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Alliance of political parties in France

The Popular Front was an alliance of French left wing movements, including the communist French Communist Party (PCF), the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and the progressive Radical Socialist Republican Party, during the interwar period. Three months after the victory of the Spanish Popular Front, the Popular Front won the May 1936 legislative election, leading to the formation of a government first headed by SFIO leader Léon Blum and exclusively composed of republican and SFIO ministers. Blum's government implemented various social reforms. The workers' movement welcomed this electoral victory by launching a general strike in May–June 1936, resulting in the negotiation of the Matignon Agreements, one of the cornerstones of social rights in France. All employees were assured a two week paid vacation, and the rights of unions were strengthened. The socialist movement's euphoria was apparent in SFIO member Marceau Pivert's "Tout est possible!" (Everything is possible). However, the economy continued to stall, with 1938 production still not having recovered to 1929 levels, and higher wages had been neutralized by inflation. Businessmen took their funds overseas. Blum was forced to stop his reforms and devalue the franc. With the French Senate controlled by conservatives, Blum fell out of power in June 1937. The presidency of the cabinet was then taken over by Camille Chautemps, a Radical Socialist, but Blum came back as President of the Council in March 1938, before being succeeded by Édouard Daladier, another Radical Socialist, the next month. The Popular Front dissolved itself in autumn 1938, confronted by internal dissensions related to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), opposition of the right wing, and the persistent effects of the Great Depression. After one year of major activity, it lost its spirit by June 1937 and could only temporize as the European crisis worsened. The Socialists were forced out; only the Radical Socialists and smaller left republican parties were left. It failed to live up to the expectations of the left. The workers obtained major new rights, but their 48 percent increase in wages was offset by a 46 percent rise in prices. Unemployment remained high, and overall industrial production was stagnant. Industry had great difficulty adjusting to the imposition of a 40 hour workweek, which caused serious disruptions while France was desperately trying to catch up with Germany in military production. France joined other nations and bitterly disappointed many French leftists in refusing to help the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, partly because the right threatened another civil war in France itself.

The Popular Front won the general election of 3 May 1936, with 386 seats out of 608. For the first time, the Socialists won more seats than the Radical Socialists, and the Socialist leader, Léon Blum, became the first Socialist Prime Minister of France and the first Jew to hold that office. The first Popular Front cabinet consisted of 20 Socialists, 13 Radical Socialists and two Socialist Republicans (there were no Communist Ministers) and, for the first time, included three women (who were then not able to vote in France). The members of the Popular Front parties too small to form their own parliamentary grouping (the PUP, PF, PRS CP and PJR) joined with several independents to sit together as the Independent Left (Gauche indépendante) parliamentary caucus.

Blum dissolved the far right fascist leagues. In turn, the Popular Front was actively fought by right wing and far right movements, which often used antisemitic slurs against Blum and other Jewish ministers. The Cagoule far right group even staged bombings to disrupt the government.

The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 and deeply divided the government, which tried to remain neutral. The French left massively supported the Republican government in Madrid, and the right mostly supported the Nationalist insurgents, some even threatening to bring the war to France. Blum's cabinet was also deeply divided. Fear of the war spreading to France was one factor that made him decide on a policy of non intervention. He collaborated with Britain and 25 other countries to formalize an agreement against sending any munitions or volunteer soldiers to Spain. The air minister defied the cabinet and secretly sold warplanes to Madrid. Jackson concludes that the French government "was virtually paralyzed by the menace of Civil War at home, the German danger abroad, and the weakness of her own defenses." The Republicans in Spain found themselves increasingly on the defensive, and over 500,000 political refugees crossed the border into France, where they lived for years in refugee camps.

After 1937, the precarious coalition went into its death throes with rising extremism on left and right, as well as bitter recriminations. The economy remained stagnant, and French policy became helpless in the face of rapid growth of the German threat. By 1938, the Radicals had taken control and forced the Socialists out of the cabinet. In late 1938, the Communists broke with the coalition by voting against the Munich agreement, in which the Popular Front had joined with the British by handing over part of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The government denounced the Communists as warmongers, who provoked large scale strikes in late 1938. The Radical government crushed the Communists and fired over 800,000 workers. In effect, the Radical Party stood alone.

Radical cultural ideas came to the fore in the era of the Popular Front and often were explicitly supported by the governments, as in the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. An "art for the masses" movement flourished, led by efforts of three of the most influential art magazines to legitimize a visual imagery: Cahiers d'art, Minotaure, and Verve. The prevailing leftist anti capitalist discourse against social inequality was a feature of the Popular Front cultural policy. The government proposed a draft law concerning intellectual property right, based on a new philosophy that did not consider the author as an "owner" (propriétaire) but as an "intellectual worker" (travailleur intellectuel). However, the draft failed to pass.

The new cross class coalition of the Popular Front forced the Communists to accept some bourgeois cultural norms that they had long ridiculed. These included patriotism, the veterans' sacrifice, the honor of being an army officer, the prestige of the bourgeois, and the leadership of the Socialist Party and the parliamentary Republic. Above all, the Communists portrayed themselves as French nationalists. Young Communists dressed in costumes from the revolutionary period and the scholars glorified the Jacobins as heroic predecessors. The Communists in the 1920s saw the need to mobilize young women but saw them as auxiliaries to male organizations. The 1930s had a new model of a separate but equal role for women. The party set up the Union des Jeunes Filles de France (UJFF) to appeal to young working women through publications and activities that were geared to their interests. The party discarded its original notions of Communist femininity and female political activism as a gender neutral revolutionary. It issued a new model more attuned to the mood of the late 1930s and one more acceptable to the middle class elements of the Popular Front. It now portrayed the ideal young Communist woman as a paragon of moral probity with her commitment to marriage and motherhood and gender specific public activism.

The International Olympic Committee chose Berlin over Barcelona for the 1936 Olympic Games. In protest against holding the event in a fascist country, the Spanish Popular Front, decided to organize rival games in Barcelona, under the name People's Olympiad. Blum's government at first decided to take part in it, on insistence from the PCF, but the games were never held because the Spanish Civil War broke out. Léo Lagrange played a major role in the co organisation of the People's Olympiad. The trials for these Olympiads proceeded on 4 July 1936 in the Pershing stadium in Paris. Through their club, the FSGT, or individually, 1,200 French athletes were registered with these anti fascist Olympiads. However, Blum finally decided not to vote for the funds to pay the athletes' expenses. A PCF deputy declared: "Going to Berlin is making oneself an accomplice of the torturers " Nevertheless, on 9 July, when the whole of the French right wing voted for the participation of France in the Olympic Games of Berlin, the left wing (PCF included) abstained. The motion passed, and France participated at Berlin.

In 1937, the Popular Front organized the Million Franc Race to induce automobile manufacturers to develop race cars capable of competing with the German Mercedes Benz and Auto Union racers of the time, which were backed by the Nazi government as part of its sports policy. Hired by Delahaye, René Dreyfus beat Jean Pierre Wimille, who ran for Bugatti. Wimille would later take part in the Resistance. The next year, Dreyfus succeeded in overwhelming the legendary Rudolf Caracciola, and his Silver Arrow at the Pau Grand Prix, becoming a national hero.

The Popular Front initiated the 1936 Blum Viollette proposal, which was supposed to grant French citizenship to a minority of Algerian Muslims. Opposed both by colons and by Messali Hadj's pro independence party, the project was never submitted to the National Assembly's vote and was abandoned.

Many historians judge the Popular Front to be a failure in terms of economics, foreign policy and long term stability. "Disappointment and failure," says Jackson, "was the legacy of the Popular Front." Philippe Bernard and Henri Dubief concluded, "The Front Populaire came to grief through its own economic ineffectiveness and because of external pressures over which it had no control." There is general agreement that at first it created enormous excitement and expectation on the left, but in the end, it failed to live up to its promise. There is also general agreement, that the Popular Front provided a set of lessons and even an inspiration for the future. It began a process of government intervention into economic affairs that grew rapidly during the Vichy and postwar regimes into the modern French welfare state. Charles Sowerwine argues that the Popular Front was above all a coalition against fascism, and it succeeded in blocking the arrival of fascism in France until 1940. He adds that it "failed to make the great changes its supporters anticipated and left many ordinary French people deeply disillusioned." The reasons for the failure continue to be debated. Many historians blame Blum for being too timid and thereby dissolving the revolutionary fervor of the workers. MacMillan says that Blum "Lacked the inner convictions that he was the man to resolve the country's problems by bold and imaginative leadership," leading him to avoid a showdown with the financial powers, and forfeiting the support of the working class. Other scholars blame the complex coalition of Socialist and Radicals, who never really agreed on labor policy. Others point to the Communists, who refused to turn the general strike into a revolution, as well as their refusal to join the government. From the perspective of the far left, "The failure of the Popular Front government was the failure of the parliamentary system," says Allen Douglas. Economic historians point to numerous bad financial and economic policies, such as delayed devaluation of the franc, which made French exports uncompetitive. Economists especially consider the bad effects of the 40 hour week, which made overtime illegal, forcing employers to choose whether stop work or to replace their best workers with inferior and inexperienced workers when 40 hours had been reached. More generally, the argument is made that France could not afford the labor reforms in the face of poor economic conditions, the fears of the business community, and the threat of Nazi Germany. The forty hour week was particularly problematic in light of German weapons production France was trying to compete with a nation which not only had a larger population but one which was working fifty to sixty hour work weeks. The limits on working hours particularly limited aircraft production, weakening French aviation and thus encouraging concessions at the Munich Agreement.