and the people:commemoration

10. « Chaque fois que les mêmes masses populaires ont cru la patrie en danger, elles ont fait front contre l’envahisseur : le 2 août 1914 est encore dans toutes les mémoires. » (Pierre Bermond of the SolidaritéFrançaise, 1935) • « La guerre est un immense creusetdanslequeltoutes les âmessont fondues en uneâme unique. » (Rabbi Bloch at a Croix de Feu commemoration, Paris, 1936)

11. « Et dans ce soleil d’automne qui éclairait hier matin l’avenue triomphale, on sentait bien que le peuple, massé autour de l’Etoile ou le long des Champs-Élysées, venait, en même temps que rendre à l’inconnu le pieux hommage qui lui revient, chercher un réconfort, une possibilité de réconciliation. » (Le Petit Journal, November 1938)

12. Paris: right-wing spaces • Right-wing crowds commemorated wartime sacrifice on the Champs Élysées • Colonel de la Rocque rented a mansion on the nearby Avenue George V • Parades in honour of Joan of Arc took place along the Rue de Rivoli and to the Place des Pyramides • Right-wing demonstrators also favoured the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Latin Quarter

13. II. The right, the street, and the people: opposition • Place de la Concorde, 6 February 1934

14. 6 February: a failed coup? • Since the left-wing victory of 1932, governments had been unstable and short-lived • Scandals such as connections between the swindler AlexandreStavisky and government officials further discredited parliament: was he killed to protect his friends in high places? • Groups such as Action Française, SolidaritéFrançaise and the JeunessesPatriotes held angry demonstrations against the ‘band of thieves and assassins’ • On 6 February, Colonel de la Rocque ordered his men to disperse, but other groups may have wished to storm the Chamber of Deputies

15. Le Populaire, 7 February 1934

16. The street as political battleground • Left and right opposed one another in the streets both before and after the Popular Front’s electoral victory in 1936 • In 1934–36, there was a ‘double mobilization’ of left and right as both sought to organize and appeal to the masses • The Croix de Feu expanded most rapidly, creating youth groups, women’s groups, holiday clubs, sporting societies… • The right opposed the left-wing image of a revolutionary working people with its own image of a patriotic people united across class boundaries

17. The street as political battlefield • « Dimanche prochain, les Croix de Feu ont donc l’intention de descendre de nouveau dans la rue. Ils trouveront devant eux les ouvriers! » (PCF deputy André Marty, 1934) • « D’après les instructions du Colonel de la Rocque,200.000 Croix de Feu seront dans la rue s’il le faut, au moment propice, pour lutter contre le Front Populaire et même au besoin, s’emparer du pouvoir. » (M. Laffon, Croix de Feu member, 1935)

18. The right, the street, and the people:leadership

19. Colonel de la Rocque

20. La Rocque: authority and paternalism • La Rocque mocked Léon Blum for a style of leadership ‘not learned at the front line’ • Jean Mermoz, popular aviator and vice-president of the Parti Social Français, compared La Rocque to a pilot in charge of his crew • But although a military man, La Rocque also liked to appear as father to the ‘grandefamillereconciliée’ of the PSF

21. Jacques Doriot and the PPF • Leader of the PartiPopulaireFrançais and an ex-Communist, Doriot sought a more direct, emotional relationship with his supporters • «  Mais, l’autre soir, au Vél d’Hiv, il y avait, sous les yeux d’une foule pénétrée d’évidence, de réalité, un homme qui se montrait vraiment comme un père, qui exerçait effectivement ce rôle paternel, profondément humain, qui doit être celui d’un chef – d’un chef de gouvernement – Jacques Doriot. » (Drieu la Rochelle, L’Emancipation nationale, 12 February 1937)

22. Crowds in French politics: fickle, fraternal, transformative? Rouen, May 1944 Paris, August 1944