The French Social Party (, PSF) was a French nationalist political party led by François de La Rocque from 1936 to 1940. La Rocque established the PSF after the dissolution of his Croix-de-Feu, a far-right league banned by the Popular Front government, with a more moderate and democratic ideology. The PSF was France's first right-wing mass party and experienced considerable initial success until it disappeared in the wake of the Fall of France in 1940. The PSF was not refounded after the Second World War, but the Republican Social Party of French Reconciliation was established in 1945 as a spiritual successor by former PSF members and it prefigured the rise of Gaullism after the war.Jacques Nobécourt, lecture at the Academy of Rouen, 7 February 1998; published in AL № 59, July 1998.
Background and origins (1927–36)
La Rocque envisioned the PSF as the more explicitly-political successor of the Croix-de-Feu, the World War I veterans' organization that had been founded in 1927 and, by the early 1930s, had emerged as the largestP. Machefer. "Les Croix-de-Feu 1927-1936", Information historique, № 1 (1972), p. 28-33. and one of the most influential of interwar France's numerous far-right leagues. Though the Croix-de-Feu had adopted as its slogan "Social d'abord" ("Social First") as a counter to the "Politique d'abord" ("Politics First") of Action Française, it espoused the political goals elaborated by La Rocque in his tract Service Public, including social Catholic corporatism, the institution of a minimum wage and paid vacations (congés payés), women's suffrage and the reform of parliamentary procedure.François de La Rocque. Service public (1934). The party's programme would further develop the same themes by advocating "the association of capital and labour", a traditional platitude of French conservatism, and the reform of France's political institutions along presidential lines to bolster the stability and authority of the state.La Rocque (1934).
Though the Croix-de-Feu participated in the demonstrations of 6 February 1934, La Rocque forbade its members from involving themselves in the subsequent riot, thus demonstrating a respect for republican legality that the PSF would also uphold as one of its essential political principles. La Rocque, who had previously maintained a certain mystique with regard to his attitude towards the Republic, explicitly rallied to it and denounced in a speech on 23 May 1936 totalitarianism (both Nazi and Soviet) along with racism (with regard to which he explicitly rejected anti-Semitism) and class struggle, as the principal obstacles to "national reconciliation".François de La Rocque. "Bulletin d'information du PSF du 8 juillet 1938, discours au Congrés PSF de Marseille, le 8 juin 1937", Bulletin des Amis de La Rocque, № 60 (1998).
Nevertheless, critics of the left and centre denounced the Croix-de-Feu, together with the other leagues, as fascist organizations. A desire to defend the republic was not their sole motivation. Politicians of the centre-right and left alike opposed La Rocque because of the perceived threat of his success in mobilising a mass base within their traditional particularly working-class constituencies.William D. Irvine. French Conservatism in Crisis (Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 93.
The disruptive nature of the leagues' activities made Pierre Laval's government outlaw paramilitary groups on 6 December 1935. Although that decision was succeeded by the law of 10 January 1936 regulating militias and combat organizations, the law was only partially implemented. Of all the leagues, only Action Française was dissolved, and the Croix-de-Feu was allowed to continue its activities essentially unimpeded. After the victory of the Popular Front, which had included in its electoral programme a promise to dissolve the right-wing leagues in the parliamentary elections of May 1936, the government issued a decree banning the Croix-de-Feu, along with the Mouvement social français, on 18 June. Within weeks, on 7 July, La Rocque founded the French Social Party to succeed the defunct league.
Political success and co-operation (1936–40)
Organisation and mass mobilisation The PSF inherited the large popular base of the Croix-de-Feu (450,000 members in June, 1936, most of them having joined since 1934)Julian Jackson. The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934-38 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 252. and, mirroring the contemporary Popular Front, achieved considerable success in mobilizing it through a variety of associated organizations: sporting societies, labour organizations and leisure and vacation camps. PSF members also orchestrated the development of "professional unions" (), envisioned as a means of organising management against labour militancy, which espoused class collaboration and claimed 1,000,000 members by 1938.P. Machefer. "Les Syndicats professionels français (1936-39)", MS (1982), p. 90-112.
Unlike established right-wing parties such as the Republican Federation and Democratic Alliance, which had traditionally lacked a formal membership structure and relied instead on the support of notables, the PSF aggressively courted an extensive membership among the middle and lower classes. By 1940, the PSF had become not only France's first right-wing mass party but also the nation's largest party in terms of membership: over 700,000 members (and more than a million according to some historiansJackson (1988), p. 254.), it eclipsed even the traditionally mass-based Socialist (SFIO) and Communist Parties (202,000 and 288,000 members, respectively, in December 1936).Jackson (1988), p. 219-20.
The party's central committee included its president, La Rocque, vice-presidents Jean Mermoz and , , Charles Vallin, Jean Ybarnégaray, Jean Borotra, and . The party had two newspapers: Le Flambeau and Le Petit Journal.
Electoral success Six members of the nascent PSF were elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1936, and three more were elected in by-elections between 1936 and 1939. Two deputies of other right-wing parliamentary groups defected to the party. The true measure of the party's electoral potential, however, came with the municipal elections of 1938–1939 in which it won 15% of votes nationally.Jacques Nobécourt, La Rocque (Fayard, 1996), p. 646. As a result of the proportional representation law passed by the Chamber in June 1939, that promised to translate into approximately 100 deputies in the legislative elections planned for 1940. By 1939, the party's elected officials, its 11 deputies aside, included nearly 3000 mayors, 541 general councilors and thousands of municipal councilors.Nobécourt (1996), p. 647.
Competition with established right-wing parties Of all the PSF's successes, it was the party's popularity among the middle classes, the peasants, shopkeepers, and clerical workers, who had been hardest hit by the Great Depression. They generated the most fear from the left. That demographic had historically been one of the primary bastions of the Radical-Socialist Party, and its falling under the influence of the "fascist" right was viewed by Popular Front leaders as a serious threat to the stability of the republic. The PSF, for its part, actively courted the middle classes and argued that their traditional Radical defenders had abandoned them by supporting the Popular Front.
Despite that demographic threat, however, the PSF generated the most fervent hostility within the parties of the established parliamentary right, most notably the conservative Republican Federation. The tensions between the Federation and the PSF were demonstrated as early as 1937 by a Normandy by-election in which the Federation candidate, after being behind the PSF candidate in the first round, initially refused to stand down and support the latter in the runoff round. The rancor of the feuding parties, despite the Federation candidate's eventual endorsement of the PSF, resulted in the seat falling to the centre, which demonstrated to Federation and PSF leaders alike the undesirability of co-existence. Thus, although the two parties were in fact in agreement on many questions of ideology, notably their defense of the far-right leagues, the PSF was viewed by the long-established Federation as a rival "to its own electoral fortunes".Irvine (1979), p. 157.
A second victim of the PSF's popularity was Jacques Doriot's far-right Parti Populaire Français (PPF), which incorporated nationalist, virulently-anticommunist and openly-fascist tendencies. Founded, like the PSF, in June 1936, the PPF enjoyed initial success and attracted a membership of 295,000, according to the party's own statistics by early 1938.Jackson (1988), p. 255. With the continued growth of the PSF, however, the PPF fell into decline, which parallelled the demise of the Popular Front to which it had largely been a reaction.
In March 1937, Doriot proposed the formation of a Front de la Liberté ("Front of Liberty") with the objective of unifying the right in opposition to the Popular Front. Although the Republican Federation, followed by several small right-wing parties that stood to lose little from allying themselves to the more extremist PPF, quickly accepted Doriot's proposal, it was rejected both by the moderate Democratic Alliance and by La Rocque, who identified the Front as an attempt to "annex" the popularity of his party.P. Machefer. "L'Union des droites, le PSF et le Front de la Liberté, 1936-37", Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. 17 (1970), p. 112-26. His insistence on the PSF's independence got La Rocque attacked violently by other figures on the right, including former Croix-de-Feu members who had abandoned the more moderate Social Party.Machefer (1970).
Rapprochement with Radical Party The major parties of the right fell in disarray after their electoral defeat and the strike movement of June 1936. Although the Republican Federation, at least, was consistent in its opposition to Popular Front policies, the Democratic Alliance and the small, Christian democratic Popular Democratic Party (PDP) were reluctant to criticise the government to prevent the sabotage of their efforts to lure the Radical Party into a centre-right coalition.Jackson (1988), p. 257.
Thus, the Independent Radicals, gathering right-wing Radical parliamentarians, constituted the most effective opposition to the Popular Front, particularly in the Senate. With the prospect of a PSF breakthrough in the 1940 elections in mind, the Independent Radicals sought to cooperate with the new force; for their part, the PSF deputies voted confidence in Édouard Daladier's Radical government in April 1938. With the collapse of the Popular Front the PSF-Radical alliance seemed inevitable to many on the left, with the Socialist newspaper Le Populaire writing in 1938 that "the PSF-Radical bloc has become a reality of political life". However, that observation appeared premature to most contemporary observers.Cited in Nobécourt (1996), p. 1063, note 58. In the original French: "le bloc PSF-Radicaux devient une réalité courante de la vie politique".
Wartime activities (1940–45) The Danzig Crisis of 1939 deprived the PSF of the chance to make serious inroads in parliament. On 30 July, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, fearing that the imminent electoral campaign would distract the Chamber of Deputies from the business of national defence, used the decree powers granted him by the Chamber to extend its term until May 1942.William Shirer. The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry Into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York, 1969), p. 434.