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Civil Rights for Civil Servants? The Ligue Des Droits De L'Homme and the Problem of Trade Unionism in the French Public Services, c. 1905–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. S. Jones
H. S. Jones
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, Oxford
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Extract

The law of 21 March 1884, which legalized the formation of syndicats for the defence of ‘economic, industrial, commercial and agricultural interests’, was not intended to apply to civil servants. They were not thought to have such interests. There was, it is true, some dispute as to which categories of public employees were covered by this legal prohibition, and the Chamber of Deputies maintained in 1894 that the law applied to workers in industrial enterprises run by the state. But governments steadfastly refused to allow postal officials or schoolteachers, for instance, the right to form syndicats. They did not, however, contest their right to form associations under the law of 1 July 1901, and conflict became acute in the period after 1905 as these associations began to transform themselves into syndicats or to claim rights associated with the syndicat The postal strikes in Paris in 1909 and the rail strike of 1910 were particular causes célèbres

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 899 - 920
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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3 ‘Syndicalism’ is used throughout this article to translate the French ‘syndicalisme’.It should not be taken to imply Revolutionary Syndicalism, which is rendered in French as syndicalisme révolutionnaire.

4 See Machelon, J. P., La République contre Us libertés? Les restrictions aux libertés publiques de 1879 à 1914 (Paris, 1976), pp. 40 ffGoogle Scholar., for a discussion of the legacy of this ‘mythe de la Loi souveraine et non oppressive’, the positivist implications of which, according to Machelon, are crucial to an. understanding of the many illiberal aspects of the record of the Third Republic on civil liberties.

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32 The governor-general of Madagascar, Augagneur, came under attack from members of the League, notably Pressensé; but he was defended against these attacks by his fellow-Freemasons: Arch. Nat. F7 12487, Prefect of the Rhône to minister of the interior, 12 June 1908; Sée, Histoire, pp. 77–8.

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81 ‘La fonction publique’ – a term that might in some contexts be translated as ‘civil service’.

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