The Frei Popular

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Final part by Pru Cha In June 1936 a mass strike wave was unleashed by the French Communist Party in a bid to gain the upper hand over the Socialist But rather than develop this growing mass movement, the main thought of the Stalinists was on how to bring it to an end.

While the centrist leader Marceau Pivert excitedly declared "Everything is now possible", CP General Secretary Thorez proclaimed:

'One must know when to end a strike."

The CP pursued its wellworn theme: 'rash' actions would only alienate important sections of the petty bourgeoisie.

The Popular Front must be responsible for the security of France against Hitler's menace.

Bium was installed as President on 4 June and his first action was to make a radio appeal for calm.

Sell out

A Popular Front meeting on June 5 called for a rapid end to the strikes and led on to the sell out, the Matignon agreement of June 7, which granted salary increases of up to 40%, union recognition and a return to a 40 hour week.

L'Humanite, (the CP daily paper) called for a return to work and these particular strikes were called off.

More strikes broke out almost immediately, but the confidence of the capitalist class was strengthened by the Matignon agreement and employers went on the offensive. By July 10 police were stationed round the suburbs.

The CP response to this was to try to appear more respectable than ever.

L 'Humanite carried a headline on July 14, the day of the commemoration of the storming of the Bastille, declaring the CP as the party of order, speaking out against campaigns 'of fight and panic.

Productivity

It next called for a 'French Front' based on respect for the law, including the Matignon agreement, defence of the national economy, including aid to the middle classes, and a commitment to high levels of productivity in exchange for job security, and liberty and national independence based. on 'indivisible peace and collective security.

Even the Socialists were forced to reject this Torysounding idea which they condemned as nothing other than a 'sacred national union'-and which SO obviously foreshadows the class collaboration of today's so-called 'Eurocommunists' On 4 General the Sp captured Badajoz and the Civil War in Spain began.

The Spanish workers' movement was fighting for its life against fascism which had strong military backing from both Hitler and Mussolini.

Best placed

The French working class was the best placed in Europe to support the Republic and one might well have expected the party pretending to carry the banner of the Bolshevik revolution to have been fighting for social revolution in France and Spain.

The French CP however considered that its prime task must be to maintain the internal unity' of France, to prevent civil war there.

Suddenly in the middle of August the Stalinists made an abrupt turn of policy, calling on Parisian engineering workers to come out on strike to force the Blum government to organise a blockade of arms to fascist forces in Spain.

Once again this turnabout derived, not from any considerations in France but from the dictate of the Comintern.

For on August 26 Schlacht, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs had been invited by Blum to a banquet in Paris.

This was the very sign of softening towards Germany which the Comintern most feared.

Thorez leapt to denounce the invitation as "not in conformity with the dignity of our people", and within days was calling on French workers to strike.

If the SFIO could be lured into conflict with Germany and Italy over Spain then collaboration between Hitler and Blum could probably be prevented.

Strike continued

It took the French bourgeoisie two years to regain control. In the autumn of 1936 they unsuccessfully demanded obligatory arbitration and the forcible ending factory of 100 textile factories in Northern France were occupied at that time. Strikes and confrontations continued, the Popular Front Government struggling to maintain control, prepared to use the full repressive machinery of the state against the workers.

The consequences included the fusillade at Clichy and the massacre of lunisian miners at Metlaouvi, both in 1937.

On Franci signed Paris Nazis.

So Social Blum was finally forced to resign in the autumn of 1937 in favour of the Radical Chautemps. Chautemps then, also unsuccessfully, tried to introduce the work statute' which foreshadowed Petain's wartime 'charter', lengthening the working day and increasing the power of the employers.

The full reassertion of bourgeois power was not achieved until the autumn of 1938 with the DaladierReynaud agreement.

It was accompanied by legislation placing immigrant workers virtually outside the law, bereft of civil rights.

This final blow came after the formal ending of the Popular Front when both Communists and Socialists abstained in a vote of confidence in the government and after a failed attempt by the workers movement to stage a general strike.

as month later German pact and in June was taken by the Stalinist and Democratic attempt the was the to fend off fascism by : 'democratic alliance' of thi middle classes and thi proletariat proved just a fatal as the policies o 'social fascism' in the thir period.

Obstruct What Stalinism di between 1935-8 was hol back and obstruct th growth of the independen strength of the workin class at a time when it wa poised for power; prop u an ailing bourgeois syster long enough for the workin class to become thoroughl; weakened and demoralisec and then allow tha bourgeoisie, itself exhauste by its battles with th workers' movement, t hand itself over to fascism which then set about th systematic destruction o the workers' movement in six year world war.

All along the CP coul point to its massive suppor in demonstrations and a elections and its increase i membership as signs of th popularity of its policies.

But Trotsky interprete the support differently. H said that the election result in May 1936 and the our break of strikes immediatel afterwards showed. th working class saying, *w

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TALIST PRESS, Wednesday 14 July 1y 18 Strikers march through Northern France 1936 two great millstones"

The day before, in an article, "The French Revolution has begun' he urged the immediate calling of soviets of workers' deputies.

«Whoever vacillates, whoever loses time, is a traitor"

He pressed the paper to be called not La Commune but Le Soviet and for work to be concentrated around Communist Party members.

Unworthy

He mercilessly castigated those "sceptics, snivellers and phrasemongers" who held themselves aloof from must be built.

His method of pushing workers beyond the policies of the Communist Party and the SFIO while avoiding revolutionary adventurism' is illustrated in his proposals for the French Trotskyists' intervention in the Lille confectionary workers strike.

They could:

for example, address a manifesto to the workers of France, explaining that it is entirely possible for the workers to run the factories themselves provided that the banks and key industries are in the hands of the people.

«Some corresponding quotations from the Socialist and Communist programmes could then be given and a conclusion drawn up pointing out in the direction of a workers and peasants government.

the bourgeois of the workers' movement in France in the 1930s, led Trotsky to conclude:

"All this implies that the proletariat will be drawn into the imperialist conflict not only without the leadership of its traditional organisations, as was the case in June, but also against them"

Pivert had taken a post in Blum's government in 1936 and when he resigned in 1937 and the GR was dissolved by the SFIO he continued inside the SFIO.

In June 1938 however, the Pivertistes were expelled and immediately formed the Workers and Peasants Socialist Party (PSOP).

This resulted in splits in both the PCI, most of whose membership wanted to join, and in the POI, two of whose leaders, Rous and Craipeau wanted to join.

Strong current

Trotsky himself refused to attribute all these problems of the French sections to leadership and organisation.

The main explanation, he said in 1939, lay in the general nature of the period: the uninterrupted series. of international defeats, the spread of