Lessons from the French

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The first article in this series dealt with the conditions under which the French Trotenter the centrist socialist party the SFIO.

In the 'French turn' of September 1934, the LC joined the SFIO as the their paper La Verite as an idependent paper.

The 'French Turn' culminated at the SFIO Mulhouse Conference in June 1935. The demands they made included preparation for a general strike, for the arming of the people, for a united front of workers' parties to seize power from reaction and from the bourgeoisie, and for the constitution of a workers and peasants government, resting on democratic assemblies, to carry out the demands of the masses.

Trotskyist or Trotskyistallied policies won one third of the vote and, not surprisingly, moves were now afoot to expel the youth section and soon the GBL itself.

Uproar

Rouse, one of the GBL members was elected to the executive committee (CAP) at the conference; and Naville, their leading spokesman, caused uproar by his attacks on the SFIO record in Parliament.

He tore them apart for participating in attempts to balance the budget when they should have been fighting for a workers' budget.

He took up their support for the Rome Agreement whereby France agreed to exchange parts of Libya and Somalia and its neutrality in Ethiopia. for the neutrality of Italy in Tunisia.

And he denounced the Popular Front with the Radicals as anti-wor ing class and a betrayal of the socialist revolution.

Conciliatory line

Pivert and Bataille Socialiste took a much more conciliatory line towards the Popular Front, partly because of the immense support it seemed to evoke.

Pivert said that the Popular Front would be forced develop a 'combative' to

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skyists of the Ligue Communiste (LC) dec- ided, on the prompting of Trotsky himself, to

Groupe Bolshevik-Lenin- iste (GBL), maintaining