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Socialists and Bureaucrats: The Blum Government and the French Administration, 1936–37

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Irwin M. Wall
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The failure of the Popular Front government of 1936–1937 was at least two-fold: from the national standpoint it was able neither to formulate a foreign policy of anti-fascism nor to bring France out of the economic crisis; from the narrower political perspective it was unable to prevent a growing sense of disillusionment and recrimination among its constituents. Both aspects have received increasing attention from historians in recent years, although not always with sufficient regard for the extent to which the two problems might be separable. Greater intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans, for example, might not have saved the Spanish Republic, but even so would have gone far toward satisfying Blum's constituents and blunting communist criticism of his government. Abandonment of the forty-hour week, on the other hand, while adding to the deceptions of the left, might have permitted the achievement of the economic upturn upon which the hopes of the Popular Front ultimately rested. Spain and finances – war and economics, the twin chief concerns of western civilization in our century as A. J. P. Taylor has facetiously suggested – are the issues in terms of which most analysts of Blum's double failure have proceeded. But there is another which may have been equally important, and which appears to have been of greater significance in the eyes of contemporaries. This was the question of the relationship of the Blum government and the French administration. The increasingly blurred distinction between politics and administration characteristic of contemporary Gaullism, as well as the rigidity and resistance to innovation typical of the crisis-prone French bureaucratic style, suggest in any case a re-evaluation of the recent past in terms what Michel Crozier has aptly called “the bureaucratic phenomenon”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , December 1974 , pp. 325 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1974

References

page 325 note 1 This is the opinion of Sauvy, Alfred, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres, II (Paris, 1967).Google Scholar

page 325 note 2 See Crozier's, Michel modern classic, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar, and Debbasch, Charles, L'Administration au Pouvoir (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar

page 326 note 1 See Greene, Nathanael, Crisis and Decline: The French Socialist Party in the Popular Front Era (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 175–192Google Scholar, for a study of the impact of the Spanish Civil War on local federations of the SFIO.

page 327 note 1 La Tribune des Fonctionnaires, June 6, 1936.

page 327 note 2 The author was privileged to hear a recording of Léon Blum's speech during an interview with Madame Blum on June 4, 1966. The remark was received with enthusiastic, sustained applause in interruption of the speech.

page 328 note 1 Ferretti, J., Ce qu'est le parti socialiste (Paris, 1936), p. 26.Google Scholar

page 328 note 2 On this question see Chapman, Brian, The Prefects and Provincial France (London, 1955)Google Scholar, and Siwek-Pouydesseau, Jeanne, Le Corps préfectoral sous la Troisième et la Quatrième République (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar

page 328 note 3 La Volonté Socialiste, July 4, October 10, 1936; Le Breton Socialiste, July 18 and September 19,1936; La Voix Socialiste, July 18, August 8 and September 19, 1936.

page 328 note 4 L'Alerte (Nice) thought the prefect to have been “appointed by reactionaries”, and criticized the use of police against striking workers: July 11 and December 12, 1936. In the Marne, the prefect was slow to implement directives from Popular Front ministers: Le Travail de la Marne, April 17,1937. In the Morbihan the prefect did all he could to aid clerical interests: Le Rappel du Morbihan, October 25, 1936. In the Basses-Pyrénées the Popular Front committee of Pau officially protested the presence of the local prefect at a “fascist” demonstration: Le Travail, June 7,1936, also July 5,1936. The prefect of the Landes was charged by the same paper with failure to apply social legislation, September 6, 1936. In the Saône-et-Loire the prefect had arbitrarily fired fonctionnaires and favored the election of non-Socialist mayors: La Dépôche Socialiste, August 8, 1936. In the Deux-Sèvres the prefect lowered the salaries of deserving fonctionnaires while raising those of their “reactionary” chiefs: Le Travail, June 20, 1936. In the Vosges the prefect was simply described as a reactionary who sided consistently with management against labor: Le Travailleur Vosgien, July 18, 1936. The paper regularly carried a flyer “Monsieur le préiet: allez-vous-en!” thereafter.

page 329 note 1 Le Jura, June 13, 1936; Le Réveil Socialiste, November 19, 1936.

page 329 note 2 L'Auvergne Socialiste, September 12, 1936. Also Le Populaire, September 9, 1936.

page 329 note 3 Ibid., June 27, 1936.

page 330 note 1 Le Travail du Lot, January 4, 1936.

page 330 note 2 Ibid., March 21 and April 4, 1936.

page 330 note 3 See Journal Officiel (hereafter referred to as JO), Chambre, June 19, 1936, pp. 1470–1472.

page 330 note 4 Le Travail du Lot expressed impatience with continual postponement of administrative changes on September 5, 1936, warning that Popular Front electors were already deceived; on September 12 it again noted postponement bitterly; on September 19 it asked the special congress; and on October 24 it reflected that the souffle républicain had turned into a light breeze.

page 331 note 1 Ibid., January 15, May 29 and July 3, 1937.

page 331 note 2 Le Cri du Peuple, May 31 and September 25, 1936; January 10, 1937.

page 331 note 3 Ibid., April 17, 1937.

page 332 note 1 JO, Lois et Décrets, September 27, 1936. Other than Trouillot, five prefects were listed as “appelé à d'autres fonctions”, but none appear to have been the object of complaint in the press in their departments: these were M. Bidoux (Orne), M. Vié (Hautes-Pyrénées), M. Idoux (Creuse), M. Burnouf (Mayenne), and M. Monis (listed as “hors cadres”). Two lateral shifts do appear to have been influenced by party considerations: Angelo Chiappe, brother of the infamous former prefect of police, went from the Aisne to the Manche; Henri Graux, disliked in the Drôme, was moved to the Deux-Sèvres. Henry, Pierre, Histoire des Présets (Paris, 1950), pp. 317–318Google Scholar, interprets Graux's shift, however, as a promotion. All the new prefects appointed by Salengro came from subprefectures.

page 332 note 2 La Voix Socialiste, October 17, 1936, also October 31, 1936. “Socialist militants will fail to understand”, the paper commented cryptically, “or will understand too well.”

page 332 note 3 Pierre Henry, pp. 290, 318. Siwek-Pouydesseau, pp. 76–79, defines a big shift after 1877 as involving twenty or more prefects; by this standard Herriot's and Combes's shifts were big, Blum's was not.

page 333 note 1 L'Alerte, February 27, 1936; Le Droit du Peuple, May 22–23, 1937; Le Jura, March 7, 1936; L'Unité Socialiste, August 1, 1936; JO, Chambre, December 11, 1936, p. 3502.

page 333 note 2 JO, Chambre, July 28, 1936, p. 2185.

page 334 note 1 Quoted in Le Gers Socialiste, June 12, 1937, and widely circulated throughout the Socialist press.

page 334 note 2 JO, Chambre, June 20, 1936, p. 1642; July 16, 1936, p. 1934. See also material on the demonstrations in Archives de la Préfecture de Police, AR 55, Carton 243, Folder 120. Police, according to outraged rightists, permitted the singing of “seditious” songs but forbade the Marseillaise.

page 334 note 3 Pierre Henry, p. 318; see the comments by Blumel, André, in: Léon Blum, Chef de Gouvernement (Paris, 1967), p. 39.Google Scholar

page 334 note 4 Even the Communists, according to police reports, expressed satisfaction with police handling of their demonstrations, and crowds on July 14 shouted “La Garde avec nous”. Archives de la Prefecture de Police, ibid., Folder 121. All this was forgotten after Clichy, however, and Blum's claim at the party congress of Marseilles that he had purged the police was met with hoots. See Socialiste, Parti, 35e Congrès national tenu à Marseille (Paris, 1937), p. 257.Google Scholar

page 335 note 1 Sherwood, John M., Georges Mandel and the Third Republic (Stanford, 1967), pp. 154–155.Google Scholar

page 335 note 2 Ibid., p. 195.

page 335 note 3 JO, Sénat, January 26, 1937, p. 33. Sherwood accepts the politically motivated charges, referring to the “committee of reparations” as a “kangaroo court”.

page 336 note 1 Sherwood, p. 154.

page 336 note 2 JO, Sénat, January 26, 1937, pp. 38–42. The Senate commission eventually reported its conclusions on April 13, 1938 – one assumes, coincidentally, during Blum's second government – and predictably substantiated all the charges made against Jardillier. See JO, Sénat, Annexes, April 13, 1938, No 277.

page 337 note 1 La République Sociale, June 4 and 26, 1936; Le Travail, June 28, 1936; Le Socialiste, June 21, July 12 and 26, August 16 and 23, September 6, 20 and 27, 1936.

page 338 note 1 See the debates on amnesty in JO, Chambre des Députés, January 21, 1937, p. 127.

page 338 note 2 Cohen, William B., “The Colonial Policy of the Popular Front”, in: French Historical Studies, VII (1972), pp. 349–368.Google Scholar See also Semidei, Manuela, “Les Socialistes français et le problème colonial entre les deux guerres”, in: Revue Française de Science Politique, XVIII (1968), pp. 1115–1155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 339 note 1 Cohen, p. 377. See also the observations of Claude Julien, in: Léon Blum, Chef de Gouvernement, pp. 379–80. In fact, Julien claims, prefectoral services in Algeria openly encouraged displays of public opposition to projects of governmental reform.

page 339 note 2 JO, Chambre, December 15, 1936, p. 3629.

page 340 note 1 Cameron, Elizabeth R., “Alexis Saint-Léger”, in: Craig, Gordon, ed., The Diplomats (New York, 1963), II, pp. 378–406.Google Scholar The support of French diplomatic personnel for the non-intervention pact is attested by political director of the Quai René Massigli, in: Léon Blum, Chef de Gouvernement, p. 362.

page 340 note 2 On British attitudes see Carlton, David, “Eden, Blum, and the Origins of Non-Intervention”, in: Journal of Contemporary History, VI (1971), No 3, p. 46.Google ScholarLarmour, Peter, The French Radical Party in the 1930's (Stanford, 1967), pp. 206–207Google Scholar, absolves the Radicals of major responsibility. The best general account is Blum, Joel Colton's Léon, Humanist in Politics (New York, 1966), pp. 245–267.Google Scholar

page 340 note 3 Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1932–1939, 2e Série (hereafter referred to as DDF), III, No 30, July 25, 1936.

page 340 note 4 DDF, III, No 28, July 25, 1936.

page 341 note 1 Ambassador Dodd's Diary, ed. W., and Dodd, M. (New York, 1941), p. 347.Google Scholar

page 341 note 2 On Coulondre DDF, III, No 472, November 12, 1936. Jules Moch described Corbin's hostility to the Popular Front in a personal interview, July 13, 1970.

page 341 note 3 US Ambassador Claude Bowers was scandalized by Herbette: My Mission to Spain (New York, 1954), pp. 296–297.Google Scholar For a representative sample of dispatches, DDF, III, Nos 237, 249, 316, 374, 399; IV, Nos 80, 133, 287, 323, 332, 403, 415; V, 66, 95, 147, 167, 236. One can only wonder at what reaction Blum must have had to this material, the blatantly pro-Franco tone and substance of which had none of the subtlety of a Francois-Poncet or a Corbin.

page 342 note 1 The incident is recounted in Bourret, General, La Tragédie de l'Armée française (Paris, 1947), pp. 137–138Google Scholar; Gamelin, General, Servir (Paris, 1946), II, pp. 259–266Google Scholar; and Bankwitz, Philip, Weygand, Maxime and Civil-Military Relations in Modern France (Cambridge, 1967), p. 267.Google Scholar

page 342 note 2 Blum admitted this in his post-war testimony: France, Assemblée Nationale, Rapport fait au nom de la Commission chargée d'enquêter sur les événements survenus en France de 1933 à 1945, par M. Charles Serre (Paris, 1947), I, p. 219.

page 342 note 3 Cot's changes were debated on at least two separate occasions: JO, Chambre, July 16, 1936, pp. 1934–1935; January 26, 1937, pp. 211–213.

page 342 note 4 Gamelin, Servir, II, p. 263.

page 343 note 1 On the above dismissals L'Echo de Paris is a good source, November 5 and 7, 1936. For a conspiratorial theory of Blum's resignation, Guerin, Daniel, Front Populaire, révolution manquée (Paris, 1963), pp. 166–167.Google Scholar

page 343 note 2 See Ellul, Jacques, The Political Illusion (New York, 1972), pp. 136–63.Google Scholar Crozier, however, discounts the importance ot technicians and emphasizes the human elements which render bureaucracy subject to political control. On Zay's innovative experiments see Talbott, John E., The Politics of Educational Reform in France, 1918–1940 (Princeton, 1969), pp. 205–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 344 note 1 Blumel's assertion that the administration was on the whole cooperative was flatly challenged by Cot, Pierre, in: Léon Blum, Chef de Gouvernement, pp. 39, 92–93.Google Scholar

page 344 note 2 A Short History of Socialism (New York, 1970), p. 246.Google Scholar

page 344 note 3 Zyromski, Jean, Les Formations politiques de la France contemporaine et l'action du Parti socialiste (Paris, 1931), pp. 12–27Google Scholar; Sfez, Lucien, “Les Idées Constitutionelles des Socialistes français (1944–1964)”, in: Jean Gicquel and Lucien Sfez, Problèmes de la Réiorme de l'Etat en France depuis 1934 (Paris, 1965), pp. 213–40.Google Scholar

page 345 note 1 Le Populaire, October 9 and November 9, 1936.

page 345 note 2 Le Gouvernement à Direction Socialiste (Limoges, 1937), p. 80.Google Scholar

page 345 note 3 Le Populaire, June 4, 1937.