Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Summary
The French Popular Front could not have existed without the Radical Party. It was the French Communist Party which saw this most clearly and which took the initiative in opening the way for the Radicals to join the communist–socialist alliance, thereby extending what would otherwise have been a narrowly based working-class alliance into a major political force. Yet just as the Communists helped to create the alliance with the Radicals, so they helped to weaken it, and ultimately destroy it, in large part because of their reactions to events in Spain.
During the interwar period the Radical Party was pivotal: it was always solicited to form, or help form, the government during the governmental crises of the era. Even after the Popular Front electoral victory of May 1936, only a minority government could be constituted without the Radicals.
The Radicals were individualists while most of their partners were, or said they were, collectivists. The Popular Front itself was simply a variation on a perpetual theme of French political life: that the country voted left or right; that there was a party of movement and a party of order. The Radicals always considered themselves to be on the left of the political spectrum, but they were also a party of order par excellence. Radicals wanted social progress but only through order, discipline and legality. The explanation for this apparent paradox lay in the fact that the Radicals were such a mirror image of the contradictions which were France: both a revolutionary and a traditional country.
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- The French and Spanish Popular FrontsComparative Perspectives, pp. 38 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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