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Popular Front Economic Policy and the Matignon Negotiations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Adrian Rossiter
Adrian Rossiter
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, Oxford
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Extract

Léon Blum's reply to interpellations on 6 June 1936 sums up the entire problem of interpreting the economic policy of the Popular Front. In terms of popular sovereignty, that policy ought to have been – in the light of parliamentary practicalities, it could only be – an implementation of the programme commun, as published at the beginning of 1936, after lengthy negotiations between the main elements in the Popular Front alliance. And yet it was not to be so. On the credit side, the 1936–7 government is remembered for instituting paid holidays and orderly collective bargaining; in the no man's land where academic debate is fought out, lie the famous 40 hours law to restrict the working week, and an ineffectual set of price controls; on the debit side, at any rate in its implementation, is the devaluation of September 1936, with the attendant failure to institute any exchange control. None of these key measures featured in the joint manifesto. They were all decided in the first four months of the legislature, after which the government remained continually on the defensive in economic and financial policy. This has led Georges Lefranc, one of the best-known historians of the Popular Front, to describe the period from October 1936 to February 1937 as ‘la pause implicite’, even though it was only on 24 January 1937 at the earliest, or more explicitly in the third week of February, that Blum acknowledged the reality which had been impending for the last five months – the necessity for ‘a pause’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 663 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Journal officiel de la République Française, Débate et documents parlementaires, Chambre des députés, compte-rendu in extenso (J.O.C.), 6 June 1936, p. 1335.

2 Lefranc, Georges, Histoire du Front Populaire (Paris, 1972), pp. 205–27Google Scholar.

3 Ibid. p. 310.

4 Receuil des Uxtes authentiques des programmes et engagements électoraux dés deputés proclamés élus…1936 (Paris, 1939)Google Scholar. All citations in the paragraph above are drawn from this ‘Barodet’ Researchers might like to note that there is a real copy (not microfilm) available at the British Library, under a new reference mark: S.413(i).

5 Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (FNSP), Léon Blum, chef du gouvernement (Paris, 1981 edn), p. 97Google Scholar.

6 Individual citations in this preliminary section would be tedious, as it is only meant to be a summary of what the published material tells us. I have drawn on the following: Belin, René, Du Secrétariat de la CGTau Gouvernement de Vichy (Mémoires 1933–42) (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar; I'Oeuvre de Léon Blum, IV–I 1934–37) and v 1940–45) (Paris 1964 and 1955)Google Scholar; de Bayac, Jacques Delperrié, Histoire du Front Populaire (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar; Duchemin, R. P., ‘L'accord Matignon, ce que j'ai vu et entendu’, Revue de Paris, XXIV (1937), 584–94Google Scholar; Ehrmann, H. W., French labor from Popular Front to liberation (Cornell 1947)Google Scholar, idem, Organized business in France (Princeton, 1957), F N S P, Blum (seen 5), Georges Lefranc, Juin '36, l'explosion sociale (Paris, 1965), idem, Front Pop (n 2), idem, ‘Le problématique des greves français de mai–juin 1936’, in Essais sur les problemes sociaux et synduaux (Paris, 1970), Jules Moch, Front Populaire, grande esperance (Paris, 1971), idem, Rencontres avec Léon Blum (Paris, 1970)

7 Blum, , 1940–45, p 315Google Scholar

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11 It is quite false to state that the congés payés did not feature in the ministerial declaration (e.g. Georges, B. and Tintant, D., Léon Jouhaux dans le mouvement syndical français, Paris 1979, p. 164)Google Scholar. This is, however, one of rare occasions where a history of the labour movement or of the Popular Front has shown any awareness at all that Blum's interpretation of his electoral mandate involved some political legerdemain.

12 J.O.C., 6 June 1936, pp. 1315–16.

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17 This refers to earlier, abortive negotiations on Parisan metallurgy, not to the Matignon summit.

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21 Also, Lambert's letter to the Figaro on 22 June 1966; but his comments described the bosses' general attitude to collective bargaining, rather than their exact movements in the first week of June 1936.

22 In my thesis, subsequent sections of this chapter demonstrate how Duchemin sought to remain in power by distancing himself from the Matignon settlement – unsuccessfully.

23 Archives Nationales (AN), 39 AS, files 850, 851, 852.

24 , F.N.S.P., Blum, p. 317 (Annexe x)Google Scholar.

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26 A.N., 39 AS 851, 24 April 1936.

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28 A.N., 39 AS 851, 15 May 1936.

29 Ibid. 22 May 1936.

30 It is unclear in the context whether this meant (Dalbouze's) Fédération de la Mécamque, or (Richemond's and Lambert's) UIMM.

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40 One work (in English) does; Ehrmann, , Labor, Appendix II, pp. 284–5Google Scholar.

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44 The CNE was an advisory body attached to the prime minister's office, to represent business, labour and other economic interest-groups. Its importance has been generally underestimated, particularly during the Popular Front, as I explain in my article, ‘The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy’, in Alexander, M. and Graham, H. (eds.), The French and Spanish popular fronts: comparative perspectives (proceedings of an international conference at Southampton University in 04 1986, forthcoming from C.U.P. later this year)Google Scholar.

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48 PàM 41633, ‘Note de Marcel Paul, Nancy’ (my stress added).

49 Rucart was Blum's minister of justice and a Radical. Later in the conversation, he insisted that the whole government, and his party above all, were determined to maintain order – even if it meant using the garde mobile, or possibly troops…. Marcel Paul implies that ‘M. K.’ was a parliamentarian; thus, either (probably) Henri de Kerillis, right-wing business propagandist and deputy for the Seine, or (perhaps) Gustave de Kerguézec, a nobleman who belonged to the soft Left in the Senate and who had interests in ship-building.

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58 Jackson, Julian, The politics of depression in France 1932–1936 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 35–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and 112–33.

59 I.e. working Saturday morning, but having the afternoon free, as well as all Sunday.