Table Of ContentFRANCE
SINCE
THE POPULAR FRONT
FRANCE
S I N C E
T H E P O P U L A R F R O N T
Government and People 1936-1996
Maurice Larkin
Clarendon Press • Oxford
1997
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© Maurice Larkin 1988, 1997
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Larkin, Maurice.
France since the Popular Front: government and people, 1936-1996
Bibliography: p. Includes index.
1. France—Politics and government—1914-1940. 2. France—
Politics and government—1940-1945. 3. France—Politics and
government—1945- I. Title.
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PREFACE
H istory is commonly called the mythology of advanced societies. Its form and
content are shaped by the questions we ask of it, while its direction and force
stem from the assurances we seek in it. This book is meant for the reader who is
looking for a history of the interaction of people, government, and material
change in France during the last sixty years, and who is less immediately
concerned with the rich diversity of life that lies beyond the direct influence of
government and economic forces. The cultural and leisure activities of the
French have been well described in several recent books in English, while the
broad structural changes of post-war France have been thematically examined
in a number of useful publications that dissect the country’s development since
the Liberation and look individually at its basic elements. Yet, paradoxically
there are few English histories of France that span the great divide of the
Second World War—the point at which the chronological accounts of the
historians give way to the theme-by-theme analyses of social scientists and
area-studies writers. There are admittedly more histories of this kind in French.
But they are inclined to treat France in isolation, and it is rare for them to
consider how far the developments they are describing are peculiar to France
and how far they reflect wider European currents. In seeking to fill some of
these gaps, I have attempted to set the changing fortunes of France in a
comparative, international context, juxtaposing the French performance with
that of her neighbours, in particular Germany, Britain, and Italy. But, since the
reader’s prime concern is likely to be with France, I have tried to do this as
concisely as possible, allowing the tables of comparative data to speak for them
selves, rather than intrude continuously into the discussion of French affairs in
the main text.1
Given the book’s main focus on the interrelation of people, government, and
economy, other themes receive sparser treatment. If man is spirit as well as
consumer, then spirit gets somewhat short shrift in the pages that follow. I have
included very little on France’s many distinguished writers and creative artists,
except when they explicitly enter the political arena; and if Michel Foucault
was right in claiming in 1970 that ‘our entire epoch struggles to disengage itself
from Hegel’* the reader may be forgiven for failing to pick up the point from
what is offered here. Nor will he find an exhaustive analysis of the private and
collective neuroses of the population in thought-provoking chapters with
1 Readers should nevertheless remember that official figures of economic performance are of
varying reliability, being subject to deliberate as well as inadvertent distortion. See notably the
illuminating discussion in François Fourquet, Les Comptes de la puissance: Histoire de la comptabité
nationale et du plan (Fontenay-sous-Bois, 1980), pp. 355-7.
vi Preface
appetizing titles such as, ‘From anomie to bonhomie’, ‘Menu peuple; menu
touristique’, etc.
The complexity of the French experience during the last sixty years makes it
difficult to summarize the book’s principal themes in a brief introduction. The
modernization of the French economy is inevitably a central issue; but by
putting it in a broad comparative setting, rather than in the customary two-
horse race with Britain, its limitations as well as its strengths should become
clearer. France’s social record is likewise examined in an international
context—with its wages, working conditions, and welfare benefits placed in
comparison with those of her neighbours. Changes in education, demographic
growth, and the disabilities of women are also outlined, together with patterns
of religious observance and the role of the Church. While the book’s main
concern is with the broad forces producing change and consolidation, the major
political events of the period are treated in chronological sequence, notably the
fortunes of the Popular Front and the crises of 1940, 1958, and 1968. The
social programmes of the Popular Front, the Liberation, and the early
Mitterrand years are also considered—together with the sad irony that all three
ventures coincided with periods of economic difficulty, in which their aims
were frustrated by the exigencies of solvency and survival. Specific chapters are
devoted to foreign and colonial issues, where French policy is assessed in the
light of the opportunities afforded by the international circumstances of the
time. Other chapters survey the impact of war and liberation on living
standards and on social and political behaviour.
In the field of politics, the evolution of France from ‘la République des
députés’ to what Maurice Duverger has called ‘la République des citoyens’
occupies a prominent place among the book’s principal themes. The alignment
of political forces has markedly changed from a multipolar to a bipolar pattern,
with the result that since the 1960s the French voter has increasingly been
offered clearly defined alternatives, with the choice of the majority essentially
determining who is in charge of government. If the distinctions between the two
opposing blocks of Left and Right have subsequently become blurred since the
1980s, French politics have not returned to the multipolarity of the past. Under
previous regimes, the multiplicity of parties and the fragility of political alliances
had made the choice of government largely dependent on back-stairs negotia
tions by politicians, rather than on the decision of the electorate. Political
scientists, such as Duverger, have tended to concentrate their attention on the
importance of constitutional change in bringing about this development.
Undoubtedly, the adoption of a semi-presidential system of government has been
a major factor, since it encourages the disparate political forces in the country to
band together in two opposing camps behind the surviving finalists in the presi
dential election. Yet, as this book argues, other factors have also played a sub
stantial role: notably the waning of the old divisive issues that had recurrently
frustrated the formation of coherent parliamentary majorities in the past. The
Preface vii
later chapters, therefore, trace the decline of the clerical, constitutional, and
colonial issues—which, together with ‘class’, might be termed ‘the four Cs’ of
French politics. ‘Class’ is an outdated but convenient alliteration to cover the
socio-economic issues that increasingly dominate political debate, embracing
not only the distribution of national income between employer and employee,
but also the adjacent problems of state welfare and national productivity. In
this respect, French politics have come closer to those of Britain and
Scandinavia. The net result has been a stability of government that France has
not known since the Second Empire, and which has survived the trials of
‘cohabitation’ in the later Mitterrand years. Unlike the Second Empire, this
stability has been won without impairing fundamental democratic safe
guards—even if parliament’s prerogatives have been over-rigorously pruned.
This situation has remained substantially unchanged, despite the emergence of
new divisive issues—such as European integration and ecological protection.
None of these recent developments has so far threatened to recreate the multi
polar politics of earlier republics.
Some readers may think that 1936 is a curious year with which to start a
history of contemporary France; the First or Second World War has more
usually been the point of departure. The first edition of this book, completed in
1986, suggested that the period 1936-86 had a logic and symmetry that
transcended the mere aesthetic attraction of its being a clear-cut half-century.
It began with the country’s first taste of Socialist government, and ended with
what was then its last—both demonstrating the problems of achieving a
national programme of social reform within an unfavourable international
context, beset by economic problems. Between these uneasy experiments, there
occurred the modernization of the French economy, partly arising from the
change in attitude engendered by war and reconstruction, and further stimu
lated by EEC membership. And, interwoven with these developments, there ran
the chequered histories of decolonization and the search for a more stable
political system. None of this could properly be understood without reference
to pre-war France and the changes brought about by war. To have gone back
further, however, to the First World War, would inevitably have posed problems
of length and necessitated a much briefer coverage of the book’s principal con
cerns. Even so, the opening chapters on the 1930s attempted to give some
indication of what France inherited from earlier decades.
This new edition brings the story to the present—1996. If 1936-96 has a less
obvious symmetry than the earlier span, 1995 saw the departure of
President Mitterrand—and with him the dissolution of the last vestiges of the
Socialist victory of 1981. Yet the years between 1986 and 1995 were a
chequered period of alternating right- and left-wing governments, which saw
no attempt to return to the bold Socialist experiments of the early eighties—not
even during the Socialist monopoly of both the Élysée and the Matignon in
1989-93. Indeed historical hindsight suggests that the decisive break in French
viii Preface
policies came neither in 1986 nor 1995—but in 1983. It was then that the
Socialists themselves adopted the example of other countries and abandoned
‘redistributive Keynesianism’ for ‘competitive disinflation’—three years before
Chirac’s neo-liberal counter-revolution.
Socio-economic developments have their own rhythms and patterns that do
not fit comfortably into the familiar chronological divisions of French history.
For this reason, the socio-economic expansion of 1947-73 is covered in a
separate chapter, while the subsequent recession is dealt with in the general
chapters on the Giscard and Mitterrand presidencies. On the other hand,
Mitterrand’s part in the development of the European Union is treated in a
chapter on its own. Convenience of discussion has also resulted in some issues
being treated in a thematic rather than a chronological fashion—particularly
the opening years of the Fourth and Fifth Republics, when new institutions,
attitudes, and forms of political behaviour were coming into being. To avoid
repetition, the general characteristics of these regimes are examined in the
chapters on their formative years, making for a certain disparity in length
between these early sections and those that follow.
The following have very kindly given me permission to use copyright material
from their publications in the maps, figures, and tables listed next to their
names. (Precise references will be found at the foot of each item.) I am indebted
to Éditions Ouvrières for Map 1.1 from Fernand Boulard and Jean Remy,
Pratique religieuse urbaine et régions culturelles (Paris, 1968); to Messrs Cassell
for Map 4.1 from Brian Liddell Hart, A History of the Second World War
(London, 1970); to Messrs Hodder and Stoughton for Map 4.2 and material in
Table 6.1 from Colin Dyer, Population and Society in Twentieth-century France
(London, 1978); to Penguin Books Ltd for Figure 9.1 from Philip Williams,
Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, 4th edn. (London, 1972);
to the Economist Newspaper Ltd for Figures 10.1 and 10.2 from Europe’s
Economies (London, 1978); to Professor Jean-Marcel Jeanneney and the
Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques for material used in
Appendix Figures 1 to 3 from J.-M. Jeanneney and Élizabeth Barbier-
Jeanneney, Les Économies occidentales du xa siècle à nos jours, i (Paris, 1985); to
Professor Alfred Sauvy for Table 1.2 from his Histoire économique de la France
entre les deux guerres* ii: 1931-1939 (Paris, 1967); to Messrs Macmillan for
Table 1.5 from The Statesman’s Year-Book, 1939 (London, 1939); to Publica
tions de la Sorbonne for material used in Table 4.1 from R. Frankenstein, Le
Prix du réarmement français, 1935-1939 (Paris, 1982); to Messrs Shenkman
for Tables 10.2, 10.4 to 10.6, and 10.9 from Sima Lieberman, The Growth of
European Mixed Economies, 1945-1970 (New York, 1977); to Oxford Uni
versity Press for Table 10.8 and Appendix Tables 4 and 6 from Andrea Boltho
(ed.), The European Economy: Growth and Crisis (Oxford, 1982); to Éditions
Bordas for material used in Table 10.14 from Yves Trotignan, La France auxx
Preface ix
siècle, i (Paris, 1976); to Messrs Routledge and Kegan Paul for Table 10.15
from D. L. Hanley, A. P. Kerr, and N. H. Waites, Contemporary France: Politics
and Society since 1945, 2nd edn. (London, 1984); to Presses Universitaires de
France for Table 11.1 from Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (eds.),
Histoire économique et sociale de la France, iv, pt. 3 (Paris, 1982); to Messrs Allen
and Unwin for Table 15.3 from Vincent Wright (ed.), Continuity and Change in
France (London, 1984); to the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior
University for Appendix Table 5 from J.-J. Carré, P. Dubois, and E. Malin
vaud, French Economic Growth (London, 1976); to Columbia University Press
for Appendix Table 7 from François Caron, An Economic History of Modem
France (London, 1979); and to Messrs Seeker and Warburg for several extracts
from Herbert Lüthy, The State of France, trans. Eric Mosbacher (London,
1955).
I am indebted to many people for their help, advice, and encouragement while
writing and revising this book, but I wish particularly to express my gratitude to
Malcolm Anderson, Robert Anderson, Bill and Sheila Bell, Roger Bullen, Eric
Cahm, Brian Darling, Neil Fraser, John Frears, Jack Hayward, Ronald Irving,
Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, Douglas Johnson, Roderick Kedward, Malcolm
Maclennan, Richard McAllister, James McMillan, Jean-Marie and Françoise
Mayeur, Peter Morris, Pascal Petit, Sian Reynolds, Jean-Pierre Rioux,
Vaughan Rogers, Donald Rutherford, Joseph Szarka, Michael Sutton, Ted
Taylor, Peter Vandome, Neville Waites, and Vincent Wright. I am especially
indebted to Michael Sutton whose expertise and vigilance have tempered my
vagaries in the additional chapters. I must also pay tribute to the organizers and
editoral committee of the Association for the Study of Modern and Con
temporary France, whose labours have so greatly enhanced the opportunities
in Britain for keeping in touch with French affairs. Ivon Asquith and Tony
Morris of Oxford University Press have exercised a remarkable blend of
patience and realism, and I am also grateful to the Press’s readers and
production staff for helpful comments. Like the hand-loom weavers of old, a
variety of typists have coped with the unpredictable nocturnal demands of my
putting-out system; and I should particularly like to thank Véronique
Magennis, Alison Munro, May Norquay, and my wife, Enid Larkin, whose
comments on the later chapters were particularly helpful. Indeed my tributes to
the help and forbearance of my wife and family have now acquired the weary
droop of a habitual drunkard’s peace-offering of flowers. They are none the less
deeply felt.
October 1996 Maurice Larkin
Edinburgh
Reviewers’Comments on the First Edition
‘a superb contribution to the literature on contemporary France.’
Journal of Social History
'this book is a remarkable achievement, based on massive research and usefully
illustrated with tables and other statistical details ... Professor Larkin has succeeded
against the odds in giving his narrative both clarity and freshness by approaching old
issues from a slightly different angle ... This will undoubtedly become an important
reference for all working in the field in this country.’
Modem and Contemporary France
‘a work as lucid, comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date as any advanced student
could wish to have—and also an account rendered all the more attractive by the author’s
refusal to regard scholarship as incompatible with wry humour.’
Journal of European Studies
‘bien ordonné, d’un ton vif... une bonne synthèse en somme qui a le mérite de mettre
l’accent sur la comparaison avec les autres pays.’ Cahiers dHistoire
‘lively and often amusing ... the interaction of people, governmental and material
change... is set most illuminatingly in its comparative international context, with much
useful statistical data.’ Times Higher Educational Supplement
‘unusually readable, the work of a literate and witty scholar with easy control of a huge
body of material’ Journal of Modem History
‘The first textbook to cover its period in one volume... An enormous amount of material
is presented with clarity and elegance ... a volume which cannot fail to become a
standard textbook.’ English HistoricalR eview
‘urbane and humorous in his judgements.’ London Review ofB ooks
‘Larkin has accomplished a wurde force; there is no equivalent work in English or French
that covers the history of France during the last fifty years with such depth and original
ity__will be much appreciated by specialists and generalists alike.’
American Historical Review
