The French elections this weekend presage success for the fascist RN. Chris Bambery looks at what we can learn from the left governments of the 30s, why today’s New Popular Front is something different, and how the left should respond  

In a welcome response to the success of the Nazi Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) led by Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen in the European election, which leads in the polls for the the snap general election set for 30 June and 7 July, hundreds of thousands of anti-fascists took to the streets last weekend in some 200 demonstrations called by the trade unions. The biggest union federation, the CGT, said 640,000 took to the streets, including 250,000 in Paris.  

The decision of the various parties of the French left to form a New Popular Front to try and stop the fascist (National Rally) winning the first round of France’s parliamentary election on 4 July, is a major step forward. The alliance brings together the centre left Socialist Party, France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI, the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon), the French Communist Party (PS), and Les Écologistes (a green environmentalist party) plus other smaller groups. 

The Popular Front is already close behind the RN in the polls, eclipsing the Renaissance party of current president Emmanuel Macron, who looks set to be eliminated from the second round, which is likely to be a battle between the RN and the Popular Front. 

The term Popular Front draws on the memory of a left alliance formed in 1935 with the aim of electorally blocking fascism. In the spring of 1936 it was elected to government in France.  

Critics on the far left of today’s Popular Front have been quick to draw on criticism of that earlier alliance, often quoting the exiled Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky. 

The new Popular Front is not equivalent to that alliance. In 1935 the Popular Front was formed by the Radical Party, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. The Radicals were a key party of the French ruling class, proclaiming its republican values, and enjoying popular support among the urban middle class and much of the rural population. Indeed, during the French Third Republic (1870–1940) the prime minister was invariably a Radical. 

Leon Trotsky described them as ‘the most wretched, cowardly and servile of all the parties of finance capital.’ⁱ But their electoral base was in turmoil in the mid-1930s. It was centred on the classes moyennes – peasants, shopkeepers, small businessmen and so on – who were shifting rightwards in response to the economic crisis.ⁱⁱ The Radicals too were the party most implicated in the various scandals and were renowned for cynically trading government offices themselves. 

The 1935 Popular Front, therefore, represented an alliance between a major bourgeois party and the left in the shape of both the Socialist and Communist Parties. It was simply an electoral alliance in which the three parties agreed not to criticise each other – giving the Radicals carte blanche. 

Trotsky’s criticism was precisely that in this alliance the bourgeois Radicals were held the reins, the Socialists and Communists followed their lead, did not criticise them in anyway and wanted to do nothing to upset them: 

‘The job of the cartel [i.e. the Popular Front agreement] always consisted in putting a brake upon the mass movement, directing it into the channels of class collaboration. This is precisely the job of the People’s Front as well … Joint meetings, parade processions, oaths, mixing the banner of the Commune and Versailles, noise, bedlam, demagogy – all these serve a single aim: to curb and demoralise the mass movement … a classic definition of the People’s Front: a safety valve for the mass movement.’ 

Pulled between left and right  

The Radicals themselves were a party torn apart by contradictions as their middle-class support was pulled towards the left and the right. The fascists reviled the corruption of the Radicals and the Third Republic, which the Popular Front was committed to defend. So, continuing, Trotsky warned: 

‘The political essence of the crisis lies in the fact that the people are nauseated by the Radicals and their Third Republic. The fascists seek to profit from this. But what have the Socialists and Communists done? They have become the guarantors of the Radicals before the people. They have portrayed the Radicals as slandered innocents. They have assured the workers and peasants that complete salvation lies – in the ministry of Daladier [the Radical leader].’ 

Thorez put matters more bluntly, saying, ‘The Communists have become in literal truth the trustees of bankrupt capitalist culture.’ 

The situation facing the working class in 1936 was radically different as to that in 2024. Last year saw a huge wave of protests against Macron’s increasing the age of retirement from 62 to 64. France’s trade unions called more than a dozen days of action in hopes of defeating the plan. The rank and file responded magnificently but the union leaders refused to step up the action to an all-out general strike and Macron won the day, gravely damaging his popularity in the process. 

It was a bad defeat. 

In contrast, the victory of Nazism in Germany in January 1933 had a radicalising effect on European workers. An anti-fascist reflex was accompanied by a growing hostility to capitalism in response to the Great Slump. The reformist line of ‘do nothing’ in the face of fascism was discredited among wide sections of workers and left-wing tendencies sprang up in the Social Democratic parties and in the unions. In February 1934 the socialist militia in Vienna fought bravely but unsuccessfully against the dictatorship of Dollfuss, and in October Spanish workers in Asturias rose in rebellion against a right-wing government which seemed to be paving the way for fascism. 

Across the Atlantic 1934 saw American workers secure three key strike victories: the Teamsters in Minneapolis, the longshoremen (dockers) in San Francisco and the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike. That would herald the creation of a new, more militant union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and a wave of factory occupations in 1936. 

France was plagued by political instability and scandal. In the 18 months prior to February 1934 France had five different governments but made up by the same parties.ⁱⁱⁱ 

When, in January 1934 a Ukrainian Jewish speculator, Stavisky, was found shot dead in an Alpine resort, matters exploded. Officially it was described as suicide, but there was a widespread belief that he was shot by the police to stop him revealing his connection with top politicians. The Stavisky scandal brought angry crowds to the doors of the National Assembly shouting, ‘Down with the criminals.’ The government resigned. In this situation the forces of French fascism took the offensive. On 6 February Action Française, edited by the vicious antisemite Charles Maurras (executed in 1945 as a Nazi collaborator) declared: ‘The thieves are barricading themselves in their cave. Against this abject regime, everyone is in front of the Chambre des Deputes this evening.’^iv 

Twice the Camelots du Roi, the shock troops of Action Française, smashed their way through to the Assembly. In the event ‘out of 40,000 demonstrators, 16 had been killed and at least 655 known to be wounded; well over 1,000 policemen received injuries.’  

The next day Colonel de la Rocque, leader of the Croix de Feu (a far-right association of ex-officers) declared from his secret ‘battle headquarters’ that ‘the Croix de Feu has surrounded the Chamber and forced the Deputies to flee.’^v 

The acting premier, the Radical Édouard Daladier, resigned and ex-president Gaston Doumerge took over, promising a strong government of order. Seventy-seven year old Marshal Petain was appointed minister of defence as a sop to the fascists. Petain already had ambitions to become dictator of France and that he was up to his neck in political intrigue. 

All of this took place while the recession raged and alienation from official politics grew. The Great Depression had hit France later than the rest of the world and it lasted much longer. ^vi 

The recession hit the middle classes particularly badly. Peasant incomes fell by 30 percent in the five years after 1930 and those of small businessman by 18 percent over the same period. It seemed fascism’s next victory would be in France. 

Working class enters the stage 

What altered matters was the dramatic entry of the working class onto the centre stage. The leader of the CGT, the main trade union federation, Jouhaux, understood the need for some form of action after the 6 February demonstration. He called a strike for 12 February. The Socialist Party reluctantly backed the strike call and called a demonstration through central Paris on the day. 

The French Communist Party (PCF) had 30,000 members in 1933. It was still suffering in the wake of the German defeat. And it was still committed to the position of the Russian dictator, Josef Stalin, that revolution was imminent and that the social democrats were the twin of fascism, ‘social fascist,’ and the main enemy. That meant that on 6 February it had refused an offer for joint action from the left-led Seine Federation of the Socialists. Instead L’Humanité, the CP paper, called a demonstration at the same time and place as the fascist leagues, declaring, ‘At one and the same time against the fascist bands, against the Government and against Social Democracy.” ^vii 

Now faced with the joint CGT and Socialist call for a strike and demonstrations on 12 February the PCF initially denounced the call, explaining in L’Humanité that they could not unite with a party responsible for cutting wages or who break strikes and were preparing the ground for fascism!^viii 

Instead they counterposed their own demonstration in Paris on 9 February, demanding a workers’ and peasants’ government.^ix 

If this were to be taken seriously they would have amounted to a call to insurrection. Instead, only Communist Party members and supporters gathered in east Paris. Seizing on their isolation the police went on the rampage killing six workers. But during the night of 11 and 12 February the party leadership could not hold this line among the rank and file. Support grew for a united front with the CGT and the Socialists. 

On the day two columns met in central Paris, one led by the Communists, the bigger one by Jouhaux and the Socialist leader, Leon Blum. The two spontaneously joined together amidst constant chants of ‘Unity, unity’ and ‘They shall not pass’. The CGT estimated 1 million workers in the Paris region struck, in total 4.5 million workers stopped work across France and in Marseille 100,000 demonstrated.  Elsewhere in towns across France there were 346 demonstrations (19 of which contained more than 5,000 participants and 161 of which involved both Socialists and Communists). ^x 

The successful mobilisations in response to the fascists fed into a renewal of wider working-class resistance. In August 1935 the government announced a 10 percent pay cut for all state employees. In the naval dockyards of Brest and Toulon there were strikes and, in what amounted to uprisings, troops killed five workers.  

The urge for unity against fascism coincided with a shift in Soviet foreign policy. Initially, Stalin believed he and Hitler could come to terms (as they would do in August 1939), By 1935 that  complacency had changed to alarm. 

Stalin now looked for a pact with Britain and France to offset the new Nazi menace. Agreements between Communist and Social Democratic parties were now permissible. On this basis a common pact was signed between the two parties. In May 1935 Stalin and the Radical leader Laval – who was moving rightwards and became deputy to Petain in Vichy France after German occupation– signed a mutual assistance pact. The official communiqué stated: ‘M. Stalin understands and fully approves the French national defence policy which requires a level of armed force sufficient to meet the needs of her security’. ^xi 

This totally contradicted the PCF policy of opposing France’s defence spending. Performing a rapid U-turn the party printed posters overnight declaring, ‘Stalin is right’. The Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov expanded on what the new line meant:  ‘What is essential is that France should not allow her military strength to be weakened. We hope no internal troubles will favour Germany’s designs.’^xii 

The PCF now proposed to extend its pact with the Socialists to include the Radicals. The ‘theoretical’ argument used to justify this alliance was that it would signify an alliance between the working class, as represented by the Socialists and Communists, and the middle class, as represented by the Radicals – an alliance which would block the growth of fascism among the middle classes. The new Popular Front was signed and celebrated with a monster demonstration in Paris on Bastille Day. Its programme was limited to the positions of the Radicals. The slogan now raised was, ‘Peace, Bread, Freedom’. The Communist leader Thorez boasted that they had rescued  the French national flag, and the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, from the right. 

Explosion of struggle  

This was the Popular Front Trotsky polemicised against. Later in 1936 he wrote: 

‘The job of the cartel [i.e. the Popular Front agreement] always consisted in putting a brake upon the mass movement, directing it into the channels of class collaboration. This is precisely the job of the People’s Front as well … Joint meetings, parade processions, oaths, mixing the banner of the Commune and Versailles, noise, bedlam, demagogy – all these serve a single aim: to curb and demoralise the mass movement … a classic definition of the People’s Front: a safety valve for the mass movement.’ 

The Radicals themselves were a party torn apart by contradictions as their middle-class support was pulled towards the left and the right. The fascists reviled the corruption of the Radicals and the Third Republic which the Popular Front was committed to defend. So, Trotsky warned that central to the crisis was the nausea people felt for the Radicals, that is what the fascists sought to benefit from, but the Socialists and Communists were now praising the same Radicals as the saviours of France! 

Thorez put matters more bluntly, saying, ‘The Communists have become in literal truth the trustees of bankrupt capitalist culture.’ Growing class contradiction meant that when France went to the polls in May 1936. It was planned that a Popular Front victory would create a government led by the Radical, Daladier. Things did not turn out like that! 

The Radical vote fell in 66 departments. The Radicals lost electors on both the left, owing to their identification with conservative governments between February 1934 and February 1936, and on the right, owing to their new identification with the Popular Front. ^xiii 

Now the Socialist leader Blum had to take the premiership. The left’s victory was the signal for an explosion of working-class militancy as the greatest strike wave the world had yet seen swept France through May and June. Over three quarters of the June strikes (8,941) consisted of factory occupations, extending to small factories, and even comparatively small workshops, which were flying red, or red and tricolour flags, with pickets in front of the closed gates.^xiv 

One Radical, a supporter of the Popular Front, complained to his party members that the occupations were ‘not in the programme of the Popular Front … It is not only illegal, it is something worse: a humiliation for the patron [the employer]. The occupations must cease.’^xv 

In an article headlined Everything is Possible, the leader of the left wing of the Socialist Party, Marceau Pivert declared: ‘In the atmosphere of victory, confidence and discipline that extends across the country, yes, everything is possible for the daring.’ But the Communist leader, Maurice Thorez countered by stating: ‘It is necessary to know when to make a compromise if all the demands have not been met but if victory has been won on the most essential demands. All is not possible’. 

Overall, the revolt remained within the framework of militant trade unionism. The strike committees did not come together on a semi-permanent basis and develop into workers’ councils. There was no advance towards challenging the rule of parliament, towards dual power.^xvi 

The Communist Party and the union leadership used their weight and prestige to end the strikes through an agreement with the frightened bosses which guaranteed paid holidays and a 40-hour week. 

In July a new crisis broke over the Popular Front with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Republican government asked for planes and arms in accordance with past agreements. Blum initially agreed but backed down under pressure from his Radical colleagues and the military.^xvii  

On a visit to London Blum was told by the British government that if he sent arms to Spain it would break its de facto alliance with France, leaving it alone to fight any German and/or Italian military intervention. Accordingly, Blum announced his support, along with Britain, for non-intervention in Spain.  

Britain and France joined the dictatorships of Germany, Italy and Portugal in pledging not to arm either side in Spain. The latter three signed up to the deal and promptly continued to supply the planes, tanks and ‘volunteers’ so crucial to the eventual victory of fascism in Spain. 

Initially Stalin supported this position – despite the Soviet Union not being invited to take part – but faced with General Franco seeming set to take Madrid and with the extent of German and Italian aid to Franco became apparent he despatched arms and military advisers, fearing the Soviet Union would lose face if fascism won in Spain. 

At this stage Thorez wanted to extend the Popular Front to a French Front, claiming he was carrying on the great traditions of Joan of Arc, embraced the Tricolour and the Marseillaise, praised the French army, and reached out to ‘patriotic fascists.’ ^xviii 

The effect of dampening down working-class struggle was to undermine the Blum government. The bosses went onto the offensive further undermining it. When Blum was forced from office in June 1937 the Radicals once again formed a government and remained there until the fall of France to Nazi Germany in June 1940 (barring a month when Blum returned). 

The experience of the factory occupations had terrified the French bourgeosie. They preferred collaboration with Hitler rather than the left threatening their power. In May and June 1940 German armies swept into France. In just six weeks French resistance collapsed. The right, under Petain, took control of the government and brokered a humiliating peace with Hitler which they tried to portray as a dented shield to protect the French people. 

A majority of Radical deputies, and Socialists, voted then to give full dictatorial powers to Marshal Petain. He led a viciously anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler dictatorship.^xix 

History not repeating  

Today, as mentioned, there is not increasing working class struggle, as there was in 1935/1936. Neither is the NR bringing battle squads onto the streets as the fascist leagues did in the 1930s. If anything Marine Le Pen wants to play down its fascist and Vichyite roots in search for respectability. 

The French centre right and the bourgeoisie faced with the Popular Front or Le Pen prefer the latter, as they are making clear. 

Nevertheless, we should not be uncritical of the new Popular Front. There are a number of compromises between the parties which severely weaken its politics. The platform of the New Popular Front calls for the defence of ‘the sovereignty and freedom of the Ukrainian people as well as the integrity of its borders, through the delivery of necessary weapons.’ This is very dangerous as Ukraine wants Anglo-French missiles fired into Russia, despite Moscow promising it will retaliate against Anglo-French targets. 

On Palestine, it does not call for a ceasefire but instead demands ‘the release of hostages held since the Hamas terrorist massacres, whose theocratic project the New Popular Front rejects’. Melenchon and France Insoumise have supported the Palestinian resistance and opposed the Islamophobia and repression unleashed by Macron against the solidarity movement. It was also agreed that if the Front won the election Melenchon would not be prime minister because he is ‘divisive.’   

Nevertheless, this is not a repeat of 1935-1936. The new Front is an agreement between parties with working class support, or in the case of The Ecologists of the broader left. It contains no equivalent of the old Radical Party and is not an alliance with a bourgeois party. 

The task for the radical left is to ensure that this does not remain an electoral pact but continues the street mobilisations we saw last weekend. Together the parties of the Front, in alliance with the trade unions, can mobilise hundreds of thousands and begin to cut into the working class support the NR has garnered in areas like the Northeast of France. 

Let us not counterpose the two tasks. A united left with a strong electoral challenge can only boost the numbers actively opposing the NR. The French election is now a clash between the far right and a united left. It’s obvious whose side we are on.