Prisoners of Want: The Experience and Protest of the Unemployed in France, 192145 (Studies in Labour History)

PRISONERS OF WANT: THE EXPERIENCE AND PROTEST OF THE UNEMPLOYED IN FRANCE, 1921–45

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Prisoners of Want: The Experience and Protest of the Unemployed in France, 1921–45

MATT PERRY Newcastle University, UK

© Matt Perry 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Matt Perry has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Perry, Matt, 1967– Prisoners of want : the experience and protest of the unemployed in France, 1921–45. – (Studies in labour history) 1. Unemployment – France – History – 20th century 2. Labor unions – France – History – 20th century 3. Unemployed – France – Political activity 4. France – Social conditions – 20th century 5. France – Economic conditions – 1921–1945 I. Title 331.1’37944’09043 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perry, Matt, 1967– Prisoners of want : the experience and protest of the unemployed in France, 1921–45 / by Matt Perry. p. cm. – (Studies in labour history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5607-4 (alk. paper) 1. Unemployed–France–History–20th century. 2. Manpower policy–France–History–20th century. 3. Labor movement–France–History–20th century. 4. Front populaire–History–20th century. 5. Parti communiste français–History– 20th century. I. Title. HD5775.P47 2007 331.13’7094409043–dc22 2006030024 ISBN 978-0-7546-5607-4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents General Editor’s Preface Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix xi xiii 1

1 The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

19

2 Movements of the Unemployed in the 1920s

51

3 The Parisian Unemployed Movement, 1930–33

71

4 Early Regional Unemployed Movements, 1931–33

99

5 The Lille to Paris Hunger March

123

6 After the Hunger March: the Rising Militancy of the Unemployed in 1934

145

7 The Coming of the Popular Front and the Unemployed Movements

175

8 The Popular Front Government and the Unemployed

193

9 Unemployment and the War Years, 1940–45

213

Conclusion

231

Appendices Bibliography Index

255 267 285

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Studies in Labour History General Editor’s Preface This series of books provides reassessments of broad themes in labour history, along with more detailed studies arising from the latest research in the field. Most books are single-authored but there are also volumes of essays, centred on key themes and issues, usually emerging from major conferences organized by the British Society for the Study of Labour History. Every author approaches their task with the needs of both specialist and non-specialist readerships in mind, for labour history is a fertile area of historical scholarship, stimulating wide-ranging interest, debate and further research, within both social and political history and beyond. When this series was first launched (with Chris Wrigley as its general editor) in 1998, labour history was emerging, reinvigorated, from a period of considerable introspection and external criticism. The assumptions and ideologies underpinning much labour history had been challenged by postmodernist, anti-Marxist and, especially, feminist thinking. There was also a strong feeling that often it had emphasized institutional histories of organized labour, at the expense of histories of work generally, and of workers’ social relations beyond their workplaces – especially gender and wider familial relationships. The Society for the Study of Labour History was concerned to consolidate and build upon this process of review and renewal through the publication of more substantial works than its journal Labour History Review could accommodate, and also to emphasize that though it was a British body, its focus and remit extended to international, transnational and comparative perspectives. Arguably, the extent to which labour history was narrowly institutionalized has been exaggerated. This series therefore includes studies of labour organizations, including international ones, where there is a need for modern reassessment. However, it is also its objective to maintain the breadth of labour history’s gaze beyond conventionally organized workers, sometimes to workplace experiences in general, sometimes to industrial relations, and naturally to workers’ lives beyond the immediate realm of work. Malcolm Chase Society for the Study of Labour History University of Leeds

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Preface Prisoners of Want examines the experience of the unemployed in France, their protests and their organizations from 1921 to 1945. Little has been written on this subject and there is considerable material – social and medical investigations, government reports, police surveillance, novels, memoirs and newspapers – that can be trawled to this end. The period under consideration opens and closes with phases of mass unemployment and efforts to organize those without work. Contemporary measurements of unemployment give the misleading impression that worklessness was not a serious problem in France. This statistical illusion has contributed to a relative disinterest amongst social historians in this subject. Although lower than in other industrial states, unemployment posed a serious problem for working-class households and there was more protest than has been assumed. Moreover, Prisoners of Want proves to be particularly timely given the return of mass unemployment in France, which has engendered in recent years new organizations and protests of the jobless. Movements of the unemployed in France adopted a range of activity from advice work and self-help to protests. There were hunger marches, demonstrations, relief work strikes, school student strikes, occupations of town halls and riots. Crucial to explaining the characteristics of these movements are the changing tactics of activists, the psychological dynamics of jobless protests and the responses of the authorities. Above all, organizing the unemployed was riddled with paradoxes and frustrations. Many activists complained about the indifference and apathy of their jobless audience. Yet, at other times, even the authorities noted the militant ‘effervescence’ of those without work. The French Communist Party played a prominent role in the creation and leadership of the movements of the unemployed. Any examination of the unemployed movements would have to consider the relationship between the communists and the workless. This interaction forms an evolving and complex factor in this history. The communist approach changed significantly over time and was the product of international prompting, periodic national attention and the work of local activists. This study will assess the impact of unemployed protest upon the authorities in terms of policy and, in the longer term, on the development of the French welfare state. It is worth considering whether the nature of the protests in interwar France contributed to the late arrival of the unemployment insurance system. Other intriguing questions are the part played by the struggles of the unemployed in the wider context of social movements in the 1930s and their significance in the French collective memory.

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my appreciation for those who have performed the unenviable task of reading and commenting on drafts of this book: Professor Richard Croucher, Professor Don MacRaild, John Halstead, Xavier Guégan and Jim Wolfreys. I would like to record my gratitude to the generosity and patience of the staff at the Archives Départementales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Archives Départementales du Nord, Archives Départementales de la Somme, Archives Municipales de Aubervilliers, Archives Muncipales de la Ville de Saint-Denis, Archives Municipales de SaintEtienne, Archives Municipales d’Ivry, Archives Nationales de France, Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Mouvements Trotskystes et Révolutionnaires Internationaux, Institut d’Histoire Sociale (CGT), CEDIAS-Musée Social, Centre de Recherches d’Histoire des Mouvements Sociaux et du Syndicalisme (CRHMSS), Open Society Archive (Budapest), State Archive for Social and Political History, Moscow (RGASPI), Comintern Archive; for copyright permissions to Institut d’Histoire Sociale (CGT) and Archives Muncipales de la Ville de Saint-Denis. Thanks to Neil Purvis for his cartographical skills. I am indebted to those who helped with materials from the Moscow archives: Alexander Valtin, Professor Peter Waldron and Jeremy Smith.

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List of Abbreviations AEAR ARAC

CAS CCdC

CCdC(RP) CDH CdC CdS CE CFTC CGT CHC CRC ECCI FST FTP HBM HOK ISR JOC PCF PUP SFIO SOI SRI

Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires [Association of Revoutionary Writers and Artists]. Association Révolutionnaire des Anciens Combattants [Revolutionary Association of Veterans, communist veterans’ organization]. Comité d’Aide et de Soutien aux Chômeurs [Committee of Aid and Support to the Unemployed]. Comité Central des Chômeurs de Saint-Etienne et des Environs [Central Committee of the Unemployed of Saint-Etienne and District]. Comité Central des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne [Central Committee of the Unemployed of the Paris Region]. Camarades Distributeurs de L’Humanité [Newspaper sellers]. Comité des Chômeurs [Committee of the Unemployed]. Comités de Soutien [Support Committees]. Commission Exécutive [Executive Commission]. Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétriens [French Confederation of Christian Workers]. Confédération Générale du Travail [General Confederation of Labour]. Comité Humanitaire des Chômeurs [Humanitarian Committee of the Unemployed]. Comité Régional des Chômeurs [Regional Committee of the Unemployed]. Executive Committee of the Communist International. Fédération Sportive du Travail [Sporting Federation of Labour]. Francs-Tireurs et Partisans [Irregulars and Partisans]. Habitations à Bon Marché [the low cost social housing]. Hayastani Oknoutian Komite [Committee for Assisting Armenia]. Internationale Syndicale Rouge Red International of Trade Unions also known by the Russian abbreviation Profintern. Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne [Catholic Workers’ Youth]. Parti Communiste Français [French Communist Party]. Parti d’Unité Prolétarienne [Party of Proletarian Unity or ‘pupiste’]. Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière [French Socialist Party]. Secours Ouvrier International [ International Workers’ Aid]. Secours Rouge International [International Red Aid].

xiv

UdC UdCdC(RL) UdS ULU URU

Prisoners of Want

Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne [Union of Committees of the Unemployed of the Parisian Region]. Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Lyonnaise [Union of Committees of the Unemployed of the Lyons Region]. Union des Syndicats de la Seine [Trades Council of the Seine]. Union Locale Unitaire [Local CGTU]. Union Régionale Unitaire [Regional CGTU].

Introduction ‘Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant’ [Live working or die fighting]. Lyons silkworkers’ slogan, 1831.1 Arise ye workers from your slumbers Arise ye prisoners of want For reason in revolt now thunders And at last ends the age of cant. Away with all your superstitions Servile masses arise, arise We’ll change henceforth the old tradition And spurn the dust to win the prize. The Internationale, 1871. The title of this book – Prisoners of Want – is appropriated from the opening lines of the Internationale. The song reverberated in the streets of French towns between the wars as the unemployed protested for ‘bread and work’. Its opening stanza resonated with real poignancy for the unemployed. They were both real ‘prisoners of hunger’ and ‘the damned of the earth’ calumnied as troublemakers and scroungers in the bourgeois press. Prisoners of Want attends to a neglected area of French history. Circumstance has conspired to obliterate the memory of unemployed protest. The left, with experiences of the Popular Front and the resistance, had a more heroic tale to tell. This failure to remember reinforced the struggle against invisibility that has been a general feature of the history of unemployment. To compound this, without a developed system of unemployment insurance, joblessness in France was significantly under-recorded thereby obscuring this blind-spot from historians. Whilst the Right to Work marches and the People’s March for Jobs of late 1970s and 1980s evoked memories of the British hunger marches of the 1930s, the French unemployed protest movement of December–January 1997–98 conjured no such reminiscences.2 As L’Année Politique commented ‘for the first time, the unemployed organized themselves into protest movements’.3 Sociologist Serge Paugam described 1 At the time of the November 1831 insurrection, Edouard Dolléans, Histoire du Mouvement Ouvier (2 vols, Paris, 1939), vol. 1, p. 65. 2 For accounts of the recent unemployed movement in France, Marie-Agnès Combesque, Ça Suffit! Histoire du Mouvement des Chômeurs (Paris, 1998); Sophie Maurer, Les Chômeurs en Action (Paris, 2001); Richard Dethrye and Malika Zédiri-Corniou, La Révolte des Chômeurs (Paris, 1992); Christophe Aguiton, ‘Le réseau des marches européenes contre le chômage, la précarité et les exclusions’, in Jean-Claude Boual (ed.), Vers Une Société Civile Européenne (Paris, 1999). 3 L’Année Politique, Economique et Social 1997 (Paris, 1998), pp. 164–5.

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the revolt of the unemployed as a ‘movement without precedent’.4 Yet there was an unemployed movement in France, though one poorly served by historians. Even Charles Tillon’s On Chantait Rouge (1977) which narrated the hunger march from Nord to Paris in late 1933 noted that it ‘did not possess the power of the famed English hunger marches’.5 Overshadowed as it was by the British, American and German movements, it is no surprise then that the French movement should be so easily forgotten or dismissed.6 Very little has been published on the subject.7 Against the weight of conventional wisdom, the unemployment movement of 1997–98 had a significant and underestimated historical forebear. Neglected evidence for this movement can be found in the hitherto overlooked newspapers of the unemployed organizations held in the National Library as well as Ministry of Labour and Interior files at the National Archives. Other resources are dispersed in the municipal archives of the Parisian suburbs and the provinces across France. The study of these protest movements allow certain insights into the experience of unemployment and unemployed movements in general. Historians and Unemployment Unemployment is a troubled concept. Its meaning, statistics, remedies and even at times its very existence are contested. It certainly divided French opinion between the wars. Likewise its history embodies contrasting approaches. The evolution of the social provision for the unemployed has enticed the attention of a good number of historians.8 This social policy perspective has highlighted French particularism: the late arrival of both state provision and unemployment insurance. Initially, the Ghent system – government subsidized voluntary insurance funds – was adopted

4 Serge Paugam, ‘La révolte des chômeurs: un mouvement sans précédent’, Magazine Littéraire, 365 (1998): 73–6. 5 Charles Tillon, On Chantait Rouge (Paris, 1977), p. 170. 6 On comparisons of unemployed movements in the 1930s, see Richard Croucher, ‘Communist unemployed organisations between the world wars’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 30 (1990): 590–91; for the standard work on the British movement, Richard Croucher, We Refuse to Starve in Silence: a History of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement 1920– 46 (London, 1987); see also Matt Perry, Bread and Work: the Experience of Unemployment 1918–39 (London, 2000), pp. 103–24, 147–57 and 187–91. 7 For the history of the French unemployed movement see Danielle Tartakowsky, ‘Syndicats et mobilisations de chômeurs dans les années trente’, Cahiers de Ressy, 3–4 (June 2000): 16–21; Agnès Colnet, Les Mouvements des Chômeurs (MA thesis, Paris I, 1984); JeanPierre Rioux, ‘Du pain, du sang et du rêve’, Histoire, 58 (1983): 42–56; Julian Jackson, The Politics of the Depression in France 1932-6 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 45–6. 8 Christine Daniel and Carole Tuchszirer, L’Etat Face aux Chômeurs: l’Indemnisation du Chômage de 1884 à nos Jours (Paris, 1999); Jacques Caritey, ‘Une idée neuve: l’histoire de la sécurité sociale’, Mouvement Social, 137 (1986): 1–5; Noel Whiteside and Robert Salais (eds), Governance, Industry, and Labour Markets in Britain and France: the Modernising State in the Mid-Twentieth Century (London, 1998).

3

Introduction 9

and codified in successive decrees (from 1905 onwards). Compared to Belgium and the Netherlands, however, the coverage of this scheme was slight and therefore played a secondary role in relieving the unemployed. It was non-contributory, voluntary, departmental or communal unemployment funds, subsidized by central government, that filled the vacuum in 1914 and 1926. In international comparisons, with the widespread adoption of unemployment insurance after the Great War, the French system looked ad hoc and outdated. Indeed, in 1921, the International Labour Organization described the French system as ‘backward’.10 An opportunity was missed in 1928 and 1930 when laws establishing comprehensive social insurance failed to address unemployment. This omission was repeated when the post-liberation social security system neglected unemployment insurance. It was not until 1958 that France’s provision for the unemployed unambiguously entered the modern welfare era.11 Sharing the social policy perspective’s focus on government policy is a related historiographical strand, which might be called the institutional school. This views unemployment as a construct of key institutions, in particular labour law, welfare provision, and government statistical agencies. Robert Salais, former head of L’Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques [INSEE, National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies] enlisted the help of Nicholas Baverez and Bénédicte Reynaud to write L’Invention du Chômage.12 This ground-breaking study took as its starting point not the development of unemployment but its definition and measurement by the French state. Unemployment was observed through the prism of institutions – the state, the large firm and the work contract. These institutions socially constructed unemployment, it was they that conjured it into being and it was they that could ultimately dispel it, according to the authors. This perspective has been borne forward by a major Anglo-French collection of essays edited by Salais, Whiteside and Mansfield which sought to ‘demonstrate the multifaceted process of

9

Miriam Cohen and Michael Hanagan, ‘Politics, industrialization and citizenship: unemployment policy in England, France and the United States’, International Review of Social History, 40/3 (1995): 91–129; Walter Korpi, ‘Un état-providence contesté et fragmenté’, Revue Française de Science Politique, 45/4 (1995): 632–65; Gilles Pollet and Didier Renard, ‘Genèses et usages de l’idée paritaire dans le système de protection sociale français: fin 19e– milieu du 20e siècle’, Revue Française de Science Politique, 45/4 (1995): 545–56. 10 International Labour Office, ‘The organisation of unemployment insurance and employment exchanges in France’, Studies and Reports, C/5 (1921): 1. 11 When employers and trade unions established comprehensive unemployment insurance. They sit on the Union Nationale Interprofessionnelle pour L’Emploi dans L’Industrie et Le Commerce [UNEDIC, National Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce]. The Association pour l’Emploi dans Industrie et Commerce [ASSEDIC, Association for Employment in Industry and Commerce] runs the scheme. Or as late as 1967 when Agence National Pour l’Emploi [ANPE, National Agency for Employment] was formed. 12 Robert Salais, Nicolas Baverez and Benédicte Reynaud, L’Invention du Chômage: Histoire et Transformations d’une Catégorie en France des Années 1890 aux Années 1980 (Paris, 1986).

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fabrication’ of unemployment. Here the discursive character of unemployment is emphasized and the themes of L’Invention articulated with greater confidence and range. Salais explained that unemployment was not ‘the mechanical reflection of objective and structural factors. This was, on the contrary, the product of an active “invention” – of a fabrication – complex, contradictory, in many respects, uncertain in its ends and results throughout the period.’ Christian Topalov pursued this paradigm focusing on the period 1880–1910 to chart the birth of the unemployed.14 These contributions, influenced by post-structuralism, have furnished invaluable insights into unemployment but their drawbacks are twofold: they depoliticize a profoundly politicized issue and they have displaced inquiry away from the experiences of the unemployed. In recent decades the historical understanding of unemployment has made great strides forward. A number of national and local studies have highlighted the importance of unemployment as a part of the working-class condition. Despite several notable exceptions, a growing consensus has emerged. The pioneering work in the history of unemployment was the work of John Garraty. In many ways his Unemployment in History anticipated later developments.15 What was unique about Garraty’s book was that it made unemployment a specific subject of study. Unemployment had its own history. It was not just another economic indicator or a tool of measurement to judge macroeconomic performance, it had historical origins and a particular pattern of development. Furthermore, Garraty revealed an interesting dichotomy between the existence of unemployment and its recognition as a social problem: it took some time before unemployment was discovered. Garraty’s account hinged upon the emerging awareness of unemployment as a problem of public policy which culminated in the Keynesian revolution of the post-war Western world. However, Unemployment in History was written at a time when the Keynesian model was under sustained attack from the new right.16 Garraty’s notion of the late discovery of unemployment has been particularly influential. His insight was that unemployment was the product of industrial capitalism 13

Malcolm Mansfield, Robert Salais and Noel Whiteside (eds), Aux Sources du Chômage, 1880–1914: une Comparaison Interdisciplinaire entre la France et la GrandeBretagne (Paris, 1994). See also Noel Whiteside and James A. Gillespie, ‘Deconstructing unemployment: developments in Britain in the interwar years’, Economic History Review, 44/4 (1991): 665–82. 14 Christian Topalov, Naissance du Chômeur, 1880–1910 (Paris, 1994). 15 John A. Garraty, Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy (New York, 1978). 16 Monetarist economic historians opened a debate over the relationship between unemployment benefits and voluntary unemployment, Daniel K. Benjamin and Lionel A. Kochin, ‘Searching for an explanation of interwar unemployment in Britain’, Journal of Political Economy, 87/3 (1979): 441–78; Daniel K. Benjamin and Lionel A. Kochin, ‘Unemployment and unemployment benefits in twentieth-century Britain: a reply to our critics’, Journal of Political Economy, 90/2 (1982): 410–36; D. Metcalf, S.J. Nickell and N. Floros, ‘Still searching for an explanation of unemployment in interwar Britain’, Journal of Political Economy, 90/2 (1982): 386–98; K.G.P. Matthews, and Daniel K. Benjamin, US and UK Unemployment Between the Wars: a Doleful Story (London, 1992).

Introduction

5

and that there was plentiful evidence that unemployment was widespread before it was generally recognized in society. Subsequently historians of unemployment have added weight to the ‘late discovery’ thesis. Garraty, and others who followed, explained that the material foundation for unemployment was laid by the separation of home and work, town and country, by wage labour and maturation of the labour market. Prevailing attitudes to the free market, to the poor, to charity as well as the moral injunction to work constituted a strong ideological barrier to the recognition of unemployment. However, the state’s eventual admission of the existence of unemployment did not resolve the conflict between the ideological dimension and the material reality of unemployment. ‘The state responded’ as Basheville and Sager observed in relation to the Canadian case, ‘by ignoring the discovery or denying its importance and commencing a long process of evasion that continued into the twentieth century’.17 That labour protest catalyses the recognition of unemployment is another aspect of this historical consensus. From the march of the blanketeers in 1817, the unemployed have episodically shaken off their apathy and demonstrated, sloganeered, even rioted, thereby drawing attention to their plight. One obvious case is the agitation of the Social Democratic Federation of the 1880s and 1890s amongst the unemployed labourers of London. But historians have noticed this relationship in studies of Massachusetts, Canada, and even the revolutions of 1848.18 So if Garraty provided unemployment with its history, others have provided the unemployed with their history. The inescapable conclusion is that the history of unemployment has to embrace opposites. It has to consider the interaction between human agency and structural context. Furthermore, unemployment has an objective, material, structural, real side as well as a discursive, constructed, ideological, invented one.19 Where this study is concerned, these historiographical insights pose the question of the contested recognition of unemployment, a battle of ideas which is played out in the representations of the unemployed, in welfare provision for the unemployed, in the shifting rhetoric of press and government. Unemployed protest is in the first instance a struggle for recognition. The demand for adequate government provision for the unemployed was a call for respect and acknowledgment. It was based upon the premise that the unemployed suffered from a plight not of their own making. In France in the 1930s, this was all the more poignant given the lateness and lack of coherence of unemployment policy. In comparison to Germany, Britain, or the USA, the relative preponderance of small and medium-sized business, the geographically scattered character of industry, the continued importance of agriculture and the scale

17 Peter Baskerville and Eric W. Sager, Unwilling Idlers: the Urban Unemployed and their Families in late Victorian Canada (Toronto, 1998), p. 4. 18 Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: the First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1986). 19 An understanding of its history therefore has to contend with the age-old philosophical problem of mind and body and overcome the Cartesian dualism so deeply embedded into conventional thinking.

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of immigration meant that there was a greater possibility of ignoring the claims of the unemployed or evading governmental responsibilities in their regard. The French Road to Mass Unemployment France and Britain took different roads to capitalist development and this had a crucial impact upon the character of unemployment in the 1930s. In Britain, the demographic shift from agriculture, the commodification of agricultural activity and the uprooting of surplus agricultural population into wage-labour occurred exceptionally early and rapidly within the process of development. These aspects of development occurred far later in France. What we might call an agricultural lag was experienced, which only worked itself out after the Second World War. These observations have considerable implications for the historical comparison of British and French unemployment.20 The geographical pattern of French unemployment was highly differentiated. A survey of France in the early 1930s reveals this complexity. At this time ninetenths of France’s unemployed resided in only 17 departments. The other tenth were shared between the remaining 44 departments.21 Unsurprisingly those regions with the greatest problems of unemployment were France’s major industrial regions: the Paris basin, Nord and Pas-de-Calais, Rhône-Loire and Seine-Inférieure. The exception was Alsace-Lorraine (the departments Moselle, Meurthe-et-Moselle, BasRhin) where unemployment remained relatively low. Other regions that suffered from heavy unemployment were lesser industrial regions, Ardennes, or areas with large cities Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) and Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhône).22 Therefore visible open unemployment of the modern type was linked to the centres of French large-scale industry: the Paris region, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Lyons-SaintEtienne region, Lorraine, Seine-Inférieure (Rouen and Le Havre), Loire-Inférieure (Saint-Nazaire and Nantes). Each of these regions had their own characteristics. Paris accounted for seven million souls in 1931 or one in six of the French population. It contained a complex social and economic geography. Inside the ancient walls of the city, artisanal trades based in the ateliers [workshops or studios] were found in the north and east of the city, contrasting with the wealth of the beaux quartiers [elegant areas]. The artisans of small industries, such as furniture, 20 Richard Roehl, ‘French industrialization: a reconsideration’, Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 233–81; –81; 81; François Crouzet, ‘The historiography of French economic growth in the nineteenth century’, Economic History Review, 56/2 (May 2003): 215–42; Patrick O’Brien and Caglar Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), p. 138; Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, ‘Historical alternatives to mass production: politics, markets, and technology in nineteenth-century industrialization’, Past and Present, 108 (1985): 133–76. 21 Maurice Duperrey (ed.), Le Chômage: les Enquêtes des Rotary-Clubs Français (Paris, 1933), p. 109. 22 However amongst the departments with the heaviest unemployment rates, there were two rural areas, Creuse and Haute-Vienne, both having high proportions of female unemployment.

7

Introduction th

th

footwear, confection and small metal trades, made their livelihoods in the 10 , 11 , 12th, 18th, 19th, 20th arrondissements [districts]. Here resided the strongest traditions of militancy stretching back through the great revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Such craft workers increasingly shared these poorer areas with factory, office and department store workers who commuted to work. Beyond the city walls, the rapidly sprawling suburbs developed in time into a working-class red circle encasing Paris. The railways and the factories of new industries were the catalysts of urban encroachment on the market gardens and rural hinterland of Paris. By the interwar years, this process was well underway. In the west (and to a lesser extent the south), the car industry dominated. The great factories of Citröen were sited at Javel and Grenelle. The giant Renault factory lodged in Boulogne-Billancourt and occupied 40,000 people in an area the size of Chartres. The automotive industry was also located at Issy-les-Moulineaux, Clichy, Levallois-Perret, Courbevoie, Suresnes, Puteaux, Colombes, Gennevilliers. The industry employed 120,000 as the depression was set to break. The northern and eastern suburbs were more mixed industrially. In the Saint-Denis plain, chemicals, heavy engineering, glass and ceramics factories stood side by side. Saint-Ouen brought together chemicals, metallurgy, food processing and textiles. Aubervilliers, La Courneuve and Pantin specialized in chemicals. The eastern suburbs were more residential with a slow but sure industrial penetration. The southern suburbs – Kremlin-Bicêtre, Gentilly, Villejuif, Arcueil and Cachan – were industrialized. In Ivry, metal, chemical and ceramics were manufactured. Vitry and Choisy were home to cardboard, linoleum, brick and earthenware factories. The spectre of unemployment hung more threateningly over the Parisian suburbs than any other part of France.23 After Paris, France possessed five major concentrations of modern industry: Nord and Pas-de-Calais, Lyons and Saint-Etienne, Lorraine, the mouth of the Seine (Le Havre and Rouen) and the mouth of the Loire (Saint-Nazaire and Nantes). Compared to other industrial nations, this pattern was markedly dispersed, with industrial regions lying with one exception along its north and eastern extremities. Each area had its own distinctiveness. Nord and Pas-de-Calais near the Belgian border was part of the early modern industrial region of Flanders. It was to become a heartland of working-class organization and militancy, the setting of Zola’s Germinal, the classic naturalistic account of a miners’ strike and patois poetry of the miner Jules Mousseron.24 The Nord and Pas-de-Calais region combined France’s premier coalfield, its principal centre of the textile industry, as well as substantial engineering and steel.25 Nord 23

‘Le chômage, l’emploi et la production industrielle depuis 1928’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 24 (January–March 1935). It had 851 unemployed per 10,000 active population which is significantly higher than even the Nord department with 589. The old city, with its industry more artisanal in character, had a much reduced unemployment rate of 451 per 10,000. Assisted unemployed per 10,000 of the active population excluding cultivators, and armed forces. 24 Jules Mousseron, (1868–1943). Jules Mousseron, A l’Fosse: la Mine et les Mineurs (Valenciennes, 1975). 25 Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: the Industrialisation of Europe 1760–1970 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 94–6.

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and neighbouring parts of Belgium stood out as one of Europe’s pioneering regions to undergo the industrial revolution of coal and factory-produced textiles. The industrial character of this area stretched back to medieval times with cloth and linen industries. The multifaceted character of its industry produced a complex economic geography. The region was responsible for 65 per cent of the nation’s coal production in 1929. The towns and villages densely populated the coalfield which stretched 100 km eastwards from Béthune to Valenciennes and five to 15 km north to south.26 Some parts of the coalfield – Denain, Anzin and Valenciennes – combined mining and steel production. Whilst coal production in the region dated back to 1717, output expanded dramatically in the nineteenth century. Beyond the coal basin, other economic specializations existed: wool in Roubaix, Tourcoing and Fourmies; linen in Lille and Halluin; cotton in Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing. To the east, heavy metallurgy developed around Mauberge in the Sambre and Escaut valleys in close proximity to coal. From the perspective of the Nord and Pas-deCalais’s regional character, its particular industrial mix meant that investment was concentrated in large workplaces and associated with them were powerful employers. This region should not be understood in one-dimensional terms however. Around Avesnes, labourers combined industrial outwork and agricultural work especially in the beetroot fields in an annual cycle of alternating industrial and agricultural activity. During the economic slump, the combination of large workplace and the badly hit older industries meant that this region suffered mass unemployment of a character not matched elsewhere outside the Paris region. Another major industrial centre, dominated by the two great cities of Le Havre and Rouen, was located in the Seine estuary. Rouen as a port that serviced the trade with the nation’s capital had a greater tonnage of goods than Marseilles. Petrol refineries, chemical works, coal processing works and textile factories (in particular cotton) resided in Rouen. This was also France’s second weaving region. It had spawned a number of contiguous industrial towns: Sotteville, Petit-Quevilly, Darnétal, SaintEtienne du Rouvray, Grand-Couronne and Deville. Elbeuf and Louviers were adjacent wool towns. Le Havre acted as a port for the US and the colonies. All told the agglomeration counted around 400,000 inhabitants. The Lorraine industrial region emerged in the latter nineteenth century and had previously been an agricultural region. The Lorraine iron ore deposits were the largest in Europe. About 90 per cent of France’s iron ore was mined in Lorraine (Longwy, Briey, Nancy and Thionville). The Moselle boasted a coalfield (Forbach and Saint-Avold) but one much smaller than that the Nord and Pas-de-Calais. This coincidence meant that Lorraine was responsible for 67 per cent of French steel production. The region however had only recently been returned to France as part of the Versailles Treaty. Because of its particular specialization in steel and the resulting lower dependency on national and international sales for its coal, Lorraine, despite its large industrial workplaces, did not experience the acute regional unemployment of other such industrial areas.

26

The towns of Lens, Denain, Douai and Bruay, Philippe Pinchemel, France: a Geographical Survey (London, 1969).

Introduction

9

The Lyons and Saint-Etienne industrial region had become a major centre of urban population and industry. The origins of its modern industry stretches back to the foundation of the Lyonnais silk industry and Stéphanois iron smelting in the sixteenth century. Over time, Lyons became France’s third city and a centre of the silk-weaving industry, as well as chemicals, banking and commerce. At the time of the first industrial revolution, Lyons had been the great artisanal centre of the silk manufacturers. Its artisans, the canuts [silk workers], had been militant pioneers of socialism and the labour movement. Lyons’s silk industry was supplied by rural outworkers. The decline of this industry in the 1930s resulted from the development of artificial silk as well as the depression of luxury trades. To a certain extent, this decline was compensated for by newer industries: chemicals (dyes, pharmaceuticals, photography and fertilizers) and engineering (with Berliet lorry factory at Vénissieux). Saint-Etienne, despite its proximity, had a quite different character, combining coal and metalworking (specializing in armaments, bicycle manufacture and toolmaking). Saint-Etienne stood at the centre of the Loire coalfield with its mining and metalworking towns: Rive-de-Gier, Firminy and so on. Unemployment was high in both departments and though a movement took root in both, the achievements of the Stéphanois movement were far more remarkable. The last major industrial region existed at the mouth of the Loire, encompassing Saint-Nazaire and Nantes. Nantes had grown as a colonial port in the eighteenth century and was a considerable commercial centre in addition to its industrial activities. Saint-Nazaire by contrast was a major shipbuildling town, an industry that was damaged severely by the depression. The road connecting the two formed the route of France’s most celebrated local hunger march in the summer of 1933. From the point of view of the unemployed movement, the existence of smaller pockets of industry outside these major areas is an indispensable part of the picture. Yet here the contrasting fortunes and the uneven character of development are perhaps even starker than the larger industrial regions. Some large cities (Toulouse, Bordeaux, Grenoble and even Marseilles) combined substantial industrial development with locally more significant administrative and commercial functions. An unemployment problem existed in such cities. So did the potential for organizations of the jobless though on the strength of their record, the possibilities were not as great as more industrialized areas. For instance, at the foot of the Alpes, Grenoble was late to industrialize with a focus on hydroelectric power generation and chemicals from the late nineteenth century. The city fared much better from an economic standpoint in the 1930s than neighbouring Lyons or Saint-Etienne with their older industrial traditions. Certain middling-sized towns were industrial in character but were relatively isolated in departments of lower population density. Often they were dependent on a single or a narrow range of industries. Mining towns such as Alès, Bessèges, La Grand’Combe (Gard), Montceau-les-Mines, Blanzy, Montchanin (Le Creusot), Graissesac, Carmaux, Decazeville, Champagnac, Commentry, Decize existed in relative seclusion and suffered badly during the slump. Lack of diversity rendered towns vulnerable to heavy unemployment. Le Boucau was the site of the giant Forges d’Adour plant and depended on its fortunes. Clermont-Ferrand had effectively become a company town. Michelin’s workforce totalled 18,800 in 1926 yet by August 1936

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the tyre manufacturer only employed 7,000.27 Some towns that depended on a single branch of industry were not always connected to large workplaces. Oyonnax (Jura) was heavily dependent on the cottage industry of comb manufacture and shared the depressing fate of coal towns. Other industrial towns were more diversified. Valence combined hosiery, silk and wood industries. The Ardennes was a centre of small metalworking industries and at its centre Charleville produced agricultural machinery, nuts and bolts, toolmaking, kitchenware and ironmongery. Limoges was relatively diversified with footwear, porcelain, paper, gloves and straw-weaving. The depression hit these areas unevenly. In some, the scale of the depression’s impact was not so much reflected in unemployment but in emigration and possibly, for outworkers, in immiseration. Neither the size of firm nor diversification acted as a reliable vaccine against the crisis. Particular alloys of industries, especially some new industrial sectors gave the best protection. The environment within which movements and protests against unemployment germinated therefore varied very considerably. The intricate patterning of French industry, and the kaleidoscope of social relations that resulted, made for great unevenness in the character of its social hierarchies. The fragmented and multiple social and economic locations of the French working class complemented cleavages of consciousness and identity: regional, gender, national and political. For the unemployed, this fragmentation was even starker given the inconsistencies of the relief system and the atomizing effect of unemployment. Yet shared interests and common cause did engage a part of the unemployed in protest and organization. The 1930s to the 1990s: The Protest of the Unemployed in France. The study of French unemployed protest in the 1930s was given renewed pertinence by the emergence of new social movements (AIDS advocacy, environmentalism, anti-racism, the homeless, the illegal immigrants – sans-papiers, and the unemployed) in 1990s France.28 The sans-papiers have organized their own hunger marches and unemployed protest exploded in the winter of 1997–98. These have attracted considerable academic and journalistic interest and had served to reawaken interest in the question of unemployment and social exclusion. The term ‘new social movements’ denoted novel forms of organization, methods of action and relations to existing social actors (in particular political parties, trade unions and the state). They represent a ‘new and more dynamic form of citizenship’ that is both participatory 27

Georges Héreil, Le Chômage en France: Etude de Légisation (Paris, 1932), pp. 44–5; Duperrey, Le Chômage, pp. 81–92; L. Dumond, ‘L’arrière-plan technique et commercial’, in André Gueslin (ed.), Michelin: les Hommes du Pneu (Paris, 1993), p. 63. 28 For example, Sarah Waters, ‘New social movements in France: une nouvelle vague citoyenne?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 6/4 (1998): 495–505; Jan Duyvendak, Le Poids du Politique: les Nouveaux Mouvements Sociaux en France (Paris, 1994); Alberto Melucci, ‘The new social movements revisited: reflexions on a sociological misunderstanding’, in Louis Maheu (ed.), Social Movements and Social Classes: the Future of Collective Action (London, 1995), pp. 107–19.

Introduction

11

and political though shunning traditional political mechanisms. For some they characterize an epoch beyond class-delineated politics. This lends an added relevance to earlier protests of the unemployed.29 The relationship between the unemployed movements of the 1930s and the 1990s casts the new social movements in a distinctive light. This relationship reveals a relative amnesia in the French working-class movement about the French hunger marches, unemployed demonstrations and riots. That history might be a blessing or a curse. The memory of the Jarrow Crusade and the hunger marches in Britain translated into increasingly ritualized and symbolic repeat marches sponsored by the official labour movement (whilst neither were graced with such support during the slump). Elsewhere research on the resurrection of slogans and methods of struggle of the depression found that such recall played well only to a particular constituency for whom these continued to have meaning but bypassed a large part of the unemployed.30 More positively, the sharper memories of unemployment and protest against it may have encouraged action to counter workplace closures in the 1970s in Britain with a wave of factory and shipyard occupations in the early 1970s and the Right to Work marches of the late seventies.31 The relationship between political parties or trade unions and social movements is also a prime focus in the literature. Here the contrast between the 1930s and 1990s is strong. The principal protests and organizations of the unemployed had a close relationship with political parties and trade unions in the most cases with the Parti Communiste Français [French Communist Party, PCF] and also in exceptional cases with the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière [French Socialist 29 This is not to say that unemployment had not been not been the subject of social conflict between the 1930s and the 1990s. Over Christmas 1960, strikers occupied the Decazeville mines and workshops against the closure of the Aveyron coalfield. Interestingly, from the point of view of the memory of the hunger marches, during the national miners’ strike of 1 March to 5 April 1963, the iron miners of Lorraine marched on Paris. The strike was over pay and the working week and won major concessions (8 per cent pay increases and a fourth week of paid holiday) though the dispute involved some serious clashes with the police and army, Roger Lajoie-Mazenc, Colère au Fond des Puits, ou Comment les Gueules Noires ont Popularisé la Grève (Salingardes, 1964); Libération, 22 June 1983; Le Monde, 14 June 1993; Edmond Maire, Charles Piaget, André Acquier, Raymond Burgy, Lip 73 (Paris, 1973); Claude Neuschwander and Guy Bordet, Lip Vingt Ans Après, 1973–1993: Propos sur le Chômage (Paris, 1993); Claude Durand, Chômage et Violence: Longwy en Lutte (Paris, 1981); ‘La Commune Longwy’, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1997. The demonstration of 2,000 workers who demonstrated on 24 July 1997 with the threatened closes of the JVC and Panasonic factories as well as the Usinor wire rod mill had prompted the retrospective assessment of the events of 1979. 30 Cybèle Locke, ‘Historical consciousness and the unemployed: invoking the symbols from the past to protest a cause’, New Zealand Journal of History, 35/1 (2001): 70–84. 31 Alasdair Buchan, The Right to Work: the Story of the Upper Clyde Confrontation (London, 1972); Jimmy Reilly, Anger on the Road (London, 1977); the memoirs of two participants in the NUWM and the right to work campaign, Harry MacShane, No Mean Fighter (London, 1978), pp. 263–4, and Ernie Roberts, Strike Back (Orpington, 1994), pp. 170, 181–3; H. Levie, D. Gregory and N. Lorentzen (eds), Fighting Factory Closures: Deindustrialisation and the Trade Unions 1979–83 (Nottingham, 1984).

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Party, SFIO] and even the ligues. This contrast can be exaggerated. It is still the case that the leading activists in the unemployed organizations come from a background of trade union or party activism and that there is a structural link between the Confédération Générale du Travail [General Confederation of Labour, CGT], PCF or Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire [Revolutionary Communist League, LCR] with particular unemployed organizations. The differences are ones of political conjuncture, of which a principal comment is the transitional decomposition and recomposition of left politics, with the long-term crisis of the French Communist Party. Other explanations emphasize the epochal rather than conjunctural dimension with ‘new times’ beyond class generating a new citizenship wave in a postmodern landscape of identities. Whilst contrasts are strong, so too are the continuities of the characteristic metabolism, even the methods, of unemployed protest. The wealth of accounts of the movement of the 1990s provides a suggestive point of comparison for study of the 1930s. A good example of this is Sophie Maurer’s Les Chômeurs en Action (2001). Her sociological examination of attitudes of participants and non-participants in the movement is highly revealing. She challenged the Marienthal thesis that the unemployed condition leads down a path to apathy and resignation.32 Her approach has the advantage over the social psychology of the Marienthal study of not viewing the unemployed as a homogeneous subject. She also considered the interaction of political socialization and responsiveness to unemployed agitation. Other accounts of the unemployed movements were insightful in different ways.33 Several narratives of unemployed organizations and of the experiences of the unemployed took the sympathizer’s or participant’s perspective. Many of the elements in these accounts of unemployed protest were present in the 1930s: the frustrations of trying to establish permanent organizations of the unemployed, the volatility of unemployed protest, the hostility of the press, the conflict with the authorities, the ambiguous relationship with the existing trade unions and political parties. These similarities are more than superficial coincidences. They stem from the similarities in the situation faced by the unemployed within capitalism. Like the 1930s, the period since the 1970s in France has witnessed the emergence of mass unemployment. The character of unemployment has been shaped by the changing patterns of economic development. Certain industries have suffered catastrophic job losses sometimes associated with near terminal decline, sometimes due to automation, sometimes due to relocation. The geography of mining, textiles and steel has concentrated unemployment in particular areas and the timing of decline has made that shock acute.

32 She established a typology of reactions to the unemployed movement: opposition, indifference and resignation among non-participants, informed for some by their political outlook. Collective action stemmed from collective identity and those with political traditions. More often collective action came from contact with unemployed organizations because individuals felt isolated or angry. 33 Combesque, Ça Suffit!; Maurer, Chômeurs en Action; Dethrye and Zédiri-Corniou, Révolte des Chômeurs; Jean-Claude Poitou, Le Chômage: Chronique d’une Révolte Annoncée (Montreuil, 1998).

Introduction

13

The connections between the decades also spring from the unemployed condition, the experience of unemployment itself. We find similar contests for recognition taking place despite the existence of more developed welfare provision than in the 1930s. Controversies over the measurement of unemployment, the scape-goating of immigrants, the efforts of unemployed organizations to win the right to represent, or act as interlocutors for, the unemployed, the pressure to revise, reform and retrench welfare, the question of economic policy and the unemployed (with privatization, the decline of planning, the abandonment of employment creation policies) all of these issues signal the continuous contestation over the reality and representation of unemployment. Indeed, the remembering or forgetting of the history of unemployed protest is part of this process too. Prisoners of Want Prisoners of Want adopts a chronological approach rather than a thematic one because of the radical impermanence of unemployment and unemployed protest. Historians of movements of the unemployed have opted for this events-based approach because of their diachronic, constantly changing character.34 Given the prevalence of the Jahoda thesis – the conventional wisdom that unemployment as a condition leads to political apathy – the history of events is a necessary antidote to this behavioural determinism.35 Transformations of all the component parts prevent static depiction of unemployed protest. The scale of unemployment, government policy, the response of the unemployed, and the strategy and tactics of the PCF were in flux. Where the activists once laboured against the indifference to protest, they might suddenly be dragged in its wake. Where France was once viewed as a happy isle cut off from the world slump, it might in months descend into deep political and economic crisis. The turn in PCF policy from the Third Period to Popular Front made night of day, fish of fowl, right of left.36 The unemployed committees, the principal subject of this study, have to be understood through the temporal dimension. Their changing metabolism, their temporary character, their reversals of outlook and approach, were an essential part of their make-up. For this reason chronology offers advantages over thematic segregation. It is also true that the radical temporal discontinuities 34

Croucher, We Refuse to Starve in Silence; Peter Kingsford, The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920–39 (London, 1982); Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, Why They Fail (New York, 1977); Roy Rosenzweig, ‘Organizing the unemployed: the early years of the Great Depression 1929–33’, Radical America, 10 (1976): 37–60; Roy Rosenzweig, ‘“Socialism in our time”: the Socialist Party and the unemployed’, Labor History, 20 (1979): 485–509; Roy Rosenzweig, ‘Radicals and the jobless: the Musteites and the Unemployed Leagues 1932–6’, Labor History, 16 (1975): 52–77. 35 First elaborated in the pioneering study of unemployment in a textile village in 1930s Austria: Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarfeld and Hans Zeisel, Marienthal: the Sociography of an Unemployed Community (London, 1972). 36 Even the language changed. Denis Peschanski, Et Pourtant ils Tournent: Vocabulaire et Stratégie du PCF (Paris, 1998).

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articulated themselves geographically. A narrative continuity is threaded across the regional movements where no genuine national unemployed movement existed. The story abandons agonizing movements for vital ones. To a certain extent this method cuts against the synchronic grain of much recent social history. To privilege process does invite neglect of cultural and analytical discussion. Efforts are made to integrate these issues into the narrative and the conclusion. Introductory contextual discussion and analysis in Chapter one and at the beginning of each subsequent chapter provide the overall coherence and logic. This study focuses upon the Comités des Chômeurs [Unemployed Committees, CdCs]. These emerged in 1927 and then again from 1931 onwards.37 Where the CdCs are concerned, there was no geographical or chronological uniformity but considerable variations in the political complexion, structure, functions and tactics. The Communist Party may have been the prime mover in the majority of cases, but it did face (usually short-lived) rival committees and at times its leadership was contested in its own creations.38 Even when communist leadership was not at issue, local structures differed from well-established regional networks of committees with a regional committee and a newspaper (as in Nord and the Paris region) to committees that existed in complete isolation. The CdCs also comprised multiple functions of which protest was only the most visible. It was also the one that most interested the authorities and (usually) the PCF. Advice work, the representation of the unemployed and self-help were more opaque features of these movements. The first chapter sets the context of the experience of unemployment between the wars. This examines its dimensions over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. Although joblessness in both decades followed a cyclical pattern, they were profoundly different. Generally speaking, despite three sharp recessions, the 1920s were a period of labour shortage, whereas from 1931, despite recoveries of 1933, 1937, 1939, there were persistently high levels of unemployment. From the perspective of social policy, the system that provided relief for the unemployed requires careful scrutiny. This after all provided the institutional framework for the experience of unemployment. It was a system that was in its infancy and was making confused steps towards a distant maturity. Furthermore, in order to understand unemployment, it is also necessary to assess what evidence exists of how the unemployed lived. Questions of living conditions, health, housing, gender and migration all warrant examination through contemporary social investigation and cultural representations. 37 They should not be confused with the philanthropic committees which were widespread during the 1930s and worthy of study in their own right. Clothed in the rhetoric of employers’ paternalism or Christian obligation, their purpose was to provide charitable relief such as soup kitchens. In the context of conservative and business hostility to unemployment insurance or more systematic public provision for the unemployed, they were an alternative with which local elites retained hegemony over the unfortunate victims of the crisis. Their intention was to forestall the initiatives of the labour movement in this regard, especially when this meant militant self-organization and protest. Eglise Catholique, Diocèse Lettre Pastorale Portant Communication de l’Encyclique de sa Sainteté Pie XI sur la Crise Economique, le Chômage et la Course aux Armements (Reims, 1931). 38 In the most stark illustration, in early 1933 in Lille, seven committees existed, only two of which were under PCF leadership.

Introduction

15

The second chapter considers the efforts to organize the unemployed in the 1920s. After the demobilization crisis of 1919, twice during this decade recessions generated sharp increases in unemployment. On both occasions, there were some endeavours to entice the unemployed into organizations. In February and March 1921, certain officials of the CGT in Paris sought to attract the unemployed into its ranks via public meetings, a recruitment campaign and demonstrations. Outside Paris isolated instances of such activity existed. Significantly from the perspective of posterity, a hunger march was held in the surroundings of Neuves-Maisons on 13 August and a committee of the unemployed was established in Sète (Hérault). The recession of 1921 was brief and mass joblessness did not return until late 1926. This second recession of the 1920s created the conditions in which the PCF and CGTU could mount a concerted attempt to organize the unemployed. In what might be described as the ‘British turn’, they attempted to implement methods that had worked in other countries, notably Britain and Germany. Central to this reorientation was the creation of committees of the unemployed, which were organizations specifically of, and for, the unemployed. The principal methods that the committees of the unemployed deployed were the public meeting, the street demonstration, the day of action and opposition to evictions. This was a much more sustained effort to harness the energies of the jobless than hitherto, both in Paris and in the provinces. Not all activity was the initiative of the communists. There were instances of self-help organizations of the unemployed created within particular immigrant communities in 1927. The third chapter details the PCF’s efforts to launch a national unemployed movement from its Parisian stronghold during the first recession of the 1930s. Under pressure from the Comintern and with the late arrival of mass unemployment to France, the PCF directed considerable resources to a strategy of constructing a network of unemployed committees, forging a regional structure and publishing a newspaper. This combined neighbourhood protest and region-wide days of action with demonstrations at the Chambre des Députés [the Chamber of Deputies, the Palais Bourbon] on 12 November 1931 and 12 January 1932. The failure of the movement to live up to the expectations of the leaders of the Comintern and the PCF generated considerable friction inside the leadership of the movement and between the latter and its ranks. The ‘class against class’ line of the Comintern created unrealistic hopes that the unemployed would be at the forefront of insurrectionary confrontations. Nevertheless, the organization of the Parisian unemployed coincided with the first great upswing of unemployment in France, much of which was concentrated in the Paris basin. Despite the sectarian hostility to the rest of the left, the unemployed committees attracted the unemployed into their ranks and were at times able to mobilize substantial numbers. The largest of these was at the funeral of Edmond Fritsch, an official of the unemployed movement who the police shot on a protest against overtime at a building site. The response to Fritsch’s death signalled the highpoint of the Parisian movement. Thereafter, the PCF’s electoral failure, the temporary fall in unemployment and continuing lethargy in the party combined. The result was that the Parisian unemployed movement stagnated. The fourth chapter examines the uneven response to Paris’s lead. The PCF intended that a national movement would follow in Paris’s wake. Although this

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failed, it did result in the emergence of a number of regional unemployed movements. Investigation of the early phase of the provincial unemployed movements (1931–33) encompasses Saint-Etienne, the Nord, Valence, Rouen, Limoges and Lyons. In all these areas, local communists established unemployed movements through the tools of an unemployed newspaper and unemployed committees. In the summer of 1933, the PCF received an external impetus to redouble its efforts amongst the unemployed in the shape of the Saint-Nazaire to Nantes hunger march. This hunger march was a rare case of a major unemployed protest led by the reformist wing of the French working-class movement and thus threatened communist prestige in the movements of the workless. Chapter five deals with the most renowned episode in French unemployed protest, the Lille to Paris hunger march (18 November–2 December 1933). After the Saint-Nazaire march, the communists were desperate to regain their hegemony over unemployed protest and marshalled all the resources at their disposal to ensure that their hunger march would be a success. Their press, the party, the mass organizations, the unions, the semi-dormant unemployed committees were all pressed into action. The ban that the Minister of the Interior imposed rendered the task of organizing the march immeasurably more complex. The march became a war of wits, repression and deception. Despite the restrictions and surveillance, the hunger marchers made a triumphant entry into Paris on 2 December. The hunger march opened the eyes of unemployed activists to new possibilities and prospects for struggle. Chapter six examines the new phase of militancy that followed the hunger march. The first indication of this was the two months of turmoil in Calais. On 5 January 1934 former hunger marchers led a riot against the police. For several weeks, the unemployed movement of Calais witnessed mass meetings, geographical extension and militant demonstrations in a long-running conflict with the council. Eventually three factors led to a pacification of the situation: the deployment of the gardes mobiles [riot police], central government’s intransigence and the waning energies of the unemployed. The events of Calais anticipated and inspired militancy elsewhere. The movement brandished several weapons: demonstrations, hunger marches, relief workers’ strikes and most dramatically at year’s end the occupation of the mairies [mayor’s offices] (an unnoticed precedent for the occupations of 1997–98). The political landscape had changed that year with the fascist riot outside the Chamber of Deputies on 6 February and the large militant anti-fascist mobilizations that followed. Chapter seven researches the formative phase of the Popular Front and its effects on unemployed movements. Heightened unemployed activity ran into 1935. The Laval Government pursued a policy of deflationary decree laws which cut back on government expenditure, further polarizing French society. This formed the backdrop for the PCF’s reorientation and adoption of the Popular Front strategy. In 1935, hunger marches took place in the Ardennes, Brittany, the Somme and Rouen. These are examined in turn. Chapter eight then considers the changing characteristics of the unemployed movements during the Popular Front period through a focus on regional movements and unemployed newspapers in Nord, Landes-Pyrénées, and Marseilles. The Popular Front changed the complexion of the unemployed movement, which now sought to

Introduction

17

find broad sponsorship and dropped its former hostility to charitable organisations, as well as to non-communist trade unions and political parties. Its methods mellowed in tandem with the PCF’s search for new allies. The confrontational style of the Third Period, and even mass mobilization, was exchanged for a lobbyist approach. The programme of the Popular Front became the principal objective of unemployed movements both during and after Blum’s ministries. The movement clung to the demand to honour Popular Front pledges even when it was clear to everybody else that the Popular Front was dead. Chapter nine examines unemployment during the war and in particular the role of the unemployed in the early days of the resistance. It would be tempting to assume that the war postponed social issues such as unemployment. In fact, the war redirected the tidal currents of social and economic thought. Resistance movements, Allied governments and international institutions established a new agenda for unemployment. The resistance inscribed the right to work into its programme. It ultimately codified this into the constitution of the Fourth Republic. Contributing to this revision in attitudes was a propaganda campaign amongst the unemployed during the gestation period of the resistance. At this time the communists turned once more to the unemployed. They had not made such great efforts to organize the unemployed since the early 1930s. Between June 1940 and spring 1941, the PCF in the Paris region directed an impressive propaganda campaign for Popular Committees of the Unemployed. These attempts met with some success and the agitation over the question of mass unemployment in defeated France was a critical and neglected stage in the party’s recovery and road to participation in the resistance. Despite this, the social legislation at war’s end failed to establish unemployment insurance in France. Part of the reason for this is that the communists had posed as the interlocutors for the unemployed but had abandoned this demand in 1936 in the spirit of the Popular Front. That spirit continued into the National Front of the resistance. In both cases, they mouthed hopeful slogans ‘bread, peace and liberty’ and the ‘right to work’ but did not pin down practical and possibly controversial social reform.

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Chapter 1

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars The Dimensions of Unemployment Unemployment changed dramatically over the course of the two decades under consideration in this book. For much of the 1920s unemployment was a marginal short-term experience. On three occasions labour market conditions rendered unemployment a mass phenomenon: 1919, 1921 and 1926–27 (Appendix 2).1 Postwar demobilization generated the first of these. The second resulted from a worldwide recession and the third stemmed from stabilization of the national currency. By the standards of other industrial states, France’s unemployment rates were exceptionally low during the interwar period (Appendix 3). In what has been described as the Malthusian model, historian Alfred Sauvy, the economic authority on France between the wars, attributed this to a restriction of labour supply by the demography of age structure and migration.2 Robert Salais criticized this interpretation, arguing that such factors only partially explain matters.3 For Salais, employment relations accounted for the gap in the orthodox explanation. Unemployment is most obvious and visible in a context of wage-labour, large-scale urban industry and modern management approaches. The French situation did not match this model and great ambiguity marked French employment relations because the active population included large numbers of self-employed, seasonal and casual workers. The labour force was also significant in the small firm sector and in rural industry. Moreover, the supplanting of paternalistic relations by modern scientific management was slow by international standards. France’s economic depression and unemployment were therefore partially obscured.4 1

The peaks for chômeurs secourus [unemployed benefit claimants] was as follows: in 1914, 410,801; in 1919, 116,320; 1921, 89,961; in 1926, 81,916; 1932, 305,496. Héreil, Chômage en France, p. 58. 2 Alfred Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres (2 vols, Paris, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 113–4. 3 They accounted for only 489,400 of the 1,351,000 reduction in the active population between the 1931 and 1936 censuses. Robert Salais, ‘Why was unemployment so low in France?’ in Barry Eichengreen and T.J. Hatton (eds), Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective (London, 1988), pp. 247–88. 4 Jacques Marseille has reasoned that there is an illusion that France escaped recession until 1931–32 because of the inadequacies of the data of economic performance. He pointed out that from 1929, the increase in short-time working and the poor coverage of unemployment funds disguised the early months of the recession. Other indicators attested to the onset of the

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Prisoners of Want

Another feature that explains the artificially low rate of unemployment is widespread short-time working or what the French called chômage partiel [partial unemployment]. It was highest in straw-working, mines, textiles and fine metals with over three-quarters of the workforce in those industries being on short time in March 1932. Between March 1930 and 1932, the partial unemployed had increased in the mines from 2 per cent to 87.7 per cent. During March 1932, it averaged 56.4 per cent of the workforce in France.5 It peaked again in early 1935 at 50 per cent and remained above 30 per cent from early 1931 to the middle of 1936.6 One of the difficulties of understanding French unemployment between the wars is the inadequacy of the statistics. There were three measures of unemployment: the census, the benefit claimant count, and the labour exchange returns. Labour exchanges under-recorded the problem because some jobless did not register with an exchange. Their figures however tended to be higher than the claimant count of those drawing benefit.7 As the relief system had limited coverage and discriminated against women and foreigners, these statistics also under-recorded joblessness.8 Letellier, Perret, Zuber and Dauphin-Meunier calculated that the real unemployment rate was double the official rate.9 The census provided an useful yardstick of comparison against other more frequent sources of statistics.10 This too had its deficiencies. Based on an recession. Prices were depressed in certain sectors and profit rates had turned downwards. Jacques Marseille, ‘Les origins inopportunes de la crise de 1929 en France’, Revue Economique (July 1980): 648–89; Marseille, Empire Colonial et Capitalisme Français, pp. 165–71. 5 Gabrielle Letellier, Jean Perret, H.E. Zuber and A. Dauphin-Meunier, Une Enquête sur le Chômage (3 vols, Paris, 1938–46), vol. 1, pp. 43–50; Georges Héreil, Le Chômage en France: Etude de Législation (Paris, 1932), pp. 113–19; see also Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 4–6 (April–June 1934): 114–15; ibid., 1–3 (January–March 1935): 10. Short-time working meant less than the standard 48 hour working week. Short-time working affected 14 per cent of the workforce (in those workplaces under the scrutiny of the Ministry of Labour’s work inspectors) in January 1931, rising to a peak of 48.8 per cent in April 1932, falling to 32.2 per cent in January 1934. In the mines, in January 1931, 28 per cent of miners were affected by short-time working rising to 92.4 per cent in January 1932 and remained as high as 89.8 per cent in January 1934. In the workforce as a whole, in January 1931 1.6 per cent of hours were lost; 10.3 per cent in April 1932, and 5 per cent in January 1934. In the mines, the hours lost to short-time working were 3.5 per cent in January 1932, 22.6 per cent in April 1932, 18.5 per cent in October 1933 and 10.1 per cent in January 1934. 6 In February 1932, it would have accounted for an additional 168,437 unemployed, when the labour exchanges registered 332,414 unemployed. In February 1935, it would have accounted for an extra 98,781, when unemployment stood at 454,522, Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, pp. 49–50. 7 For example, on average during 1935, 465,900 registered at the labour exchange, whilst 426,900 drew unemployment benefits, Claude Lasry, La Lutte contre le Chômage et les Finances Publiques 1929–1937 (Paris, 1938), p. 202. 8 On under-recording of Polish workers, Archives Nationales (henceforth AN) F7 13526 translation of Narodwiec, 16 February 1927. 9 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, p. 37. Based on the labour exchange registers compared with the census figure of 823,803 unemployed in March 1936. 10 ‘Le chômage en France’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 10–12 (October–December 1932): 377–85. According to the census, unemployment was 419,891 on 8 March 1931,

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

21

analysis of the Seine department, Nicolas Baverez reasoned that unemployment in urban areas had an intensity comparable to other industrial states.11 If the statistics underestimate unemployment, they do provide certain insights. Rates of unemployment varied considerably according to industry, level of skill and occupation. Unemployment was highest amongst the unskilled. Labourers were the occupational category with by far the greatest unemployment (26.6 per cent in the 1931 census) followed by those in transport (15 per cent). Those occupational groups with higher unemployment (over 5 per cent) were workers in construction, wood, leather, textiles and engineering. Those with intermediate rates of unemployment were food processing, stoneworkers and ceramics, rubber, paper, garments and printing. Low unemployment was found in agriculture, mining, chemicals and domestic services.12 In mining, repatriations and short-time working created a misleading picture of economic well being.13 To summarize, unemployment in France during this period exhibited certain particularities. The official rates of unemployment were low by international comparison. The vicissitudes of unemployment were distinctive. During the 1920s, labour shortage was the norm but there were three sharp increases in unemployment. During the 1930s the conditions of generalized labour shortage were over and unemployment took on a sustained character. The timing of the cycle was again peculiar to France with the late onset of mass unemployment and its stubborn persistence up to the war. The Relief System and the Absence of Unemployment Insurance During the interwar period, the relief system was in an immature transitional state. Indeed, it did not come of age until 1958.14 To understand the French system of relief for the unemployed, the distinction between the fonds de chômage [unemployment assistance funds] and the caisses de chômage [unemployment insurance offices] is essential. The government regulated both and periodically tried to resolve this hybrid policy. The caisse was an insurance scheme established privately, by a mutual or friendly society, or by a trade union, or even by an employer. Trade unions had established caisses de chômage from the nineteenth century, particularly in the print 243,420 (1.98 per cent) on 7 March 1926, 537,150 (4.96 per cent) on 6 March 1921. 11 Nicolas Baverez, Les Chômeurs et Chômages des Années 1930: l’Exemple Parisien (Ph.D thesis, Paris 1, 1986). 12 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, p. 81; Philippe-Jean Hesse and Jean-Pierre Le Crom, ‘L’indemnisation des chômeurs dans les années 1930’, in Les Sans-Emploi et la Loi Hier et Aujourd’hui (Nantes, 1988), pp. 43–67. 13 The workforce of coal mines fell 20 per cent between 1930 and 1936 but the overall unemployment rate for miners was less than one percent in February 1935. Ibid, pp. 84–5. 14 Christine Daniel and Carole Tuchszirer, L’Etat Face aux Chômeurs: l’Indemnisation du Chômage de 1884 à nos Jours (Paris, 1981), pp. 94–117; Philippe-Jean Hesse, ‘France and unemployment insurance from 1920 to 1958: the myth of social security’ in Noel Whiteside and Robert Salais (eds), Governance, Industry and Labour Markets in Britain and France: the Modernising State in the Mid-Twentieth Century (London, 1988), pp. 193–211.

22

Prisoners of Want

trade, leather working and precision instruments. In other parts of Europe, in the Low Countries in particular, this formula of relieving unemployment – the so-called Ghent model (trade union insurance supplemented by government subsidy) – was the norm.15 On 9 September 1905, the French Government opted to follow this route with a decree regulating and subsidizing unemployment caisses.16 But given the relative failure of trade unions to take this up and low levels of unionization, the Ghent system could only ever cover a tiny proportion of the unemployed in France. Though governments preferred such an approach because it encouraged thrift amongst workers, the coverage was never broad enough to cope with mass unemployment.17 The unemployment funds became the basic policy framework for the provision of the unemployed. These resulted from two crises: the outbreak of war in 1914 and the currency crisis of 1925–27. The commencement of war caused a very dramatic dislocation of industry with many workplace closures due to mobilization and credit controls put in place to prevent capital flight. The freeze on bank accounts even applied to the caisses de chômage further aggravating the crisis.18 Faced with war, the Viviani Government created a national unemployment fund out of which discretionary local unemployment funds in towns of more than 10,000 inhabitants would be subsidized.19 This decree stipulated the criteria for the receipt 15 Guy Vanthemsche, ‘Unemployment insurance in interwar Belgium’, International Review of Social History, 35/3 (1990): 349–76; Jens Alber, ‘Government responses to the challenge of unemployment: the development of unemployment insurance in Western Europe’, in Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (eds.), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick, 1984), pp. 151–83; International Labour Organization, ‘Unemployment insurance: a study of comparative legislation’, Studies and Reports, C/10 (1925). 16 The law on finances of 22 April of 1905 granted a credit of 110,000 francs to this end. Héreil, Chômage en France, p. 16. This followed the pioneering efforts of Dijon (1896) and Limoges (1897) where trade union unemployment insurance received municipal subsidies. Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, p. 202. 17 French unemployment insurance under the Ghent system was regulated by the decrees of 9 September 1905, 24 November 1914, 7 February 1928, 30 March 1929, 28 July 1932 and 8 August 1935. The following parliamentary reports were written on the matter: Dr. Grinda, Chamber of Deputies, 6 March 1924, annex 7328 and 2 April 1924, annex 7463; Dr. Chauveau, Senate, 24 May 1927, annex 273; Professor Antonelli, Chamber of Deputies, Parliamentary Document, 1928. At their pre-depression high point in 1927, 123 caisses had 181,050 members. In early 1932 only 76 caisses were functioning for 131,499 members, making payments to 4,850 unemployed, Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 63–4. By the end of the year, the Ministry of Labour noted that coverage had only risen to 215,000 compared to 11 million wage-earners. ‘France: le Chômage’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 1–3 (January– March 1933): 1–2. 18 AN F 22 542 Minister of Labour to Minister of Finance, 13 August 1914. 19 Puteaux council established the first public unemployment fund on 2 August 1914. By December 1914, there were 234,932 registered with the Parisian unemployment fund, Antoine Borrel, La Lutte contre le Chômage: Avant, Pendant et Après la Guerre (Paris, 1917), p. 246; Louis Gueneau, Les Dernières Crises du Chômage et la Question de L’Assurance Obligatoire (Paris, 1924), pp. 18–20.

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

23

of unemployment benefit. Eligibility was quite restrictive: unemployment should be involuntary due to neither illness nor accident, the claimant must have been unemployed for at least a week, not be an alcoholic and not reject a job offer without good reason. The unemployment funds were considered an emergency measure and were therefore not mandatory on councils. The Minister of Labour Couyba viewed the measure as an ‘expediency’ not a ‘solution’.20 A supplementary decree of 9 January 1915 established the commissions paritaires [tripartite adjudication and appeals commissions] drawn from the council, employers and unions to bring some semblance of even-handedness to decisions.21 As the war continued a labour shortage replaced mass joblessness and one by one the unemployment funds closed. These funds were revived in 1919 with the demobilization crisis, in 1921 with world recession and once more in 1926 with the crisis of currency stabilization.22 Outside the Seine, Nord and Bouches-du-Rhône, the unemployment funds closed once the emergencies had passed; only the first of these had existed permanently from 1914. The next major piece of legislation came in late 1926. That July, Raymond Poincaré had formed the cabinet of Union Nationale [National Union], a coalition of the right and centre. To rectify the parlous financial situation, Poincaré increased indirect taxes, taxed real estate and reformed the management of the public debt. The troubled fortunes of the franc continued until June 1928 when Poincaré was finally forced to devalue and thus stabilize the currency at one-fifth of its post-war value. Through this, the burden of public debt lightened, interest rates lowered and exports became more competitive.23 Before devaluation, instability caused a dramatic rise in unemployment in late 1926 and early 1927, which was seen as part of the bitter medicine of stabilization. Responding to this upsurge in joblessness, the Government formulated the decree of 28 December 1926. This decree sanctioned the establishment of unemployment funds in communes of more than 5,000 inhabitants. The Government would subsidize these municipal or departmental funds so long as they adhered to certain conditions.24 According to article six of the decree, like the caisses de chômage, the initial limit for payment of benefit was restricted to 120 days. Faced with persistent unemployment, the limited duration of payment was problematic. So the limit was temporarily extended to 150 days by the decree of 16 November 1927 and to 180 20

AN F 22 542 Minister of Labour to Sembat (editor of L’Humanité), 14 August 1914. Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 20–21. 22 The law of 22 November 1918 allowed demobbed soldiers to return to their old work contract, Gueneau, Dernières Crises du Chômage et la Question de L’Assurance Obligatoire, pp. 27–8. 23 The Poincaré stabilization has elicited considerable debate: Kenneth Mouré, Managing the Franc Poincaré (Cambridge, 1991); H. Clark Johnson, Gold, France and the Great Depression 1919–32 (New Haven, 1997); Marcel Netter, Histoire de la Banque de France entre les Deux Guerres (Pomponne, 1994). 24 To qualify for relief, the unemployed had to meet the following criteria: residence qualifications, proof that they had worked for a living, a redundancy certificate, proof that their lack of work was not due to industrial dispute or permanent disability. Relief was given on a household basis so that married women and young adults were less likely to receive relief. Relief was denied to those over the age of 60. 21

24

Prisoners of Want

days by the decree of 7 February 1928.25 This was a pattern that would be repeated when mass unemployment returned in the ensuing decade. When mass unemployment reappeared in 1931–32, the policy to tackle it became systematized with greater range and more thorough institutionalization. As far as relief was concerned, the legislation already in existence was built on and its implementation became more widespread and more entrenched. In a decree of 15 June 1931, the Government responded to this new persistence of unemployment by extending the time limit for benefits.26 On 25 June 1932 the ‘neo-cartel’ Government of Edouard Herriot temporarily abandoned the time limit altogether. With the onset of the economic crisis of 1931, unemployment funds proliferated rapidly. By the end of January 1932, 241,487 jobless people received benefits from 18 departmental and 334 municipal unemployment funds. A large majority of claimants (80.4 per cent) were male. Indeed, in 187 of these 352 funds women received no benefits at all. A geographical unevenness matched this gender inconsistency. Whereas in the Nord, one departmental and 52 local unemployment funds existed in January 1932, some 26 departments had no unemployment funds at all.27 Given the non-mandatory nature of the unemployment funds, there were considerable divergences in local provision. In the Paris region, where about half France’s unemployed lived, there was a total expenditure of 104 million francs in 1931. Two benefits scales were paid: one in the city, the other in the suburbs. In addition, a heating allowance and rent subsidies were introduced. On 27 March 1931, the Parisian municipality established free school meals for the children of the unemployed and the rest of France quickly followed suit. Municipal and private soup kitchens were also established. In the provinces, considerable variation existed in the opening date of funds, in the rates of provision and in the strictness of their controls. A time lag between the laws, degrees and circulars and their implementation added further complication to the situation. Georges Héreil categorized towns into those that implemented the rights of the unemployed and those that did not.28 In Lille, Roubaix, Saint-Etienne, Limoges, Bordeaux, Nantes, Reims, Calais, Nice, Rouen, Le Havre and Clermond-Ferrand, the unemployed received the benefits that were their due but Lyons, Marseilles and Trouville adopted local restrictions or regulations. For example, Trouville 25

Indeed, decrees revised article six on the following occasions: 13, 25 February, 10 March, 1 May, 5 June, 31 July, 3 October, 11, 21 November, 31 December 1931; 23 March, 5 April, 24 June, 4 July, 7 October 1932; 12 January, 7, 14 April, 20 June 1933; 4 January, 26 April, 18 May, 27 June, 2 October, 1 December 1934; 6 October 1935; 21 January, 29 July, 26 August 1936; Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 7–9 (July–September 1936): 207. Other key articles subject to revision were article nine (determining rates of benefit), article ten on the form of payment and article 14 on state subsidies to unemployment funds. 26 Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 1–3 (January–March 1932): 32–3. 27 AN F7 13550 statistics of unemployment funds, 30 January 1932. Côtes du Nord, Orne, Eure et Loire, Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne, Indre, Nièvre, Meuse, Vosges, HauteSavoie, Savoie, Lot-et-Garonne, Gers, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Lozère, Basses-Alpes, Var, Ariège, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales and Corse had no unemployment funds at that time. 28 Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 150–66.

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

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provided all its benefits from the unemployment funds through food vouchers. In some places, benefit was conditional on physical labour and in others public works for the unemployed paid at below established wage levels. Such practices stirred associations in the popular imagination with the poor law, the forced labour of authoritarian regimes or even the feudal corvée [labour service].29 André Gueslin described the conditions for eligibility as ‘draconian’ with a six month residence requirement, at least six months employment and a certificate from an employer. The distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor still infected the procedure.30 Providing precious insights into the working of the benefit system at the individual level, the unemployed committee of the Parisian fourth arrondissement kept a log of casework for those denied benefit. It was a catalogue of those who fell foul of the entanglement of regulations. Those who designed these rules expected to find a bourgeois ideal of the family, of residence patterns, of household income, of sexual relations and of work habits. The cases cited were refused on the grounds that they failed the household means test, turned down because they were thought not to be suitable, for not having a fixed abode, for petty undeclared forms of income or simply without explanation.31 As a result there was a considerable divide between the ‘official’ unemployed and large numbers of unemployed threatened by homelessness and degradation. In general, the numbers of funds grew over the course of the 1930s and the coverage widened. In January 1933, there were 639 unemployment funds, that is, double the number twelve months before. By June 1938, there were 918 funds covering a population of 17.2 million.32 Once an unemployment fund had been opened, there was no guarantee that it would remain open, particularly during a spell of economic improvement. Ministers of Labour received many complaints about the failure to open or the premature closure of unemployment funds and such grievances might lead to protest or the formation of a Committee of the Unemployed.33 One serious problem was that even though the state provided the larger part of the 29

For example, when young unemployed had to labour for five francs a day on forestry work in Aplemont it was called ‘forced labour’, Le Cri des Chômeurs (Aplemont, n.d.). ADSSD 49 J 8 CGT’s dossier on forced labour, 1933. 30 André Gueslin, Les Gens de Rien: une Histoire de la Grande Pauvreté dans la France du Vingtième Siècle (Paris, 2004), p. 94. 31 AN F22 682 Comité des Chômeurs du Quatrième Arrondissement, Le Cahier de Situations de Chomeurs du Quatrième Arrondissement (n.d., c. 1933). 32 ‘France: le Chômage et le marché du travail en France au mois de juin 1938’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 4–6 (April–June 1938): 129; ‘France: le Chômage’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 1–3 (January–March 1933): 3. 33 For example, the failure to open one at Douai, ADN M616 29 Central Commissioner (Douai) to Sub-Prefect, 14 November 1931; ibid., 29 November 1931; at Boinville, AN F 22 682 Nantes CdC to Minister of Labour, 17 February 1936; closures, ibid., Orange CdC to Minister of Labour, 10 August 1936; ibid., unemployed of Sainte-Margarite (Vosges) to Minister of Labour, 27 March 1933; Rivery (Somme), Archives Départementales de la Somme (ADS) 99 M141 Prefect (Somme) to Central Commissioner (Amiens), 20 July 1935; on closure of the unemployed fund and subsequent formation of CdC at Inchy-en-Cambrésis, ADN M616 32 Sergeant’s report, 11 October 1936.

26

Prisoners of Want

expenditure, communes with heavy unemployed witnessed a great strain on their finances, leading many to call for a National Unemployment Fund or even greater state funding.34 The alternative to the extended duration of benefits was to push the longterm unemployed onto the poor law. On 11 November 1931 a decree allowed the unemployed who had exhausted their right to unemployment fund benefits to receive help from bureaux de bienfaisance [poor law offices] under strict conditions. Such reliance on the poor law was unpopular with the unemployed as it smacked of dependency and charity. In the Seine region, by early 1932, several thousand were exhausting their right to benefit each month.35 As well as the problem of the 120 or 180 days, the levels of benefits were also a source of grievance amongst the unemployed. All CdCs called for an increase in benefits typically for ‘our 12 francs’ a day.36 The CdC of Saint-Claude declared, ‘It is impossible to live on 7 francs a day, it is unjust that the unemployed should be disqualified after 180 days, it is absolutely necessary that those on short-time should be assisted’.37 The regulation that benefits should not exceed half the claimant’s anticipated wage also caused particular hardship and anxiety.38 As unemployment grew in 1931, a series of specific measures rendered the relief of unemployment more complex. With widespread short-time working, some insurance societies established caisses de chômage partiel [literally ‘partial unemployment’ or short-time working] to cope with the widespread problem of poverty due to reductions in the weekly wage. On 10 March 1931, the Laval Government formulated a decree regulating funds for the provision of benefit to those on short-time working. On 22 October 1932, a decree permitted the extension of union funds and local unemployment funds to the ‘partial unemployed’. The regulations stated that workers would only benefit if they were working less than four days a week. So for many workers in industries such as mining that usually laid workers off one or two days a week, these benefits did not help. In a three-year high in the first half of 1932, these caisses provided for only 4,318 recipients.39 With casual labour and its looser relationship with the employer, work became more infrequent when recessions hit. This pattern of unemployment was for obvious reasons concentrated in France’s great ports: Le Havre, Calais, Dunkirk, 34

XXVe Congrès de L’Association des Maires de France (Paris, 1934), p. 1. AN F7 13550 Prefect (Seine) to Minister of the Interior, 8 March 1932, when 7,082 had exhausted their benefit; ibid., 9 May 1932 – 11,370; ibid., 20 June 1932 – 16,859. In June 1932 the benefit limit was suspended altogether. 36 For comparison, average hourly wages in Paris in 1931 were 6.61 francs, Patrick H. Hutton (ed.), Historical Dictionary of the Third French Republic (2 vols, London, 1980), vol. 2, p. 276. 37 AN F 22 682 Saint-Claude (Jura) to Minister of Labour, 1 December 1931. 38 This was known as le demi-salaire. AN F 22 682 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of Labour, 13 April 1932; ibid., Châlons-sur-Saône to Minister of Labour, 19 August 1935; ibid., telegram from Saint-Etienne CdC, 17 September 1936; ADN M616 32 Kléber Lahaye’s leaflet on the half-wage, 1936; Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1935), pp. 15–17. 39 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, pp. 242–3. 35

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

27

Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux and Marseilles, with their volatile seaboard proletariat.40 On 3 June 1931, special regulations were introduced for unemployment funds for dockers.41 A second decree establishing a scheme for unemployed sailors followed on 13 November.42 This scheme was all the more important because sailors obviously struggled to meet the residence criteria of unemployment benefits. However, with these schemes, casual labour was under greater scrutiny with daily signing-on. Public works were another strand of the government’s ‘struggle against unemployment’. A succession of plans bearing the names of incumbent ministers came into operation.43 Between 1931 and 1935, 7,000 million francs or 3 per cent of the non-military budget was expended in this manner. At their height, these worksites only employed 9,195 workers.44 The Marquet plan (1934) came in for severe criticism from the CdCs, which equated it with forced labour, and from the Association of French Mayors, because it concentrated on the large centres of population ignoring three-fifths of the country.45 The Popular Front’s Blum plan envisaged 20,000 million francs for public works but in reality only spent a fifth of that.46 Pierre Saly described the French public works of the 1930s as more a trick-ofthe-light than a substantial effort to eliminate unemployment.47 In many places the use of public works was controversial because of the failure to pay market or union rates of pay. In Saint-Quentin, Cysoing, Arras, Armentières and Le Puy amongst several others, those on work relief organized disputes to improve their terms.48 Subsidies to firms hiring the unemployed was another mechanism designed to alleviate unemployment. The Herriot Government first established this principle on 19 September 1932. On 29 January 1935, the Flandin Government decreed it possible for local unemployment funds to subsidize employers for taking on the unemployed [primes d’embauchage]. With these measures, governments hoped to be seen to be doing something and at the same time appeasing business opinion which was hostile to additional expenditure to relieve joblessness.49 40 AN F7 13522 file on Le Havre in 1927. In 1921 and 1927, the Ministry of the Interior had carefully monitored the unemployed movement in Le Havre. 41 In 1932, an average of 4,483 were on the scheme, rising to 6,177 in 1934. 42 ‘Le chômage, l’emploi et la production industrielle depuis 1928’, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 24 (January–March 1935): 256. This involved smaller numbers than the previous schemes providing for an average of 1,159 in 1934; 70 sailors demonstrated in Dunkirk over their lack of benefits because of the residence criteria, ADN M616 26 Central Commissioner (Dunkirk) to Prefect (Nord), 6 November 1931. 43 Journal Officiel, 26 February 1931; ibid., 13 December 1931; ibid., 17 November 1932. 44 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, p. 302. 45 XXVe Congrès de L’Association des Maires de France (Paris, 1934), p. 1. 46 Pierre Saly, ‘La politique française des grands travaux (1929–39): fut-elle Keynesienne?’, Revue Economique, 31/4 (1980): 707. 47 Ibid., p. 742. 48 Michael Seidman, ‘Making the French Unemployed Work, 1930–6’, French History, 18/2 (June 2004): 196–221. 49 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, pp. 304–5. There was little take-up of the scheme. By the time it ended in 1936, 86,126 francs had been spent in this way, Conseil National Economique, La Main-d’Oeuvre et le Chômage (Melun, 1937–8), p. 33.

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Despite the proliferation of government initiatives with regard to unemployment, private and charitable efforts to assist the jobless should not be forgotten as these were very widespread. They are all the more significant because charitable relief acted as a barrier to the modernization of unemployment relief. Civic notables, local politicians, churchmen, rotary clubs and businessmen set up committees to relieve the distress that mass unemployment occasioned. By early 1932 a charitable relief committee had been established in most Parisian arrondissements dispensing aid through soup kitchens.50 At the same time, Le Temps reported that the deputy and mayor of Lyons, Edouard Herriot, a leading figure in the Radical Party, formed a Committee of Voluntary Help for the Unemployed of Lyons alongside the Prefect, the Chamber of Commerce, union leaders and the directors of the public utilities.51 The Lyons Chamber of Commerce had played a particularly significant role in the collection of 300,000 francs for the committee’s fund. Likewise, Cardinal Verdier, the Archbishop of Paris, established the Comité de Secours Diocésain [Committee of Help of the Diocese], comprised of former ministers and notable citizens. He also planned a programme of church building to create work for the unemployed.52 Other clergy, such as Lénart, the Bishop of Lille, followed suited.53 Overall, charitable endeavours for the unemployed were suffused with traditionalism, paternalism and Catholicism. If the urban well-to-do were responsible for most charitable relief organizations, there were exceptions. Fearing that they were abandoning the issue of unemployment to the communists and concerned that if they created organizations of the unemployed that they would escape their control, the CGT engaged in philanthropic works for their unemployed members.54 By 1933, they had helped 14,000 families with 70,000 francs raised through the union’s special appeal.55 If the reformist wing of the labour movement engaged in some voluntary efforts for fear of being criticized for inactivity, the Catholic workers’ movement did so with more ideological conviction. Jeunesse Ouvrière, the paper of a young Catholic workers’ association Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne [Catholic Workers’ Youth, JOC], reported Pius XI’s appeal for Catholic activism on the question of unemployment and eagerly responded.56 The organization set up a national unemployment fund and by 15 January 1932 had collected 40,000 francs.57 They had also set up an office to help the young unemployed find work in Paris. By 1933 such offices existed in 50

AN F7 13550 Prefect (Seine) report on mayors’ meeting, 30 June 1932. Le Temps, 4 January 1932. Comité d’Aide Volontaire aux Chômeurs de Lyon. Lyons had 7,067 unemployed at this time. The Chamber of Commerce opposed unemployment benefits and a National Unemployment Fund as ‘demoralising’, XXVe Congrès de L’Association des Maires de France (Paris, 1934), p. 2. 52 Le Temps, 19 December 1931; ibid., 6 January 1932. 53 Ibid., 13 December 1931. On charity, Daniel Rops, La Misère et Nous (Paris, 1935). 54 AN F7 13524 Director of General Security report, 17 January 1927. 55 Paul Guitard, Chômage (Paris, 1933), pp. 177–83. 56 Jeunesse Ouvrière, 88 (1 November 1931). The JOC was formed in Clichy in 1926. By 1932, its paper sold 85,000 and in the following year there were 70 federations and 500 sections. 57 Ibid., 93 (15 January 1932). 51

The Experience of Unemployment in France between the Wars

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Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Nancy, Boulogne-sur-Mer and had helped 2,000 young unemployed workers and distributed 250,000 francs of charity.58 Its concentration on unemployment was such that from 1 July 1932 it printed a paper Le Jeune Chômeur [Young Unemployed] specifically directed at young unemployed Catholic workers. The JOC took a strictly ‘non-political’ line, stressing this during political crises of February 1934 and May–June 1936. This did not mean that the JOC did not highlight particular ideological themes. It campaigned for the return of mothers to the home and occasionally spoke out against the anti-immigrant talk prevalent in discussions of unemployment.59 The organization did not have a stance on government relief for the unemployed but instead appealed for sympathy and charitable assistance. On the extreme right, some of the ligues [leagues] attempted to capitalize out of unemployment through charity. Sometimes, CdCs disrupted these efforts. When the Croix de Feu [Cross of Fire] tried to establish a soup kitchen in Lille and distribute clothes in Mauberge, the CdCs prevented them from doing so.60 Les Stations du Métropolitain des Sans-Travail [the Underground Stations of the Unemployed] organized soup kitchens and sold anti-immigrant pamphlets. In Paris, Lyons and Marseilles, Les Comités des Chômeurs Français [Committees of Unemployed Frenchmen] organized among the unemployed and mixed fascist ideas and antiimmigrant violence. Les Foyers des Chômeurs [Hostels of the Unemployed], originally communist in political coloration, came under the influence of the fascist ligue, Solidarité Française [French Solidarity], and participated in the fascist riots of 6 February 1934.61 These efforts, however, were of marginal influence when compared to the Committees of the Unemployed. Amid all this activity, the attitudes of French workers to charity should not be overlooked. Whilst this was most strongly articulated by the PCF, there was a widespread belief that such handouts were degrading and a slight on the independence of the worker. As a 50-year metal worker put it, Charity … that was for others. … Yesterday I was a worker with his dignity and his conscience. I was rapidly thrown into the ranks of the poor buggers. … My God, when you’ve started on the road to humiliation, you no longer know where this bitch of a life will stop you. … [T]wo months of waiting in vain in front of the counters, of disappointments at the gates of building sites, of meals humbly eaten in a cohort of the wretched, soup received like alms …62

58 Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, Le Petit Guide Social des Familles Ouvrières (Paris, 1933). 59 On foreigners and unemployment, stating that they would not discriminate in giving relief: Jeunesse Ouvrière, 97 (1 April 1932). 60 ADN M616 30 Central Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect, 30 March 1935; ibid., 3 April 1935; Réveil du Nord, 4 April 1935; La Dépêche, 25 April 1936. For agit-prop theatre about such incidents, Groupe Octobre, ‘Mange ta soupe et … tais-toi’ (March 1935) in Madeleine Rebérioux, ‘Théatre d’agitation: le Groupe Octobre’, Mouvement Social, 91 (1975): 109–19. 61 Colnet, Les Mouvements des Chômeurs, pp. 57–8. L’Emancipation Nationale, 10 April 1937. 62 Guitard, Chômage, pp. 108–9.

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In the proposals for unemployment insurance, employers saw an encroachment onto their prerogatives and reacted with a hostile determination. French advocates of unemployment insurance were relatively isolated. French parliamentarians had tried to introduce bills for unemployment insurance as early as 1895 and such attempts were made in 1923 and 1927. These efforts failed miserably, even lacking enthusiastic support of the union movement.63 Comparing the British, German and Italian systems in the late 1920s, Robert Mossé, a French supporter of unemployment insurance, defensively maintained that compulsory unemployment insurance neither increased unemployment nor demoralized its recipients. Instead, it safeguarded against hardship and crime.64 Foreign examples of unemployment insurance were generally seen in poor light.65 A report for the Rotary Club of Paris asserted that unemployment insurance was a ‘cause of ruin in every country where it is practised’.66 French economist Charles Rueff’s influential study of real wages and unemployment in Britain suggested that the combination of unemployment insurance and trade union strength prevented the downward flexibility of real wages. Therefore, unemployment insurance caused permanent unemployment.67 This only served to reinforce conservative and business prejudices against trade unions and unemployment insurance. The prevalence of these views retarded the adoption of unemployment insurance, devaluation and Keynesianism. Rueff had influential backers such as Professor Charles Rist.68 Similar beliefs were generally held by industrialists. For instance, car manufacturer Louis Renault worried about the threat that unemployment relief, let alone unemployment insurance, posed to savings and investment.69 If the conservative and business right was hostile to unemployment insurance, there was little enthusiasm from social policy experts or the political centre. Georges Héreil’s 1932 study of unemployment legislation – with a supportive preface from Albert Dalimier, the Minister of Labour – concluded that the French system had the advantage of flexibility but the drawback of inconsistency. For him, if it were really preferable, unemployment insurance could only be established at a time of sustained 63

The CGT was lukewarm about Mouret’s bill of 1923 and the CGTU was hostile to social insurance, Gueneau, Dernières Crises du Chômage et la Question de L’Assurance Obligatoire, p. 234. 64 Robert Mossé, L’Assurance Obligatoire contre le Chômage au Point du Vue Social (Paris, 1929). 65 Le Temps, 2–3 January 1932. 66 Duperrey, Chômage, p. 166. 67 Anon. (Charles Rueff), L’Assurance-Chômage: Cause du Chômage Permanent (Paris, 1931); for a refutation of Rueff: Elizabeth C. Wilson, ‘Unemployment insurance and the stability of wages in Great Britain’, International Labour Review, 29/4 (1934): 767–96. 68 Rist was author of the report of April 1931 adopted by Conseil National Economique on economic policy and the depression published in the Journal Officiel, 30 June 1931. This argued that the crisis derived from the external factors of the world economy. He was editor of the Revue d’Economie Politique and a director of the Compagnie de Suez and Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. 69 Patrick Friedensen, ‘L’idéologie des grands constructeurs dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, Mouvement Social, 81 (October–December 1972): 60.

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recovery. He counterposed the principle of thrift which underpinned unemployment insurance with the principle of solidarity which could guide a reformed French model.70 Even the French Association for Social Progress (which had incorporated Max Lazard’s French Association for the Struggle Against Unemployment) did not campaign for unemployment insurance.71 For the left, the central issues in France were not unemployment insurance but a national unemployment fund and the 40 hour week.72 Even the PCF dropped unemployment insurance as a demand with their adoption of the Popular Front. The creation of a national unemployment fund would replace the principle of local discretion with all its arbitrariness. As the economic crisis of the 1930s deepened, the proposal of a national unemployment fund found widespread support. In December 1933, Pétrus Faure, the deputy and mayor of Chambon-Feugerolles (Loire), proposed such a bill on behalf of the Parliamentary Group of Defence against Unemployment with the support of over 600 deputies.73 Given the broad parliamentary support for this measure (including both right and left wings of the Radicals), it naturally became inscribed into the programme of the Popular Front. That is not to say that there was not stern opposition to the idea. This came mainly from the employers through the Chambers of Commerce. In 1936 they deluged the Minister of Labour with letters, motions and reports against the proposed national unemployment fund.74 The national unemployment fund, like other parts of the Popular Front programme, was a casualty of the retreats that followed the early reforming zeal of the summer of 1936. Overall, the French relief system was much less mature than in other comparable countries. Its many inadequacies and its emergent character put a premium on the advocacy, advice and protests. To some considerable extent, this structured the pattern of protests and other responses of the unemployed. 70

Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 201–6. The matter was debated in its journal, Robert Mossé, ‘Le chômage et l’assurancechômage en Allemagne’, Documents du Travail, 176 (December 1931): 251–75. In Germany, he argued, unemployment insurance constituted a small charge on government expenditure (of roughly 3 per cent) and this was a preferable way of dealing with the adverse effects of rationalization than inertia or assistance. Other articles were hostile to unemployment insurance: ‘Un examen de l’assurance-chômage’, Documents du Travail, 176 (December 1931): 276–8. The journal returned to the question in a general discussion of international systems of social insurance in the next issue, ibid., 177 (January 1932): 6–21. 72 The decree of August 1914 established the misleadingly entitled National Unemployment Fund. This was an account from which governments subsidized communal or departmental unemployment funds. It was therefore a system of local discretion with some central regulatory guidelines. 73 AN C// 15122 Parliamentary bills: file no. 1399, December 1933. This was turned over to the appropriate parliamentary committee, Commission d’Assistance et de Prévoyances Sociales [Commission of Assistance and Social Welfare]. 74 Amongst others, AN F22 683 Nancy Chamber of Commerce (CoC) meeting, 30 February 1936; ibid., Troyes CoC, 10 March 1936; ibid., St-Dizier CoC, 11 March 1936; ibid., Caen CoC, 31 March 1936; ibid., Elbeuf CoC, 21 April 1936; ibid., Chambéry CoC, 25 April 1936; ibid., Bourg CoC, 5 May 1936; ibid., Moulins CoC, 6 May 1936; ibid., Bergerac CoC, 13 May 1936; ibid., Dijon CoC, 8 June 1936. 71

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Daily Routines: the Search for Work To describe the French system of relief for the unemployed is one thing, to understand how it was experienced is another. Fauxbras’s novel poignantly observed the unemployed war veteran in the benefit office and the labour exchange, ‘Unemployment has the utility of teaching you patience. You wait to inscribe, you wait to sign on. You wait to receive benefit. And it’s not worth getting in a rage, they’ll reply with good reason that you’ve nothing better to do’.75 A letter to the Minister of Labour from one of the ‘honest’ unemployed who ‘wanted work’ objected to his treatment as a ‘pariah’ and the attitude of officialdom towards them which was ‘receive this charity and shut up’.76 D-G Guinard penned a brief description of the world of the unemployed tenant. This experience was fraught with an anxiety. A mind-numbing and dispiriting routine pervaded the piece.77 The central character of the short story, Jean, paid his last 50 francs as rent for a miserable fifth floor garret. It was Tuesday and he knew that unless he found work by Saturday he would be evicted. We follow him on foot across Paris in the hopeless search for work with his certificates and job adverts in hand. His appearance had become tatty and his clothes worn after three weeks without work. He rose early, spent the mornings looking for work and slept on benches in the afternoon. Time and again, he heard the same excuses for not being taken on: he hadn’t done his military service, he was too young, not skilled enough, that he should leave his address. Eventually, on Wednesday, he willing accepted a job as a poorly-paid errand boy, with humiliating conditions at a bookbinder’s. Julien Walgraffe’s Clochards! provides a non-fictional portrait of the daily routine of the homeless and unemployed of Paris. An unemployed Belgian was the subject of the study. He was ineligible for benefit and had to rely on shelters, soup kitchens and (Catholic) charity. It reported the disheartening search for work, ‘Everywhere “sorry”. I could “come back later”. … It’s “no vacancies” everywhere’.78 In the ‘week of the unemployed’ column of a newspaper for the unemployed of Drancy, a contributor recorded his day-by-day experiences. In one issue, his heart warmed to hear of work in his trade in an advert, which asked applicants to turn up at nine o’clock the following morning. When he arrived at 7.45 am, there were already 20 waiting for the job and at 9 am there were 100. They were only to be disappointed because the place had already been filled.79 In like fashion, some industries, such as the docks, relied on casual or day labour, so the jobless would crowd the hiring sites at the appointed times in the hope of a day’s work. In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell recounted his difficulties of finding work in Paris:

75

César Fauxbras, Viande à Brûler: Journal d’un Chômeur Roman (Paris, 1935), p. 18. AN F22 682 Unemployed of the 13th arrondissement to the Minister of Labour, 15 July 1936. 77 D.-G. Guinard, ‘Chômeur’, A Contre-Courant, 2 (August 1935): 88–93. 78 Julien Walgraffe, Clochards! Extraits d’un Journal d’un Sans-Logis (Brussels, 1934), pp. 28–9. Also, Maurice Joyeux, Souvenirs d’un Anarchiste 1913–44 (Anthony, 2002), pp. 161–2. 79 Le Chômeur (Drancy), 3 (December 1932). 76

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We failed to find work the next day, and it was three weeks before the luck changed. … Day after day Boris and I went up and down Paris, drifting two miles an hour through the crowds, bored and hungry, and finding nothing. One day, I remember we crossed the Seine eleven times. We loitered for hours outside service doorways, and when the manager came out we would go up to him ingratiatingly, cap in hand. We always got the same answer: they did not want a lame man, nor a man without experience.80

With much reduced family budgets, the unemployed had to develop survival strategies as part of their new mode of existence in order to make ends meet. Ermont CdC calculated that even on a weekly budget without meat and clothing a married couple’s benefit of 87 francs 50 centimes was insufficient.81 Debts would build up with shopkeepers and landlords. In the ‘week of the unemployed’ column, the week began with the receipt of 63 francs benefit. After a haircut, a shoe repair, a packet of cigarettes, the debts with the baker and the grocer settled, less than a franc remained.82 George Orwell recalled the humiliations and hunger associated with living on six francs a day in Paris: the squalor, the lies to conceal the true extent of his poverty, the contemptuous pawnshop officials, the run-ins with the landlord, having to pawn his possessions and clothes.83 Some compensated for the loss of the breadwinner’s wage by sending the nonworking household members to work. Out of 1,249 households surveyed in Meurtheet-Moselle, 189 housewives found work after the husband’s redundancy. Between a quarter and a fifth relied on family or friendship networks to help when in difficulty, particularly with the provision of home-grown produce.84 Overall, practices of budgeting, diet, sociability had to adapt to these new circumstances. Gender and Unemployment Whether one considers the relief system, or contemporary assumptions, or cultural representations, unemployment was considered primarily as a male problem. Julien Duvivier’s film Belle Equipe (1936) centred on a group of male unemployed friends who won the lottery. Several contemporary novels explored the devastating consequences of unemployment of the male breadwinner.85 Les Humbles followed 80

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (London, 1940), pp. 29–47. This quotation begins a section on the woes of being penniless and desperately searching for work. Orwell’s account was of his experiences in 1928. 81 AN F22 683 CdC Ermont to Minister of Labour, 15 March 1937. Bread: 24 francs 15 c.; potatoes: 11 francs 20 c.; soap: 1 franc; washing: 6 francs; lighting: 9 francs 50 c.; water: 1 francs 50 c.; cooking oil: 5 francs; coffee and sugar: 10 francs; coal: 15 francs 50 c.; travel: 11 francs; a total of 94 francs 85 c.. 82 Le Chômeur (Drancy), 4 (January 1933). 83 Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, pp. 20–21. 84 Claude Thovenot and Annette Minot, ‘Incidence de la crise de 1929 sur les consommations en Meurthe-et-Moselle’, Annales de L’Est, 22/3 (1970): 246–7. 85 Jules Romains, Les Humbles: les Hommes de Bonne Volonté (Paris, 1933); André Suarnet, La Grande Menterie: Histoire d’un Chômeur (Étrépilly, 1991); Guy Fogré, Le Fils du Chômeur (Paris, 1934), a short story about the impact of the father’s unemployment

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the Bastide family. The father lost his job at a porcelain factory after 20 years service. The emotional impact on a family is the core theme of the text.86 Indeed, the supposed masculinity of the unemployment problem was doubly underlined in those novels – such as César Fauxbras’s Viande à Brûler: Journal d’un Chômeur (1935) or Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s semi-autobiographical work Gilles (1939) – that featured war veterans who were unable to find work. If unemployment was a male problem, it was also a problem of undermined masculinity as male adulthood was identified with working. A cartoon in the Catholic young worker’s newspaper captured this subverted masculinity and gender role reversal when it depicted an unemployed father with his children, the caption reading, ‘Papa is crying! Why? There is no more work at the factory. He is staying at home and it is mummy who is working in his place’.87 All this meant that the effects of unemployment on women were hidden. Conservative, business and Catholic circles campaigned vigorously for the return of women to the home [‘femme au foyer familial’] as an answer to unemployment. They viewed working mothers as a moral threat to the very fabric of French society. Organizations such as the Union Féminine Civique et Sociale [Feminine Social and Civic Union] and the Ligue de la Mère au Foyer [League of the Mother in the Home] acted as pressure groups for this agenda. The Rouen Chamber of Commerce called for financial encouragement for women to return to the home along the lines of the Third Reich’s marriage loan.88 This explicit approval of the Nazi policy anticipated the slogans and policy of the Vichy regime. Bestowing religious authority on this campaign, the papal encyclical of October 1931, which took as its subject the ‘plague of unemployment’, bemoaned the numbers of working mothers who ‘abandoned [their] children’.89 Abbott Jenatton warned that where feminism had attained the right to divorce and low birth rates prevailed, society was reduced to an atomized collection of childless households of bachelors and divorcees. He proposed ‘the return of the mother to the home’ and thus each sex could play ‘the role attributed to them by God’.90 This language of moral panic demonized the working woman, and in particular the working mother, who subverted not only male employment but also her own maternal nature. With anxieties about the low birth rate, women were put under the dual pressures of the pro-natalist lobby and the difficulties of household budgeting at the time of the depression. The editor of the unemployed newspaper, L’Espoir de Vivre, Hélène Liron divulged the confessions of mothers who came to their offices for help: ‘Ah! If only we didn’t have any children perhaps we would be able to get by, but well, what on his son, which ends happily when the father’s wooden toys made for the son are sold commercially. 86 The effect on the father is secondary to that on the small boy Louis and the mother, Romains, Humbles. 87 Le Jeune Chômeur, 2 (1 August 1932). 88 M. Mathieu, Chômage: Rapport Présenté au Nom de la Commission des Questions Générales (Rouen, 1935). 89 Eglise Catholique, Diocèse Lettre Pastorale Portant Communication de l’Encyclique de sa Sainteté Pie XI sur la Crise Economique, le Chômage et la Course aux Armements. 90 Ernest Jenatton, Contre le Chômage (Marseille, 1935), p. 29.

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91

can we do? We can’t kill them after all!’ Paul Guitard cited examples of women who had deserted their infants because of unemployment. The depression also narrowed the horizons of young women. The same author recorded the pathetic case of a young violinist in a labour exchange who took her instrument to her interview but was forced her to take a post as a domestic servant.92 Whilst the language is colourful there is certainly some truth in the observations of Jeanne Buland, in the communist pamphlet Femme Défends-Toi, who noted how the ‘bourgeoisie and their lackeys’ blamed women who worked for the rise in unemployment. Women, she continued, did not work for their amusement or for ‘small fanciful objects [colifichets] but to gain a living wage’.93 The benefits system was geared in the first instance to male heads of household. Although women were eligible for benefits, they faced considerable discrimination as practices varied from locality to locality. Indeed, some benefits, such as the family allowances instituted by the law of 1932, discriminated against women because benefits were paid to heads of household which excluded married women even if they were the sole breadwinner, or abandoned by their husbands.94 Out of work women, therefore, were marginalized and more seriously under-recorded than their male counterparts.95 Migration, Ethnicity and Unemployment After 1918 France replaced the USA as the world’s most important destination for migrants. With an extremely low birth rate and labour shortages that were aggravated by war losses, France’s foreign population of 1.5 million in 1921 doubled in the following decade. During these years, because of France’s demographic position, voices calling for the restriction of immigration were marginal.96 The Italian, Polish, Spanish and Belgian immigrants performed the dirty, hard and dangerous work and were treated like ‘white negroes’; the situation of the non-white migrants from France’s colonies was even worse.97 Immigrants toiled in agriculture, general labouring, construction, mining, metalworking predominantly in the north, the Paris 91

L’Espoir de Vivre, 4 (1938). Guitard, Chômage, pp. 116–19. 93 Jeanne Buland, Femme Défends-Toi (Paris, 1932), pp. 7–8. 94 For the relationship between unemployment relief and family allowances see, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 10–12 (October–December 1932): 200–202. 95 Even in the figures of those registering at a labour exchange, in the first six months of 1932 whilst an average of 86.5 per cent of unemployed men received benefits only 74.2 per cent of women did, Marguerite Thibert, ‘The economic depression and the employment of women’, International Labour Review, 27/4 (1933): 454. 96 Tim Maga, ‘Closing the door: the French government and the refugee policy, 1933– 39’, French Historical Studies, 12/3 (1982): 427; Rahma Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers dans les années 1930’, Mouvement Social, 188 (1999), 63–5. Matt Perry, ‘“Sans Distinction de Nationalité”? The French Communist Party, Immigrants and Unemployment in the 1930s’, European History Quarterly, 34/3 (2004): 337–69. 97 Georges Mauco, ‘Immigration in France’, International Labour Review, 27/6 (1933): 765–88. 92

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region, the east and the Midi. By the early 1930s, foreign labour constituted 34 per cent of those working in mines and quarries and 30 per cent in heavy metal industries. At times of recession, short-term contracts were terminated and migrants were compelled to return to their country of origin.99 Immigrant workers’ rights to unemployment benefit were less certain than those of French workers. Some countries had signed bilateral treaties (Italy, Poland, Belgium) or conventions (Romania and Austria) with France which entitled their nationals to benefits on a par with indigenous workers. Migrants from other countries could be dealt with according to the whim of the local unemployment fund. Where the immigrant was protected by treaty or convention, he or she needed an identity card stating his or her occupation and status as a ‘worker’.100 It became very difficult for a foreign worker designated as an agricultural labourer on his or her identity card to get industrial employment and therefore could be denied benefit. Even when the foreign workers had a legitimate claim to benefits, zealous officials influenced by the climate of racism might often turn them down. Furthermore, according to the communist and unemployed press, when strains appeared on the finances of the unemployment funds a common response of the authorities was waves of disqualifications of foreign claimants. Behind the scenes the Government secretly circularized major employers’ groups to repatriate foreign workers.101 Yet many employers, resistant to this interference, lobbied for the watering down of legislation on repatriation and opposed special taxes on firms employing foreign labour. At the same time the rightwing press continued with the xenophobic rationalizations of unemployment and some employers who hired foreign labour simultaneously financed the extreme right agitation against those very same workers. With the onset of the depression, various social and political forces attributed the rise in unemployment to the large increase in immigrants over the previous decade. This discourse emerged very rapidly and appealed emotionally to ethnic solidarity; it was as bold and simple as it was irrational. The speed of its development can only be accounted for by the prior existence of factors conducive to its growth: namely, the social and physical segregation, labour market competition, weak factors of integration and the persistence of racist, chauvinist and pro-imperialist ideas. The labour movement had largely failed to overcome these factors as a low proportion of 98

In 1931 there were 800,000 Italians, 508,000 Poles, 352,000 Spaniards, 254,000 Belgians in France, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Immigrés et la Politique (Paris, 1988), p. 37. By 1931, 459,498 foreigners lived in the Seine department, constituting 9.3 per cent of the population. 99 Mauco, ‘Immigration in France’, 772. In 1927, there was a net emigration of 27,000 and in 1932 the net outflow was 50,000. 100 Jacques Malivoire de Camas, La France et le Chômage: Etude de Legislation (Paris 1933); Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1932), p. 6; Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1935), pp. 68–75; Charles Bonnel, Les Droits des Chômeurs (Paris, 1939), pp. 69–71. 101 Ralph Schor, Histoire de l’Immigration en France (Paris, 1996), p. 125. For an example of the employers’ campaign, Chambre de Commerce de Marseille, La Protection de la Main d’Oeuvre Nationale (Marseille, 1931).

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immigrant workers were organized in trade unions and few had made common cause with French workers before the onset of the depression.102 These latent conditions for a racist backlash found a catalyst in the depression of the 1930s.103 A rhetoric of foreign ‘armies’, ‘invasion’ and ‘occupation’ exposed an agitational bellicosity and, given that so many had so recently followed their nation’s call to arms, a threatening undercurrent of vigilantism and anti-immigrant violence. The press of the extreme right – L’Ami du Peuple, L’Action Française, and La Victoire – which shared a wide circulation of over one million recycled these themes repeatedly. This anti-foreigner clamour found a strong echo, and therefore political legitimization, within the Senate and the Chambre des Députés. In November 1931, deputies from all parties, with the exception of the communists, formed the ‘Group in Defence of the Unemployed’ proposing five bills on repatriation. The nationalist discourse – permeating press, parliament and public – asserted that foreigners should be sacked first, that there should be special taxes on employers who recruited foreigners, that immigration should be halted or controlled, and that repatriation should be stepped up through round-ups. The parliamentary debate on immigration culminated in the Law for the Protection of National Workforce of 10 August 1932. This limited the proportion of foreigners in public sector employment to 5 per cent. In the private sector, similar quotas were to be fixed by industry, region or sector through consultation with employers or unions. The representatives of local government also adopted this agenda as conferences of the Association of the French Mayors in 1932 and 1934 attest.104 Beyond the process of political legitimization, governments and civil servants acted upon the assumed equation between foreign workers and the threat to jobs. On 7 February 1931, the Minister of the Interior dispatched a circular to all prefects asking for precise information on unemployment, especially the situation of unemployed foreigners. An internal memo clarified the purpose of the survey. It sought to encourage employers to terminate the contracts of foreign workers who would then leave France.105 Whereas a coterminous Ministry of Labour survey 102 Bruno Groppo, ‘Entre immigration et exil: les refugiés politiques italiens dans la France dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, Matériaux pour l’Histoire de Notre Temps, 44 (1996): 27–35; Catherine Gousseff, ‘Quelle politique d’acceuil des refugiés en France? Le cas des Russes dans les années 20’, Matériaux pour l’Histoire de Notre Temps, 44 (1996): 14–18; Janine Ponty, ‘Les travailleurs polonais en France 1919–39’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, 57/4 (1985): 687–92; ADSSD 3 Mi 6 91 PCF Central Committee minutes, 21 October 1933. 103 AN F7 13341 Ministry of Interior files, 9 January 1930. AN F 13541 Association of Sculptor and Decorator Veterans to the President of the Federation of Veterans’ Associations, 6 January 1931. AN F7 13541 Seine Federation of the Federal Union of Veterans to the President du Conseil, 17 January 1931. AN F7 13541 prefectoral (Seine) report, 19 November 1931; ibid., 21 November 1931. 104 M. Proust, ‘Chômage’ in Association des Maires de France, XXVe Congrès de l’Association des Maires de France (Paris, 1934). 105 The memorandum also sought to restrict the labour supply by excluding other categories: those over 60, married women and young women, AN F7 13529 Ministry of Interior memo, 19 February 1931.

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aimed to ascertain the precise level of unemployment, this Ministry of the Interior questionnaire was concerned with repatriation and, for that matter, social control wanting to ‘determine the number of workers considered as particularly susceptible to revolutionary propaganda’. Prefects, particularly those responsible for France’s borders, eagerly rose to the task.106 Despite a formal commitment to internationalism, the workers’ organizations of the reformist left failed to challenge unambiguously the rise in chauvinism. The SFIO, the CGT and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (League of the Rights of Man) were all calling for a reduction in immigration.107 The CGT openly spoke of its goal of ‘protecting’ French workers and its paper Le Peuple carried more articles on immigrant workers than any other paper, including those of the extreme right.108 Many sources point to a dramatic rise in racism inside the French working class as mass job losses materialized.109 A flood of letters and petitions to the authorities denounced immigrant workers and xenophile employers.110 Police reports also indicate the widespread character of racist ‘explanations’ and ‘solutions’ amongst French workers.111 The sum of all these factors – the pressures of recession, anti-foreigner hostility, government legislation and police action – reversed the great expansion of the foreign population that the 1920s had witnessed. Recording this decline, the census rolls of the foreign population in France stood at 2.89 million in 1931 and had fallen dramatically to 2.45 million in 1936. In 1935 alone, 67,000 immigrants were repatriated and entry permits fell from 128,000 in 1931 to 9,000 in 1935.112

106

AN F7 13529 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 19 February 1931; ibid., Prefect (Hautes-Alpes) to Minister of the Interior, 14 March 1931; ibid., 14 April 1931; ibid., Prefect (Ardennes) to Minister of the Interior, 17 August 1931. 107 Confédération Générale du Travail, La CGT devant le Chômage (Paris, 1931); Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers’. 108 Schor, Histoire de l’Immigration, 122; and for comparisons of 1930s and 1980s see, Leah Haus, ‘Labor unions and immigration policy in France’, International Migration Review, 33/3 (1999): 683–716; Lebas, the SFIO, mayor of Roubaix, condemned the frontaliers [crossborder workers] as a cause of unemployment, R. Dufraisse, ‘Le mouvement ouvrier français ‘rouge’ devant la grande dépression économique de 1929 à 1933’, in Denise Fauvel-Rouif (ed.), Mouvements Ouvriers et la Dépression Economique de 1929 à 1933 (Assen, 1966), p. 182. 109 Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship and National Identity (Minneapolis, 1996), pp. 201–2. 110 Schor, Histoire de l’Immigration, 123. 111 A police report from Valenciennes observed that workers, who were increasingly anxious about the future, generally believed that the economic crisis could be resolved if the numbers of foreigners in the factories were minimized, AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Under Prefect, 11 May 1932; for example, the unemployed of Mezièresen-Santerre complained about the employment of foreigners, ADS 99 M141 Director of Departmental Labour Exchange (Somme) to Prefect (Somme), 13 April 1935. 112 Annuaire Statistique de la France (Paris, 1936).

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Housing and Urban Landscapes Eugène Dabit described the atmosphere of the poorest working-class neighbourhoods of Paris during the early 1930s in Les Faubourgs de Paris.113 During the narrative, he walked through slums and soulless modern apartment blocks whose inhabitants were ‘almost dead in a common grave’. He witnessed slanging matches, stench and the claustrophobic lack of any horizon. He described those living in the most intense hardship as ‘les misérables’ [the wretched], amongst whom were the unemployed. Dabit depicted the scene as a market finished, which was when the misérables appeared. A stall-holder gave these people a few pennies discount, they scavenged the rotten fruit and vegetables or the odd bone if the dogs did not get to the butcher’s stall first. Dabit introduced the reader to the elderly who were reduced to petty streetselling of laces or thyme; one, a woman with an awful cough made a few pennies before returning to her son with TB. ‘All will’, he observed of these morbid folk with shortened lives, ‘soon join my aunt in the cemetery’.114 A large proportion of unemployment was concentrated in the Paris region but this region embodied a multitude of landscapes according to the social mix, age of housing and industrial make-up of a given locality. In some parts such as Saint-Denis with its large industry and proletarian character, the unemployed had a considerable social weight and were identified politically with a communist council. It, like other parts of the red belt of Paris, was rapidly expanding. Elsewhere, there was greater social heterogeneity and fixed patterns of settlement. The unemployed felt marginalized in more affluent quarters. With the protests at the Christmas revelries at the fashionable nightclubs of Monmartre, the PCF sought to highlight these juxtapositions and draw on latent social antagonisms. In the provinces, the unemployed found themselves in very different settings. Some towns, such as lace town Caudry, that relied on particular depression-hit industries were reduced to depopulated ghost towns with a pervading gloom.115 Mining settlements, the corons [mining cottage or village] of the Nord region, might be smaller versions of this. The geographical randomness of coal deposits isolated 113 Eugène Dabit, a communist sympathiser who died on a trip with André Gide to the Soviet Union was close in some ways to both the populist and proletarian literature movements and a member of AEAR [Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] the organization that linked artists and authors sympathetic to the PCF. 114 The account culminated with a stirring call to action drawing on the revolutionary heritage of the landscape surrounding the inhabitants of Paris. Eugène Dabit, Les Faubourgs de Paris (Paris, 1933), p. 93. Dabit’s novel, Un Mort tout Neuf, featured as an all-pervasive anxiety about economic crisis and the war it seems to threaten. His L’Hôtel du Nord turned into a film by Marcel Carné in 1938 followed the residents of a hotel in a poor area of Paris based on his own observations of his parents’ guesthouse. André Kertész’s photography captured the impoverished underside of interwar Paris, Paris vu par André Kertész (Paris, 1934). René Clair’s film Sous les Toits de Paris (1930) and Jean Renoir’s Les Bas-Fonds (1936), based on a Maxim Gorky novel, also evoked such scenes. Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar, Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (London, 2005), pp. 276–98. 115 It was nicknamed Caudry-Dead-Town (Caudry-Ville-Morte).

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concentrations of unemployed in networks of proletarian villages in Gard or Loire. There were also high numbers of unemployed in ports shaken by the downturn in world trade with their fluid international populations. Here the casual and irregular patterns of work lent a peculiar characteristic to unemployment where the unemployed would gather in the morning hoping for work at the dock or ships. So whilst unemployment was a principally urban phenomenon it was not one restricted to the big city. The unemployed might be at their most stigmatized in smaller affluent towns with weak labour movements dominated by local commercial elites or still worse in rural areas where the market for agricultural waged-work or cottage industry dried up. The ‘events of Le Puy’ – demonstrations against the council and a relief workers’ strike – beginning on 17 December 1931 illustrate the small town mentalities with which the unemployed had to contend. Like many parts of France outside the larger towns, conservative Catholic hegemony reigned on the council and in the press. There was no unemployment fund. Instead the unemployed were obliged to break stones outdoors at piece rates.116 A struggle for recognition against shame and invisibility took place in the public spaces of French cities and towns. This was most obvious at the level of the demonstrations of the unemployed which contested the urban landscape against bans from the authorities. But this also took place on a more mundane level as the jobless overcame the shame associated with unemployment and gathered in public places. Their mass character and visibility transformed the urban landscape of the 1930s. Paul Guitard described the visual impact of the dole queue and the unemployed, It has lasted a long time … At certain hours of the morning and evening, parts of Paris, ordinarily quiet and untroubled, are suddenly animated with an unusual liveliness. Hands in pockets, the steps dragging and instinctively muffled – what do you expect, one loses self-assurance – with the same heavy movement of the shoulders and the same tiredness that circles the eyes, sad despite the feverish cheeks, some men group together first of all and, after the rapid exchange of a few words, move in single file, passively. Slow, grey, sad, as if it ought to be without end, while in a sky stale with fog, soot and smoke, January rains its worries on them, the queue lengthens, and lengthens tirelessly … It is cold; a damp air makes light work of the fragile barrier of jumpers and jackets. In the morning, you breathe the smell of the sweepings that spread the stench of eau de toilet, soapy and perfumed. The evening, the shower glistens on the monotonous asphalt. There are men and women. One would say shadows. One after another, they disappear behind the door, where they will look for, each in turn, their morsel of hope. Slowly, the sad line loses its length. The door closes, opens again and closes on the last man, who enters and then leaves. The street is again free for passers-by. That has lasted a long time. These ephemeral, wretched crowds, these are the unemployed. Unhappy orphans of the state, you meet them, in front of the steps of wide chipped flagstone of the Hotel de Sens, where figures commemorating noble birth show the history of a glorious age that seems to symbolically crush the gaunt ghosts of today. … You meet them again, these orphans of the state, on the worn track of the avenue Rapp, open to the four winds, to the fog. You meet them above all, near St-Germain-des-Prés, 116

Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: a Life (Oxford, 1976), p. 94.

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in the derelict rue l’Abbaye, where the Departmental Labour Exchange is based, and everywhere else besides, in each arrondissement, where state and municipal assistance tries to reduce the great pity of the unemployed.117

The unemployed were often banned from meeting in municipal buildings and denied municipal permission to demonstrate. On some occasions, the unemployed briefly captured the streets within a town only for it to be won back by external forces of the riot police [gardes mobiles]. The struggle for public recognition was also a conflict between left councils and police authorities. On occasion, prefects and ministers of interior considered rescinding the police authorities of those councils with a permissive attitude towards militant unemployed protest. This contested public sphere was related to wider contests for municipal territory and local social hegemonies. Within the confines set by the routines of the unemployed, it is hard to gauge the extent to which the unemployed used public space for their own ends through the mechanisms of sociability, custom, public shaming of transgressors of moral codes, humour and rumour. The evidence for this is very patchy and was not one of the contemporary concerns of those who observed the unemployed. A number of the newspapers of the unemployed sought to shame local councils, unsympathetic journalists, landlords or employers who broke the eight hour law.118 Their cartoons revealed the great ironies of the unemployed situation.119 No doubt, however, these questions are important to understanding the way in which organization and protest germinated. If local social hegemonies were important to the experience and degree of recognition of the unemployed, so too were relations with landlords. A remarkable scene from Duvivier’s film Belle Equipe (1935) depicted the tensions between the slum landlord and the unemployed tenant. The camera followed the two adversaries as they descended a staircase in the middle of a tenement block, hurling insults and drawing the attention of the neighbours. One demanded rent, the other clean towels, repairs and an end to the power cuts. ‘No money, no towels’. The PCF obviously struck a chord in its depictions of landlords as ‘vultures’ and its battles against evictions. Several newspapers carried photographs of the cold determined stare of crowds that had just prevented the eviction or the seizure of the possessions of one of their neighbours.120 Evictions were monitored with concern by the authorities, which at times responded with moratoria on the evictions of unemployed tenants.

117

Guitard, Chômage, pp. 105–6. For example, mayors were shamed for failing to provide a room for the unemployed and distributing rotten fish to the unemployed, La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), 1 (11 January 1932). 119 For example, a cartoon caption read: ‘13,000 unemployed cut off from benefit. It’s not enough to liquidate unemployment… They only have to liquidate the unemployed’, La Voix des Chômeurs (Limoges), 4 (July 1932). 120 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 9 (20 March 1932); La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord), 6 (MarchApril 1936). In the ‘week of the unemployed’ column, the landlord was told he had no chance of getting the rent, and the author observed, ‘While we wait for the law exonerating rent, let us 118

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The housing situations of the unemployed varied greatly. Estimates of the numbers of unsanitary houses in France that were in serious need of repair or replacement ranged between 3,000,000 and 500,000.121 A survey found that 4 per cent of the unemployed owned their own accommodation but that three-fifths of these lived in a wooden or plasterboard shack or a caravan. Most of those without work were tenants living in unfurnished accommodation. Many larger families lived in the low-cost social housing [the HBM, Habitations à Bon Marché]. Rents were higher in the Paris region than elsewhere in France, where housing would typically account for a tenth of household income.122 The unemployed had serious difficulties paying their rents. In a survey in 1936, only just over half were paying their rent in full. For the rest, rent backlogs mounted up. A third were able to pay no rent at all. The unemployed went without basic amenities, furniture and possessions. In what was considered a new consumer age, nearly half of unemployed households in Paris did not possess any of the following: radio, gramophone, books, musical instruments or sewing machine. 11 per cent were categorized as having the worst category of furniture.123 Nearly half of unemployed households in Paris and Lyons did not have indoor toilets. Many unemployed, especially those with larger families, lived in overcrowded conditions: 27 per cent of Parisian unemployed households lived more than two per room. The situation was worse elsewhere with the equivalent figure in Lyons being 33.4 per cent and Mulhouse being 37.9 per cent. Not only was there a shortage of rooms but also a lack of beds. Most children slept two to a bed. Paul Guitard described the scene of an impoverished household that he had visited, I found in a single room, a family: a father, mother, boy of eight and small girl of five. A narrow bed, a couch with dirty sheets, a rickety table, two stools and a small stove without fire or soul. I asked these poor people how they could sleep in such conditions. The mother – 35 years old, she looked 50 – began to cry. Between sobs, she showed me the beaten earth floor and nodded towards the children. The man was unable to speak. He made no gesture. Enveloped in his impenetrable veil, he was like a statute of resignation. Fathers without work, children without joy.124

Considering the quality of air, light and the question of damp, only two thirds of homes of the unemployed were deemed in a fit and healthy state. Where housing was concerned, overcrowding was the principal grievance of the unemployed followed by lack of light, dilapidation and dampness.125 Unemployment pushed some into homelessness. In January 1933, 1,961 resided in the dosshouses of Meurtheet-Moselle whilst the figure had never passed 700 before the onset of persistent make the law ourselves, counting on our own strength to prevent all evictions’. Le Chômeur, 4 (January 1933). For communist tenants’ posters, press and activity, AN F7 13757. 121 G. Méquet, ‘Housing problems and the depression’, International Labour Review, 27/2 (1933): 178. 122 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 3, pp. 118–22. 123 Ibid., pp. 133–4. 124 Guitard, Chômage, p. 134. 125 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 3, pp. 153.

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126

unemployment. Homelessness often proved to be a threshold between being unemployed and becoming a vagrant. Health, Nutrition and Suicide During the interwar period, relative hardship was an ever-present companion of unemployment. In a survey of budgets in 1936, a typical household where the head was unemployed received an income of 11,125 francs. Where the head of the household was in intermittent employment, income rose to 15,295 francs. This compared to 24,723 francs for a family where the main breadwinner was in constant employment. Unemployment more than halved a working-class family’s resources.127 Admittedly on a small sample, the mortality rate before unemployment was 0.73 per cent and after unemployment 1.22 per cent.128 The most extensive study of unemployment in France found that unemployment and poor health went hand in hand and that the lower the income of the household the greater the morbidity. Those with an income between 12,000 and 15,000 francs were half as likely to have serious illness in the family than those below 9,000 francs. A further aggravating factor was slum housing conditions. Investigators observed that mothers were particularly at risk from ill health because of the problems associated with childbirth compounded by the fact that they would often go without in order to feed their families.129 A quarter of mothers in Paris and Lyons were in a state of generally deficient health, that proportion increased according to the size of a family; 52 per cent of mothers with more than six children were in poor health. In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the growth of unemployment did not lead to a generalized increase in mortality rates. A study of death rates in Clichy, in the Parisian suburbs, found that this was true for all age groups except, perhaps significantly, those over 60. Nevertheless some medical professionals were gravely worried about the effect of unemployment on public health. Research in Strasbourg and Marseilles discovered a correlation between unemployment and syphilis as a result of the growth of prostitution consequent upon greater unemployment. Medical researchers were particularly concerned by the health of children. Renée Odic, the medical inspector of schools for the Seine department, cautioned that though ‘unemployment did not or did not yet translate into an increase in mortality, it exercised serious effects on the health and development of children’. In Dugny, the school with the highest proportion of children with unemployed parents witnessed the greatest fall between 1930 and 1932 in their weights on entry.130 Another health professional Dr Godart, who worked for the Caisse Interdépartmentale des Assurances Sociales de Seine et Seine-et-Oise [the Interdepartmental Fund of Social Insurance of Seine and Seine-et126 Claude Thovenot and Annette Minot, ‘Incidence de la crise de 1929 sur les consommations en Meurthe-et-Moselle’, Annales de L’Est, 22/3 (1970): 245. 127 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 3, p. 22. 128 Ibid., p. 157. 129 ibid., pp. 164–5. 130 The children weighed on average 1.29 kg lighter. Renée Odic, ‘Les effets du chômage sur la santé publique’, Presse Médicale, 95 (26 November 1932): 1973.

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Oise], studied 2,000 children of the unemployed. Over a fifth were in ‘very clearly insufficient’ health, 14.1 per cent had bone deformities such as rickets, and more than 40 per cent had ‘very insufficient’ height and weight for their age.131 Despite, as G. Ichok observed, a strong suspicion of a relationship between unemployment and ill health, firmer conclusions were not possible because of the limited scope of the research and the inadequacy of the available statistics.132 The unemployed generally economized by cutting out meat and fruit. Their diets became less nutritious and more monotonous. Potatoes, rice and pasta replaced green vegetables, fruit, butter and eggs. In Meurthe-et-Moselle, urban unemployed households had to cut back on the quantity and quality of food and only 50 per cent were well nourished. In the poorest areas of Nancy, investigators were told that some families went without food for days at a time. A study of 30 unemployed families in Nancy observed that eight had cut out meat altogether and only nine had meat more than twice a week. In the countryside, however, the unemployed were able to grow fruit and vegetables in their gardens and provided themselves with a healthy diet.133 Other studies too found deficiencies in the diets of the unemployed. Average calorific levels were only slightly above daily requirements in Paris and Lyons, implying that there was a lack of nutrition amongst many of the unemployed. Even in Mulhouse where the general level of calories was significantly above the minimum required, diets were lacking in essential vitamins implying malnutrition.134 Maurice Chaumeau investigated the impact of unemployment on nutrition in Lyons in 1936. He found that 40 per cent of the time the families with unemployed heads of household were malnourished; this compared to 15 per cent for those on short time.135 Beyond the physical effects of unemployment, there was a psychological toll in terms of depression, anxiety and suicide.136 Although unemployed suicide victims were not disaggregated from the overall figures for this category of death, suicides as a whole did rise noticeably as the depression worsened. Between 1930 and 1934, courts recorded a 17 per cent increase in annual suicides.137 The link between unemployment and suicide was recognized in some quarters. Jean Chiappe, the Prefect of Police of Paris, even went so far as to talk of a ‘suicide epidemic’ 131

Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 3, pp. 173–4. G. Ichok, ‘Chômage et santé publique’, Journal de la Société de la Statistique de Paris (December 1936): 424–48. Relatively full statistics of mortality were aggregated therefore not allowing the consideration of unemployed health per se. Morbidity statistics were less reliable and not so readily available. 133 Claude Thovenot and Annette Minot, ‘Incidence de la crise de 1929 sur les consommations en Meurthe-et-Moselle’, Annales de L’Est, 22/3 (1970): 235–49. This article was based on an unpublished survey of 1933–4 by Professor Jacques Parisot, Faculté de Médecine de Nancy. 134 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 3, p. 204. 135 Maurice Chaumeau, Une Enquête sur l’Influence du Chômage sur l’Alimentation Familiale (Lyon, 1940). 136 Chaumeau, Une Enquête sur l’Influence du Chômage sur l’Alimentation Familiale. 137 From 9,293 to 11,144, Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres, vol. 2, p. 124. 132

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connected to unemployment with 1,400 suicides under his jurisdiction in 1932 alone.138 In César Fauxbras’s Viande à Brûler (1935), war veteran Paul Thévenin committed suicide after being disqualified from benefit in the climax of the novel. Suicide was a recurrent theme in the newspapers of the unemployed movement and the communist press more generally.139 The Unemployed and Class Chômage, the French for unemployment, does not have the same connotations as its English or German equivalents. One vernacular connotation of chômage, meaning unemployment benefit, led some to equate the unemployed [chômeur/chômeuse] exclusively with those who were able to receive benefit [toucher le chômage].140 To add further linguistic complexity, not only does chômage derive from chômer meaning to stand idle, chômeur/chômeuse, an unemployed person, could also denote an idler. Thus the widespread term chômeur professionnel was an explicit condemnation of those who allegedly abused the system of assistance. Also drawing on this sense, Denis de Rougemont’s Journal d’un Intellectuel en Chômage is about the experience of a young middle class author.141 This work raises the question of the class position of the unemployed. Indeed, de Rougemont specifically made the case to include the ‘unemployed intellectual’ in the broad category of the unemployed. In so doing he recognized the controversial character of this approach. There was a considerable literature devoted to this specific, somewhat marginal, aspect of unemployment.142 If, at one end of the spectrum of class positions of the unemployed, there is the social layer of the unemployed intellectual with no relationship with the working class, at the other there is the problem of the ‘vagabond’, ‘tramp’, the homeless and the ‘professional unemployed’. In Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (1932), a vagrant is saved from drowning by a shopkeeper whose bourgeois existence is then overturned. Could 138

Guitard, Chômage, p. 199; ibid., pp. 115–16. In his contemporary study of unemployment, a journalist of the Parisian daily Le Petit Journal recounted the anecdote of a French clown who had achieved great success in the US but on his return to France was unable to find work. He spent his last pennies on going to the circus and then shot himself. Ibid., p. 61. For the suicides of the unemployed in the Somme, ADS 99 M 141 Prefectoral (Somme) report, 22 September 1935. 139 L’Humanité, 31 July 1932; Le Travailleur, 11 April 1936; Le Sans-Travail (Valence), March 1932; Le Chômeur (Drancy), 3 (December 1932); L’Emancipation, 25 February 1933; Le Cri des Chômeurs, 7 (February 1932); ibid., 4 (November 1931); ibid., 8 (March 1932); ibid., 11 (May 1932). 140 Maurice Joyeux, Le Consulat Polonais (Paris, 1957), p. 14. It is worth noting that the movement of the unemployed was largely a movement of those on benefit and several documents noted how the CdCs largely failed to attract the unemployed who were denied relief [‘chômeurs non secourus’]. 141 Denis de Rougemont, Journal d’un Intellectuel en Chômage (Paris, 1937). 142 Guitard, Chômage, pp. 33–81; Roland Weil, Le Chômage de la Jeunesse Intellectuelle Diplômée (Paris, 1937); Conseil National Economique, La Main-d’Oeuvre et le Chômage (section entitled, Le Chômage des Travailleurs Intellectuels ).

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the hero really be considered unemployed?143 Could the two tramps of the popular radio programme Sur le Banc? Making such distinctions was a subjective matter, and for those who had not experienced or were unlikely to experience unemployment the temptation was to judge many of those not dressed ‘respectably’ as professionally unemployed, as the undeserving poor. One French study of unemployment opened with the scene from a Parisian police station where a homeless man was brought in. He turned out to be a craft worker who had lost his job and gone through his savings but was too proud to ask for help from his friends or the state. He was not a ‘clochard’ [tramp] who was ‘happy to live in a permanent state of war against work’. The police officer came across people in this situation on a daily basis. Some, he observed, were fraudulent but more had simply become homeless through bad luck.144 At the time young, homeless and ineligible for benefit, Maurice Joyeux described the ease with which circumstances transformed him into a tramp.145 Usefully he observed that this was a process [‘clochardisation’] and therefore not amenable to easy and clear-cut formal definition. His autobiographical novel, Le Consulat Polonais, described the declassed individualism of tramps favouring only those demands on a communist leaflet that would directly benefit themselves as they queued for soup. He revealed their resentful alienation from the ‘unemployed’ with a roof over their heads.146 Adding to the sociological fluidity of the times, the economic crisis in agriculture had a proletarianizing effect because ruined small farmers, sharecroppers or agricultural labourers migrated to the towns in search of work or, at worst, unemployment benefits.147 These problems highlight the danger of hoping to discover a static compartment within the working population easily identifiable as unemployment. Patterns of ownership and class locations were in flux, even in crisis, to an extent that was not normally the case and mass unemployment acted as a solvent of stable employment relations. One way of thinking of the unemployed is to consider them part of the working class given that they have no other means – apart from relief – than waged work. But many definitions of the working class embody an objective and a subjective side. This suggests that the unemployed should also identify themselves as workers and with the organizations of that class. One alternative to considering the unemployed in this way is to deem them beyond class analysis or as a class apart. Although the organizations of the unemployed sought to challenge the shame of claiming relief and to advocate the common interests of all unemployed, this was not the same as the attempt to construct a corporate identity of the unemployed as a social group.

143

Better known to English-speaking audiences via its remake Down and Out in Beverley Hills (1986). 144 Guitard, Chômage, pp. 14–17. 145 Joyeux, Souvenirs d’un Anarchiste, pp. 163–4. 146 Joyeux, Consulat Polonais, pp.14–18. One said, ‘Coal. We don’t give a damn about that. We sleep under the bridges, us.’ 147 AN F 22 683 Prefect (Indre) forwarded the resolution of Blanc council to the Minister of Labour, 12 February 1936. Michel Augé-Laribé, ‘Labour conditions in French agriculture’, International Labour Review, 25/1 (1932): 23–57.

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148

They sought affiliation with the wider working class. Indeed, in the context of the national and gender mix of the unemployed, this project was intrinsic to the remaking of the French working class during the 1930s and 1940s. Beyond the question of defining and measuring unemployment, there is the more profound problem of trying to encompass the psychological experience of unemployment. The class location of unemployment is further complicated because it is usually a transitory and stigmatized social position. Denis de Rougemont believed that French commentators failed to grasp the essence of unemployment. They ignored that this was a psychological and experiential condition that was shared by 50 million people worldwide.149 Paradoxically, unemployment was an entirely foreign experience to those who shaped public discussion on the issue. Much of the discourse, be it charitable or moralistic or political, misconceived the phenomenon. In his literary way, de Rougemont was making a similar point about the unemployed condition as those sociologists who sought to ‘immerse themselves’ in the world of the unemployed in the classic study of Austrian village of Marienthal.150 Whilst it is true that a more satisfactory understanding of the unemployed required a means of listening to the jobless themselves, blinkered by his own social and political alienation from the working class de Rougemont was mistaken in thinking that the unemployed were a class apart. On the contrary, unemployment was a transitory phenomenon that affected a very large proportion of the French labour force during the interwar period. Press Opinions, Public Opinion In the mainstream press, representations of unemployment ranged from the philanthropic efforts of local benefactors to less charitable depictions of dole scroungers and fraud. Encapsulating this latter view, the mayor of Ris-Orangis declared, ‘The unemployed wanted services but do not want to serve’.151 Several newspapers gave lurid details of fraud cases.152 Opinions that benefits were an encouragement to laziness and that people were unemployed because they chose to

148 For example in a song ostensibly written by a workless person about unemployment, this predicament was identified with particular trades: miners, metalworkers and builders, La Crise du Chômage (Millau, 1921). 149 De Rougemont, Journal d’un Intellectuel en Chômage, pp. 59–62. 150 Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarfeld and Hans Zeisel, Marienthal: the Sociography of an Unemployed Community (London, 1972). 151 Gueslin, Gens de Rien, p. 92. 152 For example, Le Temps, 15 April 1934; ibid., 16 March 1933; Journal de Saint-Denis, 26 November 1932; Philippe Hesse and Jean-Pierre Le Crom, ‘L’indemnisation des chômeurs dans les années 1930’, in Les Sans-Emploi et la Loi Hier et Aujourd’hui (Nantes, 1988), pp. 49 and 65; The scale of fraud was vastly exaggerated. Only 323,498 francs were repaid in Seine in 1935 and 852 were fined or imprisoned. In contrast, 33,869 challenged the rejection of their benefit claims, of which 54 per cent of appeals were confirmed and 12.2 per cent changed. Thus there were many more denied benefits unreasonably than ever committed fraud. Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, pp. 270–71.

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be so were quite widespread especially outside the working class.153 Arguing with his unemployed tenant, Bertheau, the landlord in the Duvivier film Belle Equipe declared: ‘You unemployed are all alike … lazy swine’. The authorities also worried that benefits allowed the unemployed to avoid low paid work or jobs outside their former profession. One Minister of the Interior even privately called for a reduction in benefits ‘to incite the workers not to stay unemployed’.154 Because journalists tend to report events, more often than not the Ministry of Labour’s release of unemployment statistics provided the bare substance of newspaper reporting of unemployment. Conscious of this myopia, one newspaper ran a series called ‘Beyond the Statistics’.155 Particularly at the beginning of the 1930s, unemployed protest was ignored or treated with hostility because of its communist affiliations. Mainstream newspapers oscillated between hysteria and derision. Pierre Taittinger’s Le Figaro reacted in a particularly vociferous manner to the CGTU’s days of action against unemployment. Events at Le Puy graphically illustrated the press vitriol directed against those who agitated amongst the unemployed, in this case Simone Weil.156 Le Mémorial, a local newspaper, questioned the actions of the ‘suffragette’ public servant ‘with a heavy purse’ using the unemployed ‘to make a splash’ parading in silk stockings and mixing with those below her station like ‘a mushroom on humus’. As a result, the teacher got in trouble with the school authorities and the police (who were scandalized by her handshake of a mere stonebreaking unemployed man). The smear campaign continued for weeks and on 4 February, Le Mémorial mixed together a vile concoction of anti-semitism, misogyny and anti-communism against the ‘red virgin of the tribe of Levi, bearer of Moscovite gospels’ who ‘indoctrinated the wretches whom she has led astray’.157 This hostility to the communist-led protests of the unemployed was even visible in the socialist press. The only protests that the CGT’s journal La Voix du Peuple mentioned, and these were the briefest possible references, were its own in SaintNazaire and Neuves-Maisons. As the 1930s progressed some attitudes mellowed to the unemployed. For instance, the Réveil du Nord gave relatively sympathetic coverage of the region hunger march of October 1934. Despite press antagonism to unemployed protest, there was an underlying anxiety amongst police chiefs and ministers of the interior that the unemployed were ‘particularly susceptible’ to revolutionary ideas.158 The unemployed had long 153

Guitard, Chômage, pp. 131–3; Franck Bory, La Figure de chômeur en France à travers L’Humanité et Le Temps (MA thesis, Paris VII, 1996); Peasants were particularly unsympathetic to the unemployed given that they regarded townsfolk in general as averse to hard work, Ralph Schor, Histoire de la Société Française au XXe Siècle (Paris, 2004), p. 145. 154 ADN M616 32 Minister of the Interior to Prefect (Nord), 23 July 1935. 155 AN F7 13523 La Volonté, 11 July 1927. 156 Simone Weil, the leftist and future philosopher, had taken up a teaching post at a local girls’ school. She pioneered the sociology of a rationalized car factory in, Simone Weil, La Condition Ouvrière (Paris, 1951). Le Mémorial, 4 February 1932 quoted in Pétrement, Simone Weil, p. 113. 157 The cycle of events had won the unemployed in Le Puy relief work for all at improved rates of pay, better conditions and a soup kitchen. 158 AN F7 13529 Minister of the Interior circular to Prefects, 7 February 1931.

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been considered a social threat and this theme continued during the interwar years, especially given the attention that the PCF paid them. The Prefect of the Seine feared the ‘dark corners’ amongst the long lines of those who called for bread and work.159 Conclusion In the context of a wider literature on this international phenomenon, the sources considered here suggest that the French unemployed shared a common experience with their counterparts elsewhere.160 Because of France’s pattern of economic development, its social policy, and the specific ways in which the world slump affected this country, the French example exhibited certain unique or distinctive features. These peculiarities conditioned the character of unemployed movements and patterns of protest. France’s economic geography both disguised unemployment and put considerable obstacles in the path of the formation of a national protest movement. Economic buoyancy of the 1920s also meant that continuities of activism and organization did not exist as they did in other parts of Europe. Growth in the numbers of immigrants after the First World War also potentially distracted unemployed anger away from the capitalist system or the government. However, despite its idiosyncrasies, France did not escape depression or mass unemployment as a superficial reading of its statistics might suggest. The potentialities for the creation of organizations of the unemployed existed in France at various moments during the period under consideration. Indeed, the immaturity and non-mandatory character of the French relief system put a particular premium on unemployed organization and protest.

159

Guitard, Chômage, p. 96. For a review of the international literature, Philip Eisenberg and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, ‘The psychological effects of unemployment’, Psychological Bulletin, 35/6 (June 1938): 358–90. 160

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Chapter 2

Movements of the Unemployed in the 1920s The French economy underwent four major recessions in the interwar years. These downturns – 1920–21, 1926–27, 1931–32 and 1934–36 – each had their own distinctive features but all led to sharp rises in unemployment. In terms of joblessness in France, the 1920s were the forgotten decade. Yet two major recessions spurred efforts to organize the workless. After the post-war recovery, the French economy slid into a sharp recession by the beginning of 1921. The figures of those on unemployment relief, though they grossly underestimated the amount of unemployment, did indicate its rapid growth in the early months of 1921.1 In April 1921, the Prefect of Nord informed the Minister of the Interior that if there was no change in the outlook, 54 factories in his department would close and 32 would have to reduce their workforces or cut hours.2 The downturn of 1921 was acutely felt in some industries such as silk, wool and leather, though other sectors such as iron and steel, shipbuilding and coal continued to grow. Overall, from its already depressed level because of war damage, industrial production fell by over a tenth.3 Unemployment in the Paris Region, early 1921 In the last week of February, the Union des Syndicats de la Seine [Trades Council of the Seine, UdS] adopted a strategy of holding meetings across the wide stretches of the Paris conurbation to engage with the discontent of the unemployed. However, unlike future years, the message was not to construct a network of organizations of the unemployed. Instead, these meetings mixed appeals for recruitment to the unions with revolutionary propaganda. On 22 February, Victor Labonne of the metalworkers and Louis Vadecart of the Union des Syndicats spoke at a meeting in the rooms of the cooperative restaurant on avenue Philippe Auguste.4 Two hundred 1

In the first fortnight of January 1921, there were 26,454 registered unemployed but three months later there were 45,474 unemployed, Bulletin du Ministère du Travail, 1–3 (January– February–March 1921): 79. In March 1921, there were 91,225 claimants of unemployment benefit but 537,000 were recorded in the census as unemployed. Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres, vol. 1, pp. 218–19. 2 AN F7 13520 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 1 April 1921. 250 unemployed demonstrated after a 3,000 strong meeting at the Bourse du Travail on 2 February, AN F7 13618 report, 3 February 1921. 3 Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres, vol. 1, pp. 460–88. 4 For the unemployed of the 11th, 12th and 20th arrondissements of Paris.

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and fifty unemployed heard that the economic crisis was the result of the capitalist system and a revolution was needed to overturn it. Symptomatic of the aftermath of the failed strike wave of 1920, however, Vadecart injected a note of pessimism, criticizing workers for deserting the unions before the strikes. He implored them to join the union and to become devoted militants.5 This was not an isolated event. On 24 February, Vadecart and a variety of other speakers addressed a meeting for the unemployed of the 13th and 15th arrondissements at the union headquarters, 163 boulevard de l’Hôpital.6 Seventy attended the meeting that lasted an hour and a half in the late afternoon. Vadecart and André Carrère again argued in favour of a social revolution to combat the miseries of capitalism and unemployment. The same day, Vadecart and Labonne spoke at a meeting of 150 unemployed in Pantin, for the north east of the Parisian suburbs.7 In Puteaux, Joseph Tommasi and Labonne addressed 600 unemployed from the western sector of the suburbs. In Clichy, 600 unemployed, amongst them locked-out workers from the Schneider plant (in Gennevilliers), attended the UdS meeting for the north-west suburbs where speakers proposed the revolutionary transformation of society and the Internationale and Révolution were sung at the end of the meeting. When groups of 150 and 300 tried to march on Paris at the end of the meeting, decisive police action dispersed the would-be demonstrators.8 This mismatch between the forces of the state and the unemployed was to become a recurrent feature of movements of the unemployed in the interwar years. A more modest number – 100 unemployed – listened to the UdS in Boulogne-sur-Seine from the south-west of the conurbation. On the last day of February, two further meetings took place in the campaign to cover the Seine region: the 7th and 15th arrondissements (115 present) and Saint-Denis (60). On 1 March, only an embarrassed 30 turned up for a similar meeting for the 14th arrondissement, Montrouge and Malakoff; though the Union des Syndicats was more successful in Kremlin-Bicêtre where 300 attended.9 The response to the Trades Council of the Seine’s call for meetings had varied considerably in terms of size. Certainly the audience at the larger events greeted their revolutionary rhetoric with some enthusiasm, singing revolutionary songs or chanting revolutionary slogans. The combination of numbers and ebullience, however, was not sufficient to challenge the police and the UdS failed to stage effective demonstrations at the end of these meetings. 5

AN F7 13520 police report, 23 February 1921. Fritsch of the furniture workers’ union was the chairman of the meeting. He would later resurface in the unemployed committees of this area in the 1930s and became a cause célèbre after police shot and killed him on a demonstration in March 1932. 6 Speakers were a metal worker delegate, Picard of the Anarchist Federation, Coussinet, representing the political prisoners, Miss Cazeux of the restaurant workers’ union, Carrère of the UdS, Vadecart and Gilbert. This room would later serve the committee of the unemployed of the 13th arrondissement. 7 Areas covered at the respective meetings: north-east suburbs: Pantin, Aubervilliers and La Courneneuve; western suburbs: Puteaux, Nanterre, Suresnes and Courbevoie; northwest suburbs: Asnières, Clichy, Levallois and Saint Ouen; south-west suburbs: Boulogne, Billancourt and Issy-les-Moulineaux. 8 Ibid., 26 February 1921. 9 Ibid., 2 March 1921. From Bicêtre, Arceuil, Gentilly and Villejuif.

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The UdS did make serious efforts to go beyond propaganda, attempting to mobilize the unemployed for a demonstration at the festival of the Mi-Carême on 2 March. They planned to form a contingent behind the ‘Queen of Queens’ cortege.10 As was frequently to be the case, they lacked the numbers needed. Only 50 turned up at the Bourse du Travail to heckle and whistle at the procession. This failure should be qualified. Given the widespread hardship of the time, the cost of these celebrations did generate genuine anger amongst the unemployed and 2,700 attended the meetings at salle Ferrier and salle Jean Jaurès.11 Despite the impressive size of these meetings, the overall strategy – and in particular, the goal of union recruitment – was unlikely to deliver any lasting results. Systematic activity in relation to the unemployed petered out after the Mi-Carême. The police continued to survey the attitudes of the unemployed as they queued at the departmental labour exchange at avenue Rapp and benefits office at rue de Rivoli–rue de Figuier. This provides one of the relatively rare occasions when the outlook of the unemployed was recorded in some detail.12 This evidence is significant insofar as it discloses official anxiety about the political consequences of mass unemployment and the authorities’ perceptions of the unemployed. Also despite the necessary qualifications, the reports do divulge some information and insight into the hidden, largely voiceless, world of the unemployed. This surveillance revealed contradictory ideas, a range of conflicting opinions and subtle changes of mood. Perhaps surprisingly, the unemployed had wider horizons than the day-to-day provision of relief, the search for work and their personal struggle to make ends meet. Their geographical parameters were elastic enough to encompass the actuality of Europe-wide events. They displayed a class-conscious awareness of turbulent labour disputes in other countries. Their sense of the recent past was shaped principally by the war and the Russian Revolution. The notion of crisis informed their sense of the present and the possibility of revolution molded their understanding of the future. The unemployed believed that the employers, the government and capitalism were responsible for their predicament. Alternating with these attitudes was an anti-immigrant discourse which provided a rival explanation for unemployment. This state espionage even showed a measure of receptivity amongst the unemployed to revolutionary ideas and the communists’ message.13 The response to the trial of communists illustrates the point. Initially, the police agent reported that the unemployed, who mostly read Le Petit Parisien, Le Journal and Le Matin, were little moved by the fate of Fernand Loriot and Boris Souvarine.14 The following 10

A festival in the middle of Lent with a procession, fancy dress and floats. Ibid., 3 March 1921. 12 These reports should be treated with caution. They tended to present particular viewpoints, probably those of the most vocal or articulate, as a majority or consensus outlook. It would also be unsafe to assume that attitudes in Paris were representative of elsewhere in France. 13 Ibid., 15 March 1921. Some of the jobless argued that the French capitalist class was fomenting civil war in Russia in order to crush the workers’ regime. 14 Ibid., 2 March 1921; ibid., 5 March 1921; ibid., 10 March 1921. Loriot, Souvarine and Monatte were arrested during the railway workers’ strike of May 1920 on the grounds that 11

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day’s report was forced to note that there was support for the communist defendants and five days later the unemployed warned of demonstrations in the event of their imprisonment. Police continued to encounter a mix of right- and left-wing ideas: at times xenophobic against foreign workers, or bellicose over the Ruhr, at other times sympathetic to British strikers, or wishing to imitate the factory occupations in Italy.15 On occasion, individuals unsuccessfully attempted to transform dole queues into ready-made demonstrations.16 However, the unemployed did respond to a call for a demonstration on 8 May in Pre-Saint-Gervais, where the police intervened physically. On their next visit to the relief office, some of the jobless were muttering darkly that on a future demonstration they would arm themselves for just such an eventuality.17 For several months from early March 1921, with the French Government’s difficulties in enforcing German war reparations, the possibility of military conscription caused deep concern among the unemployed.18 Some said that they would refuse to go, others said they would only rejoin the army in order to arm themselves for the overturn of the capitalist system.19 News of the mutiny at Plombières-lès-Dijon pleased the unemployed, some believing this to be the start of the revolution.20 Another recurrent anxiety for the jobless was the possibility that their benefits, to which they had no statutory entitlement, might be stopped. Periodic rumours about the closure of unemployment funds intensified discontent.21 Generally, then, as one of the police reports noted, unemployment led to complaints amongst its victims but not ‘turbulent demonstrations’.22 Taken together these reports indicated that there was some justification for the concern of the authorities about the political consequences of unemployment. The reports were highly selective. Like pursuing the most obvious suspect in a murder case, the police found the clues that would confirm their hunches. Their suspect in this case was from what were called the dangerous classes in the nineteenth century, the unemployed infected with sedition. There was circumstantial evidence to identify this character but not a rounded case. Over time, however, official unease dissipated as police reports predicted that the unemployed would not be drawn into direct action, ignoring attitudes and simply noting ‘no incidents’.

they were preparing for a seizure of power. When they were finally tried in February 1921, they were acquitted. 15 For xenophobia: ibid., 18 March 1921; ibid., 24 March 1921; ibid., 12 April 1921; on the Ruhr: ibid., 2 March; ibid., 9 April 1921; on British strikes: ibid., 2 April 1921; ibid., 4 April 1921; on Italian factory occupations: ibid., 30 March 1921. 16 Ibid., 22 March 1921, two tried to provoke a demonstration; 27 April 1921, four tried to get the unemployed to demonstrate outside the Chamber of Deputies against war. 17 Ibid., 10 March 1921. 18 Ibid., 8 March 1921; ibid., 19 April 1921; ibid., 24 May 1921. 19 Ibid., 9 April 1921; ibid., 16 April 1921. 20 Ibid., 20 May 1921; ibid., 21 May 1921. 21 Ibid., 31 March 1921; ibid., 13 April 1921; ibid., 29 May 1921. 22 Ibid., 1 April 1921.

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Unemployment in the Provinces in 1921–22 Elsewhere, up until the end of the summer, prefects from across France forwarded reports of meetings for the unemployed: in Dieppe, Rouen, Bar-le-Duc, Montbéliard, Saint-Etienne, Le Havre, Neuves-Maisons and Tours.23 In Montbéliard, the threat of unemployment in the Peugeot factories provoked union meetings against redundancies.24 On 31 March, 450 to 500 unemployed attended a meeting in Le Havre with Senecal, a speaker from a local organization of the unemployed, Henri Quesnel, secretary of the metalworkers’ union, Henri Offroy, secretary of the libertarian group, and Louis François, a councillor and dock workers’ union representative.25 The meeting decided on a series of demands to be put to the council, including better rations of wood, coal and milk as well as the provision of forestry work for the unemployed. Two days before, however, the building workers’ union had called a meeting for the unemployed at which only ten attended. The secretary declared that if the unemployed were not interested, he was not interested in them. These meetings showed the unpredictable duality of organizing the unemployed, which might result in frustrating failure or fleeting success. On rare occasion in 1921, these provincial meetings developed beyond a simple airing of grievances or union recruitment appeal. In Neuves-Maisons (Meurthe-etMoselle), a small town 11 km southeast of Nancy, the workers of the Usines de Chatillion-Commentry were menaced with an uncertain future and a six day lay-off. Two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 strong workforce at the iron mine, foundry, steel works and rolling mill were affected. The Union des Syndicats de Meurthe-et-Moselle [Meurthe-et-Moselle Trades Council] was ready to respond to the situation.26 The plan was to stage a march from Neuves-Maisons to Pont-Saint-Vincent and Chaligny. Lucien Humbert, secretary of the trades council, was the principal instigator.

23 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Dieppe) report, 22 February 1921. The CGT in Dieppe similarly organized a meeting for the unemployed four days later with Damiens, secretary of the Rouen dockers, Gues, who held the same position in Dunkirk, Lathois, the transport workers’ secretary of Roubaix and Louis François, the regional union official for La Manche. On 12 March, the Special Commissioner reported that revolutionary syndicalist committees were being formed to exploit the economic crisis in Rouen, ibid., Special Commissioner (Rouen) to Prefect (Seine-Inférieure), 12 March 1921. In Saint-Etienne, between late June and July, police reported three meetings of the unemployed. Arnaud, secretary of the Bourse du Travail, and Lorduron, the departmental union secretary, spoke. Between 150 and 200 attended the meetings held in the Bourse du Travail. They organized a petition of demands to be put to the Prefecture. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne), 28 June 1921, ibid., 7 July 1921, ibid., 24 July 1921. In Tours, 60 attended a meeting on 16 August. They formed a delegation to see the Prefect with a list of demands. There is an appeal to join the union. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Tours) report, 17 August 1921. 24 AN F7 13520 Special Commissioner (Montbéliard), 26 March 1921. 25 Ibid., Divisional Commissioner (5th arrondissement, Le Havre) to the Director of General Security, 31 March 1921; ibid., Special Commissioner (Le Havre) to the Director of General Security, 31 March 1921. 26 Or, in the police language of moral condemnation, ‘exploit’ the situation, AN F7 13520 Special Commissioner (Nancy) report, 12 August 1920.

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At 10 am on 13 August, 200 assembled in the place des Ecoles de NeuvesMaisons. Before departing, Frédérick Dölker, the secretary of the metalworkers’ union of Meurthe-et-Moselle, called for calm and a dignified demonstration that would show that the working class was conscious of its actions. He also declared that this protest was the ‘prelude to a programme of direct action’.27 The banners of the metalworkers’ union, the miners and the Communist Youth of Chaligny flew at the head of the procession. Having marched through the streets of Neuves-Maisons, they trekked 2 km to neighbouring Chaligny where they held a meeting. Humbert spoke against unemployment and wages cuts. He proclaimed it necessary to fight against the capitalists because their goal was to plunge working-class families into poverty by denying them work. For this reason, workers needed to rally to the unions and for the different tendencies within the labour movement to make a common front against the bosses. Next to speak was Jacquemain. He called for workers to fight against wage cuts and unemployment and, if they failed, he suggested a seizure of power in order to take all goods into common ownership and to redistribute wealth. He declared that the Government was hand in hand with the capitalists and said that demonstrations like this one would take place throughout the department. Contradicting Jacquemain on the need for immediate revolution, Dölker called for workers to organize in the workplaces and that they were capable of replacing the bosses. The slogans that the demonstrators bore aloft on their placards contrasted with later protests of the unemployed reflecting their war-ravaged surroundings, calling for house-building as well as the reconstruction of villages and transport.28 Absent from future protests were the more abstract, even didactic, sentiments present on the Neuves-Maisons march: ‘under-consumption causes unemployment’, ‘unemployment is due to the incapacity of the government and capitalist cupidity’ or ‘the government is complicit in the organization of unemployment’. One placard which read ‘the land to the peasants, the factory to the workers, the mine to the miners’ even echoed the watchwords of the Russian Revolution. Perhaps the slogan that most accurately matched the intentions of the organizers called on workers to join the union in order to vanquish capitalist domination. Some inscriptions, however, anticipated the future 27 Ibid., 13 August 1920; for Dölker at the CGT metalworkers conference of 1935, see in R. Dufraisse, ‘Rapports entre les organisations ouvrières et les organisations patronales dans la métallurgie français durant la dépression économique (1929–1939)’, in Denise FauvelRouif (ed.), Mouvements Ouvriers et la Dépression Economique de 1929 à 1933 (Assen, 1966), p. 204. 28 Placards bore the following inscriptions: ‘Inhabitants of the devastated regions live in cellars, build houses.’ ‘The luxury of the rich is made from the poverty of the poor.’ ‘Wage cuts force workers to restrain their needs.’ ‘Under-consumption causes unemployment.’ ‘Bread and work.’ ‘Repair the ruins of our villages instead of banqueting.’ ‘Repair the railways, there will be less accidents and work will pick up.’ ‘Before celebrating the dead, look after the living!’ ‘Unemployment is due to the incapacity of the government and capitalist cupidity.’ ‘To beat capitalist domination, worker join the union.’ ‘If the bosses are impotent to assure production let them declare bankrupt.’ ‘The government is complicit in the organization of unemployment.’ ‘The land to the peasants, the factory to the workers, the mine to the miners.’

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protests, reappearing in the 1930s. They then marched 2.5 km crossing the river Moselle to reach Pont-Saint-Vincent, singing the Internationale, the Drapeau Rouge and the Avant-Garde. There the union leaders made their speeches once more before dispersing at 11.45 am. Another sign of things to come was the establishment of an unemployed committee in the small town of Cette (alternatively alternatively Sète, Hérault). This organizational structure was to form the basis of future movements of the unemployed in France. There, in late August 1921, Fraisse of the Bourse du Travail managed to assemble about 100 unemployed to convene a committee and formulate demands to be presented to the mayor.29 That the first committee of the unemployed should be formed in such an obscure corner of France is instructive, highlighting the absence of centralized design behind this innovation. It also makes a more general point about the agitation amongst the unemployed in 1921. This was not based on the principle of selforganization and union officials were unaware that distinctive methods were needed to mobilize the unemployed. The French economy was recovering. Unemployment fell bringing to a close the first phase of unemployed agitation. It did remain a problem in particular industries and localities. Shipbuilding escaped recession in 1921 but was hit thereafter. Thus in 1922 there were union delegations to Paris from Saint-Nazaire and Bordeaux.30 Those who sought to organize the unemployed in the early 1920s were drawn into the centrifugal forces of crisis that beset the French labour movement.31 The leadership of the Parisian movement, Victor Labonne, Joseph Tommasi and Louis Vadecart sought affiliation to the Third International and were attracted into the much diminished ranks of the CGTU. Labonne and Tommasi were delegates to the founding conference of the Profintern [Internationale Syndicale Rouge, ISR, Red International of Trade Unions] in the summer of 1921. This was not the case elsewhere. In Meurthe-et-Moselle, Dölker and Humbert, despite holding sharply different views, remained with the CGT and SFIO. Embittered or demoralized by division and defeat, others like Henri Quesnel, secretary of the metalworkers in Le Havre, simply dropped out of activity. This crisis compounded the failure to settle on a strategy that would sustain action amongst the unemployed and the split in the French labour movement disrupted the effective assimilation or analysis of these early experiences of organizing the unemployed. Hence there was no cadre, no core of activists formed during 1921 able to respond to the return of mass unemployment in 1927 and 1931.

29

Ibid., Special Commissioner (Cette) to the Director of General Security, 23 August 1921. Ibid., La France, 18 February 1922; ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Nazaire) report, 5 April 1922. 31 The initiative to organize the unemployed did not come from the general secretary Léon Jouhaux whose address to the National Central Committee on this issue was reproduced, La Voix du Peuple (March 1921): 164–70. For the CGT’s position, ibid. (April 1921): 189–92. On the crisis in the UdS, AN F7 13618. 30

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The ‘English’ Turn: the Movement of the Unemployed in 1927 in Paris The next attempts to agitate amongst the unemployed came during the financial and economic crisis of 1926–27. By this time, the split in the French trade union movement had become entrenched. The largest trade union confederation, the CGT, opted for co-operation with the Conseil National Economique [National Economic Council] to find a remedy for unemployment. Seeing rationalization as a step towards nationalization and socialism, the reformist wing of the working-class movement did not seek to agitate amongst or – as the Ministry of the Interior put it – ‘exploit’ the unemployed.32 In contrast, the PCF and the CGTU made a strategic decision that the unions and their normal practices could not harness the unemployed and therefore formed unemployed committees [Comités des Chômeurs, CdCs].33 The unemployed were (perhaps over-ambitiously) to be organized into base groups from workplaces, firms, industries and localities. Unlike 1921, L’Humanité insisted that committees of unemployed be established that would engage in direct action such as public meetings, street demonstrations and the harassment of public officials.34 Police surveillance noted that the adoption of ‘English’ and German methods prompted this strategic reorientation.35 This was an implicit admission of failure of the methods used in 1921. In the Paris region, the CGTU was to oversee the creation of these CdCs through the Comité Central des Chômeurs [Central Committee of the Unemployed, CCdC], which had seven members, the most prominent of whom were Claude Lichon and Maurice Nilès (secretaries of the regional CGTU).36 The CCdC was nominally a delegate body with two representatives from each CdC but it met infrequently and day to day decision-making was in the hands of Lichon and Nilès. The CGTU set up a series of public meetings out of which CdCs would form. Because of the role of the communist union confederation, industrial groups constituted a major part of the movement from the outset. Thus, building, hotel, leather and metal workers all had their own CdCs. These meetings basically regrouped by industry union members who had suddenly been cast out of work. Because of their greater symmetry to CGTU structures, this industrial model emerged more quickly and with greater 32 AN F7 13527 police report, 18 January 1927; ibid., March 1927. For the CGT on rationalization, La Voix du Peuple (June 1927): 354–9 and its role on the Conseil National Economique in relation to unemployment, ibid. (February 1927): 67–72. 33 L’Humanité, 28 December 1926; AN F7 13094 PCF central union section (Bernard) circular, 8 March 1927 referred to the PCF circular of 28 December about unemployment. Ibid., Regional union section circular (CGTU), Lisieux, 31 December 1926, called for the establishment of CdCs. 34 In order to accomplish these plans, the paper announced meetings for the metalworkers of 20th arrondissement, unitaire building workers, and the comités intersyndicales of Asnières, Boulogne-Billancourt, Ivry, 19th arrondissement, and Montmorency 35 Although Thorez pointed out that British communists had made few gains through this work, Racamond and Raynaud outlined the methods required to organize the CdCs at the Central Committee, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 30 PCF Central Committee minutes, 13 January 1927. AN F7 13527 police report, 13 January 1927. 36 Ibid.

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initial success than geographical CdCs. On 21 January, unemployed committees organized along industrial lines attracted between 200 and 700 participants each, whereas Bicêtre unemployed committee could muster only 40.37 As time passed the limitations of the industrial model became apparent. Some of the most important demands of the movement related to relief and this meant that the geographical model of CdCs would be most effective at putting pressure on local councils. The industrial model also blurred structures of the union and the CdC and made it more difficult to attract non-CGTU unemployed. Local inter-union committees often played an important role in initiating geographical CdCs and these were forged throughout much of Paris and its suburbs in a relatively short period of time. The CGTU leadership’s strategy was to attract large numbers to public meetings, to draw up lists of demands and, if sufficient numbers came, to propose an immediate street demonstration. On 23 January Lebrun and Habert, two PCF councillors, led an impromptu open air meeting at Bezons market, attracting about 100 until police insisted on their dispersal.38 The following day while 300 unemployed queued at the Bureau d’Assistance [relief office] in Argenteuil, they decided to form a committee, electing Gougenlenque as their secretary. They then marched to the mayor’s offices shouting ‘Du travail, du pain!’ [Bread, work]. A delegation interviewed the mayor who promised to open public works and ask employers to observe the eight hour law.39 The Central Committee of the Unemployed sought to embed its unemployed committees in working-class communities through mobilizing the local population against the eviction of unemployed tenants. On 22 January, unemployed wood and furniture trade unionists organized to prevent the eviction of one of their members who lived in rue Daumesnil.40 On 3 February about 100 assembled outside the house of Maimard, rue des Bois. The bailiff and the police commissioner withdrew for fear of creating a violent incident.41 L’Humanité carried an article about the prevention of a double eviction in the 13th arrondissement ten days later. In this instance two communist councillors Fernand Colly and Louis Gélis headed the 20 strong picket.42 The campaign against evictions provided dramatic triumphs that raised local esteem for the CdC. In response, the authorities monitored the numbers of evictions and in some cases put a moratorium on evictions of unemployed tenants. Beyond these local or trade-based initiatives, the movement measured itself against the authorities on days of action on 4, 17 February and 3 April 1927. The communist movement intensified its efforts amongst the jobless before 4 February. In the aftermath, L’Humanité reflected in satisfied manner that 50,000 had demonstrated 37

AN F7 13522 police report, 21 January 1927: 700 at the metalworkers’ meeting, 600 at the hotel workers’ meeting, 200 at the leatherworkers’ meeting, 200 at the clothing workers’ meeting. 38 AN F7 13527 Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 23 January 1927. 39 Ibid., 24 January 1927. 40 AN F7 13522 police report, 21 January 1927. 41 Ibid., 4 February 1927. 42 L’Humanité , 13 February 1927; AN F7 13522 police report, 14 February 1927. The police report suggested that one of the evictees had boasted that he had the money and was sending it to his provincial home.

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in the Paris region. The Minister of the Interior with corresponding smugness reported only 5,000 to 6,000 turned out. Communist tactics on the day were to call the unemployed to meetings and demonstrations at dozens of points across the region. In total 36 assembly points attracted as many as 600 in Puteaux or 800 in Ivry or as few as six in Noisy-le-Sec.44 The Prefect of Seine-et-Oise reported that 400 mainly North Africans and foreigners demonstrated in Argenteuil but elsewhere smaller meetings were held.45 Outside the communist press, there was a consensus that the day was a failure.46 In the run-up to the next day of action on 17 February, the CCdC again coordinated a campaign of meetings. 42 were planned in total. Militants expected 15,000 to 20,000 on the day, whilst the police counted on 10,000 turning up.47 For the 17 February, fewer assembly points were designated in order to assemble larger, more imposing units. These greater concentrations could not disguise the fact that the overall numbers were disappointingly small.48 The most impressive gathering relied on the strength of union organization rather than unemployed structures. In a public meeting in central Paris, senior CGTU officials Henri Raynaud and Gaston Monmousseau addressed 1,200 CGTU metalworkers.49 Police were able to disperse demonstrations, such as at the metro station of Hôtel de Ville where three were arrested. Even the police’s projections for the day had overestimated the influence of the communists over the unemployed. Rather than greater mobilizations, the movement had stagnated.50 The next day of action on 3 April combined the endeavours of the unemployed committees and communist tenants’ organizations probably in an effort to mask the deficiencies of both. The day consisted of little more than ten public meetings in

43

L’Humanité, 5 February 1927. AN F7 13522 police report, 4 February 1927. The size of meetings were the following: 1st arrondissement, 50 (but the room was not booked); 3rd arrondissement, 50 (who were mostly foreigners); 5th, 15th and 16th arrondissements, 250 (who were mostly Algerian); 11th and 12th arrondissements, 450 (four of whom were arrested when they tried to demonstrate); 13th arrondissement, 150; 14th arrondissement, 200; 17th arrondissement, 20; 18th arrondissement, 80; 19th arrondissement, 45; 20th arrondissement, 500; Antony, 45; Aubervilliers, 400; Bondy, 150; Boulogne-sur-Seine, 250; Bobigny, 150; Clichy, 200; Courbevoie, 160; Ivry, 800; Levallois-Perret, 65; Les Lilas, 100; Malakoff, 120; Montreuil, 400; Montrouge, 20; Nanterre, 370; Neuilly-sur-Seine, 50; Puteaux, 600; Romainville, 150; Saint-Denis, 500; Saint-Maur, 30; Saint-Ouen, 150; Suresnes, 40; Vanves, 30; Villejuif, 100; Vitry, 200. 45 AN F7 13527 Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 4 February 1927. These meetings drew the following attendances: in Aulnay, 200; in Montmorency, 30; in Bezons, 30; in Houilles, 25; in Reuil, 60; meetings in Poissy and Charenton were cancelled because of small audiences. 46 For example, Le Matin, 5 February 1927. 47 AN F7 13522 police report: ‘Au sujet de la manifestation du 17 février’, 15 February 1927 48 Ibid., 17 February 1927. With 5,835 on the demonstrations and 6,620 at the meetings. 49 Ibid.. 50 Ibid.. 44

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the Paris region. According to the Prefecture, only 2,230 attended. The mobilizing capacities of the unemployed had clearly diminished drastically; three times as many had participated in the previous day of action. Predicting ‘complete failure without the support of the tenants’, the police observed that the CCdC ‘is completely disorganized and one can state that no effort has been attempted to put it right’.52 Three months of work to pull together an organization of the unemployed in the Paris Region thus came to a dispiriting end.53 Provincial Movements of the Unemployed in 1927 The turn to building a movement of the unemployed was not restricted to Paris. Right across France during the early part of 1927, there were reports of the meetings, delegations to mayors’ offices or Prefectures, the creation of CdCs and even demonstrations. Industrial production started to decline in December 1926 and fell for five successive months.54 The PCF sought to direct its regions to create a movement of the unemployed across the country. The first indications of a campaign in the provinces could be detected in the circulars aimed at local communist organizations.55 If in rather implausible hyperbole, a regional circular for Alsace-Lorraine underlined the need to learn from the English example where the crisis of unemployment brought the greatest number of workers struggles ‘ever known’. This supposedly had the result that British unemployed benefits were higher than French wages.56 The instructions emanating from Communist Party chiefs envisaged public demonstrations as the central strategic implication of the ‘English turn’. Demonstrations dramatized the plight of the unemployed, which might otherwise be invisible. This form of collective action could overcome the atomization and stigma associated with worklessness. In order to do this, it was necessary to assemble sufficient numbers for demonstrations to be credible. The widespread use of police bans on demonstrations made mass mobilization all the more imperative. Often in contravention of the bans, such protests became a test of strength with the police.

51

Ibid., April 1927. The meetings were of the following sizes: avenue Mathurin Moreau, 400; Aubervilliers, 300; Boulogne-sur-Seine, 150; Clichy, 100; Ivry, 500, Malakoff, 300; Montreuil, 120; Puteaux, 150; Saint-Denis, 150; Champigny, 60. 52 Ibid., 2 April 1927. 53 The movement of the unemployed was not worthy of a mention at the PCF’s conference that year, AN F7 13091 police reports of PCF conference of 1927 in Saint-Denis, 26–28 –28 8 June 1927. 54 Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres, vol. 1, p. 464. 55 AN F7 13524 regional secretary’s circular attached to Special Commissioner (Marseilles) report, 22 December 1927. Ibid., CGTU regional circular, no. 18, 3 January 1927. AN F7 13525 Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Director of General Security, 11 January 1927. AN F7 13525 Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Director of General Security, 11 January 1927. 56 Ibid., PCF Region of Alsace and Lorraine, circular no. 1, 29 January 1927.

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More often than not, however, communists were thwarted when they periodically attempted protests at the end of meetings. With the rise of the franc hitting the textiles industry badly, the agitation amongst the unemployed in Nord began earlier than elsewhere. By December 1926, there were 900 unemployed and 39,000 on short-time working in the department.57 On 29 December 1926, Lille communists tried for a demonstration in the place de la République, but because of a police ban and because only 50 unemployed had responded to this call, they had to be satisfied with a meeting in the CGTU’s Bourse du Travail.58 On 5 February, 150 unemployed in Calais tried to subvert a ban by going in small groups to the Hôtel de Ville. As soon as they formed a crowd there, they were dispersed by police.59 In Nantes, the authorities repeatedly foiled the CdC. Even when the movement was growing with up to 400 at meetings in late December and early January, the demonstrations at the end of meetings failed because of the strength of the police.60 There were rare examples where the CdCs were able to pull off demonstrations. In Amiens, the absence of a police contravention rendered this easier. On 8 January 1927, having assembled several hundreds, the leaders of the CdC spontaneously decided to march through the streets of Amiens.61 For an hour and a quarter, the unemployed stomped around the town singing the Internationale.62 They were calling for benefits of 15 francs a day, the opening of public works, the exoneration of direct taxes and rent as well as the end to immigration. A second demonstration took place on 5 February with similar numbers to the first. A week later 300 marched from the Bourse du Travail to the Hôtel de Ville singing the Internationale, the Carmagnole and chanting ‘Poincaré, hou, hou’ [boo, boo]. Another instance of an unmolested demonstration took place in Tours. On 24 January, Henault, the mayor of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, and Jaix, secretary of the local metalworkers’ union, led 100 demonstrators to the Prefecture of Indre-et-Loire, in Tours.63 In Bordeaux as well, the CdC was allowed to demonstrate on 2 and 3 February, mustering only 90–100 unemployed.64 In Saint-Etienne, the police ban meant that a demonstration was halted once it arrived in the centre of the city. On 11 February, the Central Committee of the

57

AN F7 13526 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 20 December 1926. AN F7 13526 Special Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 29 December 1926. 59 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Calais) to the Director of General Security, 7 February 1927. 60 AN F7 13525 Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Director of General Security, 20 December 1926; ibid., 28 December 1926; ibid., 7 January 1927. 61 400–500 according to police, 1,000 according to L’Humanité. 62 AN F7 13527 Central Commissioner (Amiens) report, 8 January 1927 and press cutting from L’Humanité, n.d.. 63 AN F7 13525 Special Commissioner (Tours) to Director of General Security, 24 January 1927. 64 AN F7 13524 Central Commissioner (Bordeaux) to Director of General Security, 2 and 3 February 1927. In Marseilles on 10 February 150 demonstrated, ibid., Special Commissioner (Marseille) report, 10 February 1927. 58

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Unemployed of Saint-Etienne mobilized impressive numbers. They were able to march through the streets until they arrived at place Marengo where a line of police barred their route. At this point Marcel Thibaud got onto the shoulders of his comrades and suggested that they go in small groups to the Bourse du Travail. Soulié, the Radical senator and mayor for Saint-Etienne, then received a delegation from the committee.66 Again on 13 March, the unemployed of Saint-Etienne were prevented from demonstrating and on this occasion 1,200 were present. Mounted police dispersed the would-be protesters on several occasions and made five arrests.67 In Le Havre, the attempt to demonstrate led to clashes with police. On 15 February, Henri Gautier, secretary of Le Havre communists, led 250 unemployed on a protest march. When the police tried to disperse the crowd, fighting broke out and six were arrested for striking an officer.68 The demonstration and arrests caused a stir amongst the unemployed in the port. In the next few days, 400 attended a meeting of the CdC with Marcel Brout of the CGTU and Carvel of the SRI and 500 protested against the arrests. This activity coincided with the highpoint of unemployment when 600 to 700 were without work. On 22 February, the court heard the case of those arrested and Gautier received a 20 day prison sentence.69 Police bans were therefore more than mere bluff to deter demonstrations, if contravened there were serious consequences for participants. Each town and region embodied a slightly different configuration of political relations with the unemployed. The predominant pattern was that the communists used the CGTU to initiate a local committee of the unemployed. In most localities this field was uncontested. This lack of competition did not guarantee success. Underlying these political questions was the uneven and dynamic character of joblessness. In Tarbes, for instance, police believed that the CdC had no influence over the workers because of the lack of unemployment and the exaggerated demands of the communists.70 Yet if a communist monopoly of organizing the unemployed existed in many parts, it was not ubiquitous. There were rare instances when cooperation existed between reformist and revolutionary wings of the labour movement in the campaigns amongst the jobless. In Metz, Fernand Bougros and Nillès (of the CGT) and Victor Doeblé and François Simon (of the CGTU) adopted a bipartisan approach from the start.71 Even the name of their committee, the Comité de Défense des Chômeurs (CGTU et CGT), [Committee of the Defence of the Unemployed (CGTU and CGT)], articulated this. Several factors made this unity possible. Beyond the willingness of local activists 65

300 according to police and 1,500 according to organizers. AN F7 13527 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 12 February 1927; Agence Havas Paris, 13 March 1927; L’Humanité, 14 March 1927. 67 Ibid., Prefect (Loire) to the Ministry of Interior, 13 March 1927; ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to the Ministry of Interior, 13 March 1927. 68 AN F7 13522 Special Commissioner (Le Havre) to Director of General Security, 15 February 1927. 69 Louis Remousin and Marius Laniece were also jailed. 70 AN F7 13526 Special Commissioner (Tarbes) report, 6 February 1927. 71 Ibid., Police Commissioner (Metz) to Central Commissioner (Metz), 26 January 1927; ibid., 29 January 1927; ibid., 3 February 1927; ibid., 25 February 1927. 66

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to work together, the political complexion of the council allowed joint opposition. Elsewhere the CGT sought to cooperate with SFIO, or even Radical, councils, whilst the CGTU put demands which in many cases – for example that of 20 francs relief a day – were not within the power of local government to grant. In Metz, the CGT and CGTU were also united in the realizable goal of the establishment of a local fund for the unemployed [fonds de chômage] and their unity was rewarded on this score. If cooperation between the CGT and the CGTU was one variation from the norm, then exclusively non-communist initiative to organize the unemployed was another. Limoges (Haut-Vienne) provides one such instance.72 In January 1927, with 3,285 out of work, the local CGT and autonomous unions joined forces to call a meeting about the situation.73 With a broad platform from the union movement, though without inviting the CGTU, an impressive 1,800 attended the first meeting. There was not always unanimity between the autonomous unions and the CGT in Limoges. At a meeting at the beginning of February, the former pressed for a demonstration in the face of CGT opposition.74 The CGT eventually relented, recognizing the popular desire for the demonstration. This went ahead on 5 February with 600 in attendance, making it one of the largest demonstrations of the unemployed during these months.75 In response to their isolation in Limoges, the CGTU made matters worse for themselves when they disrupted a meeting called by the autonomous shoe workers’ union, which had been the driving force behind the movement.76 The CGTU then organized their own splinter meeting which attracted 280, a relatively modest figure given what had been achieved before.77 Having formed its own CdC, the CGTU called its own demonstration on 18 March to which a forlorn 70 to 80 turned up. With one solitary placard and the paucity of numbers, Perol, the secretary of the Union Locale Unitaire [local CGTU] even abandoned the idea of approaching the mayor with a list of demands.78 Elsewhere communists faced late-coming rivals. In Saint-Etienne, despite the successes of the communist-led Comité Central des Chômeurs de Saint-Etienne [Central Committee of the Unemployed, CCdC(SE)],, Mahistre, the CGT secretary of the Bourse du Travail, established a rival organization for the unemployed. For this project, he was able to use the superior resources of his union and enlist the support of the autonomous unions. Arriving several weeks after the establishment of the Central Committee of the Unemployed and after the peak of that organization, Mahistre’s efforts may have exacerbated the decline of Thibaud’s organization which should be considered one of the most effective CGTU-led unemployed committees in the country. Thibaud complained of preferential treatment of those unemployed belonging to Mahistre’s organization. If this were true, improved chances of

72 Pierre Cousteix, ‘Le mouvement ouvrier limousin de 1870 à 1939’, Actualité de l’Histoire, 20–21 (1957): 27–96. 73 AN F7 13527 Prefect (Haut-Vienne) to Minister of the Interior, 8 January 1927. 74 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Limoges) to Prefect (Haut-Vienne), 4 February 1927. 75 Ibid., 5 February 1927. 76 Ibid., 26 February 1927. 77 Ibid., Prefect (Haut-Vienne) to Minister of the Interior, 5 March 1927. 78 Ibid., Police Commissioner (Limoges) report, 19 March 1927.

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employment would be a powerful incentive to forsake the CCdC. Likewise, at a time when Nantes CdC was in decline in mid-March 1927, the CGT started to organize meetings for unemployed dockers at which Peneau, the departmental secretary of the CGT, outlined all that his union had done for the unemployed. He also sharply criticized the CGTU at these meetings.80 In a leaflet the CGT contrasted the 9,500 francs a day that it contributed to a caisse de chômage [unemployment insurance fund] with the ‘speeches, saliva and words of little comfort’ of the unitaires.81 Although the establishment of a rival non-communist organization for the unemployed was an exception, the issue of unemployment regularly occasioned sectarian exchanges on the left. The local CGTU secretaries often used the CdCs as a platform to censure other organizations and these denunciations did not go without reply. Le Peuple, the national newspaper of the CGT, contrasted the work in Saint-Nazaire of the local CGT secretary with that of the communist CdC. There, Emmanuel Jouvance – who was later to organize a CGT-led hunger march to Nantes in the summer of 1933 – succeeded in getting advance warning from the employers for redundancies in the shipyards. He also sent letters notifying employers of the availability of skilled labour and set up a fund for medical assistance for the unemployed. On the other hand, the communists, according to Le Peuple, were ‘fishing in troubled waters’ and the CGT in Saint-Nazaire had ‘nailed the beak shut of those who profit from their Moscow backers’.82 Given the large-scale immigration of the 1920s and the concentration of immigrants in particular industries, it is unsurprising that unemployment should affect foreign workers in an acute way. Firstly, foreign workers were perceived as expendable labour without the rights or the entitlements that French workers had. They were discriminated against in redundancies.83 Indeed, the French Government monitored the figures of unemployment amongst foreign workers in anticipation that this should be the case. Secondly, an anti-immigrant discourse spread, which purported to explain mass unemployment and offer repatriation as a supposed solution to the economic crisis. In such places as Cherbourg, Saint-Maur, Amiens, Graulhet, Limoges and Firminy, committees of the unemployed advocated discrimination against foreign workers, through either a ban on immigration, or the sacking of foreign workers.84 A meeting of the unemployed in Lancey even made the employment of foreigners its central issue, though it has to be said that there is

79 AN F7 13525 Central Comissioner (Nantes) to Minister of the Interior, 17 February 1927; ibid., 26 February 1927. 80 Before audiences of 250 to 300. Ibid., 15 March 1927; ibid., 16 March 1927; ibid., 17 March 1927. 81 Ibid., 4 May 1927. 82 Le Peuple, 20 December 1926. 83 For instance, 23 Poles sacked at the Mines de L’Escharpelle, L’Humanité, 2 December 1926. 84 AN F7 13526 report (Cherbourg), 22 February 1927; AN F7 13527 report of SaintMaur CdC meeting, 27 December 1926; ibid., Special Commissioner (Limoges) to Prefect (Haut-Vienne), 12 January 1927; Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 10 January 1927; ibid., Prefect (Loire) to Minister of the Interior, 6 January 1927.

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no indication that this was a CGTU event.85 Other CdCs opposed the anti-foreigner discourse. Metz CdC promised to oppose deportations of unemployed foreigners.86 Argenteuil CdC had considerable success in mobilizing unemployed foreigners. On 28 January this CdC organized a meeting specifically for North Africans with a guest speaker from Etoile Nord-Africaine [North African Star]. It attracted 80. The speaker complained about the Arab office repatriating people as though they were cattle. That leaflets written in Arabic were produced for the meeting must have contributed to its success.87 Police reported that the 400 who demonstrated in Argenteuil on the 4 February day of action were mostly immigrants. The CCdC in Saint-Etienne also drew significant support from foreigners.88 Marcel Thibaud, the secretary of the CCdC, set the tone at a public meeting in La Ricamarie, ‘He wished that foreign workers were treated the same as French workers. The state made Algerians, Moroccans and foreign comrades come during the war. It named them heroes of the Foreign Legion, now it shows them the door.’89 The leaflet of the CdC of Marseilles called on the unemployed ‘of all categories, of the two sexes, and of all nationalities’ to demonstrate on 10 February.90 The colonial commission of the PCF in Marseilles noted the importance of political work amongst unemployed Algerians and that an Arab member was being sent specifically for this task from Paris.91 A further layer of complexity to the patterning of unemployed organization was added with some instances of organizations formed along minority national or ethnic lines. A Comité Central Juif de Secours aux Chômeurs [Jewish Central Committee of Relief to the Unemployed] was created during the recession of late 1926 and early 1927. It established committees in the fourth arrondissement, Monmartre and Belleville. This had quite different goals from the CdCs. Rather than a mass organization of the unemployed, it was a charitable body headed by notables within the Jewish community, setting up soup kitchens providing 1,200 to 1,500 meals a day.92 Polish language newspapers published in France for the immigrant community Wairus and Narodwiec ran campaigns highlighting the plight of unemployed Poles.93 These papers challenged the official statistics which under-reported unemployment in general and the numbers of Poles in particular.94 The six-month residence criterion 85

Ibid., Prefect (Isère) to Minister of the Interior, 17 December 1926. AN F7 13526 Police Commissioner (Metz) to Central Commissioner (Metz), 26 January 1927. 87 AN F7 13527 Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 1 February 1927. 88 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 12 February 1927. 89 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 18 February 1927. 90 AN F7 13524 Special Commissioner (Marseille) report, 10 February 1927. The leaflet was attached. 91 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Marseille) report, 12 January 1927. 92 AN F7 13527 Comité Central Juif de Secours aux Chômeurs leaflet, n.d.. 93 AN F7 13526 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 29 January 1927 with translations of Wairus, 23 and 25 January 1927 and Narodwiec, 8, 16 and 22 January 1927. 94 Ibid., translation of Narodwiec, 16 February 1927. 86

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of eligibility for unemployment benefit disproportionately affected Poles whose entitlement to unemployment benefit was formally protected by treaty. The papers pointed out the Poles were caught in a catch-22 because the cost of repatriation was so prohibitive. This press campaign also identified the growing xenophobia that unemployment engendered. Wairus quoted from an article in Le Journal that sounded the irrational alarm over the ‘weakening of the race’ and the social and political dangers of immigration. Some ethnic organizations adopted a more radical stance. Most of the Parisian Chinese community worked in the Renault and Citröen factories. Unrest emerged in December 1926 with lay-offs at the car plants.95 The Committee of Chinese Unemployed formed after a delegation of unemployed visited their embassy on 26 February 1927. Their slogan, ‘relief, work or repatriation’, encapsulated the lack of choices of many unemployed foreigners. To some extent the radicalism amongst the Chinese unemployed was an extension of political instability in China itself. The police were concerned about this group because those favourable to radical nationalist (Koumintang) politics mixed with readers of L’Humanité.96 Other nationalities took action against unemployment. On 1 April 1927, 12 Algerians protested at the Ministry of Labour. They complained about the mistreatment of Arabs at avenue Rapp, the departmental labour exchange.97 The CGTU did on occasion make efforts not only to challenge xenophobia through the CdCs but also to organize ethnic groups to combat unemployment. On 15 January, it and the Polish Regional Committee put out a Polish language bulletin entitled ‘Unemployment and Repatriation’, which claimed that 300 Poles had come to a meeting that they organized on 8 January.98 In Marseilles, there were two rival organizations created amongst the Armenian population, 2,000 of whom were unemployed in February 1927. Armenians could not benefit from unemployment relief because there was no reciprocal agreement with their country of origin. The first committee was organized from the Bourse du Travail Unitaire and was communist in its outlook. The second, the Comité de Secours aux Arméniens [the Relief Committee for Armenians], was founded by Haik Serengulian, a socialist baker and member of the Hayastani Oknoutian Komite [Committee for Assisting Armenia, or HOK].. Its first meeting, on 13 February, attracted an audience of 1,500. Around 500 signed up to the committee.99 It established a soup kitchen, which fed about 40 members.100 Furthermore, the Armenian Prelate in Marseilles began to distribute money to the unemployed of his nationality. At the suggestion of the police, the Prelate and Serengulian’s committee joined forces and several communists drifted into the rival organization, presumably because of the promise of material relief. Most CdCs did not last in any meaningful sense much beyond February. Even before then false expectations and poor turnouts led to an often articulated 95 96 97 98 99 100

Unrest in 1925 amongst Chinese Parisians had led to a wave of deportations. AN F7 13522 reports, 1 and 7 March 1927. AN F7 13527 report, 1 April 1927. Ibid., 5 February 1927. AN F7 13524 report: ‘Le HOK et les chômeurs ômeurs de Marseille’, 3 March 1927. Ibid., Special Commissioner report: ‘Les chômeurs ômeurs Arméniens’, 21 March 1927.

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disappointment on the part of the CGTU officials.101 Decline from that point was universal even in the most sustained and impressive organizations. After just one month’s activity, the Metz CdC’s meetings slumped from an average of about 90 to 30. After the clashes with police on 15 February in Le Havre, the CdC was able to captivate the attention of the unemployed for several weeks. Gradually the size of meetings tailed off. Whereas at its peak in late February, the CdC could attract 450– 500, by March 200–250 attended. The slow decline was only reversed when 300 attended a meeting on 17 April to respond to the suppression of the unemployment fund. On this occasion, the CdC warned of police provocation and did not attempt to demonstrate.102 After the failure to prevent the closure of the unemployment fund, the CdC descended into farce. On 30 April with only 36 at a meeting, Swynghedauw observed that two leading committee members had found work and the CdC dissolved. Yet two days later the committee was reconstituted. During May, plans to demonstrate outside Hôtel de Ville and the mayor’s offices were thwarted by poor turnouts at meetings and the CdC was finally closed on 20 May.103 The police in Le Havre reflected on the demoralization that had set in on the committee. Leaders attributed decline to ‘the weakness of the comrades’ but the police observed that the movement ‘never had the size the communist leaders wished to give it’. Like Le Havre, the decline in attendance at meetings was only temporarily reversed in Nantes with the threatened closure of the unemployment fund in late April. From a low point of 40 at the end of March, 300 attended a meeting on 27 April, but attendances soon slumped thereafter. On 6 May and 1 June, with 120 and 180 present respectively, Le Goff, secretary of 15th Union Régionale Unitaire [URU, Regional Unitaire Union], tried to demonstrate but they were easily dispersed. During June, three meetings were cancelled, two more planned demonstrations flopped and the Nantes CdC suffered a demoralizing end. Conclusion Movements of the unemployed appeared in France on four occasions in the period of the two world wars (1921, 1927, 1931–38, 1940–41). The first of these was the least impressive. Only on the odd occasion did propaganda generate protest. Most of the activity was restricted to meetings, petitions and delegations. The vehicle for this activity was the trade union. Although there was one spontaneous local example, there were no efforts to organize a movement through creating committees of the unemployed. Instead, the local unions that organized meetings over unemployment did so principally in order to strengthen their own organization. For those with expectations shaped by workplace-based trade unionism, the fruits of these endeavours were almost inevitably disappointing. This was the case not only when ten unemployed building workers turned up to a meeting in Le Havre 101

AN F7 13526 report (Nancy), 21 January 1927, this at a meeting with 100 present. AN F7 13522 Special Commissioner (Le Havre) to Director of General Security, 17 April 1927. 103 Ibid., 9 May 1927; ibid., 20 May 1927; ibid., Central Commissioner (Le Havre) to Director of General Security, 11 May 1927; ibid., 13 May 1927. 102

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but also when 150 attend the Bourse du Travail in Saint-Etienne. If the intention was to generate protest and militancy amongst the unemployed, then this strategy was mistaken. The general situation in the labour movement was not propitious. The collapse of the railworkers’ strike of May 1920 had reversed the growth in militancy. Recriminations and division were the order of the day. The SFIO split at the Congress of Tours (December 1920) and the Communist Party was formed. There were schisms in the trade union movement as well.105 In this context, union membership declined and employers sought wage cuts as the recession bit. The combination of these factors meant that, unlike Britain for instance, there were no organizations of the unemployed formed during the first recession of the interwar period. With the brief exception of 1926–27, the ensuing decade in France was one of relatively full employment. There was therefore no possibility of maintaining a movement of the unemployed during the 1920s as there was in Britain where the jobless total remained above one million throughout the decade. Unemployed activism made an inauspicious start in 1921 and there was nothing to build on apart from the possibility of learning from mistakes when mass unemployment returned in 1927. The legacy of the 1927 campaign was largely negative from the point of view of future unemployed protest. For a time the CGTU devoted great resources to the unemployed cause, accounting for three quarters of its demonstrations between the beginning of January and the end of May 1927.106 Because of the character of unemployment, despite the fact that the CGTU and the PCF were the prime movers, there is very little evidence of continuity between 1927 and the next upsurge of agitation in 1931–32. There was a clear organizational breech as the CCdC vanished between mid-1927 and 1930. In the winter months of late 1927, there was a halfhearted effort to form a Central Office of Unemployment but this had next to no impact. Police records and biographical detail yield little evidence of continuity of personnel between 1927 and 1931. The discontinuity and turnover of the ranks of the jobless partly explain this but not why there was so little connection in terms of the CGTU officials. The lack of continuity may in part be accounted for because those involved in the experience of 1927 were hardly likely to be keen to repeat it.

104 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) report, 28 June 1921; ibid., 7 July 1921. At the former meeting, ‘all showed their bad humour to see so few unemployed’. 105 This did not occur formally until after the spell of activism amongst the unemployed. The CGTU was created at the conference of 25 June–1 July 1922 after a series of expulsions from the CGT. 106 Danielle Tartakowsky, Les Manifestations de Rue en France 1918–68 (Paris, 1998), p. 170.

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Chapter 3

The Parisian Unemployed Movement, 1930–33 Shortly before the world slump, the Comintern had adopted the Third Period or ‘class against class’ perspectives that were predicated on the belief that capitalism was entering a terminal crisis.1 At this time the PCF was in a deep malaise. Its membership had haemorrhaged, it had undergone several schisms and was suffering from a divided leadership.2 This was the context in which the party once again tried to fashion the unemployed into a mass movement that could challenge capitalism.3 Launching an unemployed movement from the Paris region had a persuasive logic. It reflected the PCF’s local strength and the regional concentration of unemployment.4 The rise in unemployment of 1931 was quite different from that of previous recessions. It announced the end of France’s status as a ‘happy isle’ in an ocean of woes; it too was now submerged in the perilous economic tides of the 1930s. The economic crisis hit industrial Paris severely. The nation’s capital had 20 per cent of France’s active population but half of its unemployed.5 Unemployment this 1 Communism and the International Situation: Thesis on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Communist International, adopted at the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, 1928 (London, 1929), p. 6; see for application of this perspective to France, AN F7 13094 Feuille de Discussion no.1: Sur la Situation Internationale, c. January 1929; L’Humanité, 28 December 1928. 2 Membership fell from 100,000 after the Tours congress of December 1920 to 25,000 in 1932. AN F7 13091 President of the Council of the Ministry of Interior to the Minister of the Navy, 17 March 1930, attached the police report of the 1930 PCF conference at Belleville. The party was a ‘pitiable’ state of division. The Paris region had lost 225 cells in the previous two years. Ibid., police report on Levallois conference 1931, 6 March 1931, left ‘an awful and deplorable effects on the spirits of the activists’. Between 1929 and 1931, the CGTU lost 100,000 members, Sixième Congrès de la CGTU: Paris du 8 au 14 novembre 1931 (Paris, 1931), p. 386. 3 In the presidium meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), Manuilsky, the president, refuted the idea that unemployment dampened militancy, ‘Even with very great unemployment the number of strikes can and must increase, to that extent unemployment revolutionizes the working class.’ Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919–43 Documents (3 vols, Oxford, 1965), vol. 3, p. 98. Dmitri Manuilsky (1883–1952), president of the Comintern (1929–34). 4 Jacques Girault (ed.), Sur L’Implantation du Parti Communiste dans Entre-DeuxGuerres (Paris, 1977); Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes Français 1920–70 (Paris, 1985). In 1928 the Paris region made up 29 per cent of the party membership and in 1936, 36 per cent. 5 Jacques Girault, ‘L’implantation du Parti Communiste dans la région parisienne’ in Girault, Sur L’Implantation du PCF dans l’Entre-Deux-Guerres, p. 67.

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time was more abiding and intractable, seemingly impervious to the corrections of monetary or budgetary fine-tuning. Mass unemployment persisted until the outbreak of war. The conditions for fashioning a movement from the mass ranks of the jobless were very different from 1927. The political circumstances were different too, with the memory of the failure of the Cartel des Gauches government fading and the associated swing to the right reversing. Orthodox economic methods that had served Poincaré, would fail his Radical successors. One set of improvisations to unemployment provision followed another as did the ministers of labour who attached their names to successive plans of public works (Steeg, Laval, Daladier and Marquet).6 The international context was different as well. The methods of earlier unemployed protests and hunger marches in other countries could be imitated.7 The International Day of Action of 6 March 1930 Irrespective of the late arrival of unemployment, French representatives participated in the forums redirecting the work of communist organizations. The Dusseldorf conference on unemployment held on 2 February 1930 designated 6 March an international day of struggle against unemployment [journée de lutte internationale contre le chômage].8 The CGTU was charged with forging the new movement of the unemployed. The PCF political bureau, when discussing the Comintern’s international day of struggle, was very well aware of France’s exceptional position. Nevertheless it went ahead with the protest. On the day, its slogans were sectarian and abstract. The result was a fiasco.9 6 Between 1931 and 1935 these only amounted to 3 per cent of the non-military budget. Pierre Saly, ‘La politique française des grands travaux (1929–39): fut-elle Keynesienne?’, Revue Economique, 31/4 (1980): 707. 7 For a survey of these efforts: Croucher, ‘Communist unemployed organisations between the world wars’. 8 Although there seemed to be some confusion whether the date was 6 March or 12 March. Communists from Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Great Britain, the Balkan Federation, Austria, Holland and Belgium attended the Dusseldorf conference on 2 February 1930. International Press Correspondence, 4 (February 1930): 100. A second Comintern sponsored conference took place in Prague during August 1931. This had reports from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, France, Poland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria and the youth, ibid., 48 (August 1931): 884; ibid., 56 (October 1931): 1003–18. 9 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 57 PCF BP minutes, 13 February 1930; ‘Le mouvement ouvrier: la journée internationale du 6 Mars’, Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 3 (March 1930): 294–8; AN F7 13532; Le Figaro, 26 February 1931; Le Temps, 26 February 1931; F7 13307 Journée of 6 March 1930, prefects reported only the following meetings or demonstrations: 300 at a meeting in Guise (Aisne), 300 at a meeting in Troyes (Aube); one meeting with 10 in attendance in Loire-Inférieure; an ‘insignificant’ demonstration of striking miners at Vannes (Morbihan); 200, 80 and 150 on demonstrations in Roubaix, Pont-de-la-Deule and Halluin (Nord); demonstrations in Hénin-Liétard and Audel (Pas-de-Calais); three small meetings in Saôneet-Loire; 50 attend a meeting in Sarthe; complete failure of demonstrations in Seine, 3,200 mainly unskilled roadworkers at a meeting, 50 arrests; meetings with ‘pitiable’ attendances

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The political bureau was troubled by their lack of headway with the unemployed. The priorities of the international communist movement, rather than contact with the unemployed, prompted this concern. The communist leadership remained silent on the subject until the fifth congress of the Profintern [the Red International of Trade Unions] where French communists were accused of opportunism over social insurance. Responding to this criticism, Comintern favourite Maurice Thorez, who had been appointed General Secretary in July 1930, intervened at the following PCF political bureau. He insisted on the urgency of initiating an unemployed movement. Their discussions at the political bureau revealed disagreements and strategic lack of clarity about the relationship between the workplace and the unemployed, about unemployment insurance, and the current state of unemployed organizations. Jacques Doriot proposed unemployed groups in the big works like Renault directed against the employer and state. This would re-label the efforts to create communist cells around these workplaces rather than create a real movement of the unemployed. Only Pierre Sémard knew of actual developments with the beginnings of local organizations in Paris but also stressed their links with the factories. Some voices recognized that unemployment posed the problem of dampening industrial conflict and of racism.10 Communist officials clearly understood that the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) expected them to establish a movement of the unemployed and that peculiarities of their national situation would not be considered mitigation for failure.11 The International Day of Action of 25 February 1931 By the time of the second international day of struggle against unemployment (on 25 February 1931) unemployment had begun to rise in France. The communists redoubled their efforts to establish an unemployed movement with the slogan ‘no place in which there is unemployment is to be without its unemployed committee on 25 February’. To launch a Parisian unemployed movement, the PCF mounted its ‘January–February’ campaign to establish unemployed organizations. The starting point of this was a series of meetings on 15 January. Whether because of the method of building them or the wildly unrealistic demand for unemployed benefits at nearly

in Seine-et-Oise; 200 construction workers tried but failed to demonstrate in Rouen (SeineInférieure), one arrest; 100 dispersed in Ville-Parisis (Seine-et-Marne); meetings of 60 in Toulon, 25 in La Seyne, 23 in Brignoles (Var); police intervened to prevent a demonstration in Vaucluse with four arrests. Ibid., police report, 6 March 1930 in the Paris region 23 police were injured and 65 protesters were arrested. 10 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 57 PCF BP minutes, 9 October 1930. On 24 October, ‘Henry’ (Polish miner, Stanislaw Matuszczak) observed that continuing immigration and alarming anti-foreign agitation were even spreading xenophobia to party and unitaire comrades, ibid., 24 October 1930. It was also discussed a few weeks later, ibid., 3 December 1930; Matt Perry, ‘“Sans Distinction de Nationalité”? The French Communist Party, Immigrants and Unemployment in the 1930s’, European History Quarterly, 34/3 (2004): 337–69. 11 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 57 PCF BP minutes, 22 September 1930.

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three times their existing levels, the unemployed did not take these meetings seriously and attendance was derisory.12 At the beginning of February, however, the newly constituted Central Committee of the Unemployed of the Paris Region [Comité Central des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, CCdC(RP)] organized a well attended public meeting.13 René Arrachard, from the building workers’ section of the CGTU, spoke. It was the first sign that the Parisian movement could mobilize large numbers. With a few exceptions, however, the local CdC meetings had generally been small, with usually between one or two dozens attending.14 The CCdC met on several occasions to plan the day of action and thrash out differences. A deep scepticism amongst its militants existed about the event.15 Despite the success of the public meeting, even Edgard Monceaux, the chair of the committee, argued in front of 60 delegates against a mass demonstration on the day of action. It was not until 24 February that the CCdC was definitively won around to the idea of a demonstration outside the Chamber of Deputies on 25 February.16 For almost a month, L’Humanité and La Vie Ouvrière campaigned for unemployed demonstrations on 25 February. Many factory cells produced special bulletins for this purpose.17 Other papers, notably Le Figaro and L’Ami du Peuple, raised a red scare about the revolutionary day of action.18 On the day itself, as the Seine departmental police report noted, the communists were foiled at every assembly point. It observed: ‘Order was maintained; the physiognomy of the street was not changed at any time; transport functioned normally; the freedom to work was assured. Nowhere was there a demonstration’.19 In different parts of the Paris region, repression did its work. Three meetings took place: 800 attended in Boulogne, 430 at rue de Clisson, 350 at La Bellevilloise.20 Unusually, unitaire building workers ignored union directives and only 200 turned up at the CGTU headquarters at rue de la Granges-aux-Belles. After

12 Twenty attended in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, 12 in 11th, and the meeting in Bagnolet was abandoned due to poor numbers, AN F7 13541 police report, 15 January 1931. 13 Attended by 1,000 according to the organizers and 700 according to police figures. 14 The exceptions were a meeting of 100 in Boulogne-Billancourt and two meetings of several hundreds in Saint-Denis. Ibid., 16 January 1931; ibid., 23 January 1931; ibid., 5 February 1931; L’Emancipation, 14 February 1931; ibid., 21 February 1931 and, ibid., 28 February 1931. 15 AN F7 13541 police report, 4 February 1931. 16 Edgard Monceaux was secretary of the unitaire Trades Council of the Parisian Region (April 1930–September 1931). He then attended the International Lenin School. José Gotovitch and Mikhaїl Narinski (eds), Dictionnaire Biographique de l’Internationale Communiste en France, en Belgique, en Luxembourg, en Suisse et à Moscou (Paris, 2001), pp. 427–8. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 68 International Lenin School forms. 17 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 75. These bulletins included ones produced by the unemployed from La Garenne and the 17th arrondissement. 18 AN F7 13532 Le Figaro, 5 February 1931 and L’Ami du Peuple, 21 January 1931. 19 Ibid., police report, 25 February 1931. 20 La Bellevilloise was a communist-affiliated co-operative in rue Boyer with large meetings rooms, Jean-Louis Panné, La Bellevilloise (1877–1939): une Page d’Histoire de la Coopération et du Mouvement Ouvrier Français (Paris, 2001).

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the meeting at La Bellevilloise, 50 began to sing the Internationale; even this small act of defiance led to police intervention to disperse the crowd. At 9 pm in Aubervilliers, the police arrested 11 when a group of 100 began to sing the Internationale near the mayor’s offices. In all, 188 arrests were made, of which 21 were foreigners who were likely to be deported. Despite the best efforts of activists, because the level of unemployment was by no means comparable with elsewhere in Europe, the day’s agitation proved disappointing. Le Populaire, the SFIO paper, described the day ‘a miserable failure’.21 Inprecor admitted the frailty of the unemployed committees [Comités des Chômeurs, CdCs] and that these were more geared to solidarity than struggle. The PCF and CGTU were called on to ‘liquidate these shortcomings without fail, and ensure better contact’ between the unemployed and factory workers.22 Afterwards, in an atmosphere of bitter recrimination, the apportioning of blame for the failure of the journée dominated the next CCdC delegate meeting. According to the contested opinions inside the meeting, the police, the unemployed, the unemployed committees and the Central Committee of the Unemployed were held culpable. A Bobigny delegate criticized the unemployed from his area for not responding to the call of Jean-Marie Clamamus, the communist mayor who had done so much for them. The Saint-Ouen representative believed that debacle stemmed from the arrests of activists. Raynaud said it was the nonchalance of the CCdC and the CdCs that was responsible for the poor results.23 At the following meeting a pessimistic Monceaux complained about the general apathy of the unemployed, noting that there was almost complete inactivity amongst them.24 Activists were aware of 25 February’s failure and that the CdCs were simply not large enough to mount an effective demonstration in the face of such police repression.25 The Confederal Bureau of the CGTU reacted to the 25th in a different manner. They exhibited deep dissatisfaction with the CCdC and appointed Lucien Monjauvis (secretary of 20th region of the CGTU) to rectify the situation.26 The soul-searching of the communist leaders was not surprising given the Party’s crisis, the purge of the Barbé-Celor ‘faction’ and Doriot’s narrow escape through recanting his errors in July 1931.27 This was symptomatic of the Stalinization of the Comintern. Despite all this, a significant movement did eventually develop. Though the impetus may have originated as bureaucratic directives, at times it met an authentic response of unemployed activism and protest from below. Ironically, the PCF leadership was pushing hardest in the direction of the unemployed before they existed in any real numbers. By the time mass unemployment emerged, the

21

Ibid., file on day of action, 25 February 1931. ‘Inprecor’ was the common abbreviation for the weekly internal bulletin of the Comintern. International Press Correspondence, 14 (1931): 271. 23 AN F7 13541 police report on CCdC, 5 March 1931. 24 Ibid., 13 March 1931. 25 Ibid., police report, 16 March 1931. 26 Ibid., police report, 21 March 1931; ibid., 25 March 1931. 27 They were removed from the Central Committee for left deviations and were made scapegoats for the plight of the party. 22

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ECCI had abandoned both its strategy of journées against unemployment and its prioritization of the unemployed. The Structure of the Parisian Unemployed Movement The basic unit of the movement was the Comité des Chômeurs [Unemployed Committee, CdC] which organized the unemployed in the locality. These organizations usually mapped municipal or arrondissemental constituencies demonstrating their intended influence on municipal and electoral politics. The unemployed movement in Paris had a confused organizational structure. The CGTU launched the Comité Central des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne [CCdC] as the first regional body of the unemployed movement. The first record of this body’s existence dates from early February 1931.28 Initially, Edgard Monceaux was its leading figure.29 At a meeting on 4 April 1931 this body had 25 delegates from various CdCs. This meeting designated a Commission Exécutive [Executive Commission, CE] which was meant to meet weekly and oversee the work of the CdCs.30 Whilst this was in the first instance a small body of ten to 24, before the 12 November journée it expanded to 60 members. To supplement the role of the Executive Commission, by September 1931, the Regional Committee of the Unemployed [Comité Régional des Chômeurs, CRC] had been established as a wider body comprising of 100 or so delegates. To further complicate the picture, the title Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne [Union of Unemployed Committees of the Paris Region, UdC] supplanted the CCdC. Drawing even greater numbers into decision-making, the widest representation took place at regional congresses. Three congresses occurred in the movement’s first year: on 23 April 1931, 25 July 1931, 14 January 1932.31 These hosted delegates from the CdCs of the Paris region. In terms of decision-making, this organizational confusion masked PCF control. It did this through its members taking leading permanent positions on these bodies 28

There is no mention of this body from 1932 onwards. Ibid., police report on 6 February meeting of CCdC, 7 February 1931. 29 The members of the CCdCCRP were: Edgard Monceaux, president, Henri Tronc, secretary, Lichon, treasurer (and treasurer of the 20th region of the CGTU), Ali Alfred, vicetreasurer, Henri Didier, Thouron, Jean Hotz, Rene Urbe, Levasseur, Renaudeau, Lebrun, Mesol. AN F7 13641 police report, 17 February 1931. 30 AN F7 13541 police report, 4 April 1931. It is uncertain how often this body met but there are police reports for 11 April, 21 April, 23 August, 6 November, and 5 December 1931. 31 The UdC conferences were as follows: the fourth congress of the Union des Chômeurs, 2–4 March 1933; the fifth congress of the UdC (29 November–1 December 1934), the sixth congress (20–23 November 1935). The UdC dissolved itself at a conference in April 1938 with the regional CGT taking over responsibility for the unemployed. There were national conferences of the unemployed in Paris in 21–22 November 1933, 13–14 November 1936, 16–18 November 1937; and an unemployed youth conference in June 1936. The CGT of the Parisian Region called a Congress of the Unemployed, 27–28 June 1939. Le Travailleur Parisien, 171 (January–February–March 1939): 20–3; ibid., 172 (June–July 1939): 9–12.

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or at the newspaper, Le Cri des Chômeurs. Chevalier, secretary, and Pierre Mercier, Le Cri des Chômeurs’s editor and treasurer, were both PCF members as were many of the key personnel in the other bodies and the CdCs. Their offices were situated in the CGTU building at 33 rue de la Granges-aux-Belles. The PCF therefore had influence over these individuals and the various bodies of the movement. Institutional duplication served the PCF in that it could find the line of least resistance to its directives, which could then be transmitted to the movement as a whole via larger or less politically certain bodies. It could also resort to calling PCF faction meetings of unemployed members in order to win particular positions.32 Despite this, the PCF’s prerogatives were continually frustrated by the vicissitudes of unemployed activity. The communist leadership’s efforts to transcend these practical limits were the source of the organizational complexity of the Parisian unemployed movement. Within this Byzantine structure, this basic contradiction generated not only highly personalized clashes but also conflict within and between institutions. Yet the movement often created counter-currents to PCF policy. This happened because PCF perspectives did not match the experience of activists on the ground who acted with greater realism, or succumbed to local inertia, or had different political assumptions. Frictions often emerged between different bodies. In late November 1931, a police report detailed the conflict between the Central Committee of the Unemployed (CCdC) and the Union of the Unemployed (UdC). The CCdC was directly accountable to the PCF and attempted to discredit certain leaders of the UdC and the Regional Committee of the Unemployed (CRC), in particular Thouron (himself a PCF member), secretary of the CRC. For their part the CRC wanted the movement to relocate as the use of CGTU offices deterred some of the unemployed.33 On 27 November 1931, a PCF faction meeting aired some of these differences. Lenoir argued for a unemployed congress from 15 to 17 December. This congress, he hoped, would replace the existing leadership because of its failures. The new leadership should be loyal to the PCF because, he thought, the unemployed movement should be part of the revolutionary struggle. Thouron replied that what was being proposed was the subordination of the movement to the party which would only damage the former.34 This conflict came to a head at the next Executive Commission meeting on 8 December. Again Thouron clashed with CGTU officials. He successfully opposed Perrot’s suggestion of Christmas [réveillon] demonstrations outside the nightclubs of the rich (which the PCF leadership strongly favoured). Again to the dismay of the CCdC, the congress was postponed to January. Despite his successes and perhaps

32

PCF Central Committee report highlighted the role of the factions (and the contradiction at the heart of the ‘united front’ policy): ‘The movement of the unemployed must be a broad movement of the united front, but by the work of the factions, …, the Party must be the leader’. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 68 The struggle of the unemployed, 1931. For example a faction meeting was called before the 12 November 1931 demonstration. AN F7 13541 police report on PCF faction of the unemployed, 4 November 1931. 33 Ibid., 26 November 1931. 34 Also despite the party’s hostility to charity, most of the faction agreed on a ‘commission de secours aux chômeurs’ [commission to aid the unemployed].

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calling his opponents’ bluff, Thouron threatened to resign from the leadership of the movement.35 When the UdC rejected the Christmas demonstrations, the PCF and CGTU forged ahead with the protests regardless. According to the police report, the demonstrators who numbered several hundred were mainly communists and only a few unemployed had been attracted. There were 54 arrests and foreigners had their identity cards confiscated.36 On 2 January 1932, the CRC was recomposed with Thouron continuing as secretary alongside the loyalist Monjauvis, Pierre Mercier, Henri Didier, Jean Pena and Robert Mention.37 From the first, the leadership of the Parisian movement was plagued by division and this compounded a lack of continuity in personnel. This pattern established in its preliminary months persisted throughout the lifespan of the movement.38

35

Ibid., police report on executive committee meeting, 28 November 1931. AN F7 13550 police report on the demonstration of the unemployed at Christmas, 25 December 1931; ibid., police report on the UdC, 9 January 1932. 37 Ibid., police report, 4 January 1932. 38 The leadership of the Parisian movement: in 1927, Comité Central des Chômeurs: Lichon, Nilès (CGTU leaders); on 6 February 1931, Comité Central des Comités des Chômeurs RP: Monceaux (president), Henri Tronc, Lichon (treasurer), Ali Alfred (vice-treasurer), Henri Didier, Thouron, Jean Hotz, Rene Urbe, Levasseur, Renaudeau, Lebrun, Mesol; in September 1931, Union des Comités des Chômeurs RP: Chevalier (secretary), Mercier (treasurer and editor of Le Cri); on 5 November 1931, ‘Bureau’ of UdC: Chevalier, Thaurin, Pontet, Collignon; 12 November 1931, Delegation to the Chamber of Deputies: Barral, Caniez, Collineau, Franson, Loret, Picavet, Simon, Belfinger, Capelle, Dechaume, Champion, Delion, Lemaire, Monjauvis, Pontey, Bresson, Chauvin, Didier, Liautey, Pena, Thouron; on 2 January 1932, Comité Régional des Chômeurs: Lucien Monjauvis, Pierre Mercier, Jean Pena, Robert Mention, Henri Didier, Thouron (secretary); on 12 November 1932, the ‘leaders’ of the UdC: Thouron, Liautey, Champion, Monjauvis; on 29 November 1932, UdC delegation to police: Mercier, Zachs, Franson; on 2 March 1933, UdC bureau: Pierre Mercier (general secretary), Joseph Zachs (youth commission), Yves Malo (PCF), Jeanne Buland (women’s commission), Jean Pena, Djilali Chabila, Paul Hog; on 19 March 1933, UdC bureau: Mercier, Zachs, Houron; on 10 October 1933, UdC bureau: Mercier, Zachs, Frachon; on 29 November 1933, UdC organizers of hunger march (Lille to Paris): Mercier (secretary), Lacroix; 4 December 1933, proposed new leadership: Auffret, Peyrat; on 19 March 1934, UdC bureau: Mercier (secretary), Lacroix; in August 1934, UdC: René Lepreux (secretary); 4 December 1934, leaders of the UdC: Chevalier, Mercier; in January 1935, Mercier expelled from PCF; on 5 January 1935, UdC statement, Auffret; on 13 April 1935, Auffret absconds with money; 11 August 1935, Secretariat of UdC: Marcel Peyrat, Marcel Aygaling (Alfortville), Marcel Fiévet; on 22 March 1936, UdC: Peyrat (general secretary); 14 November 1936, UdC at national congress: Peyrat (secretary), Francon; ADS 99 M141 Le Progrès, 27 April 1935, Bulluc of the ‘national organization of the unemployed’ and Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 27 April 1935, Bellugue, secretary of the ‘National Committee of the Unemployed’. 36

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Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne The first congress of the unemployed of the Paris region took place on 23 April 1931.39 Le Cri des Chômeurs reported 120 delegates of whom half were CGTU members. The congresses roughly plot the movement’s changing size and character.40 With its origins in the winter of 1930–31, it underwent a seasonal decline in the summer of 1931 and grew to new heights in the winter of 1931–32. This early phase did establish an institutional structure with a degree of permanence mainly thanks to the resources of the CGTU so that, for example, when Albert Vassart reported to the French commission of the Comintern, in early 1933, he recorded 150 CdCs in the Paris region and 230 nationally.41 The reports from the CdCs provided a second more sensitive indicator of the movement’s dimensions. Le Cri acted as a regional voice and the local reports charted the particular geographical evolution of the movement. That an unemployed committee should send a report to the paper indicated a vitality that public statements of numbers at congresses could not.42 It was not until January 1932 that evidence existed of a vibrant movement of more than a handful of committees. That month’s issue printed 23 local reports with all but one from the Parisian arrondissements or the Seine department. Next month’s issue revealed a distinctive geographical transformation. Committees reporting from Seine-et-Oise 39 For activity prior to this, AN F713541 Le Chômeur, filed on 17 March 1931. It discussed the 25 February day of action and some local activity in Saint-Denis. Le Cri des Chômeurs (Paris), 10 (April 1932); ibid., 1 (May 1931). 40 AN F7 13565 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 4 (November 1931) recorded the proliferation of the committees: 25 on 25 April 1931, 18 on 15 September and 31 (plus three industrial groups) on 30 October. L’Humanité, 12 November 1931. Le Cri des Chômeurs, 6 (January 1932). From early growth to the lull of August 1931, in Paris, the number of committees had fallen from 40 to 30, International Press Correspondence, 56 (1931): 1016. A report to the Central Committee noted how the number of CdCs since of the Prague international conference on unemployment of August 1931 had grown from 17 to 72 on the Paris region, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 68 ‘Projet de resolution sur le chômage’, n.d., c. December 1931. 41 Open Society Archive (OSA, Budapest), Comintern archive on CD-ROM, f.495 op.55 d.27 ll.69–70 Vassart’s report, 14 May 1933. For figures of UdC membership and numbers of CdCs: on 23 April 1931, first UdC congress: 36 CdCs and 10,000 members; in July 1931, second UdC congress: 18 CdCs and 5,780 members; in October 1931 in report to the Prague conference, 30 CdCs and 3,000 unemployed; on 3 November 1931, a police report noted 35 CdCs and 9,320 members; on 9 January 1932, a police report cited 84 committees representing 12,000 unemployed; on 14 January 1932, third UdC congress: 30,000 members; on 6 January 1932, CGTU political bureau cited 120 CdCs; in November 1932, 36,000 members; on 2 March 1933, fourth UdC congress: 140 CdCs and 55,000 members; on 2 March 1933, a police report cited 20,000 members; in April 1933, Vassart’s Comintern report cited 150 CdCs; in August 1933, 34,000 members; in December 1933 more than 36,000; on 28 May 1934, a police report cited 30,000 members; in 1934, fifth UdC congress: 167 CdCs and 50,000 members; in April 1935, CGTU congress report cited 200 CdCs and 41,500 members. 42 This is how the number of local reports evolved: Le Cri des Chômeurs has 7 local committee reports for ibid., 3, July 1931; 12 for ibid., 4 (November 1931); 22 – ibid., 6 (January 1932); 21 – ibid., 7 (February 1932); 45 – ibid., 8 (March 19320: 46 – ibid., 9 (20 March 1932); 37 – ibid., 10 (April 1932); 15 – ibid., 11 (May 1932).

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spiralled from a solitary case in the previous month to 13. This probably indicated a centrally-directed push to expand into new territory. In March the movement reached its zenith with two editions recording more committees than ever before (45 and 46). Reports streamed in from Seine and Seine-et-Oise but results were never impressive from Seine-et-Marne. After that peak, the April and May issues registered a rapid decline in the number of local reports with only 15 in the latter. It is clear that the communists were the catalyst in the development of the unemployed movement of the Paris region. A planned push on their part explains the stark pattern of geographical expansion in January and February. Just as the institutional impetus shaped expansion, so it contributed to decline as the party and CGTU expended their meagre resources, especially the energies of their activists, on the electoral campaign of May 1932. Yet the CdCs were not a simple matter of will. The unemployed responded to communist advances and their interaction had a certain logic of its own. The presence of communist councils meant a very different orientation and conditions for some CdCs. Communist councils certainly assisted the movement, especially its initial development. Early unemployed demonstrations and mass meetings took place in the communist-held towns of Saint-Denis, Villejuif, Vitry and Bobigny. Under pressure from the Comintern, the communist leadership sought to launch the unemployed movement from Paris. This meant starting from the PCF’s Parisian municipal strongholds.43 A municipality like Saint-Denis or Ivry could put resources at the disposal of the unemployed movement. The existence of communist officials and staff strengthened the work of the mass organizations of the party, a factor of particular significance given the instability of unemployment. Furthermore, communist councils made great efforts to be seen to be alleviating the lot of the unemployed, providing a range of services for them. The propaganda of the unemployed movement highlighted the virtues of municipal communism and the shortcomings of non-communist councils.44 As there were only a few isolated communist-held councils outside the Paris region, the councils of the Parisian ‘red belt’ were held up as examples throughout the land. In Ivry, that bastion of industrial working-class communism, alongside cheap housing and children’s holiday camps, the council specifically targeted the unemployed and their families.45 There, the CdC 43

The municipal communism was not straightforward because there was often a tension between the ECCI or CC and the ‘opportunist’ mayors. 44 There were also specific pamphlets lauding the municipal largesse of the communists towards the unemployed: The PCF printed Doriot’s speech in the Chamber of Deputies: Jacques Doriot, Les Communistes et les Chômeurs: Discours de Jacques Doriot à la Chambre des Députés le 20 novembre 1931 (Paris, 1932). It likewise printed the speeches of André Marty: André Marty, Les Communistes et le Chômage: Discours au Conseil Municipal de Paris, 9 December 1931 (Paris, 1931); Du Travail et du Pain: Discours au Conseil Municipal de Paris, 9 et 11 May 1934 (Paris, 1934); La Politique Municipale Communiste: Pour les Meurt-de-faim! (Chômage et plan Marquet): Discours Prononcé au Conseil Municipal de Paris le 23 novembre 1934 (Paris, 1935). 45 Archives Municipales d’Ivry: Bulletin Municipal Officiel de la Ville d’Ivry-surSeine, 42 (January 1932): 5–21; ibid., 51 (September 1934): 8; ibid., 52 (January 1935): 16 and supplement: 2–12; ibid., 54 (March–April 1935): 2–3; ibid., 57 (April 1936): 7–8; Le

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was the most important communist mass organization but was relatively inactive.46 In Saint-Denis, Jacques Doriot paid particular attention to mass unemployed meetings speaking regularly during 1931 and 1932 in front of crowds of up to 850.47 This, according to his biographer, was the principal reason for Doriot’s local reversal of the electoral trend against the PCF in the elections of May 1932. This northern suburb was sociologically very working-class and had heavy concentrations of unemployment. The jobless made up half of the new recruits to the local sous-rayon [sub-district] in the first five months of 1932.48 In non-communist municipal territory, the CdCs took on a hostile posture towards the local councils. This antagonism was a fundamental aspect of the first phase of the unemployment movement and characteristic of its press. The standard mode of operation of the CdCs which consisted of pressuring local councils for improvements only really made sense in non-communist areas. Paradoxically, it was easier for a number of reasons to organize where a communist council existed. Shrill condemnation of socialist, neo-socialist and worse still Parti d’Unité Prolétarienne [Party of Proletarian Unity, PUP or ‘pupiste’] councils contrasted sharply with harmonious relations with communist councils.49 The local committees adopted a spectrum of approaches from militant demonstrations – sometimes clashing with the police – to self-help efforts, like kids’ parties or soup kitchens. These methods were often complementary rather than mutually exclusive.50 Whilst the communists decried bourgeois charity and urged the formation of self-defence groups to confront the police, they did not openly condemn self-help or benefits advice and representation for the unemployed.

Travailleur (Ivry). Bernard Chambaz, ‘L’implantation du PCF a Ivry’ in Girault, Implantation du PCF, p. 170. Free milk and school meals, health checks, warm winter clothes, a model soup kitchen, subsidized rents and a moratorium on evictions of the unemployed for rent arrears were provided. 46 Ibid., p. 173. 47 AN F7 13541 and F7 13550 police reports on meeting in Saint-Denis for 1931 and 1932. Here local communists were able to develop the most impressive local organization with meetings between January 1931 and March 1932 averaging nearly 500 that is over three and a half times the size of the average elsewhere. 48 Jean-Paul Brunet, Jacques Doriot: du Communisme au Fascisme (Paris, 1986), pp. 125–6; 144 out of 396 were unemployed including 45 out of 96 metalworkers, L’Emancipation, 28 May 1932. 49 Thus in Pantin, the CdC was one wing of a concerted communist push against the neo-socialist Auray, with the PCF eventually taking office in 1938. Girault, ‘L’implantation du Parti Communiste dans la région parisienne’, p. 107. 50 The eleventh arrondissement CdC, one of the strongest in Paris, organized a children’s Christmas party and stormed and occupied the mayor’s offices in the same month. This was the first such occupation. Ibid., p. 68; Le Cri des Chômeurs 6 (January 1932). The 15th arrondissement CdC pooled their members’ skills in co-operative fashion with lectures, hairdressing and shoe repairs as well as 200 of them clashing with the police outside the mayor’s offices. The 18th arrondissement CdC organized their own soup kitchen and mobilized against evictions. Ibid., 8 (March 1932). In Choisy-le-Roi, they demonstrated and ran a food co-operative. Ibid., 7 (February 1932).

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Le Cri revealed the grass-roots vitality of the unemployed movement. The paper reported on 25 local demonstrations of a hundred or more, three of these were 500 strong or more.51 Most of these occurred in winter 1931–32. The paper also recorded the size of public meetings such as those of 300 in the 15th arrondissement and at Vitry or 600 at Argenteuil. Some ten committees also stated membership figures in the regional paper. With 1,500 members, the 20th arrondissement committee was probably the largest.52 Many local groups exhibited a common life cycle. Indeed, in December 1932 L’Humanité outlined this model procedure that had been adopted throughout the Parisian region in the previous few months.53 Typically unemployed comrades would call a mass meeting with a CGTU speaker, they would formulate a list of demands [cahier des revendications], select a central committee and demonstrate outside the mayor’s offices. The mayor might make concessions or reject the demands or even refuse to see the delegation. Even when this process was executed perfectly, it was not a recipe for sustained activity and, unlike organizing in the workplace, impermanence, a constantly changing audience and lack of routine characterized unemployment. Frustration or success of local demands would return the group to square one. This act of Sisyphus accounts for the short life span or torpor of many of the local groups after their first appearance. The majority of committees only had one or two reports in Le Cri and two fifths had only one report. Only ten out of 97 committees sustained enough activity over the year to have four or five reports in the eight issues that exist. There was also a clear connection between the rise and fall of unemployment and the vigour of the committees. The greatest number of committee reports coincided with the unemployment peak of March 1932. The reports declined thereafter with the falling jobless numbers. The UdC appeared to be ill-prepared for such fluctuations. Le Cri explained each fall in the official unemployment figures exclusively as statistical manipulation and deception. Whilst official statistics did conceal the extent of the problem, the failure to understand seasonal and business cyclicality led to disorientation and demoralization. Communists suggested an even-paced radicalization of the unemployed. Instead a sharp ebb and flow to unemployed protest took place. Apart from the focus on the municipal authorities, the local unemployed committees reported two major campaigns: about evictions and overtime. Le Cri recounted several occasions on which evictions were successfully prevented.54 Thus the short life-cycle of the unemployed group could be extended by other focal points

51 900 demonstrated in Ivry, ibid., 3 (July 1931); 600 in Choisy-le-Roi, 6 (January 1932); 500 in Cachan against an eviction, ibid., 8 (March 1932). 52 11th arrondissement CdC had 500 members, Colombes, 600 members and 15th arrondissement, 200, ibid., 6 (January 1932); Bondy, 300 members and Meudon, 100, ibid., 8 (March 1932); Puteaux, 600 and Argenteuil, 400, ibid., 9 (24 March 1932). At their height individual committees could sell as many as 200 to 800 copies of Le Cri. 53 Colnet, Les Mouvements des Chômeurs, p. 62; L’Humanité, 24 December 1932. 54 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 7 (February 1932); ibid., 8 (March 1932); ibid., (20 March 1932).

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of struggle. This in turn depended on sufficient anger over particular issues to elicit a local response. The UdC and Politics The agenda of UdC and the PCF overlapped considerably. A number of lead articles in Le Cri des Chômeurs dissected government spending to demonstrate that different (that is, PCF) priorities could meet the demands of the unemployed. In January 1932, for instance, the paper listed spending on police, war, bank subsidies and the cost of imperialist expeditions to China and Morocco. In another article, the Paris police budget and the salary of the director of municipal police were detailed, ‘while the unemployed starve’. On a further occasion, the donation of 200,000 francs to an ex-President of the Republic and subsidies to foreign powers and capitalist companies were highlighted. The aim was to furnish unemployed activists with a few rudimentary facts to counter the commonplace notion that there was not sufficient money to relieve the unemployed. It also corresponded with the perspectives of the Comintern, which viewed the 1930s as a period of immanent war and imperialist hostility to the USSR. Articles connected the bad treatment of the unemployed with the French bourgeoisie’s warlike and predatory goals.55 The Government’s imperialist dreams and its war drive were contrasted with the peaceloving USSR ‘where unemployment did not exist’. The movement sought French witnesses to attest to full employment in Soviet Russia. Pierre Mercier, the editor of Le Cri, was delegated to visit the USSR on behalf of the UdC.56 In March, an appeal was made to send another delegate to the USSR and to defend the ‘country without unemployment’.57 These visits combined careful showcasing of the USSR and Stalinist cadre schools.58 Le Cri frequently featured articles on charitable responses to unemployed hardship. The paper unerringly opposed ‘bourgeois philanthropy’ or Catholic charity as the very antithesis of working-class solidarity.59 The inadequacy of charitable efforts to tackle the crisis was repeated bluntly. In the 13th arrondissement, two months of collections had amassed 20,000 francs, but this only amounted to 2 francs 50 centimes per unemployed. Similarly, whilst 12,000 rations of soup were distributed in Paris each day, there were tens of thousands of unemployed.60 In March 1932, as unemployment reached a peak, local unemployment committees reported growing philanthropic activity with charitable committees being set up in Aubervilliers, 55

Ibid., 3 (July 1931); ibid., 9 (20 March 1932). Ibid., 6 (January 1932). According to Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français, it is Paul Mercier. Elsewhere he was called Pierre. 57 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 8 (March 1932). 58 Edgard Monceaux and Jeanne Buland were amongst those officials of the UdC who attended the International Lenin School. 59 Ibid., 2 (June 1931); ibid., 6 (January 1932); ibid., 7 (February 1932); ibid., 8, March 1932; ibid., 9 (20 March 1932). For a fuller exposition of PCF attitudes to charity, see Georges Sadoul, Les Réligions et le Chômage: la Croisade de la Charité (Paris, 1932). 60 Ibid., 8 (March 1932). 56

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Bondy, Boulogne-Billancourt, Malakoff as well as the 10th and 15th arrondissements. In Saint-Germain, the paper noted that priests were giving unemployed members of these committees ten francs in the first week of unemployment, but five francs in the second and nothing after that.61 This was at the same time that André Tardieu, the Prime Minister, called for a repeat of the wartime ‘national assistance’ to raise money.62 His Minister of Labour, Pierre Laval, established a national lottery to raise money for unemployment benefits. Not only were these acts designated bourgeois condescension, they were also palliatives disproportionate to the scale of the crisis. Criticism of charity and political partisanship went hand in hand. The paper condemned the SFIO and the CGT for charitable collections under the guise of ‘workers’ solidarity’ and criticized Léon Jouhaux (the leader of the CGT) for asking for a day’s pay a month from union officials. In Boulogne-Billancourt, the socialist council set up a committee [comité entr’aide des chômeurs] on the ‘bourgeois model … [of] … swindling workers and shopkeepers’.63 Local CdCs were quick to equate charity with electoral opportunism. In the 19th arrondissement, the socialist republican party had set up a ‘committee for the help of the unemployed’ with a poster campaign advertising the distribution of stew, clothes and so on. The report suspected that the undeclared intention was to undermine the CdC and secure electoral advantage.64 In the 10th arrondissement, Susset, a republican socialist distributed ‘electoral stew’ [pot-au-feu électoral] to the unemployed.65 For Le Cri, charity, selfhelp and voluntary action stood in sharp contrast to the communist formula of selfactivity, unemployed rights, social insurance and the overthrow of capitalism. Both its attitudes to charity and Catholicism reflected an undiluted ideological purity. This purism had a price. A patient fraternal explanation of differences would have corresponded more to Le Cri’s desire to mobilize workers ‘without confessional or political distinction’. The Union of the Unemployed’s self-righteousness was also exhibited in its discussions of politics. Its paper reflected the fierce inter-party competition on the left that characterized the Third Period. It found itself on several occasions refuting the accusation that the CdCs were communist fronts.66 Their habitual response, that the CdCs organized the unemployed no matter which party they belonged to, was qualified with the comment that only the PCF and the CGTU supported the unemployed. Such a formulation was hardly likely to attract socialist or confederal loyalists into the ranks. Le Cri repeatedly rehearsed arguments against ‘splitters’ – the SFIO and the PUP. Criticisms of these ‘agents of the bourgeoisie’ and ‘social fascists’ appeared as lead articles. The paper detailed their failure to see unemployed delegations at the Chamber of Deputies. It condemned the CGT for establishing a Commission Syndicale Confédérée des Chômeurs [Confederal Union Commission 61

Le Cri des Chômeurs, 9 (March 20 1932). Collections by children, the distribution of medals and so on. 63 Ibid., 9 (20 March 1932). 64 Ibid., 8 (March 1932). 65 Ibid., 9 (20 March 1932). 66 For instance, Courrel, the socialist mayor of Champigny, denounced the local committee on these grounds. Ibid., 3 (July 1931). 62

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of the Unemployed] in the Paris region as an attempt to divide the unemployed in the interests of the bourgeoisie.67 Local committees identified the crimes of particular socialist, ‘pupiste’ or ‘workers’ mayors or councils.68 Particular bile was reserved for the PUP.69 Communist André Marty and pupiste Louis Sellier traded insults about unemployment at the Paris city council and their speeches were reproduced as pamphlets.70 Le Cri gave rival committees equally short shrift.71 This sectarianism and party rivalry intensified as the May 1932 legislative elections approached. Efforts to marginalize the PCF and the communist-led CdCs increased both at the local and departmental level. ‘Electoral stew’ was only one means to this end. Several local committees related efforts of others to establish rival committees and undermine them. The SFIO paper, Le Populaire, accused the CdCs of wasting the meagre resources of the unemployed.72 The CGT distributed thousands of leaflets accusing the CdCs of diverting money into appeals, posters and agit-prop materials that could be used for the relief of the unemployed. In early April, the SFIO’s Seine Federal Council narrowly voted to prohibit its members from joining any CdC affiliated to the UdC.73 Le Cri’s May issue advised its audience ‘in the electoral struggle, you must choose between friends and enemies’. It cited various crimes of the PCF’s electoral rivals. The names of PUP or SFIO candidates such as Bloch, Sellier, Déat were systematically denigrated and communist candidates – André Marty, Jacques Duclos, Marcel Cachin and Jacques Doriot – were routinely 67

Ibid., 6 (January 1932). In Drancy, a long-running feud developed between the CdC and the socialist mayor Duchanel. The very first issue of Le Cri announced that Duchanel had formed a ‘united front’ of ‘social fascists’ and pupistes ‘against the unemployed’. In August 1931, the mayor further exacerbated the rift by calling out the police against a CdC meeting resulting in 10 arrests. The council then set up its own ‘general committee of the unemployed’ in an effort to marginalize the communist-led committee. Eventually, after over a year of wrangling, an unemployed committee was set up in Drancy with genuinely cross-party leadership and its own newspaper, Le Chômeur, August 1932–January 1933. 69 There were PUP mayors in Suresnes (Louis Sellier), Clichy (Charles Auffray), Kremlin-Bicêtre (Georges Gérard), Issy-les-Molineaux (Justin Oudin). A brawl at a Clichy CdC meeting was ‘provoked by the pupiste Auffray’, ibid., 8 (March 1932). In KremlinBicêtre, Gérard refused to see a delegation from a 200 strong demonstration. Former PCF general secretary Louis Sellier was denounced as the ‘property owning’ mayor of Suresnes. He was criticized for inadequate public works, for not being local, for refusing to see a delegation from the 18th arrondissement and proposing subsidies to business. Ibid., 6 (January 1932). 70 PUP, Deux Discours de Louis Sellier: la Crise Économique: le Chômage, la Solution; le Déshabillage d’André Marty (Paris, 1932); André Marty, Les Communistes et le Chômage: Discours au Conseil Municipal de Paris, 9 Décembre 1931 (Paris, 1931). 71 Aulnay-sous-Bois CdC warned of the ‘autonomous’ committee whose members had been expelled from the CdC for breaking confidences. Saint-Denis CdC sought to unmask other committees ‘that try to divide the movement of the unemployed’. The BoulogneBillancourt CdC condemned the socialist council for following the bourgeois example of forming an unemployed self-help committee, Le Cri des Chômeurs, 9 (20 March 1932). 72 Ibid., 8 (March 1932). 73 Le Populaire, 9 April 1932, quoted in Le Cri des Chômeurs, 11 (May 1932). The vote was 2,174 to 1,994 with 894 abstentions. 68

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recommended. Criticism of the right-wing and fascist politicians was notable for its absence. National Days of Action, 12 November 1931, 12 January and 24 March 1932 The UdC promoted a number of regional-wide or national activities to elevate the sights of the local committees beyond the parochial horizons of municipal or communal politics. The Communist International at this time sought, through its days of action, to ‘conquer the streets’. In line with this, the PCF celebrated the riots in Roubaix of June 1931 and wrote pamphlets on armed insurrection.74 The UdC called for a protest outside the Chamber of Deputies on 12 November 1931. The deputies – with the exception of the communists – refused to give the delegation a hearing. The communists complained about the brutality of the police that day, violently dispersing demonstrators on more than one occasion. In fact, 50 were arrested, eight of whom were identified as communists.75 Out of the numerous assembly points only two – the 13th arrondissement and Saint-Denis – drew any significant numbers. The police estimated 1,500 on the demonstration as a whole.76 A similar protest was organized for 12 January 1932. Le Cri reported that 20,000 illegally assembled outside the Palais Bourbon [the Bourbon Palace, the Chamber of Deputies] and that demonstrators had responded to the police baton charge with courage using doors and windows to defend themselves near the Invalides station. The police made 5,140 arrests, deporting foreign workers.77 Reflecting on 12 January, both Jacques Doriot and Benoît Frachon privately identified errors and lack of preparation. Doriot maintained that to ignore the 180-day limit on unemployment relief was mistaken and that secrecy had hampered mobilization. Frachon blamed this failure on a clandestine mentality, police infiltration and an insufficiently militant approach. Despite some truth in these deductions, none of the leaders dared confront

74

A. Neuberg, L’Insurrection Armée (Paris, 1931) and see Danielle Tartakowsky, Les Manifestations de Rue en France 1918–68 (Paris, 1998), pp. 219–25. 75 Amongst their number were two Algerians, a Czech, two Turks and three women. Most were aged between 18 and 34 and came from a wide geographical spread within the Seine Department. 76 AN F7 13565 Echo de Paris, 13 November 1931. According to this source, 16 were apprehended in the course of the demonstration and released after their identities were checked (and sent to the Ministry of the Interior). Police estimate for 12 November 1931 was 1,500. AN F7 13557 Ministry of Interior summary report on ‘the organisation of the unemployed’, 2 March 1933. AN F7 13565 report: ‘Manifestation des chômeurs à la Chambre des Deputés’, 12 November 1931. L’Humanité L’Humanité, 13 November 1931. AN F7 13565 meeting at the Gymnase, 12 November 1931. ‘En tête d’une immense armée des sans-travail’, Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 15 (December 1931): 1143; for fuller discussion see Matt Perry, ‘‘Unemployment Revolutionizes the Working Class’: Le Cri des Chômeurs, French Communists and the Birth of the Movement of the Unemployed in France 1931–2’, French History, 16/4 (2003): 441–68. 77 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 7 (February 1932); Journal de Saint-Denis, 16 January 1932. For discussion of the size of demonstrations see Antoine Prost, ‘Les manifestations du 12 février 1934 en provence’, Le Mouvement Social, 54 (1966): 7–28. See Appendix 5.

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the key problem: the Comintern’s sectarianism and flawed analysis of the period.78 The remedies were equally unsound. The PCF leadership resolved to step up its work amongst the unemployed and to raise awareness through increased coverage in L’Humanité.79 It was a formula of the same but more. The communist press campaigned hard to mobilize for 4 February 1932, the CGTU day of action against the bosses’ offensive.80 On the day there was a demonstration in Courbevoie at the Delage factory, 120 protested at an aircraft factory at SaintMaur and in Saint-Denis there were some protests outside factories.81 In the 13th arrondissement, police baton-charged several hundred protesters outside the Panhard factory leading to some arrests. Le Cri believed that the day of action achieved some sizeable demonstrations but also revealed several weaknesses. Its preparations had been too internally focused and insufficient efforts had been made to interest those jobless without benefits. Le Cri reasoned that their demands were too narrow and that they needed a greater orientation on town halls and labour exchanges. Clearly the unemployed movement was not meeting communist expectations. Reflecting on this disappointment, La Vie Ouvrière, the paper of the CGTU, criticized Le Cri for lagging behind the consciousness of the masses.82 These region-wide activities, centring on the nation’s capital, played a special function for the movement. They allowed the PCF and the CGTU leadership to shift the balance of the movement’s activities towards militant protest. Demonstrations in Paris were intended to capture national and international attention. They also provided a mechanism to calibrate and improve the relationship between communists and the Parisian unemployed movement.83 The journées drew the attention of the communist leadership to the question of the unemployed and the inadequacies of its work. The communist leadership hoped to use these days as an instrument to reshape the movement. Alongside their topdown character, the days of action exposed certain disagreements, confusions and differences of emphasis among communist chiefs. One such instance was just before the 12 January day of action. Marcel Gitton observed that unemployed recruitment to the CGTU was slow, that other trade unionists dismissed unemployed workers and that the police used them as spies or agent provocateurs. On the sticky contradiction of the ‘united front’ policy, Gitton talked of the need for a proper independence of the unemployed movement, whilst Stillin equated this with the abandonment of the unemployed to bourgeois leadership. Confusions also existed over the relationship 78 79

ADSSD 3 Mi 6 78 PCF BP minutes, 13 January 1932. For example, L’Humanité, 20 January 1931; ibid., 6 February 1931; ibid., 19 February

1931. 80

At Citröen, Renault, Saint-Denis, Puteaux-Suresnes, La Courneuve, the Panhard factory, Montreuil-Bagnolet, Alfortville and Bezons, Le Cri des Chômeurs, 7 (February 1932). 81 Ibid., 8, March 1932; L’Humanité, 6 February 1932. 82 La Vie Ouvrière, 5 February 1932. 83 Preparing for the demonstration on 12 January 1932 revealed that the influence of socialists on several local unemployment committees. They were able to undermine the mobilization. One example was that mayor Grisoni held sway on the Courbevoie committee. Only half of the committees (62 out of 120) were clearly under communist leadership.

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between immediate demands of the local committees and broader demands such as public works and unemployment insurance.84 Unemployed movements were volatile affairs and the Parisian movement’s ranks swelled rapidly in March 1932. At last a strong dynamic from below animated the movement. This month brought together both a highpoint of unemployment cycle and a dramatic surge in activitism because of the police killing of an unemployed demonstrator, Edmond Fritsch.85 On 17 March, the 11th arrondissement CdC delegated Fritsch to report on the soup kitchen in communist-run Ivry. On hearing of a demonstration against overtime at a building site in Vitry, Fritsch changed his plans and went along. At 4 pm, he found 200 unemployed gathered outside the site and that the workers had stopped work. A CGTU construction worker addressed the assembly. Soon after the police arrived and tried to move the demonstrators on. The ‘flics’ [slang for police] then attacked the demonstrators with batons; some police drawing revolvers and shooting. The workers replied with bricks and hurled the chant ‘murderers, murderers’. In the mêlée, the police shot Fritsch in the head and another demonstrator, Vincent Palaric, was wounded in the thigh. Le Cri’s special edition bore the headline ‘Standing up to murderers! An unemployed man is killed by brutes on government orders. Assemble for mass funeral’.86 Police reports presented the events and Fritsch himself in a different light.87 On 24 March, Fritsch’s funeral measured the anger of the unemployed against the power of the police. The Prefecture received reports by telephone every few minutes from different parts of the city. Just before 1 pm, 300 gathered at rue de Chanzy near Fritsch’s home in Cité Prost, in the south-east suburbs. Elsewhere one hundred or so stewards – including Lepreux of the CdC, Roufflanges, of the SRI, Venet of the PCF, Rigault, of the CGTU and future mayor of Vitry – milled around outside the headquarters of Fritsch’s union. At 1.20 pm, a group of unemployed from the 12th arrondissement, just physically across the Seine from Ivry moved down rue de Reuilly and rue Faidherbe. Meanwhile the hearse pulled up outside the mortuary and the cortege of 2,000 mourners went from Cité Prost to boulevard Voltaire. At 1.40 pm, 50 building workers at the porte d’Ivry left work and joined the ceremony. The group from the 12th arrondissement, singing the Internationale and shouting ‘murderers’ moved to rue Faidherbe being applauded by pedestrians. On to rue de Faubourg Saint-Antoine then rue Chaligny by 2 pm, they were 9,000 strong. Marchers carried flags, banners and wreaths.88 Various groups added to the throng as it wheeled its way towards central Paris, across the Seine towards place d’Italie. One banner read ‘Du travail et non du plomb’ [bread not lead]. On each occasion that the crowd spotted a group of police they chanted ‘murderers’, ‘police murderers’, ‘death 84

ADSSD 3 Mi 6 78 PCF BP minutes, 6 January 1932. Secours Rouge International [SRI, Red International Relief] organized the funeral and protest and details can be found in AN F7 13517 Secours Rouge International, 1932. This is a strange choice as the UdC was better placed to capitalize on the situation. 86 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 9 (20 March 1932). 87 APP GA F11 report: ‘On the subject of Fritsch, wounded 17 March 1932’, 18 March 1932; ibid., report, 23 March 1932. It differed on who initiated the violence and claimed that Fritsch had a poor reputation in his own neighbourhood. 88 58 flags, 65 banners and 45 wreaths dutifully enumerated by the police. 85

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to the flics’ or ‘death to Coulon’ [the officer who shot Fritsch]. By 3.10 pm the front of the march reached the place d’Italie where 1,000 were awaiting its arrival. Further on around 500 had also gathered on the route de Fontainebleau around the KremlinBicêtre cemetery. Just over an hour later the head of this slow-moving procession entered the cemetery joining with 2,000 already there. By 4.20 pm, the back of the march had passed through the porte d’Italie which marked the border between Paris and its suburbs. The vast gathering crowded into the cemetery struggling to hear or see what was going on. After graveside speeches from leading members of the communist movement, the ceremony was over by about 5.20 pm. A quarter of an hour later the cemetery was empty. According to Le Cri, 120,000 attended the funeral march, although the police put the figure at 15,000.89 Wood and building unions called 24 hour strikes for the funeral. Protests and messages of support were sent to Le Cri.90 On 8 April the trial of those arrested during the Vitry incidents took place. Several hundred demonstrated outside, protesting that whilst Fritsch’s murderers walked free, two demonstrators faced jail. The court became the scene of another clash between police and the unemployed.91 For Simone Weil and P. Busseuil, the killing of Fritsch, shot in the back of the head, showed that ‘le flic est roi’ [literally, ‘the cop is king’]. As the murderer would not be brought to justice, the event had provided the police with a licence to kill.92 They noted the differences in the newspaper accounts. The bourgeois press stated that the bricks started to fly at the police before the latter had drawn their revolvers; L’Humanité contradicted this. Le Petit Parisien even rejoiced in the attitude of the police towards the unemployed ‘mob’ [tourbe]. But on the mourners’ return from the cemetery, the police, who had not been visible before, showed themselves in heavy and provocative numbers ready to attack on the slightest excuse. Prefect of Police Jean Chiappe even had the gall to offer his hand to Fritsch’s widow who struck him 89 Contrasting figures and accounts of Fritsch funeral: Ibid., 10, April 1932; AN F7 13517 Secours Rouge International 1932; L’Emancipation, 26 March 1932; police put attendance at 15,000 in AN F7 13557 Ministry of Interior report on organization of the unemployed, 2 March 1933. The rest of the press quoted the police press release stating that 12,000–15,000 attended. A size that was ‘impressive … more than 20,000’ was quoted in Simone Weil and P. Busseuil, ‘Le flic roi: l’assassinat et l’enterrement de Fritsch’, La Révolution Prolétarienne, 126 (April 1932): 4. 90 Messages came from the 5th arrondissement and Villepinte. The Gonesse CdC held a large protest meeting on 20 March. At Bezons, 100 demonstrated against the police, simultaneously sending a large delegation to the funeral. At Argenteuil, a meeting of 600 elected their representatives to the commission paritaire but boycotted the meeting because of the presence of the Police Commissioner who ‘had Fritsch’s blood on his hands’. On 24 March, the Bobigny CdC organized a demonstration in honour of Fritsch and called for the arrest of ‘police murderers’. The Alfortville CdC made a 500 francs appeal publishing 20,000 leaflets and 300 posters to explain the murder. The 12th arrondissement CdC reported continuous activity since 20 March and an increase in Le Cri sales from 200 to 800. 91 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 11 (May 1932). One got a month and the other got three months in jail. For the ensuing story, Le Chômeur (Drancy), 4 (January 1933). 92 Weil and Busseuil, ‘Le flic roi’.

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in the face. L’Humanité pretended that the procession had sung the Internationale; when it had largely been intimidated into silence. Weil believed that whereas the bourgeoisie had feared a unanimous response from the working class after the death of Fritsch, the division and failings of the leadership of the labour movement was exposed.93 Whilst Coulon walked free, Levis and Primard, who had been part of the crowd alongside Fritsch, got three and one month sentences respectively. The aftermath of Fritsch’s death signalled the highpoint of the unemployed movement in Paris but such tumultuous high emotion was bound to be transitory. His death also highlighted the overwhelming degree of repression practised against the unemployed. The authorities surveilled, infiltrated and physically harassed the unemployed movement.94 From the very first, the authorities prohibited demonstrations of the unemployed, which were routinely baton charged or ‘dispersed’ in the neutral sounding code of the official reports. Providing the brutal detail, Le Cri read like a catalogue of repression. The paper recounted harassment of even the most basic activities of the movement such as distributing leaflets, signing up members or selling newspapers.95 This repression acted as one of the limits on unemployed activity, especially the kind of militant action that the communists favoured. Indeed, the mobilizations that followed Fritsch’s shooting embodied a paradox: they were the most sizeable and visible expression of unemployed anger to that date. The movement had a martyr who was to be commemorated for years to come.96 Yet the funeral march revealed the weaknesses of the movement. It marked its isolation from the bulk of the labour movement and showed that the authorities could successfully resort to armed repression, indicating the superiority of their forces and their capacity for violence. Those marching on the funeral cortege must have understood this. Despite the size of the mobilization, it laid bare the political isolation and vulnerability of the unemployed movement. 93 Ibid., The CGT did next to nothing and the CGTU’s call for a one-day general strike in building and woodworking was not followed. The demonstrators were mainly from the ranks of the unemployed. Their grief and hatred could be heard in their shouts of ‘police murderers’, ‘unemployment is not a crime’ and ‘the right to work has been replaced with the right to a bullet’. 94 AN F7 13533–64 for departmental and prefectoral reports on unemployment 1931–6 and AN F7 13124–13134 for surveillance of the communists. 95 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 9 (20 March 1932). 96 In 1933, thousands again mourned their comrade (2,500 according to police) with a demonstration from porte d’Italie to the Kremlin-Bicêtre cemetery, as well as a public meeting and protest at Noisy-le-Sec. On 18 March 1934, 2,800 participated in the demonstration from place d’Italie to the cemetery. Le Travailleur, 24 March 1934; APP GA F11 police report, 19 March 1934. Ibid, report, 17 March 1935, in 1935, according to the police, 1,800 took part; L’Humanité, 18 March 1935, claimed 8,000 were present. APP GA F11 police report, 22 March 1936, in 1936, Marcel Rigault, Marcel Capron (deputy and mayor of Alfortville), Marcel Peyrat, general secretary of the UdC, Eugène Hénaff of the CGT and PCF CC, Just of the SFIO and Becker, head of the woodworkers’ union, attended; ibid., police report, 19 March 1938, in 1938, a delegation of 25 from the UdC and woodworkers’ union placed a wreath at his grave.

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After Spring 1932: the Long Malaise Official unemployment figures had reached a high in March 1932 but declined for the next three months.97 These fluctuations in unemployment decided the fate of the committees.98 The summer months of 1932, as in 1931, saw a recovery in the labour market and a lull in unemployed activity. The combination of pre-electoral activity, the PCF’s electoral disaster and the fall in unemployment halted the Parisian movement.99 With a network of offices in the Paris region, its activities declined to a slower routine of advice sessions, meetings of idle talk about abstract demands and committee business.100 The unemployed movement was adapting to a situation where the energy of unemployed protest was spent. In September, it gave contact addresses for only 38 committees and did not advertise Le Cri, suggesting strongly that it had ceased regular publication.101 Le Cri was a considerable financial drain on the CGTU. Despite the union’s steadily declining membership, it had to subsidize the Parisian unemployed movement heavily.102 The combined costs of the election campaign and the paper probably accounted for the latter’s disappearance. This was a common feature of unemployed newspapers.103 97

303,218 in March and 232,371 in June 1932, Sauvy, Histoire Economique de la France entre les Deux Guerres, vol.2, p. 555. 98 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 11 (May 1932). 99 Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes Français 1920–70 (Paris 1985), pp. 24–5. Their seats fell from 14 to 12 deputies and their vote fell by a quarter from 11.3 per cent to 8.4 per cent. 100 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. 101 L’Union des Comité des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales du Chômeur (Paris, 1932). A report noted that after the Lille to Paris hunger march there was a plan to relaunch Le Cri as a bi-monthly with a print run of 19,000 but that it did not appear regularly thereafter, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. A (dubiously numbered) copy exists for 1937, Le Cri des Chômeurs, 72 (1937). 102 By June 1931, the CGTU had already given 3,000 francs. In December 1931 alone union donations amounted to 1,185 francs. Le Cri des Chômeurs, 6 (January 1932). In the first months of 1931 the Parisian movement operated at a small surplus (including subsidies) with a monthly expenditure between 9,825 francs and 2,618 francs. Ibid., 2 (June 1931). But from May to October 1931, Le Cri accumulated debts of 2,274 francs and this would partly explain, alongside the seasonal labour market recovery, why there was no Le Cri after the July edition until the November one. AN F7 13565 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 4 (November 1931). In December 1931, expenditure had leapt to 16,530 francs and in May 1932 the paper talked of spending 20,000 francs a month. Le Cri des Chômeurs, 11 (May 1932); AN F7 13557 Seine Prefectoral notes on unemployment 1933, 8 March 1933. Le Cri owed the regional CGTU 32,000 francs in early 1933. 103 AN F7 13549 L’Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Lyonnaise, Internal Information Bulletin, 2 (c. April 1932). The Lyons paper had a print run of 6,000 and a sale of 3,630, which ‘threatened seriously to damage the movement financially in the long-run’. AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Lille) to the Director of General Security, 5 July 1932. La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord and Pas-de-Calais) also caused tremendous financial difficulties with the printers and the unemployed failed to take it seriously and use it as a tool to build

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The movement had come to an impasse and remained silent until a hunger march for the Paris region on 9 December 1932. Le Chômeur, a non-partisan paper of the unemployed of Drancy, provided an interesting postscript to Le Cri.104 At its launch meeting of 1 July 1932, the prevailing mood was that internal disputes and splits had squandered the energy to fight unemployment.105 The new committee included a communist, an anarchist, and a socialist. It affiliated to the UdC but stressed its political autonomy. In September, it reflected on the absence of mass demonstrations and the movement’s weakness as well as doubting the prospects of the Paris hunger march.106 The lull in unemployed activity after the spring of 1932 was occasionally interrupted.107 On 30 June 1932, the unemployed of Bagnolet attempted to demonstrate after a meeting on the hill opposite the mayor’s offices. The police ordered the 250 would-be demonstrators to disperse. In response, they threw rocks at the police one of whom was hospitalized. Another exception to the pervasive passivity was the CdC of the 13th arrondissement, which was ‘by far the most active in the Paris region’ and the ‘quickest to apply the directives’ of the UdC. Agitating over the provision of milk and coal or disqualifications, it mobilized between 150 and 500 (according to police figures) for successive street demonstrations on 26 and 29 October 1932, 14 January, 11 and 18 March 1933. Police attributed this to the energy, popularity and charisma of Lucien Monjauvis, nicknamed ‘Montgeau’.108 The First Parisian ‘Hunger March’, 9 December 1932 The approach of the UdC leadership, whether sanctioned by the PCF or not, gradually altered after the Fritsch funeral with the adoption of less confrontational tactics and negotiation with the authorities. In late 1932, the UdC planned a hunger march emulating those in Britain, Germany and the US.109 Aware of the march three weeks in advance, the Ministry of the Interior expressly asked the Prefecture of Police to be kept up to date with developments. In the last week of November, Zachs, Mercier and Franson of the UdC took the unprecedented step of meeting with Paul Guichard, the movement. La Voix des Chômeurs: Organe du Comité des Chômeurs de Limoges, 4 (July 1932). The Limoges paper had to raise its price in July 1932 due to its deficit. 104 Frustrations with the communist-led movement and sectarian bickering led to its establishment. 105 Le Chômeur (Drancy), 1 (August 1932). The paper’s contributors were Barillot, Samuel Vergine, Dr Thulié, Marcel Giguel, Thouron, Dorvidal, Maurice Berbez, Zaccarelli and René Motelet. 106 Ibid., 2 (September 1932). 107 The collapses of CdCs when leading activists get work and the demobilizing effects of government concessions, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. 108 According to the communists between 500 and 3,500 attended these demonstrations, L’Humanité, 27 October 1932; ibid., 30 October 1932; ibid., 12 March 1933; ibid., 19 March 1933; APP GA M6 Lucien Monjauvis file: police report, 19 April 1933. 109 Indeed, the NUWM’s fourth hunger march had taken place in October and early November.

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the director general of the Parisian municipal police, to negotiate permission for the route and activity for the hunger march.110 The UdC leaders had abandoned the idea of a demonstration outside the Chamber of Deputies (as had happened on 12 November 1931 and 12 January 1932). Instead a delegation would hand over their demands to the Chamber and a demonstration would take place elsewhere. After some bargaining, this was to take place at porte de Soissons, avenue du Président Wilson. They would be allowed to assemble, make public speeches but would not be allowed to form a procession. Joseph Zachs insisted that the police should not interfere with those postering or leafleting at labour exchanges. The police chief conceded on this point, though he stipulated that there were to be no street meetings at these events. As the day approached, police intelligence from Seine-et-Oise suggested that three columns of unemployed would move on the porte de Paris.111 All would converge on Bezons and then on to the porte de Paris. According to the Special Commissioner for Versailles, 1,200 would answer the call from his sector (roughly equivalent to the number in the local CdCs). The Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) expected an additional 800 from both Corbeil and Pontoise.112 His informant had told him that the communist mayor of Bezons expected to march on central Paris rather than Saint-Denis as arranged. In the communist cells, rumours were that the Saint-Denis assembly point was a diversionary tactic to fool the police.113 Clearly the abandonment of demonstrating outside the Chamber had caused confusion and disagreement within the PCF. Whilst the PCF Central Committee had strongly advocated the Christmas nightclub clashes, the leaders of the unemployed movement had opposed these and were to criticize the same tactic at their conference in March 1933. Police reports on the Communist Party written as late as August 1934 noted the tension between the CC and the ECCI on the one hand and sections of the Parisian region who were ‘legalist’ in their orientation.114 On the day itself, groups of demonstrators made their way to two suburban assembly points: in the north at avenue du Président Wilson in Saint-Denis and the other in the south in Ivry. Some unemployed such as those from Arnouville-lesGonesses started their trek as early as 9.30 am on the cold winter morning. Between 2 pm and 3 pm, groups of unemployed arrived at their destinations. According to the Saint-Denis communist newspaper L’Emancipation, 20,000 had descended on 110

APP BA1868 Prefect of Police to Minister of the Interior, 29 November 1932. Opening the meeting Guichard relayed Camille Chautemps’s concern for the unemployed and reminded the delegation of the Minister’s action to improve heating allowances for the unemployed. He then stated that the purpose of the meeting was simply to allow the unemployed the right to express their views on 9 December, without constituting a challenge to public order. 111 The first from Mantes, via Poissy, Sartouville, Houilles; the second from Montesson via Carrières-sur-Seine; and third, from Sannois, Corneilles-en-Parisis and Argenteuil. 112 Ibid., Prefect (Seine-et Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 1 December 1932. 113 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Versailles) report on 9 December march, 30 November 1932. 114 That is less willing to clash with the authorities on illegal street demonstrations as the Comintern demanded APP BA1916 report: ‘Organisation de la Région Parisienne du Parti Communiste’, August 1934; OSA f.495 op.55 d.27 l.70 Vassart’s report, 14 May 1933.

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the northerly venue with more than 5,000 from Saint-Denis alone. From avenue du Président Wilson, at 3.30 pm, they marched to the gas works where speakers addressed the crowd. Amongst the speakers were Henri Raynaud, the secretary of the regional CGTU, Jean-Pierre Timbaud of the metalworker’s union, Eugène Hénaff, of the bricklayers and Paul Hog of the Committee for the Struggle against War. The meetings concluded at around 5 pm.115 Not everyone agreed with the upbeat assessment of the day in L’Emancipation or L’Humanité, whilst the latter put the overall turnout at 30,000, the police revised that down to 10,000 and the Journal de Saint-Denis gloated that it was a ‘pitiable failure’.116 Paris had experienced its first hunger march [‘la marche sur Paris’ or ‘la marche de la faim’]. This tactic was now inscribed into the thinking of the leadership and repeated in Paris most famously in late 1933 as well as on 12 January 1935. In addition, plans for further hunger marches were made in late 1934 and late 1935 but were abandoned. Borrowed from foreign unemployed movements, the hunger march tactic was also adopted in other parts of France. The march of 9 December 1932 signalled the UdC’s retreat from the confrontational tactics of the ‘class against class’ perspective. Given the weakness of the movement, these tactics had led to intensified surveillance and successful repression in the shape of mass arrests and baton charges.117 In these circumstances, such a policy of confrontation was hard to sustain. On the insistence of the party and against the wishes of the leadership of the UdC, the unemployed demonstrated again on the night of Christmas eve outside the fashionable nightclubs of Monmartre. Joseph Zachs claimed that 2,000 turned out, whilst the police put the figure at 400. Like the previous occasion, the police were able to make 24 arrests.118 Despite the greater realism reflected in the negotiations with the police over 9 December 1932, the PCF leadership had therefore not totally abandoned its injunctions to conquer the streets. The hunger march of 9 December 1932 failed to reverse the stagnation of the Parisian movement. As 1933 began, bitter divisions broke out within the UdC. The schism on the Pierrefitte CdC between communist and non-communist was so serious that Jacques Doriot had to arbitrate. To call on Doriot, a member of the PCF Central Committee and the mayor of Saint-Denis, was to seek the highest moral authority within the movement. Three members of the committee who had been excluded wrote to Doriot stating that they would create a new CdC independent of the PCF if the situation was not resolved to their satisfaction.119 That dissident voices should be attracted to Doriot was also a sign of the tensions on the CC and between different districts within the Paris region. At the end of January, discord between the base and the leadership of the UdC surfaced once again.120 Partly this was a 115

L’Emancipation, 10 December 1932. AN F7 13557 police report, 3 January 1933; Journal de Saint-Denis, 10 December 1932; Le Chômeur, 4 (January 1933). Le Chômeur, the independent paper of the movement of the unemployed of Drancy, agreed with the communist figures. 117 On 12 January 1932, for example, at the illegal demonstration outside the Chamber of Deputies 5,104 had been arrested from a total number the police estimated at 6,000. 118 AN F7 13557 police report: ‘The organisation of the Unemployed’, 2 March 1933. 119 AN F7 13557 police report, 3 January 1933. 120 Ibid., police report, 27 January 1933. 116

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product of the low ebb of unemployed protest. All that the CdCs were able to muster were small delegations to councils asking for the distribution of goods in kind.121 At a north sector UdC meeting in February, delegates criticized the leadership for incompetence and authoritarian practices. They had given out the wrong details in eviction cases and their ‘no philanthropy’ slogan was seen as manifest hypocrisy when they too were distributing food to the unemployed. Most seriously, rank-andfile critics accused the leadership of manoeuvring that set the French and foreign workers against one another.122 Combined with this dissatisfaction, the CdCs were under pressure because they owed a heavy debt of 32,000 francs to the regional CGTU.123 The UdC congress of March 1933 offered no effective solutions. Instead their formula of closer cooperation between the UdC and the PCF/CGTU could only exacerbate the situation.124 CdCs continued to meet though less frequently, only rarely attracting respectable numbers.125 No significant protest resulted. The Fourth Congress of the Union des Chômeurs, 2–4 March 1933 The fourth congress of the UdC took place on 2 to 4 March 1933. L’Humanité appealed to provincial unemployed movements to send delegates.126 This call solicited only nine such representatives, reflecting both the poor state of the unemployed movements nationwide and the fact that the Parisian conference was an unsatisfactory substitute for a national one. At the time of the conference, the Parisian movement counted 90 CdCs and 20,000 members.127 Its bureau, the permanent leadership of the movement, consisted of Pierre Mercier, general secretary, Joseph Zachs, secretary of the commission of the unemployed youth, Yves Malo, a PCF delegate, Jeanne Buland, secretary of the women’s commission, Jean Pena, Djilali Chabila and Paul Hog.128 The conference opened to 410 delegates with Mercier giving an account of the previous year’s activities. Some protests, he noted, had forced councils to open unemployment funds but results were uneven. He considered the hunger march on Paris of 9 December 1932 a success but the events of the night of 24–25 December less so (Zachs reiterated this contrast). Mercier reported both an increase in the numbers of committees and overall membership. At the time of the previous year’s conference 120 CdCs organized 30,000 unemployed, now 140 CdCs had 55,000 121

Ibid., police report, 11 February 1933. AN F7 13557 police report, 21 February 1933. The reference to French and foreign divisions may be a reference to the creation of special organizations and language classes for foreign workers and unemployed. The UdC set up a Comité de Défense des Travailleurs Étrangers, see ibid., police report, 16 March 1933; ibid., February 1933. 123 Ibid., police report, 8 March 1933. 124 Ibid., police report: ‘The organisation of the Unemployed’, 2 March 1933. 125 Such as 350 in Malakoff and 200 in Bagnolet in February. 126 L’Humanité, 26 February 1933. 127 Ibid., 3 March 1933. We known that of the nine provincial delegates Saint-Quentin, Sotteville and Denain were represented. 128 The bureau had been called the executive committee. 122

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members (nearly three times the police estimate).129 Zachs’s speech implicitly confirmed the greater moderation and the change of emphasis of the movement. Symptomatically of this, he called on all CdCs to establish commissions juridiques [legal commissions] for increased advice work. From Seine-et-Oise, Franson reported the spectacular growth in the number of CdCs, which had doubled in number since May 1932.130 Despite upbeat reports from the bureau members, Mercier and Zachs, the conference did air some of the difficulties of the movement. A delegate from SaintQuentin (Aisne) called for better links between Paris and the provincial movements. A socialist delegate complained of repeated sectarianism towards his party. The attacks must stop, he objected, because the CGT and the SFIO militants were not allies of the bourgeoisie. The congress did little to address these very real weaknesses of the movement. There was no call for the establishment of a national movement and Mercier answered the charge of sectarianism with the stultified formulae of the Third Period. The Day of Action at the Mairies, 15 April 1933 Central efforts to revive the movement were a failure. Even the commemoration of Fritsch’s death engendered internal recriminations. Delegates at the URC blamed the officers for the poor mobilization.131 The journée of demonstrations outside the mairies of 15 April 1933 was even worse. With unemployment losing its standing in the political and press agenda, the day of action was intended to protest against the closure of soup kitchens, forced work, evictions, cuts in benefit and disqualifications. Only seven demonstrations took place. None of them, according to police, were larger than 200.132 More optimistically, L’Humanité reported demonstrations in 18th, 13th, Alfortville, Juvisy and ‘numerous others’. For his troubles, Lucien Monjauvis was arrested in the 13th arrondissement. The police were determined to crack down on the agitation in that area.133 In Saint-Denis, 2,500 attended a meeting in the Municipal Theatre with Marcel Marschall the assistant mayor and Zachs speaking. An attempt to demonstrate at the end of the meeting only involved brief pushing and shoving with the police. The unemployed then went to a meeting with the striking Citroën workers. In the 18th arrondissement, 230 gathered outside the mayor’s offices presenting their demands via a delegation. Likewise in Alfortville, 500 demonstrated through the streets to the mayor’s offices, handing a list of demands which Marcel Capron, the communist deputy-mayor, accepted. 129

Shortly afterwards, Vassart told the Comintern that there were 230 CdCs of which 150 were in the Parisian region, OSA f.495 op.55 d.27 l.69 Vassart’s report 14 May 1933. 130 L’Humanité, 5 March 1933. From 27 CdCs in May 1932 to 63 then. 131 As a ‘half-failure’ after 1,400 attended. AN F7 13557 Ministry of the Interior report, 27 March 1933. 132 Ibid., police report, 15 April 1933. Demonstration and size: in the 13th arrondissement: 150, in the 14th: 20, in the 15th: 100, in the 17th: 50, in Bagnolet: 30, in Malakoff: 80, in Romainville: 200, in Saint-Denis: 200. 133 L’Humanité, 16 April 1933.

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By the summer, membership of the UdC had been in decline for months. Many local CdCs were passive, some had ceased to function altogether.134 Yet internal strife persisted. In the month before the Lille to Paris hunger march, whilst the CdC secretaries followed PCF directives, members grumbled about the bureaucratic methods of the leadership, especially Mercier and Zachs. This antagonism became so great that by October the rank and file were pushing for the replacement of Mercier, Zachs and Francon.135 Conclusion According to Danielle Tartakowsky, between August 1931 and the May elections of the next year, 102 of 181 demonstrations of interest groups were of the unemployed.136 The surge of unemployed activity that peaked in spring 1932 abated shortly afterwards. It is ironic that the greatest day of the Parisian unemployed movement should be provided by the march of the northerners on 2 December 1933. This was emblematic of some of the problems of the movement in Paris. This movement was unable to provide a coherent national leadership for the unemployed across France. Yet its limitations should not obscure its achievements. It managed to establish organizations which retained sizeable if passive membership. In the main this was achieved despite the failure of its days of action through less visible work representing and advising the jobless. The economic crisis and organizations to combat it, in particular, the CdCs and unions, allowed greater implantation for the PCF in Paris during the 1930s.137 High unemployment facilitated local Communist Party growth.138 Unemployment also became a principal theme of municipal communism which was so important to the implantation of the PCF in the region. The fruits of the Parisian movement were therefore harvested in the growth in party and union membership and in the municipal elections of May 1935.

134

AN F7 13557 police report, 20 July 1933. Ibid., police report, 10 October 1933. 136 Economic interest groups, corporations and trade unions as opposed to political demonstrations, Tartakowsky, Les Manifestations de Rue en France 1918-68, p. 249. 137 Girault, ‘L’implantation du Parti Communiste dans la région parisienne’, p. 70. 138 For example in the 13e arrondissement, Plagnard, ‘L’implantation du PCF dans le 13e arrondissement de Paris’, p. 138. 135

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Chapter 4

Early Regional Unemployed Movements, 1931–33 As unemployment intensified during the winter of 1931–32, a number of regional unemployed movements developed on the Parisian model. Unemployed newspapers remain from those centred on Saint-Etienne, Rouen, Valence, Limoges and Lille. The five cities (Paris, Lyons, Limoges, Saint-Etienne and Lille) of the six with the highest numbers out of work all produced unemployed newspapers by early 1932.1 Lille may have been fifth in terms of the numbers unemployed but it acted as the regional focus for the Nord department which had over twice as many unemployed than any other provincial department. Unsurprisingly, Limoges (Haute-Vienne), which had higher unemployment than anywhere other than Paris and Lyons, produced an unemployed movement. In addition, Valence (Drôme) and Rouen (Seine-Inférieure) also produced unemployed newspapers. They all adopted similar methods to those pioneered in Paris. The local CGTU launched a central co-ordinating body as well as a newspaper in a regional capital and from there created a number of satellite committees. These local committees engaged in local activity and contributed to regional congresses, the regional newspaper and national or regional days of action. Paris and the Failure to Create a National Unemployed Movement By March 1932, the unemployed movement had expanded from its Parisian base to various parts of the hexagon. Admittedly with typical hyperbole, Le Cri declared ‘everywhere in France the unemployed organize themselves and struggle’. The provincial reports in Le Cri did suggest that the strategy of launching a national movement from a Parisian base had met some tentative success.2 The April edition proclaimed the launch of three unemployed newspapers – La Voix des Chômeurs (Lille, Nord and Pas-de-Calais), Le Cri des Chômeurs (Lyons region), Le SansTravail (Valence).3 In May, Le Cri believed ‘throughout the country, the unemployed struggle sharpens’ with reports of protests in March and April from Tourcoing, 1 AN F7 13550 statistics on unemployment funds, 30 January 1932. Note that all figures are for those registered at unemployment funds. The exception was Marseilles. 2 Valence, Saint-Nazaire, Limoges, Dunkirk, Montereau, Tours, Le Mans, Angers, Toulouse, Oyonnax, Saint-Claude, Vierzon, Le Puy, Thiers, Clermont-Ferrand, Tourcoing, Dole, Gard and Le Havre. 3 Le Cri des Chômeurs, 10 (April 1932). At least three other papers had also appeared: La Voix des Chômeurs, Saint-Etienne; La Voix des Chômeurs, Limoges; and La Lutte des Chômeurs, Rouen.

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Auberchicourt, Sin-le-Noble and Halluin (Nord), Pont l’Abbé (Finistère), SaintEtienne (Loire) and Le Havre (Seine-Inférieure). These promising beginnings did not materialize into a national movement. La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), La Lutte des Chômeurs (Rouen), Le Sans-Travail (Valence) seem to have disappeared in the spring of 1932. Le Cri des Chômeurs (Lyons) only managed two issues in the months May to September. Only La Voix des Chômeurs (Limoges) maintained, with one exception, a monthly edition from March to July. That paper believed that the unemployed were in part responsible for the electoral disaster. It argued that the ‘promises from gentlemen’ seduced the unemployed and that whilst the 180-day limit had been abolished, this was in large part due to the agitation of the unemployed in the Paris region. It optimistically predicted that these illusions were starting to disappear.4 By May 1932, communist deflation was nationwide. Prefectoral reports repeatedly spoke of ‘very marked decline’, ‘little activity’, ‘skeletal organization’, incapacity to wage ‘any sustained or energetic revolutionary action’ and the like. Only in exceptional areas like the mining regions of Pas-de-Calais and Nord was the picture of sulky passivity broken. Thus the PCF was not in a position to launch a mass movement of any description. Only a handful of reports mentioned activity amongst the unemployed. In Bordeaux, a communist-led CdC existed that attempted to demonstrate outside the Hôtel de Ville.5 But even here unemployment had favoured the port-side employers and not the communists as the former were able to use unemployment to defeat the CGTU dockers in a strike over wage reductions in April 1932. Elsewhere, in Roeux (Pas-de-Calais) a communist cell was being formed to direct the activity of the unemployed but the police expected little to come of it. On the PCF political bureau in July 1932, Sémard made a near terminal prognosis of the movement: many unemployed had become declassed and stoically accustomed to their fate. As for the CdCs, ‘Our movement is very small and we no longer take any action for the demands of the unemployed, above all immediate demands, which on the most part are ignored or abandoned by our cadres’. The bureau political, he believed, was incapable of resolving this and a report was being prepared.6 Saint-Etienne, 1931–32 Saint-Etienne had long been a centre of heavy industry with the classic combination of coal and iron to resource its industrial revolution of textiles and metalworking. The Loire coal region, though concentrated in a thin strip only 30 km long was responsible for seven per cent of France’s coal output.7 The coal was expensive to extract. Though it had expanded production during the war, the coalfield and its population stagnated in peacetime. From 1931 onwards, the economic depression compounded this situation. In September 1932, 4,000 unemployed from Saint4

La Voix des Chômeurs, Organe du Comité des Chômeurs de Limoges, 4 (July 1932). AN F7 13098 Special Commissioner (Bordeaux) report, 10 June 1932. 6 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 78 PCF BP, 27 July 1932. 7 Philippe Pinchmel, France: a Geographical Survey (London, 1969) p. 199. In figures for 1929. 5

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Etienne were inscribed at the Departmental Office of the Loire. Beyond the regional capital, the numbers on unemployment relief was over a hundred in five towns.8 On the journée of 25 February 1931, which was a fiasco elsewhere apart from the Nord, 600 attended a meeting in Saint-Etienne. The police prevented 150 from marching and arrested Thibaud and Ponsard for speaking at the gates of the Ravat works. In nearby La Ricamarie, Besset and Greet led a demonstration of 200 outside the Hôtel de Ville and the two got into the council chamber before the police intervened and dispersed the protestors.9 Like other movements of the unemployed, that of Saint-Etienne was plagued by police informants.10 Unemployment became more serious in the course of the year. On 31 July 1931, a CGTU delegation lodged a list of unemployed demands with the council. Two weeks later the union put up a poster entitled ‘an insult to the unemployed’, condemning the council and Durafour, the mayor.11 Their expenditure on the public works, school meals for the children of the unemployed, the poor law, soup kitchens, left municipal finances in a parlous state. The mayor appealed to the Prime Minister for help, in particular public works, as the Stéphanois region was ‘one of the worst affected by the crisis’.12 The Comité Central des Chômeurs de Saint-Etienne et des Environs [Central Committee of the Unemployed of Saint-Etienne and District, CCdC(StE)] was formed in August 1931 after several unsuccessful efforts to develop an unemployed movement in the region. On 23 December 1931, 43 delegates founded the CCdC. This organization edited La Voix des Chômeurs, which was first published on 11 January 1932.13 It sold a total of 1,500 membership cards by January 1932.14 The Central Committee 8 In Chambon (589), Firminy (182), La Ricamarie (117), Roanne (115) and Rive-deGier (101), Duperrey, Le Chômage, p. 181. 9 AN F7 13532 report on 25 February 1931 day of action. 10 After a tip-off, a police informant was exposed in a meeting, AN F7 13547 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 22 July 1932; a meeting was restricted to members of the group but even this failed to prevent the police ascertaining what happened, ibid., Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 2 December 1932. 11 The local clerical press defended the record of the council that had, according to the Mémorial de la Loire, spent 2.5 million francs on the unemployed in 1931 and were on course to spend 8 million francs in 1932. Mémorial de la Loire, 1 August 1932. 12 Archives Municipal de la Ville de Saint-Etienne (AMSE) mayor to the President of the Council, 28 October 1931. 13 Delegates were from Saint-Etienne, Terrenoire, Rive-de-Gier, Saint-Chamond, La Ricamarie, Saint-Genest-Lerpt, Saint-Just, Saint-Rambert, Andrézieux and Firminy. By that time committees had been established in Chambon-Feugerolles, Terrenoire, Rive-deGier, Saint-Chamond, La Ricamarie, Saint-Genest-Lerpt, Saint-Just, Saint-Rambert and Andrezieux. The following issues exist: La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), 1 (11 January 1932); 2 (30 January 1932); 3 (March 1932); 4 (March 1932). The contributors to the paper were Gaillard (secretary of the CCdC), Thibaud, Fabry, Claudius Delorme (newspaper’s manager), Royon, Binet (Villars CdC), Ramier, Poirieux (Roanne CdC), Letang, Bouvier, Verdier (Le Chambon), Gimel, Verre, Gobet and Dinofalis. 14 Out of 300 unemployed in Chambon-Feugerolles. Ibid., 1 (11 January 1932). Of the 20 CdCs that sent in reports to the paper, eight were only in one issue, whilst Rive-de-Gier and

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of the Unemployed established a network of committees across the industrial basin. These varied in size and activity. La Ricamarie and Chambon-Feugerolles CdCs claimed 98 and 160 members respectively. As was the case elsewhere in France, some CdCs had sharp disputes with SFIO councils. La Voix and the CdCs trained their propaganda on the socialist mayors such as Brioude of Firminy, Pons of La Ricamarie and L’Horme of Riche.15 Dr Musy, mayor of Saint-Rambert-sur-Loire refused to see the CdC, which he claimed lived off the backs of the unemployed.16 La Voix blacklisted Chambon-Feugerolles, Fraisses and Bourg-Argental councils for refusing the CdCs meeting rooms. Pétrus Faure, the deputy and mayor of ChambonFeugerolles, also came in for particular criticism.17 The Central Committee of the Unemployed also faced rival organizations. The councils of Saint-Chamond, Terrenoire, Fraisses, Firminy, La Ricamarie and Le Chambon set up assistance committees for the unemployed. The Government encouraged such initiatives, which were composed, by as La Voix observed, of ‘bosses and infantry captains’ who ‘continuously solicit shopkeepers making them pay for the crisis they are not responsible for’. In the mining commune of Roche-laMolière, the CCdC had to fight the PUP for the sympathies of the unemployed. The ‘pupiste’ Leureux had set up a CdC and tried to prevent its affiliation to the CCdC. The CCdC then organized a meeting in the village to win the local unemployed over. With Delorme from the CCdC in the chair, only 24 out of 150 voted to stay with Leureux and against affiliation.18 In Unieux, as well, an independent committee beyond the influence of the CCdC was established. By August 1932, the Central Committee of the Unemployed had competition in Saint-Etienne itself in the shape of the Groupement de Défense du Travailleur Français [Defence Group of the French Worker], which combined anti-communism and xenophobia.19 The CCdC viewed these other committees as an attempt to undermine its legitimacy and distract the unemployed from a militant campaign for their rights. La Voix contrasted its stance to the paternalism and questionable generosity of the council-backed efforts. They decried, for example, the distribution of rotten herrings to the unemployed in Chambon-Feugerolles.20 Having said this, the CdCs accepted the self-help ethos. In La Ricamarie, the committee organized a kids’ party for Christmas. The CCdC arranged a party on 2 January that attracted 4,000 people in the Saint-Etienne Bourse du Travail and distributed several thousand francs worth of toys to children of the unemployed.21 It also launched a co-operative to buy in bulk in order to reduce prices for the unemployed. The CCdC was also involved in agitation. It built for the 4 February Firminy were in all four editions. 15 AN F7 13547 Special Inspector to Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne), 16 January 1932. 16 La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), 1 (11 January 1932). 17 Faure was chair of the Parliamentary Group for the Defence of the Unemployed, and proposed bills on a national unemployment fund. 18 Ibid., 2 (30 January 1932). 19 AN F7 13547 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Prefect (Loire), 26 August 1932; La Tribune, 23 August 1932. 20 La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), 1 (11 January 1932). 21 Ibid.

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‘day of action against the bosses’ offensive’ of the ‘unemployed and all workers’, while in Roanne, 800 demonstrated outside the Hôtel de Ville. On 15 January, the CCdC hosted 500 delegates at its second congress, 140 of whom were from outside Saint-Etienne. Marcel Thibaud, as the secretary of the regional CGTU, opened the meeting and made the keynote speech. Binet from La Ricamarie, the chair of the congress, underlined its significance and the possibility of influencing both the authorities and the broader population. After these speakers, at 11.10 am, 400 unemployed demonstrated through the streets of Saint-Etienne, depositing lists of demands at the mayor’s offices and the Prefecture. With placards and a red flag, the march followed the ‘habitual route’. Demonstrators were an interesting mix ‘of whom about 50 were foreign elements, many young people, some young women, who marched slowly, under the eyes of the curious masses on the road sides’.22 After the congress, the council notified the CCdC that the pay rates on work relief were to be improved and that two sites of municipal works would employ unemployed women. This, La Voix argued, was due to their action. By spring, the Central Committee of the Unemployed asserted that its activities had wrung other concessions as well: free showers, soup kitchens and, in some places, the establishment of unemployment funds. Citing the example of La Roche, they had won free school meals and a heating allowance for the unemployed. The Central Committee of the Unemployed sustained a remarkable loyalty from hundreds of unemployed with demonstrations and public meetings throughout 1932.23 Saint-Etienne was the heart of the movement but a vibrancy existed in La Ricamarie, Saint-Chamond and Roanne. In late September 1932, Marcel Thibaud headed a delegation from Saint-Etienne to the Minister of Labour with Vernay, the Radical deputy of Saint-Etienne, and Longueau, the PCF deputy in attendance.24 Six hundred attended the report back meeting on 5 October. Yet the largest meeting was when the PCF deputy Monjauvais came to address the CCdC on 19 November with 1,000 present.25

22 AMSE Central Commissioner to mayor, 15 January 1932. Also mentioned at the conference were the secretary Tremeaux (Chambon-Feugerolles), assistants Guillon (SaintChambon), Roudil (Saint-Etienne), Mme Granjon (Saint-Etienne); AN F7 13547 Special Inspector of Police to Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne), 16 January 1932; ibid., Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 15 January, the bureau of the Central Committee was Thibaud, Gaillard, Royon, Delorme and Rivel. 23 Police figures for demonstrations in the region (Saint-Etienne unless stated): 400 on 15 January 1932; 200 (at Roanne) on 4 February 1932; 150–200 (at Saint-Chamond) on 19 March 1932; 80 on 2 April 1932; 300–400 on 24 April 1932; 500 on 1 August 1932; 200 on 4 August 1932; 400–500 on 19 October 1932; 1,000 on 19 November 1932. 24 AN F7 13547 Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 23 September 1932; ibid., Minister of the Interior to Minister of Labour, 3 October 1932; ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 8 October 1932. 25 Ibid., Police Commissioner (third arrondissement) to Central Commissioner, 20 November 1932.

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By April 1932, the Central Committee of the Unemployed claimed 4,000 members regionally.26 The organization remained one of the most significant regional bases of the unemployed movement. In April 1935, the CGTU claimed (a probably inflated) 10,000 members were in the unemployed movement of the Loire with 14 committees making it the third largest departmental unemployed movement after the Paris and Nord regions.27 From the first, the regional CGTU leader Marcel Thibaud was closely associated with the venture and became its secretary and leading figure. A plausible reason for its efficacy was its successful blend of militancy and self-help. The committees secured several municipal concessions in Saint-Etienne: increases in payment for relief work, soup kitchens, benefits for Sundays and holidays, benefit increases and foiled disqualifications.28 On 21 October 1933, the Comité Central des Chômeurs de Saint-Etienne along with the CGTU and the PCF had organized a protest meeting against the visit of the President of the Republic. A police witness to the meeting noted that the committee members expected to be arrested after the meeting.29 As the meeting ended nearly 1,000 gardes mobiles drew revolvers and batons and charged the crowd. Thirty three protesters were arrested and were then brutalized in police custody. Thibaud nearly lost his life. Four were sentenced to between ten and 20 days in prison. At the following meeting, two weeks later, with 150 present, Garnier made a fiery speech in response to the events of 21 October. The police recorded it thus: He relates the events of 21 October and pronounces a violent indictment of the police, and in particular against Mr Alteirac, the Chief of Security. He asks the unemployed to be patient because the hour of revenge is near (sic). … The hour is near when capitalism, the bourgeoisie, and the police will sink before the revolutionary wave (sic). … He accused certain councillors of having ‘been fiddling’ on occasion and having stuffed cash into their pockets. He apologized for Thibaud’s absence, ‘assassinated’ by the police. The audience cries: ‘Long live Thibaud!’30

Repression failed to stall the Central Committee of the Unemployed, which planned demonstrations for 15 November and 8 December. On the former 150 demonstrated for a short while before attending a public meeting twice that size.31 This agitation spread into ‘reformist’ ranks as CGT miners of the Saint-Etienne basin

26 La Voix des Chômeurs, 4 (April 1932); it claimed 2,500 at the beginning of October, AN F7 13547 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 8 October 1932; and 3,000 in November 1932, ibid., Police Commissioner (third arrondissement) to Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne), 20 November 1932. 27 CGTU, Congrès National: 1935 (Paris, 1935), p. 20. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 report on the movement of the unemployed at the beginning of 1933. In early 1933, there were nine CdCs and a central committee which organized 3,500 unemployed. 28 M.M., ‘Un exemple de bon travail parmi les chômeurs’, Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 13 (1 July 1934): 824–8. 29 AN F7 13565 Central Commissioner to the Director of General Security, 21 October 1933. 30 Ibid., 2 November 1933. 31 Ibid., Prefect (Loire) to Minister of the Interior, 16 November 1933.

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who, inspired by the hunger marchers of the Nord, were to march to the Prefecture on 3 December.32 The Oyonnax Hunger March and the Limits of Municipal Communism The first French hunger march of the 1930s took place in the largely rural department of Ain. The town of Oyonnax with a population of 11,464 was home to comb-making and plastics industries.33 René Nicod (1881–1950) had established a socialist and then communist fiefdom in Oyonnax centred on the co-operative institution of the Maison du Peuple [people’s hall]. He had been a deputy and was the town’s mayor since 1919.34 One of the principal boasts of his council was that it stood up for the unemployed.35 By the beginning of 1931, when mass unemployment returned, the Oyonnaxienne works closed, laying off 150 workers, and the Etablisssements Charpie et Compagnie went bankrupt. The Prefect privately intimated to the Minister of the Interior that ‘unemployment gripped with a very particular acuteness’ in Oyonnax.36 In 1926–27 and in the 1930s the local Communist Party organized a committee of the unemployed. In late January 1931, 300 rallied to a CdC meeting, which established a set of demands that were put to the council. These were passed on to the authorities outside Oyonnax.37 One of the principal demands was that unemployed heads of households should be paid nine francs a day. At the following meeting of the CdC, with hundreds in attendance, Piccinaly, a councillor delegated to the CdC, explained that the Government refused the nine francs demand and imposed a lower rate. Pin, the leader of the CdC, and Piccinaly successfully turned the anger of the unemployed on the Government. Despite their local popularity, the communists of Oyonnax had no effective answer to the coercive authority of the Prefect who suspended the unemployment fund on 30 May 1931.38 Many much larger towns were unable to match the scale of mobilization of the Oyonnax CdC. On the international day of struggle against unemployment of 25 February 1931, communist councillors Piccinaly and Falnot addressed 500 in Maison du Peuple. A demonstration of twice that number marched behind red flags and sang the Internationale.39 Again during the following winter, the CdC was able

32

Ibid., Ministry of the Interior notes, 2 December 1933. In the census of 1926. 34 Charles Sowerwine, ‘Aux origines du communisme à Oyonnax: socialisme et la maison du peuple’, in Jacques Girault (ed.), Des Communistes en France (années 1920 – années 1960) (Paris, 2002), pp. 141–62. 35 The council spent 20,000 francs in benefits and 87,000 in wages to employ the jobless of 1921; again in 1927, it directed 53,527 francs in assistance to the unemployed and 44,100 francs in work relief. L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 18 January 1931. 36 AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 3 October 1932. 37 Ibid., 25 January 1931. 38 Until 10 December 1931. It had been established on 7 January 1931. AN F22 661 Control and Inspection of Unemployment Funds. 39 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 1 March 1931; AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to President of the Council, Ministry of the Interior, 6 January 1932. 33

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to organize meetings which ran into the hundreds. On 4 January 1932, with Curtet, Guillot and Piccinaly speaking, the CdC met and then demonstrated through the streets of Oyonnax. At the head of the demonstration of 500 or 600 was mayor Nicod.40 When former councillor Gourmand Jean complained that this was a political demonstration, large numbers angrily surrounded him and the police had to rescue him. On 4 February, the CGTU day of action, the same scenario was repeated with even greater numbers.41 Three elements generated the hunger march of Oyonnax. First, there was the high concentration of unemployment. Secondly, the movement of the unemployed in communist Oyonnax was exceptionally vital. Thirdly, the state delayed its subsidies to the unemployment fund. On 9 April 1932, 250 unemployed men and women from Oyonnax assembled at La Chuse, despite a snowstorm. Their placards read ‘Work or Bread’, ‘7.50 francs for the young’, ‘Suppress the 180 days limit’, ‘Protest against the murder of Fritsch’. Their destination was the Sub-Prefecture at Nantua four kilometres away. Despite a ban on the march in Nantua, they entered the town and a line of police guarded the Sub-Prefecture. Negotiating with the captain of the gendarmerie who initially said that the Sub-Prefect would only see a delegation if the crowd dispersed, the delegation was eventually heard. Then, with the police watching on, the Oyonnaxian unemployed thundered the Internationale as they demonstrated through Nantua in defiance of the ban. On their return to La Chuse and Oyonnax, they demonstrated once again shouting, ‘Soviets, soviets, the hunger marchers break through!’42 The determination of the Prefect and the Ministers of the neo-cartel Government to assert their authority undermined the efforts of the communist councils and the CdC in little Moscows like Oyonnax. This clash would test the claims of municipal communism and ultimately expose its limits. Reports from the Prefect had noted through the course of 1932 that the crisis was worsening in Oyonnax and the sole note of optimism resulted from an increase in demand for yo-yos in October.43 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain parodied the notion that the yo-yo, which epitomized alienated numb-minded leisure of capitalism, offered genuine hope for the town: Hatred turns to anxiety, One says: shush! And the other: quiet! Prosper, who sees his life in pink, With Laval, plays with the yo-yo. … To come to the end of unemployment, To resolve the imbroglio, Fate without recourse to the Magus: 40 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 10 January 1932, stated 600 and AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 6 January 1932, stated 500. 41 As many as 1,000 were on the demonstration, with a contingent of workers from Bélignat. 42 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 17 April 1932. 43 AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 10 February 1932; ibid., 3 October 1932.

Early Regional Unemployed Movements, 1931–33 Let’s sing the glory of the yo-yo.

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44

The ‘recovery in the factories’ provided the authorities with the pretext to clamp down on the council’s provision for the unemployed.45 The Minister of Labour sent round circulars concerning the functioning of unemployment funds about home-working and piece-rates. The bombshell fell in October when the Prefect called in the head of the Regional Office of the Labour Force from Lyons. Privately betraying his foregone conclusion to the Minister of Interior, the Prefect indicated that the purpose was to ‘severely restrict’ the number of beneficiaries of the unemployment fund.46 The Prefect also called in Aubin, an Inspector of Work, to process the disqualifications. The local communist paper complained about ‘the lies of mal-intentioned political adversaries’ about the burden on the ratepayer and the existence of the ‘professionally unemployed’ in the area.47 A series of meetings and a counter-inquiry yielded no clemency on the part of the authorities. Three hundred disqualifications resulted. So the communists turned to mass mobilization with 700 demonstrating on 9 December.48 Unemployment remained high.49 The winter cold and the Prefect’s success deflated the town’s movement of the unemployed. The CdC’s meetings became infrequent and not even worthy of mention in L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, let alone the dispatches of the Prefect to the Minister of the Interior. Amongst the unemployed, demoralization replaced their once ebullient belief in their council and their CdC. On 27 April 1933, the council was reduced to the humiliation of sending a delegation, including the mayor to lobby the Minister of Labour.50 For a second time, as in 1927, the external constraints imposed upon municipal communism in Oyonnax exposed its impotence.51 Nord Region in 1932–33 That Nord and Pas-de-Calais provided a large and militant unemployed movement should be no surprise. High levels of urbanization, population density and industrialization suggested that such a movement would take hold. The area was an important centre of coal, textile and metal industries. Both textiles and mining suffered disproportionately in the economic crisis. Mining had already suffered a rationalization crisis in 1927–28 and in 1931 recession once again hit the industry hard. In early 1931, the authorities recognized the growing discontent of the working 44

L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 9 October 1932. AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 29 October 1932. 46 AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 3 October 1932. 47 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 9 October 1932 and ibid., 27 November 1932. The latter quoted L’Union Républicaine, 9 October 1932. 48 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 18 December 1932; AN F7 13544 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 10 December 1932, the Prefect put the number of demonstrators at a more modest 300. 49 With 1,382 receiving benefits in the second fortnight of December, amongst whom 623 were heads of households. 50 L’Eclaireur de l’Ain, 5 March 1933. 51 In 1927, the banks refused the council loans to fund generous benefits for the unemployed, AN F7 13524 Prefect (Ain) to Minister of the Interior, 21 January 1927. 45

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class over the questions of wage cuts, high prices and unemployment. Workers were grumbling that agriculture was being protected while nothing was being done for them. The working population worried about a more uncertain future as the economic crisis deepened manifestly.52 Employers responded with large-scale short-time working and the CGTU and PCF led a number of bitter struggles. The PCF considered the Nord of unique importance. Thorez and Desrumeaux, two of its leading cadres, hailed from the area. It was also an area of strong competition with the socialists (SFIO and CGT) and Catholics [Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétriens, the French Confederation of Christian Workers, CFTC] for influence over organized labour.53 Viewed from the low point of 1932, the PCF in the Nord department had like elsewhere suffered decline since the early 1920s. According to the Prefect, its activity and influence had ‘noticeably lessened’ although, he exaggerated, it ‘incontestably’ remained ‘ascendant over the working masses’.54 Its departmental membership had more than halved in five years.55 The campaign over unemployment helped to reverse this decline. The Nord region’s unemployed movement was launched at a conference on 20 December 1931. It held two further conferences in quick succession on 19 January and 17 April 1932. At the conference in mid-January, 90 attended, of whom 75 were delegated from 27 unemployed committees.56 They discussed the demonstration on 12 December in Lille upon which the socialist council had called the police ‘to attack the protestors’. They also discussed the question of xenophobia and foreign workers.57 They resolved to set up a committee for the unemployed of Lille, to have uniform membership cards across the region and establish a newspaper.58 After the conference, the unemployed committees initially met with some successes. A regional bulletin provided advice on unemployment regulations for the CdCs to use. It detailed the work of communist Saint-Denis council on behalf of the unemployed, the movement’s demands and the line that the CdCs should adopt.59 In Lille, a propaganda sheet entitled Le Chômeur helped the work of the committees

52 AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 11 January; ibid., 11 February 1932. 53 M. Gillet, ‘L’évolution du Parti Communiste de 1921 à 1934 dans la région Nord-Pasde-Calais’, Revue du Nord (May 1973): 233–8. 54 AN F7 13098 Prefect (Nord) to Ministry of the Interior, 12 August 1932. 55 From 6,978 members in 1927 to 3,230 in 1932. 56 ADN M616 27 Bulletin Régional à l’Usage des Comités des Chômeurs, 1 (January 1932), put the attendance at the congress at 97 in addition to 27 CdCs that sent delegates, seven sent their apologies. 57 AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 18 January 1932. 58 AN F7 13549 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 19 January 1932. He gave different figures for the conference: 150 present, 75 delegates, 33 committees. 59 ADN M616 27 Bulletin Régional à l’Usage des Comités des Chômeurs, 1 (January 1932).

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61

(as did Halluin). Large meetings were held in different parts of the Nord. Some committees organized sizeable demonstrations.62 Communists faced difficulties sustaining these activities. The CRC called for demonstrations on 22 March. On the eve of this day of action, the Special Commissioner (Lille) noted the reluctance of the local unemployed committees to implement the directives of the regional committee for militant demonstrations.63 The results on the day were patchy. In most places, CdCs held meetings rather than demonstrations. The CRC claimed 2,000 demonstrated in both Douai and Dorignies and 1,500 in Lille and Halluin.64 A second regional bulletin noted that the number of committees had doubled and claimed that their activity had secured concessions for sailors and local improvements in Lille, Hellemmes and Halluin. However, the bulletin emphasized the ‘great weaknesses’ of the CdCs, many of which were embryonic, and the severe difficulties in the sale and distribution of La Voix.65 By the time of the third congress, La Voix des Chômeurs claimed 70 committees had been established. The regional newspaper carried several articles that decried the activities of the socialists. In particular, they faced competition in Lille. Not only had Kléber Lahaye, the Lille PUP councillor, set up the Comité d’Entente du Chômeur de Lille [Committee of Fellowship with the Unemployed of Lille], but SFIO mayor Roger Salengro denied the communist unemployed committee a room.66 Given these inter-party tensions, it was no accident that the second edition came out with an eye on the legislative elections. From spring, the initial success of the movement faded. The third internal bulletin reflected on the failure of the 14 June departmental day of action. Demonstrations 60 Ibid., Le Chômeur, 2 (February 1932). Le Cri des Chômeurs (Halluin), 1 (1932); ibid., 2 (1932); ibid., 5 (1932). 61 Mauberge, ending in a demonstration through the town (on 22 January with 400–500 present), Fives (27 January, 300 present), Louvroil, where they tried to demonstrate but were repulsed by the police (8 February, 300 present). AN F7 13549 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 24 January 1932; ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 28 January 1932; ibid., Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 10 February 1932. 62 In Lille of 700 on 21 January, in Houplines of 40 on 22 January, in Roubaix of 500 on 25 February and two in Hellemmes (the first with 100 on 27 February and the second with 300 on 2 March). Ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) report, 21 January 1932; ibid., Central Commissioner (Lille) report, 21 January 1932. Ibid., Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 26 February 1932; ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 27 February and 2 March 1932. 63 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 21 March 1932. 64 ADN M616 27 Bulletin Régional à l’Usage des Comités des Chômeurs, 2 (March 1932); ibid., 3 (July 1932). 65 Given that the paper’s print run was 20,000, the fact that many CdCs did not place an order, or did so too late, meant that the CRC had to send it irrespectively. Only a few committees ordered and paid the 15 centimes per 100 required. The bulletin laid great stress on settling up for the first issue and the importance of better organization for the second issue that would appear on 19 April. 66 La Voix des Chômeurs, 1 (1932); AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 11 January 1932.

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were expected in Denain, Anzin, Onnaing, Raismes, Valenciennes and elsewhere.67 This attempt to revive the movement was seen as a failure by all sides. In Raismes, Valenciennes, Orchies, Roubaix, Armentières and Seclin projected demonstrations did not take place. Only red Halluin mobilized respectable numbers. There, Gustave Desmettre, the Communist Party mayor, led the 250 marchers. Waziers and Somain held public meetings of 100 or so. In Lille and Tourcoing, the unemployed committees staged demonstrations of 150 and 100 respectively.68 Another day of action on 8 November showed that little progress had been made since June. Unimpressive meetings were held in Valenciennes (80 present), Dunkirk (150 present), Denain (150) and Lille (100) where a demonstration was also staged.69 La Voix appeared only on exceptional occasions. The fourth issue came out in August 1933 with the express purpose of advertising the national congress of the unemployed of 20 September which would plan the hunger march to Paris.70 The paper was able to report on some activity such as a successful strike against forced labour in Arras, but the front-page stressed the difficulties of printing the newspaper, its importance and the onus on the committees of making it viable. As it did not appear again until January 1936, this injunction seemed not to have had the desired effect. Indeed, its absence during the highpoint of activism in 1934 suggests that the paper was irrelevant to the success of the movement. Rouen, February 1932 Seine-Inférieure, one of France’s major industrial regions, had spawned textile mills, docks, petrol refineries, chemical works and coal processing works. Rouen and Le Havre had a combined population of around 400,000 inhabitants. In the early months of the economic crisis, the unemployment fund only opened intermittently.71 Unemployment was high and there was considerable unemployed activity as well as a well-established regional movement of the unemployed. In the department of Seine-Inférieure in January 1932, there were 19 unemployment funds. 1,333 in 67

Ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 13 June 1932. Ibid., 14 June 1932; ibid., Special Commissioner (Douai) to Director of General Security, 15 June 1932; ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 15 June 1932. 69 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 8 November 1932. 70 ADN M616 28 La Voix des Chômeurs, 4 (August 1933). The congress actually took place on 21–22 September. 71 In addition to the unemployment fund, the council opened a soup kitchen for both those who did not meet the criteria of the 1926 decree and for the children of the unemployed during school holidays. An unemployment caisse for the ‘partial unemployed’ was established for textile workers with a 10 per cent subsidy from the employers (which was a first nationally). In Le Havre, an unemployment fund, a dockers’ unemployment fund and a sailors’ unemployment fund were all established on 12 October 1931. In Rouen, the unemployment fund opened on 12 March 1931 only to close on 13 June 1932 (reopening on 4 December 1932). Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 155–6. For labour disputes in Le Havre see, John Barzman, ‘Port labour relations in Le Havre, 1928–1947’, International Journal of Maritime History, 10/2 (1997): 83–106. 68

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Rouen and 1,036 in Le Havre were on unemployment benefits. The communist party in the region, as elsewhere, was at its lowest point (1930–3) in the interwar period.73 The CRC based in Rouen published La Lutte des Chômeurs in February 1932.74 It reported from Petit-Quevilly, Gissel, Maromme, Le Houlme, Louviers, Montvilliers, Le Havre and Bolbec.75 The key agitational issue in the paper was the opening of unemployment funds. In Maromme and Bolbec no funds existed and the committees looked to the example of Louviers and Montvilliers where unemployed protest had precipitated the opening of funds. The paper also covered the issues generated by the particular industrial and occupational composition of the region. The question of the seafarers’ unemployment funds featured prominently. It noted that unemployment was high amongst sailors estimating 60,000 awaiting ships that would not come. A group of sailors detailed the iniquities of the special provisions for the sailors established in the decree of 13 November 1931. Article six specified that sailors would have to wait six weeks after their last berth before receiving benefits. The decree also stated that sailors would not be eligible if they refused pay cuts or were habitually drunk and they would receive no allowance for dependants if their family did not live in that port. In Rouen, the unemployment fund deemed many seafarers ineligible and abandoned them to reliance on charity. In Petit-Quevilly metalworkers from Chantiers de Normandie were on short-time as had been textile workers for the last year and a half. Despite the apparent demise of the paper, the unemployed movement in Seine-Inférieure did not perish with it in 1932. On 20 April 1935 the region organized a hunger march to Rouen and there remain copies of La Voix des Chômeurs (Sotteville) for November 1935 to February 1936 which reveal a continuing regional movement.76 Valence, February–March 1932 Valence (Drôme) with a population of 34,275 mixed hat-making, wood, food processing and silk industries. Situated between Lyons and Marseilles in the corridor of the Rhône, it was by far the smallest regional unemployed movements of 1932 under consideration. In January 1932, the Drôme had a departmental unemployment 72

AN F7 13550 statistics on unemployment funds, 30 January 1932. The membership for the Basse-Seine region which included Seine-Inférieure and Eure had haemorrhaged members from 1,200 in 1928 to 520 in 1932. In 1932, it had no permanent official. Membership was concentrated in Rouen and its industrial zone (PetitQuevilly, Cailly valley, Sotteville, Elbeuf, and so on) with a secondary concentration in Le Havre. One member of the regional bureau of the PCF took responsibility for each of the mass organizations. Nicolas Aubin, ‘Le “peuple communiste” en Basse-Seine: dénombrement et étude de l’encadrement des militants communistes, 1920–39’, Annales de Normandie, 50/4 (2000): 547–68. 74 Its manager was Paul Soyez. 75 Maromme and Petit-Quevilly were suburbs of Rouen, whilst other CdCs were based in small towns some distance from Rouen: Louviers (33 km) and Bolbec (56 km). La Lutte also reported on events from the docks and shipyards of Le Havre 87 km away. 76 Its contributors were Louis Vaubaillon (manager), Gaston Lanquetin, Janette, J. Lepetit (secretary, CRC). There was also a propaganda sheet, L’Eveil des Chômeurs (Rouen), 1934. 73

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fund with 1,647 registered unemployed.77 In February 1932, the Comité Unique des Chômeurs de Valence et des Environs [Unified Committee of the Unemployed of Valence and District] published the first issue of Le Sans-Travail. This regional body of eight CdCs included Valence, Crest, Montélimar, Bourg-en-Péage, Romans, Valsles-Bains, La Bégude, Privas.78 Two hundred and forty met in Valence to formulate their demands. These were: 1. A representative of the CdC and of the CGTU on the local commission of the unemployment fund, the CGT which only represents part of the working class having three. 2. Distribution of free coal to all unemployed with or without children, and even bachelors. 3. Increase in benefits to 12 francs a day for heads of family and to eight francs for the single unemployed, married partners, children or persons in their charge […]. 4. Distribution of all the funds collected for the unemployed by the council to go to all the workless without distinction, including unemployed men and women rejected by the unemployment fund for various reasons. Control of these funds by all CGT, CGTU and CdC organizations. Distribution of this help in a neutral place under the control of the above mentioned. 5. Automatic inscription of all those under the supervision of the Bureau de Bienfaisance not admitted to the unemployment fund. 6. Medical care and medicines and exoneration of taxes for all unemployed. 7. No evictions for non-payment of rent for the unemployed. 8. Energetic motion from the Municipal Council for unemployment insurance, against workers’ payments to social insurance and against all evictions of tenants. The first edition of Le Sans-Travail featured reports from Romans, Bourg-enPéage (both known for shoe-making and felt hats), Bourg-les-Valence, Saint-Donat, Montélimar and Crest. It seemed that the Valence committee had at least a shortlived vibrancy. The next month’s edition reported a meeting of 280 on 3 March in Valence and advertised a meeting for 10 March. The paper also reported on a 200-strong demonstration in Romans outside the mayor’s offices. Le Sans-Travail carried similar themes to the other regional unemployed newspapers.79 For instance, it criticized Jouhaux, the CGT leader, for his collections for the unemployed pointing out that the Comité des Forges, the influential employer’s organization, had praised him in contrast to the judgement of the employers that the unemployed movement’s unhelpful demands ‘aggravate hardship and disorder’.80 It also noted that the local council and the CGT boycotted their Caisse d’Entraide aux Chômeurs 77

AN F7 13550 statistics on unemployment funds, 30 January 1932 An intention to set up CdCs in Aubenas and Le Teil was indicated. 79 Such as unemployed suicide, militarism, government budget priorities and the injustices of the benefits system. Its contributors were Banc, Reyne, Blanchard, Marius Chambon, Billoud, Berthe Buis and Planta. 80 Le Sans-Travail (Valence) (March 1932). 78

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Nécessiteux [Mutual Aid Fund for Needy Unemployed]. The paper agitated around low wages in the textiles industry, evictions and overtime.81 The paper also printed its financial accounts and the printing cost of Sans-Travail accounted for half of its expenditure.82 Limoges, March 1932–April 1933 Limoges was an isolated industrial town that manufactured ceramics, armaments, shoes and confectionery. The town’s shoe and porcelain industries faced strong international competition, especially from Czech rivals. It had a reputation as a red town with a socialist council and strong trade union traditions.83 Few places in France were as badly hit by unemployment as Limoges with 6,000 unemployed in early 1932. Despite departmental and state subsidies, a heavy financial burden fell upon the council because of unemployment.84 Unlike other regions which established a network of committees, the unemployed movement in Limoges comprised of one solitary CdC, which was nevertheless able to produce its own newspaper, La Voix des Chômeurs. Unlike the absence or brief existence of an unemployed press in towns of a similar size, the paper first appeared in March 1932 and its last known edition was dated April 1933, spanning a year.85 From March to July 1932, the CdC published four editions. Then for seven months publication ceased, reappearing in March and April 1933. The paper announced at its birth that its purpose was to give a voice to the unemployed and their struggles, which had been ignored by the local press. The CdC had come into bitter conflict with the council and the CGT, which had both refused to recognize the CdC. By the time of the first edition, the committee had organized demonstrations of thousands outside the Hôtel de Ville. By March 1932, it had sold 700 membership cards; by July, 800.86 Like other such papers, it contrasted the local socialist council’s provision for the unemployed with that of communist Saint-Denis.

81

Charles Douchet who linked unemployment to the situation of textile workers in his pamphlet Ouvrière! Assez de Misère, Assez d’Exploitation (Valence, 1932), written at the time of a regional strike involving 25,000 textile workers. Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. 82 The committee received money from trade union donations and fundraising parties leaving a healthy balance. 83 James Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1985). 84 Between 1 January 1932 and 10 September 1932, the council had to provide 1.8 million francs of the 10.8 million francs benefits bill. Héreil, Chômage en France, p. 153. 85 Editions in existence: La Voix des Chômeurs (Limoges), 1 (March 1932); ibid., 4 (July 1932); ibid., 5 (March 1932); ibid., 6 (April 1933). Its contributors were J. Couturier (manager and sec. of CdC), Sparta and Jebs. 86 La Voix des Chômeurs (Limoges), 1 (March 1932); ibid., 4 (July 1932).

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Lyons, 1932 In France’s third city, Lyons, Edouard Herriot, the Radical deputy and mayor, had attempted to set the agenda on unemployment by establishing a committee of the great and the good to alleviate the worst effects of economic distress.87 The benefits regime in Lyons differed from the administrative norm. It provided assistance for short-time workers and those unemployed who did not meet the criteria of the 1926 decree through distribution of food. The city was relatively late in establishing its unemployment fund (19 April 1932) preferring the philanthropic principle. When it did open the unemployment fund, it subjected claimants to a rigorous household means test and was therefore more akin to the poor law than a statutory right.88 Communists organized an unemployed movement with an organizational structure similar to elsewhere. The Union des Comité de Chômeurs de la Région Lyonnaise [Union of Unemployed Committees of the Lyons Region, UdCdC(RL)] and its newspaper, Le Cri des Chômeurs, linked together the CdCs of the region. On 17 January 1932 the Union of the Unemployed convened a regional congress formulating a list of demands. Le Cri’s first issue left the press in March 1932. It reflected on the journées of 12 January and 4 February which revealed ‘many weaknesses’. Police repression prevented factory gate protests at the lorry plant Berliet and the silk works Usines de la Soie Décines.89 Both March and April issues reported on the ‘battle of textiles’ with 8,000 on strike in Vienne, just 20 km from Lyons. This strike conformed to the pattern of politicized and militant strikes that punctuated the relative industrial doldrums of the first few years of the 1930s. The unemployed, Le Cri reported, refused to act as strike-breakers and they participated in the pickets and barricades. Industrial militancy in Vienne contrasted the general passivity of the unemployed in the Lyons region which appeared to be much less able to mobilize than other regional unemployed movements. Articles urging obviously unforthcoming action abounded.90 Fitting with the lack of militancy, the Lyons movement had like its Stéphanois neighbour organized a self-help retail co-operative to cut food prices for the unemployed. Nevertheless, a network of 17 CdCs and a relatively sizeable membership developed.91 Between February and April 1932, the Union of the Unemployed issued 3,630 membership cards to the CdCs.92 The CdC of the third arrondissement with 550 members and the seventh with 450 were the largest. These figures did not reflect active membership. For instance in the seventh arrondissement, whilst 450 cards had been issued only 288 members attended the CdC at least once in a month. As for Le Cri, a similar difficulty existed. With a print run of 6,000 only 876 were sold 87

Le Temps, 4 January 1932 Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 158–60. 89 Le Cri des Chômeurs (Lyons), 1 (March 1932). 90 Ibid., 1 (March 1932); ibid., 2 (April 1932). 91 Five Lyons arrondissements had CdCs (first, third, fourth, sixth and seventh) as did Bron, Décines, Caluire, Saint-Fons, Villeurbaine, Oullins, Vénissieux, Bourgoin, Cours, Givors, Vienne and Villefranche. 92 AN F7 13549 Special Commissioner (Lille) report, 2 May 1932 appended L’Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Lyonnaise, Bulletin Intérieur d’Information, 2 (n.d.). 88

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93

in Lyons, nearly half in the seventh arrondissement. An internal bulletin explained the difficulty. It noted that the paper was struggling to survive because, despite its moderate price, there was no adequate mechanism to distribute and sell enough papers. After the first two issues in March and April, the paper faltered. Only two issues came out between April 1932 and November 1933.94 The paper had to rely heavily on contributions from the sympathetic local unitaire unions.95 Such support was difficult to sustain or justify over the longer term. La Voix des Chômeurs, Bordeaux, April–May 1933 The great Atlantic port of Bordeaux was a commercial and administrative centre with some industry. The unemployment fund opened on 27 April 1931 and on 3 July 1931 a special dockers’ fund was established. During 1932, about 2,000 each day received unemployment benefit.96 After the initial communist attempts to forge an unemployed movement in 1931–32, there were very few signs of a vital movement in 1933. La Voix des Chômeurs’s first issue summoned the unemployed to march behind the CdC banner on May day 1932.97 It explained that it desired to emulate the paper of the Parisian unemployed. One theme ran throughout the paper’s three issues, the struggle against overtime and the flaunting of the eight hour law. Several workplaces were placed on a list of shame for long working hours.98 With 15,000 unemployed in Bordeaux and nearly 54 million hours of overtime worked, the paper reasoned that unemployment could have been reduced by 2,000 if the practice was stopped. Interestingly, La Voix put very different explanations and solutions to unemployment than those of the early unemployed press. Instead of the capitalist system being to blame with the need for revolutionary organizations in response, the distribution of work was pinpointed as the cause and remedy to unemployment. Existing legislation and institutions in the shape of the eight hour law and the factory inspectors were the means invoked to challenge joblessness. Despite continued sectarianism towards reformist organizations, these arguments suggest a break with the class against class line of the PCF and perhaps an awareness of the strategy’s failure. The CdC also engaged in a sectarian tussle with the Fédération Locale des Chômeurs [Local Federation of Unemployed], a rival unemployed body, which had the support of the council and the local CGT. On 20 April, the police arrested Doyeux, the secretary of the Federation, as his group were running an appeal for the unemployed. La Voix claimed that he was released when the police realized that he was their friend. The next day, 1,000 unemployed attended a Federation 93

As well as 200 purchased in the 3rd arrondissement, 100 in 1st and 90 in the 4th. Le Cri des Chômeurs (Lyons) 5 (November 1933). 95 During the period of February to April 1932, local trade unions donated 5,568 francs to the unemployed movement, of which nearly fourth-fifths came from the railworkers of Oullins. Ibid., 2 (April 1932). 96 Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 153–4. 97 La Voix des Chômeurs (Bordeaux), 1 (28 April 1933). Its manager was Boué Bigne. 98 Ibid., 3 (23 May 1933). 94

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meeting. According to La Voix, Doyeux blamed foreign workers for unemployment, a statement that Didier, from the CdC, refuted to warm applause. La Voix reported another Federation meeting that was by invitation only in order to prevent discussion among the unemployed.99 La Voix provided evidence that the Bordeaux CdC engaged in a range of other activities. It advertised its own meetings and the opening hours of its advice office in the Bourse du Travail. Its first issue detailed four items of casework of those refused benefit or disqualified.100 The CdC also organized a women’s section [commission féminine]. The third issue witnessed the passage from a typed sheet to a newspaper proper. It stretched to four pages and doubled its price to 20 centimes. A front page article explained that the 20 centimes was a necessary investment for the unemployed. This 20 centimes contributed to the suppression of overtime, of double-earners, and of the employment of the retired.101 It seems that this appeal was insufficient as there is no record of a fourth issue. Again, so it would appear, the financial obstacles to producing an unemployed newspaper cut short the ambition of a local unemployed movement. Saint-Nazaire to Nantes Hunger March, 27–28 June 1933 From spring 1932 the unemployed movement’s fortunes had slumped. Efforts to reverse the decline had little effect. Falling unemployment, the indifference of the unemployed and tactical errors of the communists all featured in this malaise. Beyond the ranks of the movement, the CGT shipyard workers of Saint-Nazaire broke the cycle of decline. Their efforts acted as curtain-opener to the most dramatic episodes of unemployed protest in France. After their march, the curve of unemployed protest continued to rise with the Lille to Paris hunger march, the regional hunger marches, riots and occupations of 1933–35. The Loire estuary with its principal towns of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire was a major site of French industry. Saint-Nazaire was a world famous centre of shipbuilding noted for its great transatlantic liners. Its berths won blue ribbon prizes for record crossings of the Atlantic during the 1930s. As a poignant contrast to the great public celebrations to launch their opulent liners, the depression privately menaced every shipyard worker in the town. In Loire-Inférieure, by 1932, 22 communes had opened unemployment funds; Nantes had three.102 The Saint-Nazaire CGT shipyard workers’ branch met on the morning of 15 June 1933. There, Emmanuel Jouvance, the local CGT secretary, addressed some 800 shipyard workers. Their grievance stemmed from the fact that the major employer Les Chantiers de Penhoët faced grave difficulties and thousands were to lose their jobs. The entire population of 36,000 would feel the repercussions of the closure of the shipyard. It was not that there was no work. On the contrary, the Normandie, a huge liner, lay in the yard’s dock. 99

Ibid., 2 (6 May 1933). Ibid., 1 (28 April 1933). 101 Ibid., 3 (23 May 1933). 102 Héreil, Chômage en France, pp. 154–5. In Nantes, the unemployment fund opened on 2 November 1931. 100

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The problem was that its owners Compagnie Transatlantique could not pay. SaintNazaire, like other shipbuilding towns across the world, countenanced a fearsome and bleak future. Indeed ministers promised to maintain work at Saint-Nazaire.103 The foundries at nearby Trignac had already closed at the end of 1932 putting 600 out of work. Jouvance’s union branch resolved to march to the Prefecture in Nantes because of high unemployment and the threat to jobs at the local shipyards. The idea of the march had already elicited support from local municipal leaders: Blancho, the SFIO deputy and mayor of Saint-Nazaire supported it as did mayor Lambot of Trignac and mayor Gouret of Montoir. By the mid-afternoon, Camille Chautemps, the Minister of the Interior, received a communiqué alerting him to the prospect of such a march. The report detailed how Nantais sympathizers would leave their workshops to welcome the march, which would mobilize 4,000 unemployed to demand the completion of the Normandie. When he received word of the meeting, Paul Mathivet, the Prefect of Loire-Inférieure, rang the Ministry and clarified its character to ministry staff. The proposed march, according to the Prefect, was more than mere trade union agitation, it had the backing of the shipbuilders Penhoët, which sought to move public opinion so that Transatlantique could be refloated and the work on the Normandie be paid for from public coffers. To underline this view, the Prefect penned a letter repeating this view that very day. He observed that the march was not immanent because ten or so days were required for its organization.104 The following day from his office in the Prefecture at Nantes, Mathivet wrote to all the mayors concerned. His letter explained that he had heard about the meeting. Although it was not normally his practice to refuse to see workers’ delegations, he outlined his particular objections to this march. He pointed out the severe difficulties that would accompany the march: the threat of the loss of benefit, the June heat, the fitness of men whose strength poverty had sapped, the arduous 62 km journey, sleeping arrangements and medical care. Considering these impediments, the Prefect hoped that the organizers would not proceed with the march. Behind this apparent concern for the marchers lay the blunt threat of force. He would not allow the march onto the streets of Nantes.105 He attached this statement to a letter to Chautemps and declared his intention to interview mayors Blanco and Lambot. At this meeting, the Prefect attempted to appease the two municipal officials by offering to accompany them as part of a delegation to the Ministry of the Merchant Navy in the hope that this would deflect them from the march. Instead the two remained committed to the project, which they could not in any case reverse. They reassured the Prefect about the careful organization that had been put in place. The Prefect confided with the Minister that whilst Blanco and Lambot expected 2,000, 1,400 was more likely and

103

Association de Recherches et d’Études du Mouvement Ouvrier de la Région de Saint-Nazaire (AREMORS), Saint-Nazaire et le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1920 à 1939 (SaintNazaire, 1983), pp. 139–40. 104 AN F7 13565 Prefect (Loire-Inférieure) to Minister of the Interior, 15 June 1933. 105 Ibid., Prefect (Loire-Inférieure) to mayors of Saint-Nazaire, Montoir, Trignac, and Saint-Joachim, 16 June 1933.

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that, because ‘all non-socialists’ disagreed with the march, it might yet not happen.106 Contrary to the Prefect’s wishful expectation, evidence soon mounted of the march’s growing momentum as successive police reports told of planned sympathy strikes among CGT metalworkers in Nantes and an agreement between Jouvance and the unemployment fund over food and signing on.107 With the Prefect’s efforts to prevent the march frustrated, organizers forged ahead with their preparations. They sought to ensure that there would be no alcoholic scenes on the march, an ambulance would accompany the cortège and a doctor would be on stand-by. The march was to take place over two days. The dates 27–28 June were only settled on a few days beforehand. The first leg of the march would take its participants from Saint-Nazaire to Temple-de-Bretagne, just over half way to Nantes, where they would stay the night. The final leg would end at a rally in the Vélodrome Petit-Breton on the outskirts of Nantes thus complying the Prefect’s ban on a march through the streets of Nantes. At 6.30 am on 27 June, two groups of marchers set off from Saint-Nazaire and Trignac respectively, joining forces at Bellevue three-quarters of an hour later. More unemployed swelled their ranks at Montoir from Saint-Joachim and Saint-Malode-Guersac. At 7.20 am, mayors Lambot, Gouret, deputy and mayor Blanco and Jouvance led the march from Saint-Nazaire. They maintained a brisk pace of six kilometres an hour. The march was disciplined, with red banners aloft as they sang the Internationale.108 Through the course of the day, there were no incidents with the police and everything seemed to go to plan. Compared to the workforce at Penhoët, the marchers were young with few over 40 years. Volunteers from the Saint-Nazaire hospital attended to the marchers’ medical needs. Supporters, wives and children sent them off. Le Travailleur de l’Ouest reported the scene as the men left ‘the crowd was still, silent and many eyes moistened with tears’.109 Peasants and workers saluted them as they passed through the countryside. Their appetites stirred by walking, they ate soup and beans at Blanche Couronne just before Savenay. By 3.10 pm, the marchers had covered the 20 km to Savenay, the only town of any size on the route. It was only 12 km and a couple of hour’s march to Temple-de-Bretagne where they were fed and lodged for the night. After a cold night, the wake-up call was sounded at 5 am, and they departed at 7 am. The second day’s march of 23 km ended at 3.40 pm when 1,800 arrived in Nantes. From the boulevard Boulay Paty, the socialist deputy Leroux, the municipal councillor Dalby and departmental secretary of the CGT Peneau led 500 Nantais workers to the velodrome. The rally began at 4.35 pm. A range of speakers enthusiastically proclaimed the success of the march, winding up at 5.30pm. The 106 107

Ibid., Prefect (Loire-Inférieure) to Minister of the Interior, 20 June 1933. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Saint-Nazaire) report, 15 June 1933; ibid, 21 June

1933. 108

300 unemployed had come from Trignac, 140 from Montoir (both on the outskirts of the town), 80 from Saint-Joachim (10 km north of Saint-Nazaire) supplementing the 680 from Saint-Nazaire and 40 unitaires. This totalled an impressive 1,360 (with 70 more on food duty). 109 1 July 1933 quoted in AREMORS, Saint-Nazaire et le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1920 à 1939, p. 139.

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police then escorted a delegation to the Prefecture where it deposited a resolution which talked of the plight of the 4,000 without work in Saint-Nazaire and the 8,000 in the same condition in the Nantais region. It outlined the case to rescue the Normandie, the need for public works in Nantes and financial support for communes such as Trignac that found it impossible to balance their budgets. It also called for subsidies for the dockers. It concluded that public opinion was on their side and therefore the Government could not remain indifferent.110 The unemployed marchers returned by train that evening to a warm and populous welcome. The march had attracted wide sympathetic press coverage and had succeeded in putting the fate of Saint-Nazaire on the national political agenda. Saint-Nazaire to Nantes Hunger March and the Attitude of the Communists This march, unlike most of the other unemployed demonstrations in France in the 1930s, was not the work of the communists but the local CGT and SFIO. The PCF and the CGTU were a marginal force in Saint-Nazaire, the SFIO and CGT dominant and the Catholic CFTC union influential among migrants from the countryside of Brittany. This posed several awkward problems for the communists. Politically, the demands of the Saint-Nazaire march were alien to them because, as the Prefect of Loire-Inférieure pointed out, the goal was to secure subsidies for an ailing capitalist concern and thereby save the jobs of the shipyard workers of Saint-Nazaire. Furthermore, the march leaders sought to win public opinion and, more to the point, press opinion, believing that the Government would bow to such pressure. According to the PCF, such aims fostered illusions in the neutrality of the state and of the press, which exemplified the ‘confusion’ and class collaboration of the reformists. At the same time, the march, if the communists failed to respond effectively, would be a further blow to their credibility. The socialists were staking a claim to the unemployed movement as never before. The communist monopoly seemed to be threatened because the PCF had singly failed to muster such forces in their own regional mobilizations of the unemployed. Local communists were in a quandary. Given the politics of the march, should they participate? Given the sheer momentum of the mobilization, could they afford to abstain? These dilemmas were not easily or consistently resolved. Instead of ignoring the march, L’Humanité eagerly reported the story as it highlighted the profound crisis of capitalism and the desperate hardship in places like Saint-Nazaire. Its headline proclaimed that 3,000 marched ‘despite reformist bosses’. It gibed that the leaders had insisted that the march would be peaceful and that they had failed to unite the whole of the working class under the (communist) slogan ‘bread and work’.111 In effect, L’Humanité posed an absurd and unrealizable ultimatum to the socialists: adopt our slogans and demands in a mass movement that you have built and in which we have no influence. The paper ignored the more obvious criticism that this was an isolated, though impressive, example of unemployed agitation which could be repeated elsewhere with effective unity between socialists and communists. Hitler’s 110 111

AN F7 13565 Prefect (Loire-Inférieure) to Minister of the Interior, 26 June 1933. L’Humanité, 25 June 1933.

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accession to power had firmly placed unity on the agenda in a new way. On 25 June, Léon Blum, the SFIO leader, came to the area and spoke on a platform with Blanco stressing the need for unity between the PCF and SFIO to prevent dictatorship.112 L’Humanité also heavily criticized the reformist leaders for attempting to salvage the fortunes of a capitalist employer. In the communist paper’s view, the bosses at ‘Transat’ should be prosecuted and expropriated to fund work on the Normandie and an increase in unemployment benefits.113 The paper bemoaned the failure of the march organizers to raise wider demands for the unemployed, particularly increases in benefits and unemployment insurance. What was needed, L’Humanité concluded, was the ‘united front from below’ that the CGTU had provided in the unemployed committees. It also played up the influence of the Nantes and SaintNazaire communist organizations. Semat, the secretary of the Nantes unemployed committee, claimed that 1,200 attended their meeting which followed the Velodrome meeting. On the way to the unemployed committee meeting was a demonstration in defiance of the Prefect’s ban on which, Semat exaggerated, 3,000 marched. Much more important than this point-scoring over the events of 27–28 June, L’Humanité, Semat, and all the communist organizations used this impressive and popular event to publicize a National Conference of the Unemployed, from which the response of the communist unemployed movement would come. On 28 June, L’Humanité printed a telegram that the ‘Central Committee of the Unemployed’ of the Paris Region had sent to the unemployed of Saint-Nazaire calling them to attend the national conference on 20 September. At the local level, this sort of abstract propaganda would not suffice. The communists needed to connect practically with the movement, which they begrudgingly welcomed. Saint-Nazaire communists had little choice but to participate. The Central Police Commissioner reported that out of 1,360 that left the town on 27 June there was a 40-strong contingent of unitaires. In Nantes, the unemployed committee held a closed meeting with 45 in attendance on 26 June to plan their intervention. Semat outlined their instructions for the day of the march’s arrival in Nantes. At 2 pm they should mobilize their forces at Vannes. The goal was to press their own demands. If they managed to get sufficient numbers they would be able to lead the unemployed away from the Velodrome through the streets of Nantes.114 They produced a double-sided leaflet to mass distribution for this end. The results did not match these grandiose plans. From the Velodrome meeting, about 100, according to the police report, went to the communist organized meeting in the Bourse du Travail. There, they were joined by 250 unemployed where they listened to Semat and a unitaire dockers’ official, Fevrier, describe the march as a ‘useless waste of energy’ [les fatigues inutiles].115

112

L’Oeuvre, 26 June 1933. L’Humanité, 20 June 1933; ibid., 24 June 1933; ibid., 25 June 1933; ibid., 26 June 1933; ibid., 28 June 1933; ibid., 29 June 1933; ibid., 30 June 1933. 114 AN F7 13565 Central Commissioner to Minister of the Interior, 26 June 1933. 115 Ibid., Prefect (Loire-Inférieure) to Minister of the Interior, 29 June 1933. Semat claimed 1,200 attended the meeting in L’Humanité, 30 June 1933. 113

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Despite communist dismissal, the march did have palpable results. On 25 July 1933 Transat was part-nationalized and the government footed the bill for work on the Normandie. Also the cruiser Georges Leygues was started in the second half of 1933, but it was not until March 1934 that the much awaited Ville d’Alger ferry was constructed. Nevertheless, unemployment remained high in Saint-Nazaire and its surrounding area.116 Conclusions Early unemployed newspapers exhibited many of the characteristics of Le Cri (Paris). They agitated over similar issues and their propaganda had been well rehearsed in Paris. There were some differences. Significantly, some of the newspapers ignored the question of foreign workers and unemployment. But the same sectarian and ultra-left politics was common to all. Each was bitterly hostile to ruling socialist municipalities and larger local CGTs. Several hailed the impeccable role of the CGTU or the communist citadel of Saint-Denis. These papers revealed an unfolding strategy on the part of the PCF with regard to the unemployed not only in terms of intentions but in terms of practical results. They largely shared with their Parisian predecessor the chronology of tentative success and disappointment, with progress made in winter 1931–32 but hopes dashed by the spring. The Parisian movement was however the oldest of the regional movements though over time not the most impressive or enduring.117 Similar methods generated the CdCs as in Paris. Touring CGTU speakers established CdCs at public meetings which would formulate demands, plan lobbies and delegations to local councils. Each region also had an initial core in a provincial capital and a periphery of outlying committees. There were common organizational threads binding the movement together: the newspaper and the central regional body. The unemployed committees all took root major industrial enclaves of a France still territorially dominated by agriculture, commerce, and artisanal work. Despite these similarities the regional movements were very different in terms of membership, numbers of committees, geography, and development. The unitaire leadership wanted the Parisian unemployed movement to be a prototype for a nationwide movement of the unemployed. Comintern perspectives shaped their thinking and limited the chances of building a mass movement of the unemployed. Accordingly, the crisis of capitalism was a catastrophic and inexorable certainty. Unemployment could only grow, the masses shift to the left, and other workers’ organizations SFIO and CGT were agents of the bourgeoisie. With the crisis of the capitalist system, ‘unemployment’ as Comintern President Dmitri Manuilsky put it ‘revolutionizes the working class’. Whilst this impelled communists to agitate among the unemployed when others ignored them, it left them ill-prepared to grapple 116

AREMORS, Saint-Nazaire et le Mouvement Ouvrier de 1920 à 1939, pp. 139–40. No provincial paper was printed before 1932, Le Chômeur, a forerunner to Le Cri, was published shortly after the 25 February 1931 day of struggle. AN F 13541 Le Chômeur (n.d.) reported on the 25 February 1931 day of action as well as reports from guidelines on how a CdC should function and reports from Saint-Ouen, Alfortville, 19th arrondissement and SaintDenis. It was filed at Ministry of Interior on 17 March 1931. 117

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with the more sober and nuanced results of such work. Confronted with setbacks, communist leaders once again ignored the unemployed, blamed them for electoral defeat, or wrote them off as an apathetic mass. They projected their own failings onto the unemployed, oscillating between the conviction that the unemployed were a revolutionary vanguard and that they were an inert mass. Principally they did not grasp that the unemployed condition combined anger and despair in a fluid and volatile mix. Some tangible results were achieved: some local and municipal demands, the creation of unemployment funds, the preventions of numerous evictions and benefits advice to the unemployed. It is highly likely that the threat of unemployed protest hastened local, regional and national (sometimes temporary) concessions such as the extension of the 150-day limit and the extension of relief beyond 180 days. Each local group had their own story of birth, successes or failures and conflicts. Each had a different relationship with the council, the police, the rest of the left and the mass of the unemployed. Yet in sum, many of the groups perished shortly after birth, or, after an energetic phase of agitation, drifted to the sleepy routine of advice sessions.118 Over time many of the committees vanished without a trace. In this sense, Paris was a prototype for what happened as other regional unemployed movements and unemployed newspapers organized in Saint-Etienne, the Ardennes, Rouen, Lyons, Nord and Pas-de-Calais and elsewhere.

118 Overall, the movement organized 32,518 in 1932 and 31,619 in 1933 (membership stamps) outside the Paris region, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934.

Chapter 5

The Lille to Paris Hunger March Most well known of the unemployed protests in France is the Lille to Paris hunger march (18 November–2 December 1933).1 Yet memories fade and the image of the unemployed miners from the Nord marching, banners aloft, hides a much more complex reality. The march’s origins lie not in a groundswell of rank and file unemployed miners as the newsreel suggests but as a reaction to the success that the local SFIO and CGT had had in organizing a march from Saint-Nazaire to Nantes (June 27–28 1933).2 Surely enough, the National Conference of the Unemployed held on 21 and 22 September resolved to organize a hunger march to Paris. The intention, French communists admitted, was to emulate the British, American and German hunger marches. In some respects the French hunger march was unlike any other. One of their goals was to surpass the celebrity of the Saint-Nazaire to Nantes march and to reassert communist hegemony over unemployed protest. The march took place in the context of the near exhaustion of the Communist Party and the French unemployed movement. The attempt to launch a French national unemployed movement from a Parisian base had met with only temporary and tentative successes. The elections of May 1932 signalled a low-point for the party. In its eleven-year existence, its membership had plummeted, its vote had collapsed and it had suffered a series of damaging resignations, splits and defections. The reason that Suplice Dewez, the communist deputy for Nord, gave for the march being between Nord and Paris was the distance, only 280 km, and the North’s strong working-class concentrations in the mining and textile industries.3 The geography of communist implantation was the real reason for this route; it was the only march possible.4 Paris and its surrounding areas and the North were the only two significant concentrations of membership and activity. After all, the American hunger march 1

In film, Henri de Turenne, 1936: le Grand Tournant and J.-M. Daniel, Marche de la Faim; in photographs, Jacques Borgé and Nicholas Viasnoff, Archives des Communistes 1917–1939 (Paris, 1998), pp. 14–15; Jacques Borgé and Nicolas Viasnoff, Archives de la Banlieue Parisenne (Paris, 1998), pp. 118–19. 2 At a Parisian regional conference of the unemployed committees in mid-August, Pierre Mercier outlined the agenda of the forthcoming National Conference of the Unemployed, the principal outcome of which would be a hunger march to Paris based on the Nantes model. AN F7 13557 report on the Regional Conference of the Unemployed Committees for the Parisian Region, 19 August 1933. 3 AN F7 13565 Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Minister of the Interior, 10 November 1933, reporting on a Nantes unemployed committee meeting held on 9 November. 4 A June 1932 circular from the Ministry of the Interior demanding to know the state of the PCF documented both its universal decline together with its remaining strongholds of Seine and Nord. AN F7 13130 Notes and reports of Prefects on PCF activity in 1932.

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covered much greater distances by combining marching and conveying participants in trucks.5 Even in the areas of Seine and Nord mobilizing for the hunger march had its difficulties. The unemployed movement and the party were stagnant. A Ministry of the Interior circular dispatched in autumn 1933 wanted to know of preparations for the hunger march and about activity among the unemployed. Thirteen out of the 19 prefectoral reports found no evidence of unemployed activity or preparation for the hunger march.6 Prefects, with few exceptions, replied that the unemployed movement was a dead letter.7 As for the Nord’s neighbour Ardennes, the Prefect observed that there was little chance of effective participation by the unemployed from his department, even from Nouzonville where unemployment was of ‘truly tragic proportions’.8 Even in the Nord region, the communist unemployed movement was at low ebb. In the communist leadership’s circular on the organization of the march, its probably optimistic assessment recognized that outside Saint-Omer and Boulogne (with the committees of 200 to 300 members), the other 14 committees required reinforcement and several others needed to be created. In all, the report noted a total membership of 1,200.9 The weak base of the unemployed movement was explicitly part of the premises of the hunger march. It was to pose the neglected question of unemployment in the unions and the localities.10 Considerable efforts were necessary to mobilize opinion in favour of the hunger march and the response was not always as the organizers might have hoped. The Special Commissioner at Versailles noted that the unemployed movement in the Paris region ‘that I have followed very attentively gives no impression of sufficient preparation to bring about bigger demonstrations in Paris’.11 Despite this, the Communist Party created structures and channelled resources to see the march through. In the Nord, the Comité Régional des Chômeurs [Regional Committee of the Unemployed, the CRC] ensured that communists reconvened or created Comités des Chômeurs. Three regional central committees (Nord and Pasde-Calais, Somme and Oise, and the Paris region) were established to organize the march.12 L’Humanité claimed that 19 new CdCs and Comités de Soutien [Support

5

Franklin Folsom, America before Welfare (New York, 1991), pp. 284 and 332–9. AN F7 13565 summary of activity in November 1933. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., Prefect (Ardennes) to the Minister of the Interior, 16 November 1933. The unemployed of Nouzonville and the towns of the Ardennes were later to have their day. 9 According, for instance, to local police intelligence the Dunkirk unemployed committee had only ‘a fictive existence’. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Dunkirk) to Director of General Security, 8 November 1933. 10 Ibid., ‘Directives pour l’organisation de la marche de la faim des délégués des chômeurs du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais du 8 novembre au 2 décembre’. 11 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Versailles) to Prefect (Seine-et-Oise), 7 November 1933. 12 IHS ‘Marche de la faim: instructions pour le travail pour tous les Comités de Soutien’, circular 38. 6

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Committees, CdS] had been set up in the Nord in period before the march and 40,000 francs had been collected.13 In Amiens, on 27 September, 250 attended an unemployed committee public meeting which reported back from the National Conference. Organizers implausibly stated that about 100 committees had been represented and that a march of 100,000 unemployed from Lille to Paris was being planned in November. The speakers catalogued the grievances of the unemployed. The meeting resolved to support the march and to join the demonstration as it passed through Amiens.14 It seems that the communists made special efforts to win the Amiens unemployed committee to the cause of the hunger march. Unlike others, the Amiens committee was not under its sway and public meetings were organized on 21, 27 and 30 November on the question of the hunger march to gain the greatest influence.15 Across Nord and Pas-de-Calais, meetings mandated marchers as their representatives. The 250 unemployed who attended a general meeting of Le Groupement des Chômeurs de Calais on 10 November ratified the Calais delegation.16 The Boulogne committee selected its delegation on 13 November to be confirmed at a general meeting that night.17 And so this process repeated itself across the Nord and Pas-de-Calais region, though perhaps less formally where organizations were not so strong. Communists sought to extend the movement of the unemployed along the route. As a first step, the party urgently sought the creation of a network of Comités de Réception [Reception Committee] and CdSs. On 4 November, for instance, a Support Committee was established in Lens where the longer term goal was to reinforce the fragile existing committee.18 The leading member of this committee was the CGT miner Henri Jacquin.19 All told, 47 unemployed committees were ‘visited and reorganized’, 19 new ones formed as were 11 CdSs in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais.20 Not only in the north but also in the march’s destination communists and the movement of the unemployed pieced together a considerable organizational apparatus. The Parisian unemployed leadership had been instrumental in pushing the hunger march at the September national conference and they would also mount an effective organization for the final days of the ‘fortnight of agitation’. From early 13 L’Humanité, 18 November 1933. CdSs pulled together the unemployed, unions, cooperatives, the Secours Ouvrier International [SOI, International Workers’ Aid], and tenants’ associations. IHS Comité Central d’Organisation de la Marche de la Faim, circular to all CdCs, 28 October 1933. 14 AN F7 13565 Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 27 September 1933. 15 This ultimately bore fruit in the hunger march of the Somme to Amiens in April 1935. 16 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Calais) to Minister of the Interior. Petit and Lahaye were replacements for original delegates Labbe and Dupuis. which ultimately consisted of Xavier Brasseur, a 26-year-old dock labourer, André Martinod, a 19-year-old carpenter, Emile Perard, a 27-year-old presseur [press operator], Georges Petit, a 30- year-old mechanic and Jean Lahaye, a 26-year-old metreur [surveyor]. 17 Albert Chochois, Arthur Goffroy, Henri Ringot, Eugène Lefebvre and Adolphe Robert. 18 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Lens) to Under-Prefect (Lens), 6 November 1933. 19 L’Humanité, 2 November 1933. 20 IHS CCdC Bulletin, 25 January 1934.

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October, the Regional Bureau and the Regional Committee of the UdC met every five or so days. The leadership widened the preparations convoking a regional conference on 28 October. By this time the Comité Central pour l’Organisation de la Marche de la Faim [Central Committee for the Organization of the Hunger March] had been formed. Between 24 October and 2 November, five district fraction meetings covering the entire Paris region were held.21 Thus on 2 November, the UdC held a meeting in Bezons with representatives from 62 unemployed committees from Seine-et-Oise. Here Pierre Mercier elaborated those tasks that fell to the Seine-et-Oise area where the unemployed were to converge on 1 December. They would have to disseminate general propaganda and provide food and shelter for the marchers in the final stages of their journey. These required serious fundraising endeavours. According to L’Humanité, in Bobigny in true Stakhanovite fashion, 28 teams collected 50,000 francs.22 A meeting was set for the following week to concentrate on finances.23 At the local level, several CdCs called general assemblies.24 They were encouraged to establish their own Support Committees.25 In the Paris-south sector, L’Humanité reported that 24 new CdCs had been formed and that 14,000 solidarity cards were in circulation.26 As the marchers approached, these activities continued.27 As part of the fortnight of agitation at the communist players’ group Travail of the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires [Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], staged Mercier’s agit-prop play about unemployment ‘50 millions’.28 A series of public meetings with high profile communists were also held to popularize the cause of the marchers.29

21

Paris city, north, east, south, west meetings. Ibid., 29 November 1933. 23 AN F7 13565 Special Commissioner (Versailles) to Prefect (Seine-et-Oise), 7 November 1933. 24 Including 3rd, 5th–6th, 11th, 13th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements. 25 Sixty CdSs, 44 new CdCs and 12 groups of young unemployed were created in the Paris region, IHS CCdC Bulletin, 25 January 1934. 26 L’Humanité, 18 November 1933. On the sale of cards, IHS Commission Confédérale du Chômage aux Unions Régionales, circular, no. 39. Overall, 63,035 francs 45 centimes was collected (including some large union donations) and 58,546 francs 45 centimes were spent. IHS CCdC bulletin, 25 January 1934. 27 On 9 November, all the CdSs of the Paris region met. On 19 November a regional committee meeting of the 20th region of the CGTU was convened with the sole purpose of discussing the hunger march. On 24 November a commission juridique [legal commission] was formed inviting delegates from all CdCs in order to cope with the legal consequences of the ministerial ban. 28 Or Zachs was the author according to the former report, ibid., 28 October 1933; ibid., 16 November 1933. It was shown in La Bellevilloise, in Bagnolet, in Pierrefitte, in Sucy-enBrie and elsewhere. 29 Ibid., September–December 1933. On 29 November, Chevalier, Mercier and mayor Clamamaus spoke at a meeting organized by the Drancy CdS. The following night further CdS public meetings were held in Gennevilliers and Charenton. On 1 December, Pavillonssous-Bois CdS followed suit as did Levallois-Perret SOI with Onof and Ducheme on the platform. 22

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Unsurprisingly, the march stirred mutual sectarian acrimony. Two weeks before the march, Gaston Guiraud and René Lefevre wrote an open letter explaining why the Parisian region of the CGT would not support the hunger march. Not only was it a communist-inspired march, but they also complained about ‘the trials of the unlucky comrades from Nord’ would face. ‘It is a responsibility that we would not take and would not be associated with it. Our conscience opposes it, and our fraternal feelings towards the unemployed forbid it.’30 Two days later, a second open letter this time from the CGT leader of the Nord miners accused the hunger march organizers of trying to undermine the CGT march of the miners planned for the 26 November.31 To the charge of inducing suffering amongst the marchers, L’Humanité replied that the SFIO had supported the Saint-Nazaire march.32 The communist paper observed that the CGT leaders and Chautemps shared the same disingenuous language of humanitarian concern. It also denounced the sabotage of the SFIO mayors, targeting particular fire on the mayor of Lens.33 With the news of the hunger march from Lille to Paris, La Vérité, the Trotskyist newspaper, spoke of the urgency with which the communists should address this matter, and that with a few exceptions the committees of the unemployed were ‘dead or exist only in the manner of a fantasy’. According to the paper, the PCF had failed to build a real mass movement because of the ‘imbecile sectarianism and absolute lack of proletarian psychology’.34 The party required a sensitive approach to the ‘mentality and reactions’ of the unemployed combining simple direct demands with a short explanation of the crisis while not ducking the question of racism. They rounded in particular on the use of the CdCs as an instrument of negative electioneering, which was ‘a certain method to condemn it to long-term sterility’. Despite their reservations, when confronted with the hunger march, however, the Trotskyists applauded this ‘excellent initiative’ and condemned the CGT for rebuffing it.35 On 12 October, the CRC (Nord) went through the detail of the march. From the Nord region there were to be 78 marchers.36 Two columns were to feed into one another at Arras. The first, from Lille, was to pass through Seclin and Lens (where delegates from Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne and Béthune were to join). The second, 30

Le Peuple, 4 November 1933, quoted in L’Humanité, 18 November 1933. L’Humanité, 9 November 1933. 32 It had failed to prevent an increase in unemployment in the shipbuilding town but had resulted in a 350 million francs subsidy for the bosses at Transatlantique. Ibid., 5 November 1933; ibid., 6 November 1933; and ibid.,18 November 1933. 33 L’Humanité, 9 November 1933; ibid., 12 November 1933. 34 La Vérité, 6 October 1933. In the run up to the Lille to Paris hunger march, La Vérité returned to the failings of communist municipal provision for the unemployed. Villejuif council had organized meetings to support the hunger march but had refused to discuss soup kitchens and the non-inscrits [those unemployed ineligible for benefit]. Only if the council addressed unemployment, the unemployed correspondent from Villejuif concluded, it could breathe new life into the committees of the unemployed. Ibid., 20 October 1933. 35 Ibid., 27 October 1933; ibid., 17 November 1933. 36 From the following committees: Bailleul with two delegates, Armentières-Houplines (7), Pérenchies (1), Camines-Wervian (3), Halluin (7), Roncq (2), Tourcoing (5), La Madeleine (2), Hellemmes (7), Fives-Lille (15), and others from Lille (27). 31

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from Denain, was to accumulate participants as it passed through Somain and Douai. From Arras, the unified column was to venture to Bapaume where contingents from Saint-Quentin, Cambrai and Mauberge were to arrive. They projected 12 days on the road and three days rest. It would begin on 18 November and end on 2 December in Paris. On the organizational side, the Lille column was in Bourneton’s charge and the Valenciennes column in Desrumeaux’s.37 By 3 November, the Ministry of the Interior had learned that the hunger march from Lille was to be only one of seven tributaries into the demonstration of 2 December in Paris. These columns resembled the points of the compass with Paris at their centre. On 29 November columns were to set off from Le Provins (southeast of Paris) and Montereau; on the following day, from Méru (north) and Etampes (50 km south of Paris); on 1 December, from Meaux (50 km east of Paris); and on 2 December from Versailles (south-east of Paris).38 The Ministerial Ban and Police Repression of the March A ministerial ban threw this diligent preparation into turmoil. Camille Chautemps, the Radical Party Minister of the Interior (who became Prime Minister during the march itself), had decided to prohibit the march. His circular to the prefects was cynically couched in the language concern for the well-being of the marchers (as had been the case with the prefectoral ban on the Saint-Nazaire to Nantes march). He would ‘in no way countenance responsibility for authorizing or even tolerating a demonstration which entails the most serious hardships’.39 The wording may seem indirect and lacking conviction but it constituted a definitive ban. On 12 October he had privately signalled his intentions to the Prefect of Nord, on this occasion without the guise of philanthropic sentiment, ‘It would be desirable that such a demonstration, likely to provoke serious disorder, should not take place’.40 He counted on the Prefect not only to monitor the march ‘but prevent the success, to the fullest possible extent’. The Minister of the Interior had sent his first communication to Prefects on this matter on 18 September and followed this up with circulars. The Ministry’s legal justification for the ban derived from a combination of the laws of 7 June 1848, 5 April 1884 and the Code de la Route [highway code]. This banned all ‘corteges, gatherings, and other demonstrations’ that would disturb the ‘traffic, safety or public peace’. Local demonstrations were only permitted subject to ‘prior authorization from the competent authority’.41 The ban caused hesitation among the unemployed of the Nord. The Special Commissioner of Arras reported to the Prefect that march leaders ‘seemed a little disconcerted’ and even overwhelmed by the task. ‘The difficulties’, he continued, ‘encountered for the organization, which were already large, are now amplified and make their task impossible.’ He even believed they might renounce the march in 37 38 39 40 41

AN F7 13565 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 23 October 1933. Ibid., Ministry of Interior report: ‘Les Marches de la Faim’, 3 November 1933. Ibid., Minister of the Interior circular to prefects, 7 November 1933. Ibid., Minister of the Interior to Prefect (Nord), 12 October 1933. ADN M616 28 Minister of the Interior to Prefect (Nord), 14 November 1933.

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42

favour of demonstrations in various localities. Because of the ban, the municipal door closed in the marchers’ faces. The mayors of Sin-le-Noble and Lens refused permission to collect for the march. In Armentières, collectors were arrested. When, on 14 November, the former parliamentarian Métivier and the unitaire railworker Place asked under what conditions mayor Delansorme of Achicourt could support the march, he replied that he, like the mayor of Lens, could not support the march in any way because of the ban. In Bapaume, which was designated as a food stop, the mayor withdrew his offer of food and shelter in line with Chautemps’s orders. Police officials paid personal visits to leading militants to reinforce the point that the march was prohibited. The Special Commissioner of Arras spoke to Suckerdorff, the local CGTU official and André Parent the communist councillor in Avion. The Prefect of the Somme warned the councils of Amiens, Albert and Pozières not to support the march. He did not bother with the communist council in Longueau, which was dominated by local unitaire railworkers. He also summoned Dupuis, an anarchist activist, to the Prefecture to impress upon him the folly of involvement in the march.43 Less direct intimidation was also employed. The labour exchange in Amiens publicly announced that any marchers would be disqualified with the result that only two remained undeterred.44 Roger Salengro, the SFIO mayor of Lille, saw to it that leaflets describing the measures that would be taken against the hunger marchers were distributed at the signing on sessions.45 Hesitations were evident in the Boulogne unemployed committee not only over the ban but also whether benefits would be paid to marchers.46 The probability of disqualification from benefit worried potential marchers. Would their family receive benefits during the march? Would the authorities prevent them from signing on once they returned? To this end, Arthur Ramette, the Nord communist parliamentarian, headed a delegation to the Prefect of Nord that put various demands relating to the hunger march, including benefits for the marchers.47 The authorities realized the anxiety that their threat caused. Delattre, the Special Commissioner of Valenciennes, noted that the possible loss of benefits caused great anguish. He suggested that the relevant organizations be approached as the threat of disqualification would, he believed, be the simplest and most effective means of halting the march.48 In addition to the threat of loss of benefit, L’Humanité reported on the meeting on Tuesday 14 November between the Regional Committee for the Organization of the Hunger March and the Central Commissioner of Lille. The later menacingly asserted: ‘We will stop you leaving Lille by all means. We have 42

AN F7 13565 Special Commissioner (Arras) to the Prefect (Nord), 14 November 1933. Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 13 November 1933. 44 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 24 November 1933. 45 L’Humanité, 9 November 1933. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Charles Tillon’s report on the hunger march, 7 January 1934. Some councils changed signing on sessions to undermine the march. 46 AN F7 13565 Inspector of Special Police to Special Commissioner (Boulogne), 14 November 1933. 47 AN F 13565 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 6 November 1933. 48 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Under-Prefect, 25 October 1933. This was forwarded to the Prefect and the Minister of the Interior. 43

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gardes mobiles’. ‘We are not scared of the gardes mobiles’, replied the delegates. ‘Well, we have machine guns to bring you to heel.’49 The following day, Thomé, the Director of General Security, restated that the march would be stopped in the interest of order. Various reports filtering into the Ministry of the Interior must have given Chautemps relative confidence that his efforts would prevent the march from taking place. If the hunger march was to proceed, the organizers needed to respond with determination. The Regional Unemployed Committee immediately put out a press release protesting against the ban, refuting the claims about the suffering of the marchers and lack of organization as well as marking their intention to push ahead regardless.50 Printed in Grand Echo and Réveil du Nord, the ban created welcome publicity for the march. Reporting this to Chautemps, the Prefect of Pas-de-Calais suggested outright repression would be necessary. ‘I would take in these conditions’, he euphemized, ‘the necessary measures to assure the execution of your decision.’51 On 13 November, Martha Desrumeaux telephoned a member of the Boulogne unemployed committee stating that no notice should be taken of the prefectoral ban. At its public meeting the following day, de France acting as chair asserted that the hunger march would go ahead despite the ‘flics’ [police]. The names of march delegates were announced to the 130 to 150 in the room. In addition the meeting discussed the local wave of disqualifications against women and the unification of existing unemployed committees.52 From that meeting, Magnier was delegated to attend the last minute preparations for the march in Lille, the next day. That meeting decided that the marchers would leave in small groups with no fanfare send-off so as not to alert the authorities. Local demonstrations that had been envisaged were to be abandoned.53 Martha Desrumeaux outlined the prefecture’s and police commissioners’ ‘multiple manoeuvres and pressure’ designed to ‘paralyze the preparation of the march’: a ban on collections, threatened seizures of collected funds, and threats to disqualify unemployed delegates. To counter Chautemps’s claims, she underlined the attention being paid to the organizational detail of the march – the selection of fit men, the provision of food and accommodation as well as the necessary fundraising.54 Delegates were indignant at the attitude of the authorities and one elderly delegate shouted, ‘Despite everything, our delegates, our representatives will remind the deputies of their promises in Parliament’. Communist officials hoped to organize widespread protests at the ban. The clamour, they asserted, would result in the lifting of the ban. Given the party’s isolation, mobilizing broad public support was unlikely. Ministers could easily dismiss the call to remove the ban because only communist-inspired complaints were

49 50 51 52 53 54

L’Humanité, 16 November 1933. Grand Echo, 15 November 1933; Réveil du Nord, 15 November 1933. AN F7 13565 Prefect (Pas-de-Calais) to the Minister of the Interior, 15 November 1933. Ibid., Inspector of Special Police to Special Commissioner, 15 November 1933. Ibid., Inspector of Special Police to Special Commissioner, 16 November 1933. L’Humanité, 15 November 1933.

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55

forthcoming. Motions and petitions were sent to the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labour from various unemployed committees. For instance, the Minister of Labour received a 26 sheet petition from Alfortville unemployed committee.56 In addition to indignation, march organizers employed subterfuge and disinformation. The communist leadership sought to give the authorities the impression that the march had been cancelled. First, they concocted a plausible retreat position. There would be no hunger march, instead the unemployed would participate in the Paris demonstration on 2 December, travelling down in coaches. On 18 November Bourneton, regional secretary of the Communist Party, stated that 300 unemployed would participate in the Paris demonstration by this method.57 A delegation from the regional committee of the unemployed of Nord informed the authorities of the abandonment of the march and requested permission for local demonstrations instead. On 21 November, an unemployed committee meeting was held in Amiens, where Dupuis, the secretary of the Regional Hunger March Committee, maintained the fiction that the hunger march had been called off and that press reports that several marchers had arrived in Albert could not be confirmed. The Prefect of the Somme had been duped and suggested to the Minister of the Interior that the march would not take place.58 To reinforce this impression, a group of hunger marchers even feigned their return to Nord.59 On occasion, marchers made further efforts to confuse the authorities by splitting into groups and mixing modes of transport (foot, rail and lorry). It was not until 22 November that the regional committee of unemployed issued a press release to the effect that the march was underway with details of the participants and their progress.60 Deception went one step further. The leadership of the movement attempted to deflect the authorities’ attention by supporting CGT miners’ demonstrations in Nord and Pas-du-Calais on 26 November. Being of a purely local character, these circumvented the ban on the march to Paris. On 26 November, 18 unemployed left 55 On 14 November a delegation of the march organizers from Paris, including Marcel Capron, the communist deputy, went to see Thomé, the Director of General Security, to protest against the ban. The latter repeated the same rationale outlined in the ministerial ban. A report of the interview in L’Humanité detailed the delegation’s point-by-point rebuttal of the Minister’s position and concluded, ‘the hunger march has to take place! The hunger march will take place!’ On 16 November, the unemployed committees of Southern Paris based at Vitry, claiming to represent 20,000 unemployed, protested against the ban. They complained about double standards: the Saint-Nazaire to Nantes march had been authorized (it had not) and that there was no ban as yet on a Nord miners’ march for 26 November. La Nouvelle Famille [the New Family], another communist organization, dispatched a protest letter to the Minister of Labour. Ibid., 15 November 1933. Ibid., 18 November 1933. AN F22 682 La Nouvelle Famille to Minister of Labour, 27 November 1933. 56 AN F 22 682 Alfortville unemployed committee to Minister of Labour, 25 November 1933 57 AN F7 13565 Special Commissioner (Douai) to Director of General Security, 19 November 1933. 58 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 20 November 1933. 59 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 22 November 1933. On 22 November, after leaving Albert. 60 Réveil du Nord, 22 November 1933; L’Humanité, 22 November 1933.

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Tourcoing at 12.30 pm, 40 from Halluin, and nine from Roubaix for Lille where 380 demonstrated at the Prefecture leaving a list of demands before dispersing at 4.30 pm.61 In the meantime, preparations for the march were kept within narrow confines so as to avoid the police spies. Thus, there was no public fanfare for the departing marchers, those delegated for the trek to Paris slipped away quietly towards the nation’s capital. The silent start of the hunger march obviously contradicted the stated aim of recruiting public opinion to the cause of the unemployed. This cat– and–mouse with the authorities characterized the event throughout. The organizers devised tactics so that they could proceed despite the ban and heavy policing. Thus, for the entire route, the marchers had to ensure that they did not hold up the traffic and that they did not constitute any sort of demonstration. To this end, they marched in pairs separated by a good distance. The marchers also dispersed in different columns so that if one group were apprehended by the authorities the others could elude them. The march took several routes, in actuality and figuratively. From separate starting points, taking different itineraries, at times merging or splitting off, the marchers wove a complex web on their way south. The police closely pursued the actual march without entirely having it in their hands. Given that the PCF criticized the organizers of the Saint-Nazaire to Nantes march for declaring at the outset that it would be peaceful, such stealth and caution was ironic. Police repression and surveillance was an integral feature of the march in some senses making it the march that it was. Because of the ban, it was conducted in a semi-candestine manner. Fuzier, the Special Commissioner of Versailles suggested to the Prefect of Seine-et-Oise that ‘exceptional police measures’ be used because ‘the popular spirit tends to tolerate all discontent’.62 L’Humanité complained of the great expense and concentration of police forces in Nord and the undemocratic ban on demonstrations in Lille, Somain and Denain on 18 November the date of the departure of the march. Repression was not restricted to the north. It extended to their supporters elsewhere. In Paris, the police exercised a ban on collections for the marchers. Despite the anticipated hardships of the marchers being the reason for the ban, the police arrested collectors who tried to raise funds.63 On 8 November a group of unemployed were arrested in Bobigny who were sticking up posters in support of the hunger marchers.64 In the north, the Regional Unemployed Committee bemoaned of the ‘flooding of the [Nord and Pas-de-Calais] area with thousands of gardes mobiles’.65 From the first, the marchers faced road blocks and their papers were examined every six or 61 AN F7 13565 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Director of General Security, 26 November 1933. 62 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Versailles) to Prefect (Seine-et-Oise), 7 November 1933. 63 Arrests were reported in Saint-Maur and the 19th arrondissement, L’Humanité, 19 November 1933; ibid, 26 November 1933. The Comité d’Entr’aide du Marcheur du Nord du XIème Arrondissement [Committee of the 13th for Assistance for the Nord Marcher] appealed to the Prefect to lift the ban. APP BA1868 Comité d’Entr’aide du Marcheur du Nord du XIeme arrondissement to Prefect (Paris), 22 November 1933. 64 L’Humanité, 9 November 1933. 65 AN F7 13565 circular of the Regional Unemployed Committee to members, 24 November 1934.

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12 km. Charles Tillon’s reminiscences return several times to the question of police repression. He recalled on the first day of the march that: But soon a blockade of police came into view. A captain told us that the Minister of the Interior (him again) banned the march ‘through humanitarian care for the unemployed and to warn them at this time of the year, against the cold and the bad weather’. What would have been the point of a discussion in front of an angry crowd, other than to reply that no law can prevent a few citizens marching on the road? We would simply continue on our way as groups of 4 or 5. We were determined to reach Paris without giving the chance of provocation. ‘Okay’, says the captain, escaping his embarrassment, ‘if you go in twos and threes for 50 metres we’ll see…’ The most important thing was to pass the roadblock… The troop of volunteers therefore stretched themselves out in small groups to reach the first stage of the suburbs of Lens.66

The police had several Citröen cars at their disposal to check the whereabouts of the marchers and every time that Tillon got into a car, plains clothes officers gave chase. The marchers remained calm and disciplined refusing to be provoked by the heavy-handed policing. On one occasion in the Somme, they were able to show some defiance in the face of this intimidation. At one road block they gathered together and sang in a Nord dialect that the Police could not fathom. The Prefect of Seine-et-Oise organized a meeting of police commissioners and under-prefects at the end of November to plan their response to the last days of the march. He sought to ensure a tight liaison with the authorities in Seine department throughout. He asked the Military Governor of Paris to put 12 squadrons (four mounted) of gardes républicaines mobiles at his disposal.67 He also noted that absolute secrecy had been maintained by the march leaders about the plans for 1– 2 December. Suggesting that the police had informants at all but the very highest level of the march, even the column leaders did not know the plans until the last minute.68 In an effort to prevent the message of the hunger march getting across to the general public, the Director General of the Parisian Municipal Police told newsreel companies and cinema directors that the Prefect deemed images of the hunger march to be ‘undesirable’. He also ordered surveillance of cinemas to ensure that this was adhered to.69 Who Marched? What we know of the march emanated from three principal sources: the communist press, the memoirs of Charles Tillon and the reports lodged in the Ministry of the Interior files. The state’s intimate knowledge of the movement defies our conventional 66

Tillon, On Chantait Rouge, p. 172. He reinforced the gendarmerie of Seine-et-Oise and created a reserve of 30 men at Versailles to help in the surveillance of the Trappes–Saint-Cyr–Malakoff–Vanves column of demonstrators. 68 AN F7 13565 Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 29 November 1933. 69 APP BA1868 Director-General of the Municipal Police to Prefect, 29 November 1933. 67

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assumptions about democracy. Not only were there informers and daily reports but there was also the attempt to identify every single marcher, a feature endearing to social historians if not to the participants. Thus we know the names, ages and professions of all, we are pretty safe in assuming, of the hunger marchers. Future struggles and future responsibilities lay before some of the hunger marchers. Of the marchers whose futures we know, a small number played a prominent part in unemployed protest. André Martinod led an unemployed riot only weeks after in Calais; other hunger marchers – Jean Lahaye, Emile Perrard, Xavier Brasseur – were also charged for their participation in this event. Eugène Denimal was secretary of the CdC of the Denain canton, overseeing several CdCs in the Cambrésis area and was to organize hunger marches in 1934 and 1935. Louis Manguine stood in the 1936 legislative elections for the PCF. Others, Eugène Lefebvre and Marcel Marchetti volunteered to fight in Spain. Lefebvre again, along with Edmond Cher, Charles Tillon and Denimal found their way into the ranks of the French resistance during German occupation. Tillon was one of the principal national leaders of the communist resistance movement, being on the secret secretariat of the party and a founding member of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans [Irregulars and Partisans, FTP]. As regards future responsibilities, a number ascended the communist hierarchy. Tillon held three ministerial posts – Air, Armaments and Reconstruction between 1944 and 1947, becoming mayor of Aubervilliers.70 Edmond Cher, elected as a councillor in 1937 became mayor of Petite-Forêt in 1945. Alidor Scherpereel took over as secretary of the Nord Federation of the communist veterans association ARAC in 1937. Police files reveal a much broader geographical and occupational spread of marchers than the communists and the press sometimes suggested. They were actually quite a disparate group. Despite the problems with their occupational categorization, these police lists of marchers do challenge the assumptions made about them. This was not simply a march of unemployed miners. Of the 76 whose situations we know, the two largest industrial groups were miners and those in building trades with nine each. There were probably more building workers given that 11 stated ‘labourer’ as their occupation and some of these are likely to have been in construction. Though, with the exception of a solitary farmer and a surveyor, all could be described as working-class, they were very different in terms of occupational status. Alongside the labourers marched artisan jewellers as well as highly skilled workers (fitters, painters and glassblowers). It should be no surprise then that the heterogeneous occupational mix should correspond to scattered recruitment from across the Nord and Pas-deCalais region. Marchers were drawn from 44 locations. The largest groups did come from the mining towns – Denain and Anzin – with 23 in total. After these, the larger towns of the region – Dunkirk, Lille, Boulogne – sent nine each. It was not just the mining region that provided significant numbers. The textile towns of Lille and Halluin yielded respectably sized delegations as did coastal towns Boulogne and Calais. Indeed, some larger mining centres like Valenciennes and Bruay only seem

70

Tillon, On Chantait Rouge; Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français.

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to have sent a single delegate. Less than half of the marchers came from the mining district.71 As to their political affiliations, there is greater uncertainty. In a Cahiers du Bolchévisme article, Michel Onof stated that only 80 out of 120 marchers did not belong to any party; of the remainder, likely to be mainly PCF, 12 can be identified as such. Tillon asserted that 39 or 40 out of 105 marchers did not belong to any organization, 65 were in the CGTU, two were in the SFIO, one was a member of the CGT and 35 were in the PCF.72 Some like André Martinod of Calais, joined the PCF as a consequence of the march.73 Part of the party’s most tested cadre took to the road. At least six had joined in the party’s first year. Several communist officials were present on the march in an organizing capacity, principally: Michel Onof (SRI), Charles Tillon and René Fromage (L’Humanité journalist, who used the pseudonym Fronsac). In addition, several members of district [rayon] leaderships marched: Edmond Cher (secretary, Valenciennes), Jean Lahaye (editor of the Calais district paper, L’Unité d’Action), Adolphe Robert (secretary, Boulogne), and Alfred Maton (secretary, Fourmies). Unitaire officials also participated: Eugène Denimal, secretary of the CGTU railworkers of Anzin, Maurice Adam, secretary of CGTU textiles in Glageon, Pierre Copin, glassworkers union secretary, Adolphe Robert, secretary of CGTU painters union of Boulogne and Lucien Sautières, secretary of CGTU trades council of Caudry. Others were lesser lights within the communist movement: Emile Sevrez, the son of a communist councillor and Fernand Lecompte secretary of the Crespin–Quiévrechain party cell. There is no record of the march attracting SFIO or CGT officials. The Hunger March, 18 November–2 December On the first day of the march, Saturday 18 November, local demonstrations in Nord were used to divert the attention of the authorities. L’Humanité reported demonstrations of 1,200 in Lille and Valenciennes, 1,500 in Denain and 500 in Somain.74 After the demonstrations had ended, two groups of marchers set out on Saturday night or Sunday morning in the direction of Lens and Arras respectively.75 71 Of the 141 marchers who told the police where they lived, 62 of these came from the coalfield. Four lists were included in Ministry of Interior files: F 7 13565 Prefect (Somme) to the Minister of the Interior, 26 November 1933; ibid., Prefect (Somme) to the Minister of the Interior, 30 November 1933; ibid., Prefect (Somme) to the Minister of the Interior, 20 November 1933; ibid., Prefect (Oise) to the Minister of the Interior, 25 November 1933. 72 IHS CCdC Bulletin, 25 January 1934. 73 M. Onof, ‘L’action du SOI et les chômeurs’ Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 1 (1 January 1934): 59–65. 74 L’Humanité, 19 November 1933. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Charles Tillon’s report on the hunger march, 7 January 1934. This stated that there were 1,200 in Lille, 1,000 in Valenciennes and 1,200 in Denain. AN F7 13565 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 19 November 1933. Police figures were 300 in Valenciennes, 120 in Denain, 250 in Lille and 70 attended a meeting at Somain. See appendix 6 for the route. 75 L’Humanité, 23 November 1933. Those going to Lens had come from Lille and its surrounding area, whilst those on their way to Arras were from Valenciennes, Denain, Somain

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The police’s first sighting of the unemployed marchers indicated that around 30 were making their way towards Arras on November 19. On the same day, the police intercepted eight more on a train from Dunkirk to Lens (three of whom were Senegalese and were turned back).76 That evening Charles Tillon and Félix Calas explained the hunger march to a public meeting in Lens. Place of the unitaire railworkers found overnight accommodation for the marchers in Achicourt. On 20 November, the Special Commissioner of Arras reported that about 40 were now on the roads heading for Albert. On several occasions, the police arrested and interrogated them, individually cataloguing their names, addresses, dates of birth and asking their business. To the frustration of the police, each marcher had been well coached and simply stated their details and that they were looking for work.77 At 3 pm the first 23 marchers arrived in Albert, where they stayed the night and the following day. On entering Albert, the marchers who eventually totalled 40 were subjected to another identity check.78 On 22 November at 7am, after a day’s rest, the marchers left Albert for Longueau. They separated into two groups, 24 in one and 15 in the other, taking different routes out of the town. One group set off in the direction of Aveluy then doubled back on themselves to give the impression that they were returning home through Pas-deCalais. Others took the train or car. Another identity check now yielded a list of 54 marchers.79 The Prefect noted that the marchers were ‘very calm and one has the impression that the morale is good although their material organization leaves something to be desired: the food is not very plentiful and the cars are in a bad state’. On 23 November, seven new marchers arrived in Longueau bringing the number of the contingent to 60.80 A second contingent from the mining communes of Raismes, Petite-Fôret, Anzin and Denain arrived in Waziers.81 Police cars shadowed the marchers, stopping when the marchers did, following each time the marchers moved off. A group from Halluin and Fives marched to Seclin to be fed at midday. They went on to communist Montigny-en-Gohelle where they stayed the night.82 Fronsac interviewed two marchers from Raismes for L’Humanité. He asked them if they were afraid of the daunting march on account of their age (one was aged 41, the other 55). ‘Afraid! Me! What do you take me for! I’ll arrive as fresh as the youngest!’ and Waziers. 76 AN F7 13565 Special Commissioner (Dunkirk) to Director of General Security, 19 November 1933. 77 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Arras) to Prefect (Pas-de-Calais), 20 November 1933. They were from Lens, Arras, Achicourt and Achiet. 78 They had come from across Nord and Pas-de-Calais: Dunkirk (4), Houplines, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Denain, Halluin (3), Calais (2), Pont-à-Meppe, Lille, Coussières, Bailleul, Onnaing. 79 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Ministry of Interior, 22 November 1933. 80 Ibid., 23 November 1933. 81 Ibid., Special Commissioner to Director of General Security, 24 November 1933. 82 L’Humanité, 24 November 1933.

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‘Tired?’, Fronsac asked. ‘No! But we’ve done 40 km, we left Raismes at 4 am, but we’ve seen lots of others, we’re determined to overcome all the difficulties to get to Paris.’

By 24 November tracing the movement of the various groups of marchers became even more complex. The first contingent left from Amiens and Longueau at 7 am. The day’s march was broken into two stages from Longueau to Breteuil and Breteuil to Saint-Just-en-Chaussée. Participants marched either the first or second stage and were transported by lorry or train on the other. A trickle of new marchers swelled their numbers with two joining from the Somme.83 Further north, another group of marchers left Achicourt for Bapaume.84 Three more from Aniche were driven to Bapaume. The second contingent still 40 in number left Waziers for Arras.85 The Halluin-Fives group travelled from Montigny to Arras to join the second contingent. These marchers had to contend with awful weather: fog, icy wind and rain.86 On 25 November, the first contingent took a rest day in Saint-Just-en-Chaussée while the second contingent travelled from Arras to Albert via Bapaume (19 by lorry). A thick fog had descended on the Somme interrupted by a few flakes of snow. On receiving the news that they were to be disqualified, one marcher spoke defiantly, If they hope to make us retreat by disqualifying us, well, they’re mistaken. We’ll go to Paris nonetheless to fulfil the mandate that our comrades have entrusted us with. If they disqualify us, all the lads from the Nord will be with us and we’ll show them what the ch’tis [northerners] are capable of.87

On their entry into Albert they were met with a thick line of police who carried out an identity check that lasted three-quarters of an hour. After which at 4 pm, they all went to the Maison du Peuple for food. On Sunday 26 November, in the Nord, the CGT’s march of the miners took place with demonstrations in Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, Béthune and Lille where 380 (1,000 according to L’Humanité) lobbied the Prefecture. Communist support had had the dual purpose of deflecting the authorities from the hunger march and reinforcing support for the case of the miners and unemployed in the region.88

83

AN F7 13565 Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 24 November 1933. By and large the march was an impressive display of self-discipline, but march leaders did send three marchers home for bad behaviour: Verhue, Nolph and Verhove. Ibid., Prefect (Oise) to Minister of the Interior, 25 November 1933. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Charles Tillon’s report on the hunger march, 7 January 1934. 84 AN F 13565 telephone message from general secretary to Prefect (Pas-de-Calais), 24 November 1933. 85 AN F 13565 Prefect (Somme) to Ministry of Interior, 24 November 1933; ibid., 25 November 1933. 86 L’Humanité, 25 November 1933. 87 Ibid., 26 November 1933. 88 Other CGT ‘marches of the miners’ took place in Carmaux 19 November and in (La Ricamarie to Saint-Etienne) Loire 3–4 December 1933. Pétrement, Simone Weil, p. 185.

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On 27 November, after resting for a day, both contingents took to the road again. The first contingent marched from Saint-Just-en-Chaussée to Clermont.89 The second contingent tracing the route that their comrades had taken four days previously marched from Albert to Longueau (outside Amiens) to enjoy the hospitality of the communist council. On 28 November, the first contingent travelled from Clermont to Nogent.90 The second contingent, 49 of them, used the same method of combining the lorry and marching from Longueau to Saint-Just that the first group had used three days earlier. The weather had changed, the fog had lifted and the sky was filled with bright wintry sunshine. There were indications that the hunger march tactic was beginning to pay off. Press coverage sympathized with the marchers. Paris-Soir and FranceActualités sent reporters and photographers. The hunger march was having a real impact in Saint-Just where unity between the CGT and CGTU had been forged on the Support Committee.91 The following day, the second contingent left Saint-Just at 8.30 am. As they did so the marchers, who were departing for Clermont, cheered the population for their hospitality. Two further marchers – René Meurant and Louis Galant – both communists, embarked from Saint-Quentin taking the bus to Amiens to catch up with the rest of the hunger marchers.92 With the second contingent making its way from Clermont to Creil, Nogent and Montataire, it eventually caught up with the first contingent on Thursday 30 November. The marchers attended a Montataire unemployed committee meeting of 250 at which five unemployed decided to join the last leg of the hunger march. Another 20 hunger marchers from Nord arrived in Longueau where they had a meeting at 5 pm. They went to another meeting that evening in neighbouring Amiens organized by the Central Committee of the Hunger March. At this assembly, Tillon, Desrumeaux and Lenglet (CGTU) spoke.93 This third contingent was driven down in two stages to Longueau on 30 November. On 1 December they joined up with the other two contingents at Lamorlaye.94 This contingent had been delayed because of the difficulties posed by the ban. On 1 December, the penultimate day of the march, the Prefect of Seine-et-Oise reported activity in four different parts of his department. The fortnight of protest was building to its crescendo. At last large numbers of jobless, several hundred in total, were taking to the streets.95 The Prefect also had been informed that a group of dockers from Le Havre would join these contingents, though they had not yet been spotted.96 89

Where 38 were accommodated for the night and 14 went to Rantigny. Staying the night in Nogent, Creil and Montataire. 91 L’Humanité, 28 November 1933. 92 AN F7 13565 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 30 November 1933. 93 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 30 November 1933. 94 Lamorlaye lies between Nogent and Ecouen. 95 Ibid., note from telephone call from Prefect (Seine-et-Oise) to Ministry of the Interior at 6.30 pm, 1 December 1933. 96 They were at that time involved in a six-week strike. AN F7 13557 Prefect (SeineInférieure) to Minister of the Interior, 5 October 1933; L’Appel des Chômeurs (Le Havre), 1 90

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The finale, the triumphant entry into Paris had arrived. It was now time for the last act: the demonstration and open air rally of Sunday 2 December. Early in the morning, the unemployed began to gather at their designated points. At place de la Mairie, Ivry, workless men and women congregated.97 At 8.45 am, 1,300 set off and followed a route through Charenton, bois de Vincennes, Montreuil, Bagnolet (where they stopped for refreshments), Pantin and Aubervilliers eventually reaching their destination, Saint-Denis.98 As for the hunger marchers themselves, they formed part of a column that left Ecouen at 8 am arriving at Pierrefitte at 10.50 am. The 600 participants were taken to the Maison du Peuple for a meal. A second march of 500 arrived from Maisons-Laffite in Colombes. The Sevran column, only 50 strong, passed through Bobigny at 10.50 am on its way to Pantin. Another group of 600 unemployed demonstrators from Provins reached Alfortville at 9.30 am singing the Internationale, rhythmically chanting ‘Du travail et du pain’ [work and bread], carrying placards and banners. These columns converged between porte de Paris and pont de Soissons from 1 pm. An hour later 6,000 set off down rue de Paris, taking the route d’Epinay arriving at Stade de L’Unité at 3.15 pm. The massed ranks alternated anti-fascist or unemployed protest slogans with revolutionary songs. To the police it seemed ‘more like a communist demonstration than a gathering of the unemployed’. Twenty red flags and 30 banners fluttered in the wind and 400 placards bore a variety of slogans: ‘Our 12 francs’, ‘Tax exemptions’, ‘Unemployment insurance’, and ‘Coal for the winter’. Seven thousand unemployed filed into the stadium. Tillon described the entry of the marchers in his memoirs: They arrived just as broken by tiredness as they were happy to have suffered for their own people. At three in the afternoon, rallying in the street, a column of 8,000 unemployed, reached Saint-Denis which was covered with streamers, and mixed with another crowd of 10,000 jobless Parisians who had come to meet them. A sea of peaked hats and red flags swelled around the stage where the marchers met all these people with their hearts overwhelmed by well wishers. There was only one slogan ‘bread or work’.99

At 3.30 pm Charles Tillon, as chair, opened the meeting and introduced the allcommunist line up of speakers: Pierre Mercier, Michel Onof, Martha Desrumeaux and Jacques Doriot.100 One speaker after another paid tribute to the exertions of the hunger marchers, denounced the Government as well as the reformist leaders and outlined the communist positions on unemployment and fascism. ‘This beautiful demonstration’, Tillon predicted, ‘will show the authorities that the unemployed (November 1933). 97 From Vitry, Villejuif and the surrounding area. 98 Smaller groups of 20 to 30 left Montreuil, Choisy-le-Roi, Drancy and Suresnes between 9 am and 10 am. From Etampes, 300 passed through Malakoff at 6.20 am heading towards Montrouge. 99 Tillon, On Chantait Rouge, p. 173. 100 Onof was born in Lille but was living in Paris’s 12th arrondissement. He had been sent on the march and was one of its leaders.

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have had enough and that they are determined to get all their demands met as soon as possible.’ True to form, Mercier attacked the reformist leaders, who, in agreement with the bourgeois government, wanted to prevent the hunger march. We went to ask for authorization from the Ministry of the Interior, but the unemployed wanted to prove that, despite the tiredness, the elements and the police as well, a distance of 250 km did not frighten them.

Onof thanked all those who had contributed to the success of the march from communist, socialist, confederal or unitaire backgrounds and appealed for unity of action. He concluded by chanting, ‘Long live the SRI! Long live the revolutionary organizations! Long live the international working class!’ Hénaff paid homage to the endeavours of the marchers from the north and sharply criticized the Tardieu government. He visualized the future heading in one of two directions: either to fascism or the USSR. Linking the fate of the unemployed to other labour struggles, Martha Desrumeaux praised the militancy of the striking dockers in Dunkirk. Next on the podium, Doriot outlined the need for public works and recited details of his council’s generosity towards the unemployed. He then invited the hunger marchers to the salle de Légion d’Honneur where accommodation tokens were to be distributed. Tillon wound up the speeches at 4.10 pm. After this rousing meeting, the unemployed were in high spirits but dispersed in small groups so as to avoid clashes with the police.101 Hunger Marchers in Paris and their Return For two days, the hunger marchers rested in Saint-Denis. On Tuesday 4 December, they were scheduled to present their demands to the Chamber of Deputies. In the morning around 100 marchers gathered and held a meeting at 33 rue de la Grange-aux-Belles. From there they took taxis to central Paris. These left in different directions so as to confuse the police surveillance. Suplice Dewez received one group at the parliament building and another went to the German Embassy accompanied by Frot, the Paris regional secretary of the CGTU, who handed in a protest letter. They then moved south into the suburbs to lay a wreath at Edmond Fritsch’s grave at Bicêtre cemetery. Eighty unemployed returned to the Chamber of Deputies where they were apprehended by the police and taken to the police station at Invalides.102 Packed into the corridor of the police station, the unemployed demanded to see their deputies. They shouted slogans and sang ‘Le P’tit Quinquin’.103 Martha Desrumeaux followed this with the ‘Mother’s strike’, and then the detainees intoned the Internationale. By this time, Doriot had arrived and intervened with the police. When ‘big Jack’ emerged, he told the marchers that their efforts to enter the parliament building were pointless and that they should return to Saint-Denis.

101 AN F7 13565 Police report: ‘On the subject about a hunger march organized by the Region Union of Unemployed Committees’, 2 December 1933. 102 Ibid., Police report, 4 December 1933. 103 The northern folk lullaby of the poor weaving girl.

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Reflecting the tensions within the PCF leadership over Doriot’s authority amongst the unemployed, Tillon reacted angrily to this suggestion, You know full well we haven’t made this journey for your meals. I believe the lads agree. You know how we got to Saint-Denis, and they’ve kept us prisoners here for three hours illegally. We’ve said a 100 times that we demand to enter the Chamber. If nobody received us we’d return to Saint-Denis by foot in groups of five, but going via the offices of L’Huma.104

Eventually, they returned to Saint-Denis after having been interviewed at the offices of the Communist daily. Three days after the attempt to gain access to the Palais Bourbon, a first group of hunger marchers returned home. At 8.30 am, 30 hunger marchers left Saint-Denis by bus. They arrived nine hours later in Valenciennes after dropping off in Arras, Douai, Aniche and Denain.105 The Special Commissioner of Valenciennes noted the ambivalence of those who had returned (though there may have been some wishful thinking involved), ‘As for those who have gone home they hardly exhibit enthusiasm about their trip and certain, the majority, wished that, at their departure, that they had been stopped from going and that they had not gone to the capital.’106 He also predicted a triumphant welcome for the larger contingent that was still in Paris. The remainder had stayed hoping to mobilize local workers outside the Palais Bourbon in order to force the authorities to grant them return train fares. On 8 December the marchers had their final meeting at rue de la Grange-auxBelles and then went to the Gare du Nord. The director of the Northern Rail Network acceded to their demand for free fares but insisted that they travel at night. The insistence on a night train prevented reception demonstrations and meetings for the marchers. Indeed, 100 unemployed had gathered in Valenciennes expecting them back in the late afternoon.107 From the Gare du Nord, 56 took the 10.45 pm for Lille, five took the 11.40 pm for Calais and nine took the 12.15 am to Saint-Quentin. Despite the long journey, spirits remained ebullient, singing the Internationale, while the detectives of the railway company looked on. The Lille train eventually arrived at 3.58 am. There, Martha Desrumeaux met the remaining marchers and took them to a nearby café for some food. Charles Tillon reflected on the efforts of the hunger marchers some four decades later: For the comrades, they realized the impact of their actions. At the Gare du Nord, we formed a cortege to get onto the platform. Not a single copper in sight. After the embraces, I saw the wooden carriages transporting the marchers move into the distance. What melancholic joy. We were bound by a strong affection after three weeks together. Being an activist is a good occupation.108

104 105 106 107 108

Tillon, On Chantait Rouge, p. 176. AN F7 13565 Special Commissioner to Under-Prefect (Valenciennes), 7 December 1933. Ibid., 7 December 1933. Ibid., 9 December 1933. Tillon, On Chantait Rouge, p. 177.

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With the return of the hunger marchers, in late December 1933 and January 1934, many unemployed committees particularly in the Nord region held report back discussions on the hunger march and sent model letters to the Minister of Labour demanding to know what had come of the promises made to the hunger marches.109 Furthermore, the smaller number of volunteers who trekked to Paris mingled once more with their fellows in the dole queues and at the street corners regaling their comrades with stories of the march. At both the formal and informal level, therefore, the march touched wider circles of the workless. Conclusion The organizers had accomplished the Lille to Paris hunger march, despite the sabotage of the authorities. By the very fact of its completion, it could be considered a success. It allowed communists to break the demoralizing circle of disappointment and failure that had characterized much of their activity amongst the unemployed thus far. They had proved their capacity to rally the unemployed on a grander scale than the SaintNazaire to Nantes march. This, given the intense inter-party competition, was crucial. L’Humanité claimed that 50,000 had received the northerners on 2 December.110 To make the maximum capital out of the event, the marchers remained in Paris after their triumphal entrance on 2 December. For nearly two months the different elements of the communist movement – its municipalities, the SRI, the union, leading party members, the communist paper as well as the unemployed movement – concentrated their forces to make the hunger march a success.111 The PCF would not expend such energies on the unemployed again. Also, from Belfort to Albi, from Strasbourg to Toulon, 29 public meetings about the hunger march were held that day, illustrating its national impact.112 A number of these places were later to stage their own hunger marches. The march revitalized the movement of the unemployed in various parts 109 AN F 22 682 model telegrams sent to Ministry of Labour from the following unemployed committees: Sèvres (30 December 1933), Valenciennes (31 December), RuelMalmaison (1 January 1934), Fresnes-sur-L’Escaut (4 January), Petite-Fôret (4 January), Condé (7 January), Hérin (13 January), Denain (18 January), Roeulx (19 January), Lourches (24 January), and Yeuville-sur-Escaut (25 January). 110 L’Humanité, 4 December 1933. 111 Ibid. The Prefecture of Police noted that: ‘To assure the success of the march and the Saint-Denis demonstration, the Parisian, provincial and suburban CdCs, supported by the PC and CGTU, have been leading an incessant propaganda over the last few weeks. Many distributions of leaflets have been made and multiple meetings in the large centres. L’Humanité has brought it a most active support regularly inserting statements from the UdC as well as numerous articles by unitaire and communist activists are reported. For their part, the leaders of the CGTU have taken advantage of circumstances to encourage their sympathizers to join the action of the jobless.’ 112 Lille, Laon, Nancy, Strasbourg, Belfort, Saint-Etienne, Grenoble, Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Beziers, Toulouse, Mont-de-Marsan, Périgeux, Angoulême, Nantes, Douarnenez, Rennes, Caen, Rouen, Troyes, Dijon, Clermond-Ferrand, Albi, Limoges, Tours. Bourges, Orléans, Algiers, APP BA 1868 report: ‘On the subject of the hunger march organised by the Region Union of Unemployed Committees’, 29 November 1933.

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of the country. In the next two months, Charles Tillon could point to a hunger march between Dives-sur-Mer and Caen, two occupations of the mayor’s offices at Montluçon, the prevention of overtime in an arms factory in the 15th arrondissement, a relief workers’ strike in Armentières and the refusal of the unemployed of Bailleul to be sent to Dunkirk. On 4 December, the Municipal Council of Paris provided 2.5 million francs credit for coal and other goods in kind for the unemployed. Tillon hoped that the coalition of forces embodied in the Support Committees would continue to act in concert over the question of unemployment.113 They did not and the advances made by the Parisian movement proved to be ephemeral. Indeed, the region became mired in the PCF leadership contest between Thorez and Doriot. It also had to wait for a central decision if there was to be a repetition of the march and this was subject to the esoteric internal logic of the communist leadership. A second national hunger march could have been more straightforward than the first. Though speculated about on several occasions, it never materialized.

113

IHS CCdC Bulletin, 25 January 1934.

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Chapter 6

After the Hunger March: the Rising Militancy of the Unemployed in 1934 The Hunger March of 1933 recast the fortunes of unemployed protest. The year that followed brought a new militancy, not only of the unemployed but also in campaigns against fascism. With the hunger march, the communists had restored its hegemony over unemployed protest and seized upon a tactic it could apply across the country. Hunger marches set out in Basses-Pyrénées, the Loire, Nord, and Gard. The news of the hunger marchers – and, in the case of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, returning marchers – inspired new efforts on the part of the unemployed. This resurgence occurred as the pace of events accelerated and took a threatening turn. The shock of Hitler’s consolidation of power, the last stand of red Vienna against Austro-fascism and the immediacy of the domestic threat of fascism with the riots of 6 February outside the French parliament created a climate of political crisis. On 12 February, a one-day general strike and demonstrations up and down the country against fascism showed the powerful potential of unity for mass mobilization. The Doumerge cabinet was a distinct shift to the right, but Radical participation continued. Mounting unemployment only exacerbated the sense of tension. Although low by international standards, joblessness rose to a higher plateau than it previously had. 1934 and 1935 witnessed the years of greatest hardship for the French working class.1 Government action comprised of reform of the relationship between union and local unemployment funds as well as the Marquet plan (the law on public works of 15 March 1934). Fiscal orthodoxy and commitment to the Gold Standard caused budgetary pressures which ruled out more concerted action to tackle unemployment. The economic crisis meant that unemployed protest, in particular from early 1933 onwards, took place within the wider context of sectional economic protests of peasants, veterans, tax-payers, civil servants and traders. In the years of the neocartel Government, the right took to the streets with peasant riots in Chartres in January 1933 and demonstrations from taxpayers, veterans and small businessmen in different parts of the country.2 After the lull that followed the 1932 legislative elections, unemployed protest returned once again on a widespread basis from late 1 Unemployment claimants numbered 350,930 in February 1934 and 503,502 in February 1935. In 1930 the total wages amounted to 161.2 million francs, they had fallen in 1934 to 137.8 million francs at constant prices, a fall of 15 per cent and this figure recovered by less than one per cent in the following year. Pierre Saly, ‘La politique française des grands travaux (1929–39): fut-elle Keynesienne?’ Revue Economique, 31/4 (1980): 735. 2 Tartakowsky, Les Manifestations de Rue en France, 1918–1968; Tartakowsky, ‘Syndicats et mobilisations de chômeurs dans les années trente’.

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1933. It formed a constituent of what Danielle Tartakowsy has aptly called the ‘new culture of demonstrations’ [‘la nouvelle culture manifestante’] of 1934.3 The Calais Riot of 5 January 1934 and its Aftermath On 5 January 1934, Le Groupement des Chômeurs de Calais [the Calais Group of the Unemployed], the local communist-led unemployed committee, organized a demonstration demanding a weekly sack of coal to fend off the mid-winter cold of northern France. Of the French unemployed committees, the Groupement had been exceptionally active.4 This strength was not a simple reflection of communist implantation.5 Calais was at that time a socialist stronghold.6 The committee had delegated five members to participate in the hunger march. If everything was done to ensure that the Lille to Paris hunger march did not provoke the authorities, this restraint did not persist on their return to Calais. As was the intention, on the marchers’ homecoming, their example stirred the unemployed to action. The demonstration on 5 January began after the signing on session at the mayor’s offices. Dockers from Calais-Nord numbering 800 to 900 joined the 200 unemployed who assembled at the Hôtel de Ville. Because of this imposing presence, the police hurriedly shut the doors of the Hôtel de Ville. André Martinod, a committee member, a hunger marcher and recent recruit to the PCF, made a speech to the crowd of dockers and unemployed. ‘We’, the firebrand shouted, ‘have not come to present our demands for yet another occasion, but, to demand a sack of coal a week and not a month.’7 Eugène Morel, secretary of the Calais Group of the Unemployed, then read the letter of demands of the unemployed dockers. Martinod once again addressed the crowd, ‘The unemployed know where to find the coal – at the port’. The crowd then headed towards the port and the Mory-Watteau works where coal was stockpiled for the Navy. There the unemployed loaded up with coal. Martinod explained that they should each take one or two blocks to pile up in front of the Hôtel de Ville to show the council that there was plenty of coal in Calais.8 3

Danielle Tartakowsky, Le Pouvoir est dans la Rue: Crises Politiques et Manifestations en France (Paris, 1998), p. 114. 4 AN F 22 682 The Minister of Labour received motions or letters from the Calais unemployed committee or its local affiliates on: 30 June, 11 August, 23 and 27 September, 1 and 16 December 1932; 14 January, 24 February, 30 March, 8 May, 9 June, 8 September 1933; 2 and 13 and 22 February, 9 and 15 March, 8 and 29 November 1934; 13 and 21 January, 21 and 23 August, 17 December 1935. Attendance at these meetings ranged in the hundreds. 5 AN F7 13098 Prefect (Pas-de-Calais) to Minister of the Interior, 10 September 1932. In Pas-de-Calais, there were 2,690 members in five districts [rayons]. The Calais district was the weakest with no constituted cells and only 86 members. In contrast, the Béthune district had 11 cells and 2,012 members. 6 With 5,000 CGT against 200 CGTU members, Prost, ‘Les manifestations du 12 février 1934 en provence’: 27. 7 AN F7 13565 Central Commissioner of Police to Director of General Security, 5 January 1934. 8 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Calais) report, 5 January 1934. According to the Central Commissioner, it was Martinod but the Special Commissioner wrote that it was Vasseur who

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In an effort to regain control of the situation, the Central Commissioner of Police formed a line with about ten police to prevent the demonstrators from returning to the town centre. During the ensuing scuffle, 19-year-old Maurice Pourquet was arrested for striking a police officer. Overwhelmed, jostled and ignored, the best that the Central Commissioner could do was to follow the 1,500 or so demonstrators who were heading for the Hôtel de Ville. Yet again, near the Hôtel de Ville, the Central Commissioner told the crowd to disperse. After repeating himself three times, he then ordered his men to draw their revolvers. Thus provoked, the jobless began to pelt the police with coal. Martinod approached the Central Commissioner and ‘imperiously’ (in the words of the latter) demanded to the release of Porquet. Martinod growled that the police official had overstepped his authority and that he would come to regret it. In a flash, Martinod leapt on to a tram to expose to the crowd the officer’s refusal. Angered by Martinod’s attitude, the officer attempted to arrest the former hunger marcher, but Martinod successfully freed himself. Another spate of missiles rained down on the police. In addition, the windows of a café and the tram were smashed. As an indicator of the seriousness of the event, there was thousands of francs worth of damage and 14 police officers were injured.9 Only with the arrival of reinforcements were the police able restore calm to the streets. The events provoked strong reactions from local people polarizing local opinion. ‘These serious incidents,’ Favier reported, ‘have moved the Calais population.’ The contrast between the Calais riot and the hunger march could not be starker. After the police harassment of the journey to Paris, 5 January represented a moment of vengeance for those hunger marchers – Martinod, Jean Lahaye, Emile Perrard, Xavier Brasseur – who participated. The day brought a sudden and momentary reversal in the relations of power. The unemployed were for a brief time in control of the situation. Of course, there were subsequent arrests and trials. Seven of the demonstrators went to jail, with sentences between eight days and one month.10 The day’s events also signalled a more profound transformation. The hunger march had struggled to generate sizeable support and its militants sought the counsel of caution. This typified both the miserable fortunes of the PCF and the low ebb of working-class confidence. The Calais riot revealed a quite different attitude. Events bore out this mood change, which was not restricted to the unemployed as Calais witnessed further left-wing political violence on 12 February (the anti-fascist general strike) and 1 May that year. Beyond Calais, the next three years brought a revival of the left and opened the possibility of mass action of the unemployed. The Calais riot inspired unemployed activists far and wide: in Paris, Saint-Etienne and Valenciennes, they talked excitedly of the ‘example’ or ‘gesture’ of Calais.11

made this statement. 9 A sum of 3,233 francs, AN F 2 2623 Prefect (Pas-de-Calais) damage report after settlement, 23 May 1936. 10 AN F 2 2623 Central Commissioner to mayor (Calais), 18 July 1934. 11 AN F7 13559 Circular from the PCF district secretary, January 1934 appended in Special Commissioner of Saint-Etienne to the Ministry of Interior, 30 January 1934; AN F7

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The riot of 5 January opened two months of remarkable local agitation amongst unemployed unparalleled in France during the 1930s.12 The subversion of authority emboldened the leaders and electrified the mood in Calais. The demands – a sack of coal, seven not six days benefits a week, more reasonable signing-on times and equal treatment for dockers – struck a deep resonance amongst part of the population of Calais, amongst whom there were nearly 4,000 unemployed. On 11 January, the Groupement organized a lobby of 500 outside Porquet’s hearing at the court in Boulogne and in the evening held a public meeting at which 2,000 to 3,000 were in attendance.13 Reflecting on the events of 5 January, Martinod blamed police provocation for the violence and insisted on more demonstrations despite the mayor’s ban. After the meeting, scuffles with mounted police broke out and two more unemployed were arrested. Now opting for a permissive stance, the mayor (who was also the local deputy) authorized an unemployed demonstration for 14 January. This attracted 3,000 and organizers sent a delegation to the Hôtel de Ville to see the mayor and the SousPréfet [Sub-Prefect] of Calais. The delegation comprised of six members of the unemployed committee (Cadras, Lahaye, Martinod, Morel, Parmentier and Perard) plus Bourneton, the regional secretary of Communist Party, Brasseur an unitaire dockers’ official and significantly Vantielcke, the secretary of the Calais SFIO.14 In the charged atmosphere that followed the events of 5 January, the demonstration ended with shouts of ‘Long live unity of action!’15 Such excitement was not confined to Calais. The nearby towns became caught up in the contagion. In late January there were demonstrations of between 100 and 300 in Marck, Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Saint-Pol-sur-Mer. By mid-February, police reports noted agitation had spread to Baraques, Coulogne, Coquelles, Fréthun, Brèmes-les-Andres, Guines and Sangatte.16 That protest enveloped surrounding areas did not mean that it declined in Calais itself; not, at least, for the moment. On 26 January, Calais witnessed another massive mobilization of the unemployed, which at its height reached 3,000. After gathering their forces, the unemployed marched to the Hôtel de Ville. A delegation, received by the mayor, demanded coal, which he said he would discuss, and asked for the charges 13560 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 11 January 1934; ADN M616 29 Sergeant (Haumont) report, 25 January 1934. 12 Chronology and size of events: 11 January: public meeting (2,000–3,000); 14 January: demonstration (3,000); 18 January: public meeting (1,500); 26 January: demonstration (3,000); 1 February: demonstration (500); 2 February: public meeting (2,000); 3 February: demonstration (750); 8 February: lobby (700); 13 February: demonstration (1,200–1,500); 14 February: demonstration (1,200–1,500). 13 The police estimated 2,000 and organizers said 3,000. Speakers: Morel (CdC), Grave (PCF), Desrumeaux, Maguis and Martinod. AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner to the Director of General Security, 12 January 1934. 14 Perard was spelt Perrard elsewhere. Vantielcke became a deputy in 1936, Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. 15 AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner to Director of General Security, 14 January 1934. 16 AN F 13565 Special Commissioner (Saint-Omer) to Sub-Prefect (Saint-Omer), 16 February 1934.

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resulting from 5 January to be dropped, which he flatly refused. The failure of the mobilization of 26 January did not deter the committee but it did threaten to frustrate and demoralize the movement. Determined to press its case, the committee called successive meetings or demonstrations. On 1 February, 500 demonstrated for these demands.17 On the following day, 2,000 attended a meeting and voted unanimously for a motion that condemned the mayor and councillors for ignoring the ministerial circular authorizing payment of benefits for Sundays and holidays. It pointed out that these had been paid since February 1933 in Montigny-en-Gohelle, Lille and Caudry. They declared themselves ‘resolved to impose it [payment of seven days benefit]’.18 On 3 February, 600 unemployed and 150 dockers marched to the Hôtel de Ville demanding benefits for Sundays. Five days later, 700 waited outside the Hôtel de Ville as a delegation negotiated with the mayor.19 On 5 January, Calais had stood out as an exceptional and inspirational example, but now national events raised the temperature in Calais. The nationwide anti-fascist general strike of 12 February brought between 6,000 and 15,000 onto the streets. Indeed, Calais witnessed one of the strongest mobilizations with probably over 10 per cent of its population participating.20 In the aftermath, the combativity of the Calais unemployed reached another highpoint. On 13 February at 8.30 am a group of unemployed picketed the signing on at the mayor’s offices. Within half an hour a contingent of 900 had been formed. At Lahaye’s call, they went to the Godin works to force the employer to take back those he had recently discharged. Realizing the futility of this, given the lack of work at the firm, they returned to the mayor’s offices. The town clerk had not yet arrived. Discovering this, Martinod told the crowd that the overpaid clerk only started work at 10 am. Brasseur then shouted to the restless assembly that Vincent and Jockelson, dockside firms, had unloaded a cargo of coal at 50 centimes a tonne below the union rate. He proposed that they should compel the firm to pay them the difference, even if the money had to be taken from the safe. They re-formed with a dockers’ flag and two red flags of the Soviet Union at the head of the march. Having resolved this course of action, a delegation delivered their demands to the town clerk. Brasseur returned from the interview with the clerk and explained that they would get their answer at 3 pm and that if they did not get satisfaction they would smash up the mayor’s offices. The teeming mass cheered Brasseur’s bravado loudly. They then headed for Vincent’s office where another delegation was received. They demanded trade union rates and the 175 francs back pay for the team that had worked on Saturday. With growing impatience, the crowd went to Jockelson. They then heard that Vincent and Jockelson were meeting at 5 pm. In the meantime the unemployed, whose ranks were swelled by around 50 unemployed women, marched 17 AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Calais) to Director of General Security, 2 February 1934. 18 AN F 22 682 Calais CdC to the Minister of Labour, 2 February 1934. The underlining is in the original. 19 AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Calais) to Director of General Security, 3 February 1934. 20 Prost, ‘Les manifestations du 12 février 1934 en provence’.

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to the barracks. There, they booed and heckled an officer on the other side of the railings. He must have been horrified at a mob of 1,200 to 1,500 which had the temerity to sing the Internationale, the Chanson de la 17e, chant ‘Long live the red army’ and then ‘government of murderers’ in front of his barracks. On their return to the Hôtel de Ville, they went their separate ways planning to re-assemble at 3 pm. At the appointed time, around 1,000 unemployed thronged outside the Hôtel de Ville as their delegates negotiated with the commission paritaire. Emerging some time later from these discussions, Victor Serret listed the concessions that they had won. Sunday payments were to be made being paid retrospectively. The rates of benefits were revised upwards: adults receiving seven francs a day, 16 to 19 year olds getting five francs and those under 16 getting three francs 50 centimes. The commission paritaire was also to include members of the unemployed committee. Walle, a SFIO councillor, confirmed the dramatic gains to the bouyant mass. Brasseur followed, hailing their achievements, and finally, Martinod took his turn to address the gathering. The latter called on them to demonstrate outside the offices of the press (Le Petit Calaisien, Le Phare, and Le Télégramme) that had so misrepresented their movement. At 5.45 pm the boisterous demonstration eventually ended and the participants returned to their homes no doubt to recount the day’s events to family, friends and neighbours.21 The next day, 14 February, the attention of the Calais unemployed movement once again turned to Jockelson and Vincent. As before, Favier, the Police Commissioner, was powerless to stop the large numbers of unemployed who had answered the call of the unemployed committee. Their spirits high after the previous day’s activity, and with Serret and Lehaye at their head, the workless made their way to the dock firms’ offices. There, a delegation met with Mr. Alexandre of Jockelson’s management and Mr Zegre, the president of the dockside employers. The delegation, emboldened by recent events, were in no mood for half-measures. They were reported to have said, Give us immediately what our comrades who unloaded the Ostrovent are owed. Hurry, because the lads are waiting. Otherwise we’ll open the safe. For two days we have been masters of the street, the factories are ours, the mayor’s offices are ours, your material is ours, we’ve won this with our own hands. The army is also with us and we proclaim a Soviet Socialist Republic.

The employers’ representatives hastily made a series of concessions ‘simply to appease them’.22 But the ferment in Calais could not sustain itself indefinitely. The Calais Group had been faced with the dilemma of continuing the cycle of demonstrations in Calais itself which would inevitably draw in police reinforcements or to spread the movement to neighbouring towns and villages. They opted for the latter. On 16 February unemployed committee members including Brasseur went to Marck where a meeting of 250 was held after a demonstration had been banned. Two days later 15 Calais unemployed joined 40 at a meeting in Baraques.

21 22

AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Calais) report, 13 February 1934. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Calais) to the Director of General Security, 15 February 1934.

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The next meeting in Calais itself took place on 23 February with 1,500 in attendance. There, Morel reflected on their magnificent demonstrations and that they had forced the local authorities to accept the Groupement’s demands on condition of government approval. This, he reported, had been refused all the way along the line. Morel bitterly criticized the local council and called for agitation to continue. Brasseur followed stating that he was not afraid of the gardes mobiles that had been sent to Calais and said that one day their violence would be answered. The committee proposed a motion and announced the visit of leading communists Cachin and ‘Gibon’ [sic – Gitton] on 3 March. With the increased police presence and the flat refusal to compromise on the part of the Government, the limits of local unemployed protest, however combative, must have been apparent to the leaders and the ranks alike. They sought to escape this dilemma via the involvement of the wider forces of the CGT for a demonstration on 4 March. Unable to secure this, they were forced to postpone to 11 March. On that day police and gardes mobiles, having denied the right to march, dispersed 30–40 unemployed in Marck and 120 in Guines with six arrests. In Coulogne, a meeting of about 40 was held.23 The two months of unemployed agitation in Calais had effectively come to an end. Agitation in Saint-Quentin (Aisne), 1934 Saint-Quentin, a northern town with a population of 49,000 in the department of Aisne, witnessed a remarkable series of events in 1934. The allegiance of the large industrial population of Aisne was strongly socialist; in the whole of the department, Guise was the solitary communist council.24 By early 1934, 1,250 unemployed resided in Saint-Quentin and a further 2,500 were on short-time working; the town was in the merciless grip of the economic crisis.25 The Comité de Secours aux Chômeurs [the committee for the help of the unemployed] brought together the town’s great and good under the chairmanship of the mayor to relieve the worst suffering of the unemployed through charitable efforts. In contrast, a communistled local unemployed committee advocated the rights of unemployed and protest to secure them.26

23

Ibid., Special Commissioner (Calais) report, 11 March 1934. Jacques Girault, ‘Pour une problématique de l’implantation du parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres’ in Girault, Sur L’Implantation du PCF dans l’Entre-DeuxGuerres, p. 51. 25 AN F7 13558 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 16 March 1934. 26 For the activity of the CdC in 1932 and 1933. The prime mover was ‘Roberty’ or Langlet. On the establishment of a CdC, AN F7 13544 Central Commissioner (Saint-Quentin) to Prefect (Aisne), 11 January 1932; there was a demonstration of 150, ibid., 14 January 1932; ibid., 21 January 1932; there was a demonstration of 250–300 unemployed on 17 February 1933, AN F7 13552 Prefect (Aisne) Minister of the Interior, 17 February 1933; 500 at a meeting at which Monjauvis and Dewez spoke, ibid., Central Commissioner (SaintQuentin) to Prefect (Aisne), 24 June 1933; a demonstration of 300 against forced labour on 19 September 1933, ibid., Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 20 September 1933; ibid., Central Commissioner to Prefect, 15 December 1933. 24

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The cycle of protest began unremarkably enough on 1 March with a strike of 100 unemployed over ‘forced labour’ on the communal works programme during bad weather.27 Within a fortnight, on 12 March, another unemployed demonstration of 180 sung the Internationale and shouted left slogans such as ‘red front’ and ‘soviets everywhere’. They were pressing for seven days benefits a week. Angelet, the secretary of the mayor’s offices, received a delegation of six but refused their demands.28 Three days later, 200 unemployed made their way directly from signing on to a meeting in the Bourse du Travail to discuss the same grievance. They resolved to confront the mayor once more. When they discovered that he was not in his office, they approached the Sub-Prefect, but to no avail.29 After a brief lull in activity, 150 unemployed attended a public meeting of the Saint-Quentin unemployed committee on 12 April. Alexis François, the 28 yearold secretary of the committee implored the unemployed to lobby the Palais de Justice where two of their comrades – Bail and Fuscien – were on trial for their part in the anti-fascist mobilization of 12 February.30 François was a watchmaker by trade, but, because of his reputation, no employer would touch him. Over the course of the year, the police came to consider him the principal animating spirit of unemployed agitation. Writing a report when François’s arrest was immanent and with his prosecution in mind, the Central Commissioner described him as a liar but a gifted, cunning and dangerous one who viewed himself as a tribune of the unemployed who would push them to the worst excesses.31 The activities of the unemployed of Saint-Quentin were beginning to exasperate Angelo Chiappe, the Prefect, who wrote to the Minister of the Interior condescendingly complaining of the failure of the SFIO mayor, a ‘central heating installer’, to quell such agitation.32 On 15 April, immediately prior to this letter, having just opened an art exhibition in Saint-Quentin, the Prefect was jostled and insulted by a group of about 50 unemployed. They demanded benefits payments for Sundays. The mayor, who was close by, asked the police not to intervene. The incident prompted Saint-Quentin Soir and Le Guetteur de L’Aisne to call for police measures against the communists.33 The Prefect considered removing the mayor’s police powers. The Prefect’s unease was borne out on 26 April when, after a short meeting at the Bourse du Travail, 60 unemployed hurried to general councillor Ringuier’s house to find out about the deliberations of the general council on the question of Sunday payments. Ringuier said that he had done all he could but that the demands of the unemployed had been rejected; some councillors had been unfavourable because of the unemployed committee’s communist links. The delegation that had seen

27

AN F7 13558 Special Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 2 March 1934. Ibid., Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 12 March 1934. 29 Ibid., Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 16 March 1934. 30 Ibid., Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 12 April 1934. 31 Ibid., Central Commissioner report attached by Prefect (Aisne) to the Minister of the Interior, 24 November 1934. 32 Ibid., Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 16 April 1934. 33 Le Nord-Est, 16 April 1934; L’Eclaireur de L’Est, 15 April 1934. 28

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Ringuier withdrew and the protest was closed with the customary speech invoking further unemployed agitation.34 For a time, quiet returned to the streets of Saint-Quentin. The passing of winter hardships must have induced the Prefect and the mayor to hope that the unemployed committee had fallen into a sulky routine of meetings and little else. Yet on 7 July protests began once more.35 What started out as a strike by 60 relief workers ended up as an attempt by 600 unemployed to storm the Hôtel de Ville, throwing stones at the doors shattering several panes of glass. Finally the mayor, opposed to calling the gendarmes, received the delegation again and pledged to defer ‘forced labour’ until Tuesday’s council meeting. Triumphant, the crowd lifted Thurotte and François onto their shoulders and carried them around the square of the Hôtel de Ville. The next day 200 protested against forced labour marching to the Bourse du Travail shouting ‘down with the fascists’ (hou-hou les fascistes) and ‘to gaol with Lartizien’. At the Bourse, 500 packed in to hear François, Demaretz, Thurotte, Cambier and Dufresnoy.36 The delaying tactics of the mayor had postponed confrontation. Surely enough, on 14 July, six unemployed were simply instructed to break rocks. Two days later, they refused saying that they were owed 20 francs for two days work. The following day the commission paritaire disqualified them from the unemployment fund. After a meeting with the six on 18 July, the unemployed committee decided to block the following day’s signing on as they had done earlier in the month with such dramatic consequences. Having been informed of this, the mayor moved hastily to appease

34 AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 26 April 1934; on 6 May, there was a 600 strong mobilization against Solidarité Française and an anti-fascist meeting of 1,300 with Monjauvis the Parisian PCF deputy speaking, AN F7 13024 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 14 May 1934; a further anti-fascist meeting organized by the Committee of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals attracted 800 on 9 November, AN F7 13024 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 12 November 1934. 35 Here Demaretz was spelt Demarest. AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 11 July 1934. The chronology of the day is as follows: 7am: 60 unemployed on the communal works downed tools and meet in the Bourse du Travail. 10 am: activists picketed the signing on at which could not take place. 10.15am: 200–300 unemployed marched to the Hôtel de Ville then go to the mayor’s house. 11.30am: protesters marched back to Hôtel de Ville and dispersed. 1.30–2.30pm: 800 unemployed met up and listened to speakers at Pas Perdu du Palais de Fervaques. 2pm: mayor Lartizien’s dealine: sign on or lose benefit. The signing on did not take place. 2.30 pm: 600 march to Sub-Prefecture and Hôtel de Ville, where there was a failed attempt to storm the building. c.3–4 pm: Delegation saw mayor temporarily conceding on work relief. 36 AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 11 July 1934; The Prefect noted more postering and leafleting on the part of the CdC on the question of forced labour the following week, AN F7 13024 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 16 July 1934.

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the unemployed. He overturned the disqualification and the commission paritaire decided that the imposition of such work was inappropriate.37 Two months intervened before the unemployed committee was again marshalling its ranks.38 On 15 September, 100 of Saint-Quentin workless went to the Hôtel de Ville after the disqualification of a father of a large family. The mayor decided a mistake had been made and returned the man’s unemployed card. While the delegation was seeing the mayor, 50 unemployed rushed up the stairs of the Hôtel de Ville, but were prevented from entering the offices of the administration by police officers who pushed them back.39 Another two months of relative calm passed before the unemployed again tested their strength against the authorities.40 The issue was the effects of the Minister of Labour Adrien Marquet’s new work programme. On 20 November, after a meeting in the Bourse du Travail of between 800 and 1,000, 300 followed the CdC to the Hôtel de Ville to extract compensation for those that the Marquet plan would adversely affect.41 They arrived at 4 pm and demanded to see the mayor. His absence led François and Dufresnoy to say that the mayor was toying with the unemployed. François declared, ‘Comrades, the mayor does not give a damn about us [s’en fout de nous]. We have only one means: to do as we did last June, break down the doors of the Hôtel de Ville, whatever the cost, we must get inside.’42 The unemployed broke through the big arched doors smashing the panes of glass and rushing to the landing outside the mayor’s offices. Twenty five officers were then able to restore some sort of order and the Central Commissioner asked the unemployed to wait for the mayor. When the mayor arrived ten minutes later, he asked to see a delegation. The unemployed refused. They wanted to negotiate with him en masse. François outlined their demands – the unemployed were to be paid as before and those that had lost money under the Marquet plan were to be compensated. As mayor Lartizien explained that he could only attempt to do the latter, the unemployed refused to move. For two hours they abused the SFIO mayor and sang the Internationale. The mayor then saw a delegation which emerged at 7 pm with François declaring the satisfaction of their demands.43 37

AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 19 July 1934. But the influence of the PCF amongst the unemployed could be detected in the audience of 500 at a meeting against war, AN F7 13024 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 13 August 1934. They also decided to send a delegation on the regional hunger march to Lille, ibid., Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 3 September 1934. 39 AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner to Prefect (Aisne), 15 September 1934. 40 AN F7 13024 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 8 October 1934, 100 unemployed turned up outside the house of an unemployed to prevent his eviction on 1 October. Ibid., 15 October 1934, there was also some campaigning against disqualifications. 41 For the size of protest: AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner report on Alexis François (n.d.); and L’Exploité, 24 November 1934, 500 instead of 300 followed him to the Hôtel de Ville. The damage to the three doors at the Hôtel de Ville was estimated at 1,000 francs. 42 AN F7 13558 Central Commissioner report on Alexis François (n.d.). 43 Delegation was of François, Georges Pelat, Charles Cambier (all PCF) and Fernand Hollande (a socialist councillor and future deputy) who are all in Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français; as are other key activists in Saint-Quentin: 38

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A number of arrests had been made subsequent to the events of 20 November. François was forced into hiding.44 When the CdC announced that there would be a meeting followed by a demonstration outside the Palais de Justice and the prison on 24 November, the Prefect was determined to stop the movement. Writing to the Minister of the Interior, he explained that there were 2,000 communists in SaintQuentin who had tried everything to foment trouble. ‘Up until now no blood has been spilled’, he menacingly added, ‘and I hope that it will be the same tomorrow.’45 After the occupation of the Hôtel de Ville, the Prefect had immediately banned all demonstrations and drafted a squadron of gardes mobiles into Saint-Quentin. He was also ready to deprive the mayor of his powers of police because the latter had refused to ban demonstrations. On 24 November 1,200 packed into the Bourse du Travail and 300 were left outside unable to get in. At 5.30 pm the meeting began with a speech by Réné Meurant (of the hunger marchers) who had replaced the now arrested François as chair of the unemployed committee.46 Other speakers were Cambier of the PCF, Achille Borgniet, the editor of the regional communist newspaper L’Exploité and Demaretz of the local CGT. One after another the speakers voiced the anger of the jobless at the Marquet plan and the reductions to benefits but counselled against any demonstration at the end of the meeting. After the speeches the unemployed dispersed peacefully and a delegation went to the mayor and the Sub-Prefect.47 The Prefect was still concerned by the size of the meeting, believing that ‘future events could thus have a gravity that none of the precedents have had’. Three days after the meeting the Prefect still had the police reinforcements camped in Saint-Quentin and they maintained this presence for some time in case of a recrudescence of protest.48 Thus only the Prefect’s deployment of emergency police measures ended the cycle of protest in Saint-Quentin. From the perspective of the authorities, where negotiation and consent could not appease, as in Calais, the unemployed had to be physically overwhelmed. Regional Hunger Marches of Late 1933–34 The first to follow the example of the hunger march was in the department of BassesPyrénées in the south-west extremity of France. On 3 December 1933, Maurice Perse, the communist mayor of Le Boucau, led between 150 and 200 unemployed Marcel Bugain (SFIO deputy), Marcel Lenglet (PCF), Pierre Thurrotte (socialist councillor, joining the PPF in 1937!), René Graux (PCF rayon leader for Saint-Quentin). L’Exploité, 24 November 1934. AN F22 682 Galant (sec. of CdC) to Minister of Labour, 16 September 1936. 44 L’Humanité, 23 November 1934. Auguste Duscien, two months in prison, Charles Dealcourt and Lucien Dufrenoy, (one month) and Ernest Auguet (one month’s suspended sentence). 45 AN F7 13558 Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 23 November 1934. 46 Alexis François was expelled in 1935. AN F 13024 L’Exploité, 13 July 1935. 47 Ibid., Sub-Prefect to Prefect (Aisne). Cambier is spelt Gambier and Demaretz, Demaret in this document. 48 Ibid., Prefect (Aisne) to Minister of the Interior, 26 November 1934.

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from Tarnos to Ondres. Likewise in Normandy on 4 January 1934, 50 unemployed trekked 25 km from Dives-sur-Mer to Caen.50 On 6 April, 60 glass workers whose factory had closed for refitting marched 7 km from Croismare to Lunéville in Meurthe-et-Moselle.51 Signalling just how widespread the tactic had become, during Christmas 1934, the unemployed of Méru (Oise) marched the 24 km north to Beauvais.52 But other hunger marches occurred in the areas with the strongest movements of the unemployed outside Paris: Nord and Saint-Etienne. Saint-Etienne Hunger March, 10 February 1934 The examples of the Calais riot and the Lille to Paris hunger march stirred the unemployed in the mining and metal-working region that surrounds Saint-Etienne. The Comité Central des Chômeurs de Saint-Etienne et des Environs [the Central Committee of the Unemployed of Saint-Etienne and its Area] set a date of 10 February for a regional hunger march. Les Cahiers du Bolchévisme, the fortnightly journal of the PCF Central Committee, singled out the Saint-Etienne movement and its hunger march of 10 February as exemplary. To prepare for the march, the movement engaged in a month of widespread activity: 50 meetings were held, posters and newspaper articles printed, as well as thousands of leaflets distributed, some addressed to specific groups such as miners, workers in particular factories, or small businesspeople.53

49 AN F7 13565 Divisional Commissioner (Hendaye) report, 1 December 1933; ibid., 4 December 1933. The distance between the two towns is 2.7 km. In the case of Le Boucau, like Oyonnax before it, a communist mayor put himself at the head of a hunger march. This had the effect of firming up his personal standing as well as underlining the apparent distinctiveness of communist municipal politics. Later Maurice Perse came under criticism from the PCF and was replaced as mayor of Le Boucau in July 1934. He did not feature on Communist Party slates again but continued to be active on the Regional Committee of the Unemployed. 50 La Croix du Calvados, 6 January 1934. Arriving at 2pm, depositing a list of demands with the Prefecture, they displayed a large placard stating ‘march of the unemployed of Divessur-Mer’. 51 AN F7 13560 police report (Meurthe-et-Moselle), 7 April 1934. 52 Having left at 5 am, they arrived in the departmental capital at 10 am and quietly demonstrated through the streets of the town bearing one placard upon which was inscribed: ‘The unemployed of Méru demand work’. At 10.25 am, the general secretary to the Prefect received a delegation of six for a discussion that took an hour. The delegation demanded immediate condemnation of the delay in instituting public works. On the invitation of the Prefect, the mayor of Méru called an emergency meeting to vote the necessary credits and 1,000 francs for Christmas gifts for the children of the unemployed. AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Beauvais) to Director of General Security, 26 December 1934; ibid., Prefect (Oise) to Minister of Interior, 26 December 1934. 53 M.M., ‘Un exemple de bon travail parmi les chômeurs’, Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 13 (1 July 1934): 824–8. In fact, the editorial control of the journal was in the hands of Czech Comintern agent Eugen Fried. Edward Mortimer, The Rise of the French Communist Party 1920–1947 (London, 1984), p. 149. See appendix for route of the march.

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On 5 February march organizers (Thibaud, Gaston, Chopin and Delorme) met with the Special Commissioner and the Central Commissioner of Police for SaintEtienne. At this meeting the four organizers were obliged to divulge the details of their march, which was to sweep along the valleys of the Gier and the Ondaine.54 Despite anticipating a peaceful demonstration, the Prefect expected it to be large – between 1,000 and 2,000 depending on the weather and mobilized considerable numbers of police for the occasion. He requisitioned the gendarmerie of the department to aid the municipal police forces and he asked the General Commandant of the 13th Region to put at this disposal three squadrons of mounted gardes républicaines and five squadrons of foot police.55 On the day, bright sunshine meant mild weather for the time of year. One hundred and twenty marchers passed through the mining villages along the Gier and joined with 300 unemployed in place Fourneyron. The Ondaine contingent numbered 200 and was welcomed by 300 unemployed in place Bellecour.56 Initially, the demonstration counted some 700. The stéphanois population was visibly ‘moved by the endless line of unfortunates with calm, level-headed dignity, demanding bread and work’.57 Even the police recognized the spontaneous groundswell for the demonstration and noted that the riot of the extreme right ligues in Paris four days earlier had heightened popular sensibilities: ‘Very many curious spectators followed the demonstration to Saint-Etienne. Recent events in Paris were certainly not alien to this unusual curiosity on the part of inhabitants for demonstrations of this type.’58 They observed the gathering force of the demonstration as it paraded through the streets of Saint-Etienne. When in the main street on its way to the Prefecture, the cortege sounded the Internationale, repeated cries of ‘Bread, Work’ and several whistles. It grew little by little to the point where it numbered about 2,000 demonstrators as it arrived in place Jean Jaurès in front of the Prefecture.59

Two thousand five hundred attended the meeting at the Bourse du Travail. Thibaud, Garnier, the unitaire construction workers’ official, Ramier of the PCF, the teacher Albert Dolmason of the Committee for Struggle against Fascism and War,

54

AN F7 13559 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Prefect (Loire), 5 February 1934. At a cost of 34,712 francs, ibid., Prefect (Loire) to Minister of the Interior, 6 February 1934; AN F7 13320 report with details of demonstrations by departments. 56 The routes: contingent one: Rive-de-Gier (6 am), Grand-Croix (7.15–7.30 am, food break), Saint-Chamond (9.30–11.30 am, food break), Terrenoire (1 pm), Saint-Etienne, place Fourneyron (2 pm); contingent two: Firminy (10.15 am), Chambon-Feugerolles (11.30 am), La Ricamarie (12.15–2.15 pm), Saint-Etienne, place Bellevue (3 pm), AN F7 13559 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Prefect (Loire), 5 February 1934. 57 La Tribune Républicaine, 11 February 1934. 58 AN F7 13559 Special Commissioner (Saint-Étienne) to Director of General Security, 10 February 1934. 59 Ibid., report attached by Minister of the Interior to Minister of Labour, 23 February 1934. 55

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Galodin another CGTU official, and Delorme of the CGTU miners, all spoke.60 They sharply criticized the new Doumerge Government and appealed for the maximum participation in the general strike to take place in two day’s time.61 The meeting drew to a close at 5.45 pm and the marchers returned by bus to their respective communes. The fortunes of the CCdC varied over the following year. After dipping to 200 in the spring of 1934, by winter attendance at the CCdC meetings had risen to 400. On 21 July, 450 demonstrated outside the Hôtel de Ville but the popular response did not match that of February.62 Thibaud proposed a hunger march of the Loire at the meeting of 23 October 1934 but no date was fixed. On 3 November, this was again discussed though once again no concrete plans materialized.63 According to the committee, the hunger march of the Loire would have attracted 10,000 unemployed planning to produce 50,000 leaflets, 500 posters and 10,000 newspapers. Like elsewhere, prevarication dissipated the momentum for a march. Nevertheless reflecting on activity during 1934, militants in Saint-Etienne could point to significant achievements. Saint-Etienne, like Calais, had witnessed local unemployed activity on a scale that surpassed previous experiences. This was yet more evidence that unemployed protest was on an upward curve after the Lille to Paris march. Hunger Marches in the Nord Region in 1934 Unsurprisingly, the mood of Calais infected the neighbouring region of the Nord whose unemployed had also participated in the hunger march of November– December 1933.64 For those involved in the daily routine of organizing the unemployed, the returns on their efforts defied logic. In the early days of 1934, the possibilities must have seemed boundless. News of events in Calais brought new hope to the unemployed. Attendance at meetings grew significantly. In Valenciennes, 180 crowded into the weekly meetings and leaders openly spoke of the need to emulate ‘the Calais gesture’. Talk of defying the authorities had a new conviction about it. Police observed a ‘new spirit’ amongst the leaders of the unemployed. The Prefect of Nord described the changed situation to the Minister of the Interior: 60

La Tribune Républicaine, 11 February 1934. According to whom, Romier, Galopin spoke not Ramier and Galodin. 61 On 12 February, the anti-fascist demonstration in Saint-Etienne mobilized 3,000 to 12,000 (police and organisers estimates) though there was no unity between the communists and socialists, Prost, ‘Les manifestations du 12 février 1934 en provence’: 15. 62 Archives Municipales de Saint-Etienne (AMSE) Central Commissioner to the mayor, 21 July 1931 63 AN F7 13559 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 27 October 1934; ibid., 5 November 1934; AMSE Central Commissioner to mayor, 5 November 1934. 64 To capitalize on the success of the hunger march, on 23 December a regional congress with 58 delegates from 35 CdCs (including 21 marchers) established a CRC. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Charles Tillon’s report on the hunger march, 7 January 1934.

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… Rowdy demonstrations occur more and more regularly, notably around Valenciennes where meetings are larger, where groups easily improvise after signing on and where the deposition of demands has taken an aggressive character… It is noteworthy that the Calais incidents are cited in all the meetings as an example to the unemployed by extremist orators.65

The agitation centred on the coalfield of the Nord. On 6 January, the unemployed of Petite-Fôret marched to the mayor’s offices at Aubry. On 9 January, 100 unemployed demonstrated at Anzin market and 35 at Sin-le-Noble. On 29 January, an impressive 400 demonstrated through the streets of Denain. Some communist implantation existed in the area but not in sufficient numbers to stage demonstrations without genuine participation from the non-party unemployed. The Denain district of the Communist Party had nine cells and 89 members in 1932. Only 20 members were based in Denain itself.66 On 1 February, 450 to 500 again demonstrated in Denain. This agitation also spread beyond the mining region. In the textile town of Bailleul, there were three demonstrations on 11, 15 and 31 January of between 70 and 100. On 20 January, 50 demonstrated in Houplines and the following day 160 marched in Nivelle. Valenciennes Hunger March, 4 February It was obvious to all that a propitious moment for the unemployed movement had arrived. Eloi Mériaux chose to agitate for a demonstration, in effect a hunger march, on 4 February in Valenciennes, a large mining and steel town in the east of the department. Valenciennes was one of the largest Party districts in the region.67 He argued against those who favoured more localized demonstrations. A number of CdC activists – Mériaux and Marcel Mayeur (Valenciennes), François Desbois (Petite-Fôret), Fernand Lecompte and Jules Boussingault (Anzin) – toured the region tirelessly advocating the march on 4 February.68 Other prominent PCF figures such as Martha Desrumeaux sensed the possibilities and threw themselves into such work. Mériaux predicted 20,000 and his tone in the unemployed committee meetings suggested a near insurrectionary quality to the day.69 The demonstration did not match these elevated expectations but was nevertheless impressive by standards set by previous regional mobilizations of the unemployed. On the day itself, 1,500 demonstrated with flags, banners and placards. The police dispersed groups of unemployed at the assembly points of Marly, Saint-Saulve and Trith-Saint-Leger. A column of 200 gathered from Condé, Fresnes and Escaupont were dispersed and then went individually to Anzin. A group of 300 likewise made

65

AN F7 13560 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 11 January 1934. AN F7 13098 situation of the PCF in 1932. 67 With 26 cells and 320 members in 1932. It organized the eastern end of the mining area encompassing Petite-Fôret, Anzin, Maing, Raismes, Saint-Sambre, Bruay, Saultain, Beuvrages, Thiant, Hérin and Wallers, AN F7 13098 situation of the PCF in 1932. 68 AN F7 13560 Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 24 January 1934. 69 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 24 January 1934. 66

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their way from Denain to Anzin. From Anzin, 1,500 marched to Valenciennes.70 They then attended a meeting where Lucien Sevrez, a communist councillor for Valenciennes, Suplice Dewez, the Nord deputy, and Pierre Mercier, the official of the Parisian unemployed movement, spoke. At the end of the demonstration, the police dispersed the crowd with one arrest.71 The Cambrai Hunger March, 23 February Elsewhere in Nord agitation found a resonance from unexpected quarters. The CGTU’s campaign also reached out to unemployed agricultural labourers. Mustered from various rural communes, a hunger march converged on Cambrai on 23 February. This was a market town with a population of 29,000 whose wealth had been made from cereals, sugar beet and linen.72 The seasonal workers of the Cambrésis illustrated what might be called the peculiarities of French unemployment and the inconsistencies of its relief system. Much of the active population in this area were seasonal workers spending four months of the year labouring on the beetroot crop and migrating long distances in their annual calendar of work. The rest of the year was devoted to industrial pursuits such as weaving in Avesnes-lès-Aubert, chairmaking in Iwuy or factory work in Denain. The slump devastated these industrial bye-employments. Because of both residence and employment criteria, the unemployment funds did not relieve these seasonal workers. After a considerable battle, through demonstrations and the advocacy of their case by certain mayors, the control commission of the departmental unemployment fund allowed these seasonal workers to claim benefits on 22 May 1933. This was a significant but not total victory. The particularly anguishing grievance that moved the seasonal workers of the whole region, according to the Réveil du Nord, was that half the unemployed seasonal workers in Iwuy still received no benefits by the time of the Cambrai hunger march.73 At 9 am, 1,000 unemployed from Saint-Hilaire, Saint-Vaast, Quiévy, Rieux and Avesnes-le-Sec assembled in Avesnes-lès-Aubert. Led by Dewez, the PCF deputy, and André Puech (known as Parsal), secretary of the unitaire agricultural workers, they set off and groups of around 100 joined from Iwuy, Le Cateau and Beauvois. Because the police banned the march, the protesters were forced to break into small groups. By the time of their arrival in Cambrai at 12 noon with the addition of the town’s unemployed, the demonstrators numbered 2,500 and marched around the town. At 1.30 pm a delegation went to the Sub-Prefect. An hour later a public meeting began with Brodel, an SFIO deputy, Puech, Dewez, Mynck of the regional CGTU, and Taquet, the secretary of Denain unemployed committee, all speaking.74 70

Ibid., Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 5 February 1934. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 5 February 1934. 72 Cambrai’s population was 26,239 in the 1936 census and had been in decline during the depression. 73 Réveil du Nord, 18 February 1934. 74 AN F7 13560 Special Commissioner (Cambrai) to Prefect (Nord), 23 February 1934. L’Humanité, 24 February 1934 claimed 5,000. 71

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This passed off under the scrutiny of the police. Thirty police cyclists were ready to be deployed from Cambrai along the route and six squadrons of gardes mobiles (four of which were mounted) waited in Cambrai in case of trouble.75 The SubPrefect reflected on the success of the agitation amongst the agricultural labourers, ‘the discontent has been exploited by the intervention and creation of unitaires agricultural unions which were created with Avesnes-lès-Aubert as the centre. The movement, little by little, has taken a greater district’.76 The Douai Hunger March, 18 April After the example of the Cambrai hunger march, other marches were organized to Douai and Avesnes in April. The Douai district of the Communist Party had 35 cells and 635 members in 1932.77 On 18 April, the unemployed from the area to the east of Douai (Somain, Aniche, Lewarde, Dechy, Sin-le-Noble, Waziers, Lallaing, Raches and Flins-lès-Raches) marched to the mining town. Their distances varied but might be as far as 17 km. When the 400 demonstrators reached the pont de Lille at 3.30pm, the police blocked their route and a delegation that included the PCF mayor of Waziers, Maurice Guironnet, went to see the Sub-Prefect.78 The Avesnes Hunger March, 22 April Despite the police attitude to the Douai hunger march, the one to Avesnes-surHelpe went ahead a few days later. The Avesnes hunger march had been several weeks in the making. The Comité d’Action des Chômeurs du Bassin de la Sambre [Action Committee of the Unemployed of the Sambre Basin], which at that time grouped together the CdCs from Hautmont, Neuf-Mesnil, Feignies and Mauberge, initially proposed a march on 9 Feburary. This proposal had the support of SFIO deputies Deudon (mayor of Mauberge) and Lagrange because of the burdens that unemployment imposed on local councils. In Mauberge, on 11 February, 500 attended a meeting on this issue. The organizers of Mauberge unemployed committee faced the dilemma of socialist participation and this led to a certain rowdiness and confusion in the meeting. Irénée Duez of the CdC recognized the efforts of the council but believed these were not sufficient. Lucien Renaud launched into a tirade against the mayor praising the efforts of communist councils. This deterred neither Deudon nor Jenot of the CGT from supporting a march.79 The police commissioner of Mauberge noted the change in the outlook of a large part of the unemployed who were enervated and ready to listen to violent appeals.80 75

ADN M616 29 report of Captain Werquin, commandant of the section of the gendarmerie of Cambrai, 19 February 1934. 76 ADN M616 29 Sub-Prefect (Avesnes) to Prefect (Nord), 22 February 1934. 77 AN F7 13098 situation of the PCF in 1932. 78 AN F7 13560 Special Commissioner (Douai) to Director of General Security, 18 April 1934. 79 ADN M616 29 Police Commissioner (Mauberge) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes), 11 February 1934. 80 Ibid., 22 February 1934.

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On 22 April, two columns, one from the Fourmies area and the other from the Sambre basin totalling 2,500, descended on Avesnes. Leaving from Mauberge and Fourmies respectively, the local press praised the march for its dignity and respectability along its 15 and 20 km routes81 (though the local police report estimated 1,000 to 1,200 and stated that some went by bus and lorry).82 The unemployed gathered from the surrounding areas at two departure points: at Mauberge, the unemployed from Louvroil, Hautmont, Sous-le-Bois, Ferrières, Raismes, Feignies, Marpent and Jeumont; and at Fourmies, from Wiguelners and Anor. Along the route, every crossroads and every village they passed seemed to provide more marchers from the scattered hamlets of the region. The march managed to unite socialists and communists, as well as confederal and unitaire trade unionists. At the head of the march were a number of local leaders from both wings of the working-class movement: Doctor Deudon, the SFIO deputy and mayor of Mauberge, Camille Jenot of the CGT, Lucien Renaud of the CGTU, Léo Lagrange, another SFIO deputy and various other elected officials. By 12.30 pm they arrived in Avesnes and sent a delegation with a list of demands to the Sub-Prefect. An hour later they emerged from the building and the marchers returned home. The Spring–Summer Lull Whilst these remote areas were successfully brought into activity, the mood was waning in the core areas of communist implantation. The size of meetings began – from the organizers’ point of view seemingly without reason – to dwindle. With 200 attending the Valenciennes unemployed committee on 24 February, the number soon halved and even dipped as low as 30 on 22 September.83 Mériaux’s prestige diminished. Differences of opinion over tactics, such as whether to seek authorization for a demonstration, whether to opt for local more spontaneous or regional more thoroughly prepared demonstrations, took their toll. The moment of quicksilver radicalization had been lost. Unemployment had passed its seasonal peak by March and the statistics were falling. The mantra in the communist press that this was all an illusion did not help activists on the ground come to grips with the ebb and flow of possibilities. The regional and national leadership had also temporized over the next step for the movement. At first, it seemed that the PCF leaders favoured the idea of another hunger march to Paris to arrive on 20 May, a day of anti-fascist mobilization. Eloi Mériaux spoke openly of this in the Valenciennes unemployed committee meetings.84 Suddenly that idea was forgotten and a regional march to Lille was set for 6 May, which was itself soon postponed.85 For a time, the

81

Le Réveil du Nord, 23 April 1934. AN F7 13560 Special Commissioner (Jeumont) to Sub-Prefect, 22 April 1934. 83 Numbers attending the Valenciennes unemployed meetings in 1934: 24 February, 200; 12 March, 100; 28 March, 100; 6 April, 100; 12 May, 85; 31 May, 80; 9 June, 90; 30 August, 80; 22 September, 30; 29 October, 100, AN F7 13560. 84 AN F7 13560 Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 11 April 1934. A report of a Valenciennes unemployed committee meeting of the previous day. 85 Ibid., 20 April 1934. 82

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key decision-makers on a national or regional level prevaricated and spurned the immediate opportunities. The decision on the broad context of agitation was taken at the Regional Unemployed Congress in Lille on 19 May. Here Martha Desrumeaux from the PCF Central Committee severely chastised Livemont, the secretary of the CRC, for his lack of leadership on this count. It is highly likely that he may have been blamed for indecisiveness higher up the PCF and CGTU hierarchy. The congress settled on a regional hunger march to Lille to take place in September to coincide with the opening of the departmental General Council (which would actually be in October).86 In the meantime, largely unsuccessful attempts to revive unemployed activity punctuated the long hiatus. Of course there were some exceptions. On the night of 21–22 August, in Valenciennes large numbers took part in an eviction fight with the police. The unemployed were spurred to angry spontaneous action by the threat of a new wave of evictions. A crowd of unemployed started to return the victim of the eviction’s furniture from the landlord’s garage. An enterprising member of the group reconnected the electricity. Then the police arrived, drawing their batons and guns. The unemployed replied with stones, bricks and bottles. At the ensuing court case in mid-December, Mériaux, who had been seriously injured, used the occasion, as the local paper put it, ‘to accuse the accusers’.87 A crowd packed the public gallery and spilled into the courtyard. He described how he had had assurances from the mayor and the Sub-Prefect that there would be no evictions of the unemployed. He had simply gone along to find out what was happening and had been knocked unconscious by a police rifle butt. He produced a medical certificate attesting to the seriousness of his injuries. Whilst the campaign against evictions was also in evidence in Roubaix and Armentières during the summer, more lamentable efforts were the norm for the CdCs.88 On 30 June the police easily dispersed a demonstration of no more than 100 in Valenciennes. On 10 July the Lourches committee could only summon 70 for a demonstration. On 29 July, the collective forces of the unemployed of Roeulx, Lourches and Denain mustered a forlorn demonstration of 150 and a meeting of 200 (in February the unemployed committee in Denain had mobilized 450–500 for a demonstration). Nord Hunger March to Lille, 15–19 October 1934 The fortunes of the unemployed movement in the Nord were only to turn with the onset of winter and the organization of a regional hunger march. It demanded winter assistance, increases in benefits, the end of forced labour, the inscription of all unemployed at the unemployment funds and opposed to the Marquet plan. Preparatory meetings were held in Lille, Valenciennes, Douai, Avesnes, Mauberge, Le Quesnoy, Cambrai, St-Amand, Orchies, Bailleul, Roubaix and Armentières. On 10 August representatives of 24 unemployed committees met in Valenciennes to discuss the march to Lille. Deloffre, a member of the SRI Central Committee who 86 87 88

Ibid., Divisional Commissioner of Special Police (Lille) report, 20 May 1934. Le Réveil du Nord, 14 December 1934. AN F7 13560 Central Commissioner (Roubaix) to Prefect (Nord), 28 August 1934.

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had come up from Paris, addressed the meeting outlining the dates and organization of the march. He expected that 20,000 would participate.89 On 23 August, the Sambre basin unemployed committee held a meeting in Avesnes-sur-Helpe with Emile Ott the secretary of Mauberge SFIO in the chair. Discussion ranged from the authorities’ refusal to meet the demands of the Avesnes hunger march to the preparations for the regional hunger march.90 The SFIO had an ambiguous position. Whilst it did not officially back the march, various mayors, including most importantly Roger Salengro the mayor of Lille, authorized demonstrations and various SFIO notables, including some deputies, supported it.91 Beginning on 15 October, four columns wound their way through the mining and textile towns and villages of the Nord to Lille. The group of 85 that set out from Fourmies covered the greatest distance. On the first day they marched 26.5 km to Auloyne with a stop in Avesnes. On the 16th, they travelled a similar distance to Curgies being joined by a group from Mauberge. In Marly and Valenciennes, about 2,500 demonstrated alongside the hunger marchers. They had come from Valenciennes, Raismes and Anzin singing the Internationale, Drapeau Rouge, Révolution, Jeune Garde and meetings were held in halls provided by the PCF and SFIO councils of Raismes, Marly and Petite-Forêt.92 The next day, their 30.5 km route took them to Beuvry picking up more marchers from Saint-Amand and Valenciennes. The fourth leg of the journey went from Beuvry to Lille via Pont-àMarcq, a distance of some 30 km. A second column had set out from Denain or Somain meeting at Aniche and journeying to Douai on the third day of the march. Domière, the communist mayor of Aniche, Ramette and Desrumeaux led this contingent which by day three was 400 strong.93 A third column spent three days on the road from Le Cateau to Cambrai, Cambrai to Douai and then a final leg of Douai to Lille via Pont-à-Marcq. Thus on the penultimate day of the march, marchers from the south and east of Lille converged on Pont-à-Marcq. Those from Halluin had a day’s march through the industrial centres of Tourcoing and Roubaix to Lille as did those from Cysoing. A final column of marchers had a three-stage 77 kilometre journey from Dunkirk spending the night in Cassel and then Bailleul.94 The 280 strong march arrived at Lille via Tourcoing where it received a great welcome. When the marchers converged, they were 1,500 strong and received by large numbers of local workers and unemployed. Reflecting on the march, the CRC circularized a statement to each of the hunger marchers, The hunger marchers have shown that they are ready for all sacrifices to bring an end to their hardship. They therefore warn the authorities that if the commitments made were not implemented, they would be compelled to use new, even more energetic, forms of action. The hunger marchers are committed to this and all their efforts so that from the moment of

89 90 91 92 93 94

Ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect, 10 August 1934. Ibid., Special Commissioner (Jeumont) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes), 24 August 1934. ADN M616 29 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 3 October 1934. L’Humanité, 17 October 1934. Ibid., 18 October 1934. Le Réveil du Nord, 26 August 1934.

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their return in their respective localities, all the unemployed would be mobilized and each unemployed commission would lodge demands until their complete satisfaction.95

As they returned to Mauberge, 250 greeted 90 hunger marchers. Irénée Duez expressed his joy at the results they had achieved. Deudon thanked the unemployed for their support and their discipline during the march. He suggested a march on Paris.96 The regional hunger march received favourable press coverage and a warm welcome as it passed through the dozens of towns on its route. After it, the momentum of unemployed struggle changed once more. Unemployed protesters gained in numbers and confidence. On 31 October, 240 demonstrated in Fives, 250 in Lambersant on 7 November (and 80 on the following day). In the next fortnight demonstrations took place in Armentières (on 10 November with 200 present), Quiévy (on 14 November with 400), Nieppe (on 22 November with 60–80). On 18 December the Regional Committee of Unemployed held a congress in Lille. The mood, after the success of the regional hunger march, was buoyant. The regional hunger march inspired a similar event specifically addressing the problems of the mining industry. The unemployed movement organized ‘the march of the miners’ on 23 December. This march took place in three contingents. The Escarpelle miners left from Pont-de-laDeule to L’Escarpelle offices at Flers-en-Escrebieux. The Anzincourt miners met at place de Monchecourt en route to the Azincourt offices. A third contingent set off from Sin-le-Noble at 10 am arriving in Aniche at midday holding a meeting at 4 pm. The Special Commissioner predicted that the demonstrators would be ‘unemployed communists, malcontents, and idlers not working miners’.97 Neuves-Maisons to Nancy Hunger March, 21 November 1934 Like that from Saint-Nazaire to Nantes, the local sharpness of the recession with unemployment, wages cuts and short-time working prompted the local CGT and socialist councils to organize a hunger march from Neuves-Maisons. These two events were the exceptions to the general rule that communist influenced CdCs organized hunger marches and other protests of the unemployed. On Monday 21 November 1934 at 8.30 am, 3,000 workers of the Forges de Neuves-Maisons assembled in place de la Gare, Neuves-Maisons. Workers on bicycles opened the march. The three banners of the local metalworkers union, CGT miners and CGT metalworkers were at the front of the march. The placards in the procession read ‘Order by work’, ‘Wages and bread’, ‘Live working…’, ‘Reduce the hours of work’ and ‘Adequate wages’. Amongst the marchers were 300 women, 100 teenagers, and flanking the demonstration were 210 men with red armbands. An autumn sun warmed the march, which was good-humoured and sung of the Internationale and Jeune Garde. More joined the march at the mining town of Chavigny. As they passed through the streets of Montet, Jeanne d’Arc, Raymond Poincaré, and Stanislas, large numbers of curious 95 96 97

ADN M616 29 CRC circular, 23 October 1934. Ibid., Police Commissioner (Mauberge) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes), 21 October 1934. AN F7 13320 Special Commissioner (Douai) to Sub-Prefect (Douai), 10 December 1934.

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and sympathetic onlookers lined the road. At 11.15 am perhaps more than 4,000 arrived at the Hôtel de Ville and a delegation composed of unions and councils of Neuves-Maisons, Pont-St-Vincent and Chaligny had an interview with Emile Roblot the Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle. At 12.45 pm the marchers went to the Maison du Peuple for a meeting which was filled to overflowing. Amongst the speakers were Humbert, secretary of the Interdepartmental CGT, Roth of the CGTU and Emile Seltz the deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle, who was heckled. The itinerants departed by tram and bus shortly after the meeting.98 Nîmes (Gard) Hunger March, 15 December 1934 By the end of 1934, unemployed agitation had spread far and wide across the French hexagon. On 15 December in the south of France, in the department of the Gard, 1,000 marched for the demands of the unemployed. The department had 2,731 officially unemployed and 7,611 on short-time working.99 The department mixed mining, industry and agriculture, having witnessed considerable agricultural agitation in the early 1920s.100 Gard was one of the PCF’s strongest departments from an electoral point of view. The Party was well implanted in the mining region of Alès. The hunger march to Nîmes was initiated from an unemployed committee meeting in Saint-Gilles. Present at the meeting were the regional secretary of the PCF, Fajon, and Treissedre, of the Nîmes CGTU, who both pushed for the march. It was their initiative rather than that of the other two speakers: Renaud, the secretary of the Saint-Gilles PCF cell and Malbos, the president of the Saint-Gilles unemployed committee.101 A meeting with 60 present on 7 December in Alès spread the idea of a hunger march to Nîmes. PCF mayor Fernand Valat outlined the situation of the miners and why it was necessary to put their case before the Prefect of Gard. He also spelled out the organization of the march. Leaving at 8.30 am, they would be transported to Aigo Boulido, 3 km from Nîmes. From there they would enter the departmental capital on foot. The numbers from Alès were not to exceed 150 out of the 385 unemployed.102 The leadership of the march encompassed the socialist and communist wings of the labour movement. They travelled by rail from Alès, La Grand’Combe (both mining towns), Beaucaire, Saint-Gilles, Vauvert, Aimargues, Saint-Laurent d’Aigouzé and Calvisson to Nîmes, the capital of Gard. Arriving at 12 am, three SFIO municipal 98 L’Est Illustré, 25 November 1934; L’Est Républicain, 20 November 1934; Le Réveil Ouvrier, 21 November 1934; Le Réveil Ouvrier, 24 November 1934;. 99 For early activity of CdCs in Alès, AN F7 13546 Special Commissioner (Alès) to Director of General Security, 31 December 1931; ibid., Prefect (Gard) to Minister of Interior, 5 June 1932; on the CdC in Nîmes, ibid., 23 January 1932; ibid., 9 December 1932. 100 Girault, ‘Pour une problématique de l’implantation du parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, pp. 22, 29–30, 35, 48. 101 AN F7 13320 Special Commissioner (Nîmes) to the Director of General Security, 6 December 1934. 102 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Alès) to the Controller General of the service of Administrative Research and Finance, 8 December 1934.

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councillors from Nîmes (Astier, Broc and Allier), Perrier, the local secretary of the CGTU, Treissedre and Vergnolle of the PCF led 1,000 around the streets of Nîmes.103 Flying red flags and holding placards, they sang the Internationale, chanted ‘bread and work’ together and the communist contingent shouted ‘soviets everywhere’. According to the local paper, the demonstration ‘created a great excitement in the town’.104 At 3 pm, they held a mass meeting in the salle Jean Jaurez.105 After the meeting, four departmental councillors, Soustelle, Astier (both SFIO), Paul Richard, Chapon (both PCF) presented the demands of the Nîmes hunger march to the Prefect, the first of which was against arbitrary disqualifications, for control of inscriptions to unemployment funds to be in the hands of the CdCs, exoneration of rents and taxes and an increase in benefit levels.106 Occupation of the Mairies In 1934 in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, the French unemployed movement found its highest range, its pinnacle of achievement. The two red months in Calais readily found an echo in Nord with the Avesnes hunger march, the regional hunger march to Lille and the occupation of the mairies. These events were unparalleled for their militant character over a broad area for a sustained period of time. Within this context, the occupations of mairies were perhaps the most militant pattern of protest of all. The occupations were not a new tactic and had been used in 11th arrondissement of Paris, Etaples, Montluçon and Saint-Quentin.107 The widening radius of protest after the Calais riot sparked militant action in Etaples, near Boulogne. On 15 February 1934, 200 unemployed men, women and their children pushed their way into the mayor’s offices and refused to move. Their demands had a familiar ring: seven days benefit, a weekly sack of coal, signing on only four times a week in a heated room, reinstatement of those unfairly disqualified, official recognition and a room for the unemployed committee. Events in Calais obviously inspired them and common deep-seated grievances fuelled them. Because 103

AN F7 13559 Special Commissioner to Director of General Security, 15 November 1934. The unemployed from Aimargues occupied the mayor’s offices of that commune in October 1936 because they were not happy with the departmental unemployment fund and threatened to do so again if they were not satisfied with the report of the delegation to Nîmes, AN F22 682 Aimargues CdC to Minister of Labour, 27 October 1936. 104 Petit Méridional, 16 December 1934. 105 AN F7 13320 reports on various demonstrations, 15 December 1934. 106 AN F7 13559 Prefect (Gard) to Minister of the Interior, 15 November 1934. The delegation include two unemployed, one from the organizing committee of the march; Perrier of the CGT; Ruis of the CGTU; Chapon, Astier, Richard et Soustelle, Vidal, district councillor for Vauvert; Allier, Broc, Baume, municipal councillors; Mancet, the mayor of Gallargues; Dragos, mayor of Beaucaire, Petit Méridional, 16 December 1934. 107 AN F7 13552 Special Commissioner (Montluçon) to Sub-Prefect, 26 December 1933; ibid., Special Commissioner (Montluçon) to Prefect (Allier), 30 December 1933; L’Humanité, 27 December 1933. On 13 April, the unemployed committee of Elbeuf (Seine-Inférieure) had unsuccessfully attempted to occupy the mayor’s offices of that town. AN F7 13562 Prefect (Lower Seine) to the Minister of the Interior, 9 February 1934; ibid., 16 April 1934.

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of the lack of police resources, the occupiers could not be evacuated and mayor Golliot was held prisoner for 16 hours. Eventually a squadron of police arrived from Boulogne, by which time 250 were encamped in the mayor’s offices and a further 300 had gathered outside. The police were able to clear the mayor’s offices without incident, free the mayor, and restore normality to the commune. They had to remain in Etaples overnight while the mayor received a delegation which proposed a series of demands that, judged in turn, were rejected or deferred to a later date.108 The examples from Saint-Quentin and Etaples were, however, largely spontaneous and isolated affairs. Between the end of the regional hunger march and 26 December, unemployed activists consciously adopted the occupation of the mayor’s offices as a tactic rather than an improvisation and they did so in one locality after another: Neuf-Mesnil, Madeleine-lez-Lille (3 November), Templemars (15 December), Anor, Rousies (17th), Louvroil (20th), Rousies, Cerfontaine (21st), Iwuy (24th), Haubourdin (26th), Avelin (14 January), Loos (16 January) and Bousies (18 February). The prime mover in this campaign was the Comité Intercommunal et Régional des Chômeurs du Bassin de la Sambre, led amongst others by Gaston Staquet and Irénée Duez.109 Christmas for the unemployed was a day without benefit, it came at a time of year when work was scarce and winter chilled the homes of the jobless. The demand for payment of benefit on Sundays and holidays and for free coal for the unemployed had an added festive poignancy. Parents feared a joyless Christmas for their children whilst others received presents and treats. Worse still, unemployment witnessed a dramatic rise in late 1934 in the Sambre basin. The bolt factories and ironworks shed hundreds of workers. Whereas Mauberge’s unemployment had oscillated around 400–450 in 1933 in mid-November 1934 it reached 956. The same ‘catastrophic situation’ existed in Hautmont, Ferrière-la-Grande, Aulnoye and Louvroil. As a result a public meeting after the hunger march to Lille in Mauberge/Sous-le-Bois attracted 825 of whom 300 joined a demonstration afterwards. Neuf-Mesnil and La Madeleine, 3 November The first occupation in the Nord took place in Neuf-Mesnil because the mayor refused to pay the benefit of the regional hunger marchers. On 23 October, Deudon and Staquet led 150 demonstrators to the mayor’s offices of Neuf-Mesnil over this issue.110 On the same day in Haumont, 40 unemployed waited four hours for the mayor in his offices singing revolutionary songs until he returned from the SubPrefect at Avesnes. This experience formed the basis for occupations elsewhere.111 On 3 November, a second occupation in Neuf-Mesnil was sparked by the refusal to pay two days of benefit to the unemployed. At 8 am, the unemployed invaded the mayor’s offices and remained for 10 hours refusing to move for either the mayor 108

AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Boulogne) to Director of General Security, 16 February 1934. See appendix 9. 109 Reporting a meeting of 500 at Mauberge CdC, ADN M616 29 Police Commissioner (Mauberge) to Sub-Prefect, 6 December 1934. 110 Ibid., Sergeant-Major’s report (Haumont), 24 October 1934. 111 Ibid., 23 October 1934.

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or the police until their demands were met. The tactic succeeded in the payment of benefit and so embarrassed the council that the mayor and several councillors resigned. As a consequence, André Lemoine, one of the leading Avesnes communists, was elected mayor.113 Now protests of the unemployed had expanded the PCF’s municipal conquests. On the same day L’Humanité reported the unemployed of La Madeleine, the suburb of Lille, surprised mayor Deschamps with an eleven-hour occupation of the mayor’s offices. The delegation secured two unpaid days of benefit and weekly benefit payments rather than every ten days.114 The Grand Echo also related the event; but the police commissioner played down proceedings in his report to the Prefect as ‘a little effervescence’ challenging the press version.115 These two successes served as examples to others. Templemars, 15 December A veritable rash of local occupations began in Templemars, just to the south of Lille, on 15 December.116 The dispute had arisen because the council had agreed a month earlier to the payment of the seventh day. Because Jules Fichelle of the unemployed committee had spoken at the council session, a councillor who had not been present demanded that Jules Lemoine, the mayor, annul the decision because it had broken council procedure. Angered by the reversal, 50 unemployed decided to occupy the mayor’s offices after they had signed on. At first, the sergeant and two gendarmes from Seclin tried to evict the protesters without effect. Police reinforcements were drafted in from Lille. The mayor, eventually arriving at 5.45 pm, promised that the council would confirm its original decision to pay the seventh day at its next meeting. Only the appearance of the special inspector from the Prefecture persuaded the unemployed to leave peacefully after a day-long occupation. This method was copied on 20–21 December in three communes within a few kilometres of Mauberge: Louvroil, Rousies and Cerfontaine.117 Joblessness in Mauberge rose rapidly from 882, to 930, to 1,036 from one week to the next in December 1934.118 One hundred in Rousies and 140 in Louvroil staged the occupations but withdrew after a promise to consider their grievances at the next council meeting. Louvroil’s unemployed occupied the mayor’s offices at the instigated of militants

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L’Humanité, 4 November 1934. In Athis-Mons, (Paris region) about 100 unemployed refused to leave the mayor’s offices until their demands had been met. These included free coal, stew, signing on in a proper room, and signing on for 30 December. Like other mayors faced with this tactic, Paquereau caved in before their demands. L’Humanité, 28 December 1934. 113 ADN M37 90B; M595 69. 114 L’Humanité, 5 November 1934. 115 ADN M616 32 Police Commissioner (La Madeleine) to Prefect, 5 November 1934. 116 AN F7 13560 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to the Director of General Security, 16 December 1934. 117 Ibid., communication from L’Oeuvre, 8.05 pm, 21 December 1934; AN F7 13098 situation of the PCF in 1932. Hautmont–Mauberge district of the PCF: 163 members in five cells (Mauberge-Louvriol, Jeumont, Rousies, Ferrière-la-Grande and Hautmont). 118 AN F7 13560 Le Petit Parisien, 21 December 1934.

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from Mauberge or Hautmont for only 20 minutes.119 At Cerfontaine, the closure of the unemployment fund had provoked an occupation, which ended because of a promise to seek a loan from the Prefecture. Iwuy, 24–25 December In Iwuy, ten kilometres north-east of Cambrai, 250 unemployed stormed the mayor’s offices on Christmas eve. Their spirits were already high. On 19 December they had held a meeting and two days later deposited their demands with Day, the mayor of Iwuy. The mayor rebuffed their demand for benefit payments on Sundays and holidays but said that he would look into the possibility of seasonal distribution of coal and warm clothing. On the morning of 24 December, the unemployed organized another meeting reformulating their demands, which consisted of the former demands plus three days signing on a week, the payment of public works at union rates, a meeting room, an end to the ban on the CGTU as well as a protest at the use of the gardes mobiles against demonstrators. At 9.30 am, two delegates took the list of demands to the mayor and threatened that they would occupy the mayor’s offices if the demands were not met. Two hundred then pushed their way into the mayor’s offices and occupied the council chamber on the first floor.120 At 4 pm, the mayor pleaded with the demonstrators not to put demands on the council that were not in its power to grant. At 5.30 pm, the wives of the unemployed turned up to protest, shouting and asking to see the mayor. A group of them had gone to the mayor’s house and broken his windows. By the evening, two squadrons of gardes mobiles descended on Iwuy from Le Quesnoy. By then a large crowd of wives, friends, relatives and sympathisers of the unemployed occupied the square in front of the mayor’s offices. The Reveil du Nord noted the ‘picturesque spectacle’ of the great windows of the mayor’s offices flung open to a chorus of the Internationale for the crowd outside who raised food by a rope to the occupants.121 The crowd remained outside the mayor’s offices until 11.30 pm. It was not until 8 am Christmas morning that Delattre, the Valenciennes Special Commissioner, entered the council chamber with the gardes mobiles at which point the 250 unemployed evacuated without resistance.122 The gardes mobiles remained in Iwuy to patrol the streets and guard the mayor’s offices for at least ten days causing Iwuy CdC to send delegations to the mayor and the Sub-Prefect to demand that these policing costs be used to alleviate the hardship of the unemployed.123 Both sides paid a price for the occupation. The Sub-Prefect of Cambrai was replaced because of his failure to re-establish order in good time.124 119

ADN M616 32 mayor (Louvroil) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes), 21 December 1934. The Prefect also mentioned an occupation at Anor on 17 December, ADN M616 32 Prefect (Nord) to Sub-Prefect, 24 December 1934. 120 Grand Echo (morning edition), 25 December 1934. AN F7 13560 Adjutant Inglaere report, 24 December 1934; ibid., 25 December 1934. On incidents at Iwuy, AN F7 13046. 121 ADN M616 32 Réveil du Nord, 25 December 1934. 122 Grand Echo (evening edition), 25 December 1934. 123 L’Humanité, 5 January 1935. 124 Réveil du Nord, 5 January 1935.

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The authorities prosecuted those involved in the occupation. On 6 March 1935, with 300 unemployed in attendance, the trial of those who led the Iwuy occupation took place. Four women charged with breaking the windows of the mayor’s house were acquitted as were the Denain communists Denimal and Porez. Their comrade Taquet received a two month suspended sentence. Of the Iwuy locals, Chretein was jailed for 15 days and four others (Caffiaux, Bataille, Trihoux and Doubois) got a month’s suspended sentence.125 On 24 December, Armand Guillon, the Prefect, circularized all local police authorities about the threat of such occupations. He realized that the prolongation of economic hardships created conditions for more of the same and worse. He wanted to be informed of all developments and called for the rapid deployment of police reinforcements to avoid occupations or for speedy evacuation as well as wishing the conviction of instigators. The watchwords for his subordinates were ‘vigilance’ and ‘firmness’.126 Two days later the Prefect followed this up with a letter to the Sub-Prefect of Avesnes about the persistence of this problem. They would face ‘serious incidents, for the threats of occupation are numerous and made with a lot of vehemence’. He warned that Lucien Renaud of the Haumont CGTU proposed an occupation of the Jeumont mayor’s offices and stationed a squadron of gardes mobiles within striking distance at Landrecies and another at Le Quesnoy. He planned to convene a special meeting of his cabinet, mayors and police officials on how to tackle this question. For weeks, rumoured and attempted occupations haunted the authorities.127 125

ADN M616 32 report of Captain Werquin, Commandant of the Gendarmie, Cambrai section, 6 March 1935. 126 Ibid., prefectoral circular, 24 December 1934. 127 The Sub-Prefect alerted his superior to rumours of occupations in Hornaing and Cuincy. The Divisional Commissioner in Lille thought the unemployed of Templeneuve would occupy. Ibid., Sub-Prefect to Prefect, 26 December 1934; ibid., Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect 28 December 1934. At Haubordin on 26 December, only police intelligence and reinforcements prevented the occupation of the mayor’s offices. Scuffles lasted an hour between 150 unemployed and the gardes mobiles. L’Humanité, 27 November 1934; ADN M616 32 Police Commissioner (Haubordin) to Prefect, 26 December 1934; ibid., Divisional Commissioner to Prefect, 26 December 1934; ADN M616 32 Police Commissioner (Haubordin) to Prefect, 27 December 1934. On 14 January, 30 unemployed of Avelin occupied the mayor’s offices between 9 am and 1.45 pm until the deputy and mayor de Routours assured them that he would consider their demands. ADN M616 32 Divisional Commisioner to Prefect, 14 January 1935; ibid., 15 January 1935. The following day an occupation was prevented in Marquette. ADN M616 32 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 15 January 1935. On 16 January, 150 unemployed in Loos stayed in the corridor of the mayor’s offices for an hour until their delegation had returned from a meeting with the mayor. With the delegation’s return they left the building shouting, ‘long live the committee!’ 18 unemployed of Bousies occupied the mayor’s offices until the lieutenant of the gendarmerie arrived from Avesnes, and ejected them military style on 18 February 1935. This was the second or third time they had adopted the tactic. Outside a crowd had gathered which the police dispersed, only for it to re-form to demonstrate in the commune. For several hours a game of cat-andmouse continued between the demonstrators and police. The Reveil du Nord noted that spirits remained agitated and that CdC members told them that, ‘Far from abandoning the game, we

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The mayoral occupations hit small communes where unemployment radically altered the local balance between consent and coercion. Local authorities could no longer rely on the acquiescence of the unemployed but did not have the local police resources to ensure order. The tactic of mayoral occupations were an expression of this situation and momentarily exposed the impotence of local authority. The strength of the tactic, which was that it exploited the shift in the balance of consent and coercion, was also its ultimate weakness. Each time order was restored with the arrival of gardes mobiles and the demands of the unemployed were frustrated. Such dramatic direct action made a considerable impression upon unemployed militants. The tactic was widely contemplated in 1936 and acted on in several cases. Other Forms of Protest If the hunger march is most typically remembered, this should not obscure the rich variety of forms of protest during the most intense phase of unemployed activity. Cysoing Relief Strike, 17–25 April 1934 One form of protest that has already been discussed as part of events in Saint-Quentin was the strike of those unemployed who were set to work on municipal work schemes. On occasion, the relief strike might take place as the principal form of protest in a locality. On 17 April, the unemployed of Cysoing launched a strike on the relief work schemes. It spread from one council to another within the canton and the relief workers staged various demonstrations. Their grievances included the reductions in hourly wages and they demanded weekly paid benefits and payments for Sundays. The strike lasted a week and was brought to a halt when the mayors threatened disqualification.128 Masselot, the chair of the Cysoing unemployed committee, defiantly warned, ‘If the strikers have returned to the worksites, it is because they are fathers and fear losing their unemployment benefits. Nevertheless, the struggle continues to obtain the achievement of our demands.’ The struggle ended on 25 April with a defiant demonstration through Cysoing. The relief strike showed that the movement was not fixated on a single tactic and that it could mobilize different unemployed constituencies over their own grievances.129

will again pursue the movement to win our demands with more vigour, and we will struggle until our victory’. Réveil du Nord, 20 February 1935. 128 Grand Echo, 24 April 1934; ibid., 25 April 1934. 129 Michael Seidman has stressed the resistance of the unemployed to work arguing that the productivist model has hitherto seduced historians and that this approach wrongly assumes that the unemployed wanted work. Michael Seidman, ‘Making the French Unemployed Work, 1930–6’, French History, 18/2 (June 2004): 196–221. This stands in a longer discourse from Paul Lafargue’s Right to be Lazy to the writings of libertarians and anarchists. There were certainly those without work who sought to avoid it but to interpret protests against work relief as opposition to work per se is a misreading. Rather opposition was organized on the grounds that these were cheap labour schemes with authoritarian overtones. Also, such an

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School Pupils’ Strike of Pérenchies-Prémesques Achille Mastdagt, the president of the CdC of Pérenchies, Prémesques, Lompret and Verlinghem, adopted a novel tactic in the struggles of the unemployed. On 5 February 1935, the unemployed of these communes withdrew their children from school in an effort to get the council to accede to their demands. The CdC decided to escalate the dispute on 11 February by calling on other parents to withdraw their children in solidarity with their demands.130 On the day of the ‘general strike’, in Pérenchies the 28 children of the unemployed on strike were joined by 47 in solidarity (or illness) out of a school population of 620, over one in ten. In Prémesques, 39 were on strike (25 had unemployed parents) out of a school population of 185.131 As part of the movement, Mastdagt tried to set up alternative classes for the striking pupils but these were closed down by police. By 13 February the strike was clearly petering out with only 20 remaining on strike in Pérenchies. For his part in agitation amongst the unemployed, Mestadagt faced the courts on 23 February. He was imprisoned for ten days for his part in a peaceful but unauthorized protest where the demonstrators had shouted ‘resign you incompetent’ outside the mayor of Verlinghem’s house. For the establishment of the alternative school for striking pupils, he received a fine of 100 francs. On 18 March, the CdC organized a meeting in his defence at which Vermont (SRI, Houplines) and Martha Desrumeaux spoke before an audience of 150.132 Conclusion The Lille to Paris hunger march redeemed unemployed protest in France. The year that followed witnessed the highpoint of unemployed protest but this was far from a nationwide experience. As the Minister of the Interior’s eyes cast across the reports from his prefects on unemployment and political activity, he noticed that in the year that followed the events of 6 February the political colours of the French mosaic were intensifying. There was a worsening of unemployment in the industrial regions together with a political and social polarization. In Paris, the movement’s stagnation continued. Efforts to restore its vigour failed because of a combination of poor timing, bureaucratic decision-making and internal frictions. Ironically, the hunger march of 18 November to 2 December 1933 proved a catalyst outside the Paris region. During this year, the now tested method of the hunger march was adopted in Normandy, Basses-Pyrénées, Loire, Nord (regionally as well as Valenciennes, Douai, Cambrai, Avesnes), twice in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Oise and Gard. Remarkable unemployed militancy flared up in Calais and Saint-Quentin. Other industrial areas were not affected to the same degree – Seine, Bordeaux, Lyons, and the Rhine – were all

interpretation underestimates the significance of the ideological caricature of the unemployed as a malingerer and dole abuser. 130 Ibid., 9 February 1935; there were also school strikes at Iwuy and Sars-Poterie, ADN M616 32 Sub-Prefect to Prefect (Nord), 4 January 1935; ibid., 7 February 1935. 131 Grand Echo, 12 February 1935. 132 ADN M616 32 Divisional Commissoner (Lille) to Prefect, 19 March 1935.

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notable for the comparative absence of protest.133 In many ways, 1934 was a unique year, before the Popular Front had been fully worked out, of rising working-class militancy and unity of action. The example of the Lille to Paris hunger march proved to be an inspiration to unemployed activists in the scattered industrial regions of France in the year that followed. For a few months into 1935, unemployed protest continued as before but the Popular Front policy soon snuffed out unemployed militancy.

133 For example Jean Chaintron, who described himself as an ‘unemployed propagandist’ in Lyons was not active in the CdC but in the SRI and made no mention of this unemployed committee; Jean Chaintron, Le Vent Soufflait devant ma Porte, (Paris, 1993), pp. 75–85.

Chapter 7

The Coming of the Popular Front and the Unemployed Movements At their Ivry conference in late June 1934, the PCF embraced the strategy of the Popular Front. An anti-fascist and electoral alliance with the socialist SFIO was extended to the Radicals by summer 1935. The PCF’s attitude to other parties changed from one of outright hostility to an accommodating search for allies. In so doing it modified its approach to social conflict and the French state. In January 1936, the three political constituents of the Popular Front agreed their programme for the forthcoming legislative elections. Their motto – ‘bread, peace and liberty’ – had a similar ring to the revolutionary slogans of 1789 and 1917. For those familiar with the language of popular protest at the time, the first of these watchwords was intended as a sign that the Popular Front would prioritize those without work.1 To tackle unemployment their programme proposed an increase in purchasing power, a national unemployment fund, a reduction in the working week (without loss of wages), pensions to encourage retirement and public works.2 This agreement implied a considerable, but willing, communist retreat. Since the crisis of 1927, the PCF had proposed an unemployment insurance bill on terms most favourable to the workers. Rather than the entitlements and rights of an insurance scheme, a national unemployment fund would dole out assistance. Even this measure, which never materialized, provoked a stern reaction from business with a stream of letters from Chambers of Commerce flooding in to the Ministry of Labour in early 1936.3 The PCF also abandoned its criticisms of the CGT’s campaign for a 40 hour week.4 The Popular Front strategy entailed ideological concessions in relation to 1 The central slogan of the French revolution of 1789 was ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ and that of the Russian Revolution of 1917 was ‘Bread, peace, land and all power to the soviets’. 2 Quoted in Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 301. 3 AN F22 683 the following letters from Chambers of Commerce: Saint-Dizier (11 March 1936), Caen (31 March), Chambéry (25 April), Nancy (30 February and 8 June), Moulins-Lapalisse (6 May), Bergerac (13 May). 4 AN F7 13595 40 hour week campaign. Confédération Générale du Travail, La CGT devant le Chômage (Paris, 1931). ‘La semaine de 40 heures’, La Voix du Peuple, 142 (June 1932): 385–94; Maurice Pinot, La Semaine de 40 Heures, le Chômage, et les Prix: une Enqûete auprès de la Production Française (Paris, 1933). During the Third Period, the PCF and CGTU condemned the CGT’s 40 hour week campaign as a safety valve for capitalism and a means of sharing out the hardship amongst workers. Racamond reported on the CGT conference in L’Humanité, 25 February 1933; ‘En tête d’une immense armée des sans-travail’, Cahiers du

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unemployment. Its economic philosophy was under-consumptionism, and therefore reformist, suggesting that the capitalist state could stimulate popular spending to overcome mass unemployment.5 The adoption of Popular Front perspectives coincided with the bottom of the economic cycle and the most active phase of the unemployed movement. At the same time, there was a recovery in workplace struggles and a desire for united action against the threat of fascism. Whilst the Popular Front was a strategy of the Third International as a whole, it was pioneered in France and was the brainchild of Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Comintern chief.6 The prize from Stalin’s point of view was the Franco-Soviet Pact of May 1935.7 Cementing an electoral alliance with the Radicals was therefore critical to the securing of the international alliance between France and Russia. The cross-class sociology of the Popular Front had important ramifications for the movements of the unemployed. The CdCs had identified socialist councils and landlords (the ‘vultures’) as their principal enemies and had clashed with petty-bourgeois ratepayers who formed the core of Radical support over levels of social provision. Such demonologies were an anathema to new modes of communist thinking. Internationally, the Popular Front transformed the Comintern’s attitude to the unemployed. In the Third Period, for a short while at least work amongst the unemployed had been obligatory. In Britain, Germany, and the US, communists had led hunger marches, protests and even riots. They had built unemployed movements of considerable if not lasting force. The Comintern now deemed the present situation to be neither revolutionary, nor were the unemployed in the vanguard of its perspectives. With the Popular Front, the communist unemployed movements in various parts of the globe unashamedly shed their revolutionary posture and sought respectability.8 Consequently, the communist parties stressed the humanitarian Bolchévisme, 15 (December 1931): 1140; L’Emancipation, 21 January 1933; ibid., 24 June 1933. Rather than consistently supporting the demand for a 40 hour week, the PCF had often called for a seven hour day, Jacques Doriot, Journée de Sept Heures, Avec Salaire de Huit Heures, Discours Prononcé à la Chambre des Députés, 10 Mars 1932 (Paris, 1932); Jacques Doriot, Les Communistes et le Chômage, Discours Prononcé à la Chambre des Députés, 20 Novembre 1931 (Paris, 1931). 5 ‘La CGT devant la crise’, La Voix du Peuple, 134 (October 1931): 663–4; ibid., 135 (November 1931): 745–8; ‘La CGT préconise une programme d’action’, La Voix du Peuple, 142 (June 1932): 395–8; Charles Spinasse, La Crise Economique: Discours Prononcé à la Chambre des Députés, 27 Février 1931 (Paris: 1931); Léon Jouhaux, Le Plan de Rénovation Economique et Sociale (Paris, 1935). Another powerful influence on CGT and SFIO economic thought was the plan of Hendrick de Man, Peter Dodge (ed.), Hendrick de Man: Socialist Critic of Marxism (Princeton, 1979), pp. 289–305. 6 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: a History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke, 1996) pp. 121–30. 7 As Daniel Guérin observed, ‘The Franco-Soviet pact had one direct and nearly immediate consequence: the formation of the popular front’. Daniel Guérin, Le Front Populaire: Révolution Manquée (Paris, 1970), p. 86. 8 Matt Perry, ‘The Jarrow Crusade, the National Hunger Marches and the Labour Party: a re-appraisal’, Socialist History, 20 (2001): 40–53; Folsom, American Before Welfare, p. 398.

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dimension of their work amongst the unemployed and this was used to break the communists’ political isolation. This also entailed a degree of institutionalization of the unemployed movements (not as much as the communists would have liked) and, crucially, a concerted demobilization of the unemployed. Doriot’s Expulsion, the Congress of Ivry and the Day of Action at the Mairies, 30 June 1934 On 3 December 1933, the day after the Lille to Paris hunger march had arrived in Paris, a hunger march for the Seine and Seine-et-Oise departments in June 1934 was decided upon. In January 1934, the PCF leaders heavily criticized the Parisian UdC for their role in the hunger march of November and December. Their efforts were deemed to be ‘far from a success’ and the results were largely due to the Party and the CGTU. In addition, the unemployed movement had failed to organize Christmas demonstrations outside the nightclubs of the rich. The UdC was once again to be reorganized in the dual hopes of reviving its fortunes and making it more compliant. The CdCs were to be sorted into five regions. Four commissions (agit-prop, housing and legal, industrial and demonstrations) were to make its work more effective.9 PCF leaders again insisted on a Paris hunger march in June.10 Various options had been discussed but a journée with demonstrations in Saint-Ouen, Montreuil, Cachan, Puteaux, Pontoise, Gargan, Juvisy was decided on. In June 1934, CdCs held meetings to build these events and formulate demands (against disqualifications, benefit cuts, evictions, forced work and the use of social insurance funds for the Marquet plan).11 Compounding the problems of the unemployed movement was the expulsion of deputy and mayor for Saint-Denis, Jacques Doriot on 27 June 1934 and the impact of this on the PCF regionally.12 Doriot carried his positions in his party district which

9

Ibid., police reports, 13 January 1934; ibid., 15 January 1934. Ibid., police report, 8 January 1934. 11 AN F7 13562 police report, 28 June 1934. 12 Doriot established a cross-party united front against fascism in the aftermath of 6 February in opposition to the PCF’s line. He refused a summons to Moscow and resigned as mayor of Saint-Denis and was re-elected in order to strengthen his position locally. A motion of censure on Doriot was passed in Thorez’s Ivry rayon on 22 June shortly before his expulsion demonstrating the extent to which this was a contest of Parisian power-bases as well as a conflict within the Central Committee of the PCF, Le Travailleur, 20 June 1934; see also, AN F7 13091 police biography of Jacques Doriot, 1 September 1924. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 111 and 3 Mi 6 112 on Doriot affair in PCF records. When Doriot was expelled, despite his adherence to the policy of the united front like their own, the French Trotskyists cautioned against Doriot’s lack of political clarity otherwise he would condemn himself to failure as others had who had split from the PCF before him, La Vérité, 13 July 1934. But in his case, his blend of amorphous politics, personal ambition, careerism and a municipal power base led him to found the fascist Parti Populaire Français (French Popular Party, PPF) in 1936. He continued to exploit this question of unemployment as leader of the PPF. 10

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accounted for a substantial part of the party’s weight in the Paris region.13 For the far left, trouble in Saint-Denis highlighted the difficulty with the communist municipal strategy in relation to unemployment. At the onset of the crisis, communist councils had acted in ‘exemplary fashion’ towards the unemployed with the most generous benefits, goods in kind such as coal and clothing and without the prying means test investigations.14 However, with the worsening of the crisis, as in red Oyonnax, communist generosity was squeezed from two ends. From one side, the mounting debts of the communist councils and the consequent press backlash put the councils under strong pressure from the Journal de Saint-Denis.15 From the other side, the Government restricted their room for manoeuvre. The authorities demanded that Saint-Denis carry out mass disqualifications in February, May and June 1932, which the council refused to carry out in full.16 Pierre Laval, at the Ministry of Labour, then issued decrees against special supplementary aid for the unemployed.17 In Saint-Denis, Jules Genovesi the maire-adjoint [assistant mayor] with special responsibility for unemployment led a demonstration on 16 June against Laval’s ‘coup’. The police baton-charged the demonstration and Genovesi received a fortnight in prison.18 The local communist newspaper continued to prepare the unemployed for a confrontation with the authorities and a further demonstration was called.19 On 19 November, Saint-Denis CdC gathered 600 supporters outside the mayor’s offices to put a list of demands. Police intervened provoking a short but violent struggle with bottles and other projectiles being hurled at the police. A police commissioner, Tiha, was hit on the head. Nine were arrested.20 With debts of 4.5m francs accumulating, in November 1932, Genovesi and the more cautious Doriot clashed over whether to succumb to government-inspired cuts or to escalate militant opposition.21 Doriot deployed his prestige to defeat and 13

He published an open letter to the Comintern, Jacques Doriot, Les Communistes de Saint-Denis et les Evénements du 6 et 12 Février (Saint-Denis, 1934). 14 La Vérité, 11 May 1934. 15 The Journal of Saint-Denis called for the Government to clean the ‘Augian stables’ of the Saint-Denis council that ‘plundered the budget, stole from the citizens and … lined its pockets at the expense of the taxpayers’, Journal de Saint-Denis, 3 December 1932; ibid., 29 October 1932; about drunkards who claimed benefit, ibid., 23 April 1932. 16 L’Emancipation, 7 July 1932. 17 Ibid., 4 June 1932; ibid., 11 June 1932. 18 Ibid., 25 June 1932. 19 Ibid., 30 July 1932; ibid., 21 August 1932. 20 Ibid., 3 December 1932; AN F7 13557 police report ‘The organisation of the unemployed’, 2 March 1933; Journal de Saint-Denis, 26 November 1932. 21 ADSSD 3 Mi 6 110 PCF Central Committee, Municipal Programme, 1934–35. This document unintentionally highlighted the contradiction of PCF policy in relation to unemployment. It identified the legal and financial constraints on its councils and asserted better provision for the unemployed existed in communist territory but called for revolutionary action to achieve these improvements, thus: ‘Having rid ourselves of all social democratic illusions on taking power peacefully in the councils; we want to conquer councils to reduce the power of the bourgeois state and to replace them with soviet councils. … To conquer the councils and to do so in the framework of the system, without taking power by

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discredit Genovesi. The retreat began. By 15 November 1933, Lepreux even went so far as to say ‘we can do nothing against the authorities’.22 This municipal retreat in Saint-Denis over unemployment policy was part of a general trend. Councils had to cut provision in order to avoid bankruptcy, the distributions of coal dried up and disqualifications became a common occurrence. Communist councillors could even be heard denouncing the young for refusing work below trade union rates. This retreat had an adverse impact on the development of a movement of protest against unemployment as the unemployed became more passive and more reliant on ‘big Jack’, their demagogic idol. Doriot had built his reputation and a substantial personal following on the question of unemployed and this was widely recognized.23 The UdC therefore suffered a double blow when the day of action of 30 June 1934 failed to match projections. Police expected around 7,000 to respond to the UdC’s call for demonstrations. The results did not match even their expectations. Instead of demonstrations in seven parts of the agglomeration, there were only four. The largest was an 800 strong open-air meeting in Cachan. Seven hundred attended a public meeting in Salle des Fêtes, Saint-Ouen. The police dispersed the 400 who assembled in Montreuil (with a communist council) to the Heights of Bagnolet. In Puteaux, 200 attended a meeting in the Salle Municipale.24 In Saint-Ouen, ten squadrons of police occupied the assembly point, the place de la Mairie, so the 2,000 unemployed had to go straight to a meeting. At Puteaux, the salle Municipale was only granted at the last moment and several hundred turned up despite the intimidatory presence of the gardes mobiles. At West Pontoise, eleven CdCs mobilized 500 unemployed, sent a delegation to the Sub-Prefecture and went to Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône to demonstrate. At 5 pm, in place Thiers, Rancy, 1,000 demonstrated without the usual interference from the police.25 Police and communists estimates vary from 2,100 to 6,500 overall participants on 30 June 1934. Either figure marks a pale imitation of 2 December 1933. The Parisian movement once more revealed its weakness.26 The PCF’s lofty insistence on the date did not help. Even in more militant areas, the summer revolutionary activity of the working class is to be on alien territory and to work definitely for the bourgeoisie’. 22 La Vérité, 8 December 1933. 23 OSA Comintern archive f.495 op.55 d.27 ll.185–7 Dmitri Manuilsky’s response, 17 May 1933. When Manuilsky presided over a discussion of the French commission of the Third International in March 1933, his criticisms focused on five areas: the remedy for weaknesses, the municipal question, strike conduct, the unemployed and the workplaces. He specifically raised the example of Doriot, recognizing his base amongst the unemployed and his council’s efforts on their behalf. Reporting to the Comintern in December 1934, Maurice Thorez noted that Doriot’s base consisted in the main of the unemployed of Saint-Denis. ‘Document: Maurice Thorez rapport du 3 décembre 1934’, Communisme, 67–8 (2001): 100. 24 AN F7 13562 police report, 30 June 1934. According to L’Humanité, more than 3,000 came to Montreuil. Banned from demonstrating, they attended a meeting in Buttes de Bagnolet and then demonstrated to the Montreuil Hôtel de Ville. 25 L’Humanité, 1 July 1934. 26 Or the ‘failure’ and ‘reduced influence’ as the PCF report on the movement put it. Although it claimed that 10,000 participated. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934.

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constituted a lull in activity. Poor timing compounded the problems of bureaucratic methods, sectarianism and infighting, which were particularly pronounced in Paris. If the UdC hoped that the day of action would mask the loss of Doriot, they were to be disappointed. The Fifth Congress of the UdC (29 November–1 December 1934) and the Second Parisian Hunger March of 12 January 1935 Whilst the creation of an unemployed movement in the Parisian region had been the first step in the establishment of unemployed movements across France, the former had fallen into the doldrums subsequently and compared unfavourably with militant campaigns in the provinces. On 12 November 1934, the UdC proposed a hunger march to Paris. The plan was that CdCs from across France would elect delegates who would make their way to the capital for 15 December. Yet others within the movement opposed this, arguing for regional marches instead.27 The congress set to begin on 28 November would resolve these questions. It took place during the campaign for united activity between the SFIO and PCF. Four hundred and twenty five delegates, largely from the Paris region, attended the first day of the congress. They were alerted to attacks on the unemployed which were symptomatic of a broad offensive associated with the decree laws. A series of measures had reduced provision for the unemployed. To disguise this offensive, cuts had been piecemeal and targeted at foreigners. Disqualifications and the denial of benefit were becoming more common.28 The conference was told that there had been resistance to this retrenchment with 400 demonstrations in the Parisian region in that year, that is 100 more than in the previous one. Discussion from the floor touched on the protests for coal, work amongst the armed forces, amongst unemployed immigrants and the actions of communist councils. A delegate from the Nord region also gave an account of the activity there. The second day opened with a session on local campaigns after which Georges Marrane (mayor of Ivry and general councillor of Seine), Lucien Midol (PCF, Central Committee) and Marcel Capron (a PCF deputy) took to the podium with an elaboration of the PCF’s municipal and parliamentary work on behalf of the unemployed. Next, speakers from the CGTU, including René Arrachard and the other communist mass organizations, followed. At the end of the day, delegates passed a motion of solidarity with the unemployed of Saint-Quentin.29 The line up of speakers was therefore exclusively composed of prominent PCF leaders. On the third and final day, 499 delegates attended. They were from 167 CdCs that claimed to represent 50,000 unemployed. The opening session was concerned with organizing the unemployed. The speaker stated that the CdC should be the 27

AN F7 13562 Police report, 12 November 1934. In December 1933, the Parisian municipal council cut benefit for immigrant workers by one franc a day. Then the General Council of the Seine cut immigrant benefits by two francs. In early 1934 the Government cut its allocation to unemployment fund by 40 million francs. In July 1934, they also lengthened the residence criteria for benefit. 29 L’Humanité, 1 December 1934. 28

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fundamental unit of the movement. The committee should be broad and inclusive, reaching out to all ages, both sexes and all nationalities. General assemblies could elect an executive commission and in addition working parties should be created.30 Local committees should also form sporting, cultural, educational and co-op groups. The UdC representative also proposed non-philanthropic CdS so that the working class could support the unemployed in their struggles. The main sentiment of the discussion was that a mass movement of the unemployed could and should be consolidated. The proposals were, so it seems from the L’Humanité report, generally approved, though the attitude to philanthropy was ‘clarified’ in the course of debate. On this question, the point was made that they should not attempt to prevent the unemployed, driven by hardship, from accepting charity. The debates also turned to the immanent hunger march, with the delegate from Nord, drawing the lessons from their recent march to Lille. Various commissions – youth, women, immigrants, colonials – all reported to conference on their work. After these, the ‘immense majority’ voted for the organizational report. The bureau régional [regional office] and the UdC’s officials were then elected. The conference ended with the singing of the Internationale.31 Police reports revealed a different aspect of the conference, highlighting the backdoors political manoeuvring. On the first morning of the conference, the PCF faction at the conference met to clarify its position. On the question of the hunger march to Paris, they decided on two December demonstrations in Paris. The PCF leadership’s criticism of the unemployed movement was such that the faction sought the unseating of the incumbent leadership of Mercier and Chevalier.32 They were scapegoats of the movement’s decline. Mercier was also considered to be pro-Doriot.33 For six months there had been almost no activity. Both had long associations with the campaign and though in the mould of bureaucratic anonymity they were capable journalists and practised public speakers. Interestingly, L’Humanité, breaking with its past pattern, did not at any stage of the conference mention any of the UdC officials by name. Thus, it obscured the reorganization of personnel from its readers. The decisions of the PCF faction, as was often the case, won the day. The 450 conference delegates decided to hold a demonstration on 22 December with assembly points at the gates of Paris: portes Chapelle, de Pantin, d’Italie and Maillot. Auffret and Peyrat replaced Mercier and Chevalier as the movement’s leadership.34 These new leaders failed to improve the fortunes of the movement. Their selection was illadvised because Auffret was widely mistrusted in the CdCs and Peyrat declined the post almost immediately after the reshuffle.35 30

For agit-prop, legal and rent advice, industrial links, women, young, social events and finance. 31 Ibid., 2 December 1934. 32 Ibid., 29 November 1934. 33 Joyeux of CdC of the 14th arrondissement remembered Mercier as a monotonous speaker who was unenthusiastically received, Maurice Joyeux, Souvenirs d’un Anarchiste (Anthony, 2002), p. 205. 34 Ibid., 4 December 1934. 35 Ibid., 14 December 1934; Jean Auffret was eventually expelled for the embezzlement of 2,000 francs on 27 April 1935, Le Travailleur, 22 June 1935.

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For some time, unemployed movements throughout the country had been preparing for a hunger march on Paris.36 In the event, the hunger march was postponed twice and finally took place on 12 January 1935.37 Still trying to overcome the failure to establish an effective national organization of the unemployed, delegations were planned from different parts of France to give the march on Paris a national character.38 The demands reflected this national focus. 1. 2. 3. 4.

The opening of a national unemployment fund paid for by the state. Two francs a day increase in benefit. Exoneration of rents with compensation for small landlords. Unemployment insurance.

The delegations would, L’Humanité readers were promised, be ‘massive’ and were proceeding to their destinations with the help of Support Committees (CdS).39 Six hundred in Saint-Claude (Jura) and 300 in Troyes had signed petitions for the marchers’ demands. As before the UdC had to contend with a police ban. The authorities were willing to concede three meeting venues but would not tolerate any street demonstrations in Paris or its suburbs.40 The Parisian Regional Committee of the Unemployed convened an emergency meeting on 9 January to discuss their response. L’Humanité stressed that it was indispensable that the CdCs should send delegates. Nearly 150 attended the union buildings on avenue Mathurin Moreau. A long discussion yielded a vote of confidence in the bureau of the UdC, who were mandated to take every step to ensure that the hunger march take place, accepting the police offer of a meeting room but demanding the right of the unemployed to assemble in the boulevards.41 Despite the cold, hail, freezing drizzle and snow, the unemployed came in their thousands to demonstrate on 12 January. Many had set off from different parts of the banlieue [suburbs] to take part in the demonstrations. L’Humanité claimed 20,000 descended on Paris. A delegation to the Chamber met the PCF deputies to leave their list of demands. Demonstrations took place in Gentilly, Bicêtre, Bagnolet, Levallois and at Etoile. Short violent scuffles broke out between protesters and police in 36 On 21 November, the CRC of Basses-Pyrénées decided that each of its CdCs would send a delegate to the ‘rassemblement général’ [general rally] of the unemployed on 15 December. AN F7 13559 Divisional Commissioner to Director of General Security, 26 November 1934. On 30 November, the Landes CdC discussed the ‘rassemblement national des chômeurs’ [national rally of unemployed] in Paris on 15 December. Ibid., police report on Landes CdC, 30 November 1934. On 6 December 1934, the Bordeaux CdC meeting of 250 was told that a delegation of hunger marchers from Le Boucau would be stopping in Bordeaux on their way to Paris, though the date was not fixed. Ibid., police report on Bordeaux CdC meeting, 6 December 1934. 37 AN F7 13562 police report, 4 December 1934. 38 L’Humanité, 6 January 1935. 39 With eight from Hautes- and Basses-Pyrénées, Indre-et-Loire, seven from Troyes, five from Nord, Rhône, Loire, Seine-Inférieuree, Aisne, and so on. 40 Ibid., 9 January 1935. 41 Ibid., 10 January 1935.

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th

Bezons, Gentilly, Ivry, 13 , Malakoff, and Bicêtre. The financial collapse of Citröen and the sacking of 18,000 metallos [metalworkers] heightened the atmosphere. In the southern sector, at Gentilly, the unemployed laid their hands on the materials of a building site to fight with police. In Bicêtre, the site of another police baton charge, a photographer from Paris-Soir was truncheoned as was Girard, the socialist mayor. About 30 arrests were made. The day culminated with three large public meetings of the unemployed. In the western suburbs at Levallois, 2,000 demonstrated before going on to the meeting at salle Huyghens. Pecq, Chatou, and Reuil unemployed had marched 300 strong. Those from Chaville, Jouy and Velizy marched into Chaville and 20 were arrested while trying to assemble for a demonstration. A column that had come from Conflans, Achères and Bezons managed to form up near Etoile. Streaming into central Paris from different parts of the western conurbation, the meeting held at gymnase Huyghens was the largest with 9,000 in attendance and the most renowned speakers: Thorez, Auffret, André Marty, Chateau (SFIO), Grandel (PCF mayor of Gennevilliers) and Langumier (CGTU). Thorez thundered triumphantly that the march was ‘a cortege of hardship, a cortege of hunger, a cortege of struggle’. In the eastern suburbs, 100 unemployed had arrived in Livry-Gargan on Friday from Mitry-Mory and Villeparisis and a similar figure from Chelles, Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois. The council found them a bed for the night. On Saturday, 11 January they left Livry-Gargan, were split into groups of 20–25 by police, sung the Internationale and chanted ‘bread or work’. Their numbers grew with contingents from Bondy and Pavillons-sous-Bois and by the time they reached Noisy-le-Sec they were 1,000 strong. At Romainville, they joined a column of 500 from Drancy and Bobigny. From there, they made their way to Bagnolet where the PCF council provided food and hot drinks. A group of 200 unemployed from Pontault-Combault and Roissy-en-Brie stayed Saturday night at Champigny. Alfortville council had a reception for 250 unemployed on their way to salle Japy. At Montreuil, midday, the police charged a group of 250 unemployed with truncheons flaying. Again the police baton charged at 2 pm at the Porte de Vincennes. In total, 6,000 attended the meeting of marchers from the eastern sector in salle Japy, receiving delegations of the unemployed from Nord, Gironde, Indre-et-Loire, Côte d’Or and Aube. From the northern sector, by the time the marchers from different localities arrived at Saint-Denis, they were 500 strong led by Hénaff, Gillot and Caresmil. Police tried to disperse them at porte de la Chapelle, but the demonstrators reformed and continued on the gymnase Jean-Jaurès. Another group from Tremblay-la-Gonesse, Villepinte, Sevran, Aulnay and Aubervilliers were forced to split up and go down side streets to get to the meeting hall. L’Humanité described the police presence as a state of siege. Nevertheless, 5,000 crowded in to hear the speakers.42 Once again, the Paris region had mobilized relatively unimpressive numbers and failed to repeat the success of the hunger march of 1933.43 The effects of the 42

Ibid., 13 January 1935; Le Travailleur, 19 January 1935. Preparation for the march did mean that in the city of Paris the number of arrondissements with CdCs grew from five in early December to 17. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 118 City of Paris Third Regional Congress of the PCF, 1935. 43

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expulsion of Doriot were also clearly felt with Saint-Denis, having once been the strongest point of the region, being now easily surpassed by other districts. The Hunger Marches of February–April 1935: Ardennes, Brittany, SeineInférieuree and the Somme From February to April 1935, hunger marchers tramped along the provincial lanes in Ardennes, Brittany, Seine-Inférieuree and the Somme. For the last time, the desire for action among the unemployed matched the willingness of the communists to lead it. In their own terms, these marches were considerable achievements. After three months of marching, there were to be no more major unemployed protests until after France’s defeat in war. Ardennes Hunger March, 22–23 February 1935 On 2 January 1935 The Union des Comités des Chomeurs de la Région Ardennaise [the Union of Unemployed Committees of the Ardennes Region] held a congress to plan a hunger march because unemployment had reached staggering proportions within the region. Three councils – Vireux-Wallerand, Levrézy and Deville – supported their demands.44 In Deville, unemployment caused a municipal crisis in 1934 that had allowed the communists to wrestle control of the council.45 The march was set for 22 and 23 February. At 9.30 am on 22 February, the last convoy of marchers had assembled in a working-class part of Deville. After half an hour, it set off. Clément Pierlot, the communist mayor, was at the head of the 150 demonstrators alongside Jules Fuzellier, the secretary of the local CGTU, and Pierre Lareppe, who was the regional secretary of the Communist Party and an activist in the Nouzonville CdC. Their initial destination was Monthermé 3 km away. There, a large number of unemployed people enthusiastically welcomed them and a delegation joined the march. This clamorous scene was repeated in Château-Regnault where another delegation added to their number. At their next stop, Levrézy, the communist mayor Compin greeted and fed the marchers. At 1.30 pm, they held a meeting in the commune. Leaving Levrézy for Brau and Nouzonville, afternoon showers drenched 44

L’Exploité (Aisne, Ardennes), 75 (2 February 1935). Ibid., 40 (2 June 1934). The communist Pierlot organized the CdC to present a list of demands to the council. All but the five communist councillors rejected these demands, and the communist representatives resigned to force elections in their seats which they won. The SFIO councillors then resigned and in the following elections, Pierlot won the mayor’s position. Ironically, the pact between the SFIO and PCF for unity of action had been greeted with great enthusiasm with meetings in many parts of the region in August 1934. AN F7 13024 reports on 6 August, 13 August and 27 August 1934 note the following meetings and attendances: 1 August in Charleville, 200; 2 August in Mohon, 200; 3 August in Nouvion, 180; 5 August in Givet, 150; 6 August in Sedan, 450; 8 August in Fumay, 150; 9 August in Vrigneaux-Bois, 150; 10 August in Rethel, 250; 20 August in Villiers-Semeuse, 100; 21 August in Revin, 180; 22 August in Braux, 250; 23 August in Monthermé, 35; 24 August in Liart, 30; 27 August in Amagne, 60; 29 August in Signy-le-Petit, 40; 30 August in Nouzonville, 150. 45

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the marchers. On their arrival in Nouzonville at 4.30 pm, the police commissioner read the prefectoral banning order and prohibited any demonstration. The marchers took no notice and ate with the local unemployed committee. In the evening, their public meeting attracted an audience of over 1,000. Early Saturday morning, delegations of marchers from across the region made their way to reinforce the group, which departed at 10 am for Charleville, the departmental capital.46 There were now over 1,000 demonstrators with a band accompanying them. They played the Internationale and La Marche de la Faim [the hunger march] specially composed for the occasion by Henrot of Revin CdC. Underlining the broad support for the march, Genon of the local CGT participated. An hour and a half later, they entered Charleville whose entire population seemed to be lining the streets. The commissioner once more declared the march to be illegal and his men blocked the road to the Prefecture. He announced to the crowd that the Prefect would not see a delegation and that the marchers could return another day. For over an hour, the line of police and unemployed faced each other until 5.30 pm when, without warning, the police charged the demonstration. La Marche de la Faim, the special unemployed newspaper brought out to report on the event, described the scene: ‘sword on flesh, rifle buts hit skulls … it was an indescribable chaotic mass where screams of rage of the baton chargers failed to stifle the cries of the wounded’.47 Many were injured and several arrests were made. Eight protesters, men aged between 22 and 40 years, three of them from Charleville, were tried. Three received prison sentences of up to one month, the others got suspended sentences or fines.48 Despite or perhaps because of being prosecuted and fined for printing La Marche de La Faim, Fuzellier won the mayoralty of Joigny three months later.49 Breton Hunger March, 7 April 1935 Brittany – with its mix of agriculture, fishing, and luxury trades like lace and earthenware, as well as its conservative and separatist traditions – was not the typical site of unemployed protest. However, by January 1933, CdCs had been set up in Quimper, Quimperlé and Penmarch. As unemployment worsened in places like Pontl’Abbé, local communist Valière disseminated propaganda among the unemployed and agricultural workers.50 Economic fortunes of the area varied according to catches, harvests and the prices at market.51 Only six communes out of 299 had 46

From the Semay valley, Neufmanil, Moncornet, and the Meuse valley. La Marche de La Faim, 1 (March 1935). 48 Pierre Taillard, Lucien-André Génon, Lucien Fay, Jean Compas, André Jonet, Robert Andry, Jean Vilvandré and Emile Gallit were prosecuted. 49 AN F7 13024 Prefect (Ardennes) to Minister of the Interior, 22 May 1935, 40 attended a protest meeting in Château-Regnault on 14 May over Borgniet’s arrest. Furthermore Revin SFIO lost Estivalet, one of their activists, to the PCF. He had participated in the march and was dismayed by his party’s failure to support the event. 50 His mistress wrote to Henri Barbé in prison that Valière was having some success amongst the unemployed. AN F7 13033 Special Commissioner (Quimper) to Minister of the Interior, 7 January 1933; ibid., 5 March 1933; ibid., 7 June 1933. 51 Ibid., 6 November 1934. 47

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unemployment funds. In Pont-l’Abbé, a commune of 6,700, the unemployment fund strained local finances. The council imposed task work upon claimants and allowed only 120 days benefit. These stringent conditions led to bitterness among the unemployed. The CdC, led by the communist Joseph Le Bellec, had conducted various struggles in the local area. Anger had been simmering for some time when the CdC decided to march to Quimper in December 1934.52 About 80 unemployed had come to the end of their entitlement so the CdC decided on a hunger march for the 7 April. On the eve of the march, the Prefect issued a ban and the local press publicized the concentration of police in Quimper for the purpose. Undeterred, 200 to 300 unemployed set off from Pont-l’Abbé on the morning of 7 April. They carried a large banner which proclaimed their demands: Re-inscription of the disqualified unemployed, for a new 120 days! End compulsory work without pay! Open public works for the workers and the peasants! Open unemployment funds in all the communes! Open a National Unemployment Fund!

After their 18 km route, the marchers arrived at the outskirts of Quimper at 11 am. The police blocked their route into the town. The marchers attempted to gain entry via a towpath along the Odet river but a squadron of mounted police gave chase and cornered them. There, a long stand off took place before Le Bellec headed a delegation to the Prefect.53 L’Humanité reported that Quimper had never seen so many police and that the marchers were virtually besieged. The communist paper claimed the population of Quimper emotionally welcomed the marchers who, after they had eaten, took to the road again for their return journey.54 Rouen Hunger March, 20 April 1935 Unlike Britanny, Rouen and Le Havre had a notable history of unemployed activism that stretched back to 1921 and 1927. In Seine-Inférieuree a regional movement of unemployed committees had existed since 1932. On 20 April 1935, the unemployed of Seine-Inférieure staged a hunger march in the face of another prefectoral ban. The regional committee of the unemployed had built the event by public meetings in Rouen, Barentin and Maromme which elicited an enthusiastic response from the unemployed. L’Humanité claimed that 2,000 took part. A heavy police presence attempted to prevent the demonstrators’ entry into the city. The CdCs of Oissel, Saint-Etienne-du-Rocheurs and Elbeuf sent 200 marchers, 150 came from Sotteville, Vallée du Cailly CdC sent 200 and Barentin and Pavilly provided a further 200 marchers. As a result of the police blockade, improvised street meetings were held with 1,000 attending in Sotteville. Despite the police line circling central Rouen, a large meeting went ahead at the Bourse du Travail and from there a delegation

52

At a meeting on 20 December 1934, L’Humanité, 24 December 1934. Le Courrier du Finistère, 13 April 1935. Guéguen and Signor, both teachers, were key to organizing the event. 54 L’Humanité, 12 April 1935. 53

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of representatives from Le Havre, Sanvic, Elbeuf and Sotteville was sent to the Prefecture with the marchers’ list of demands.55 Somme Hunger March, 24–26 April 1935 The fourth hunger march of spring 1935 set out from Vimeu on 24 April to Amiens, the departmental capital. Vimeu was a small commune in the western part of the Somme whose industry of small metalworking such as locks, taps, fittings and ironmongery dated back to the seventeenth century. A regional committee of CdCs had been set up in Vimeu in March 1932.56 Rising unemployment in early 1934 led the Prefect to confide with the Minister of the Interior, ‘It is undeniable that a certain agitation begins to reign amongst the unemployed, they manage to organize each week meetings and rowdy demonstrations and this, at the instigation of extremist elements who according to type, redouble this activity before 1 May’.57 On 19 and 25 April 1934 demonstrations of the unemployed took place in Amiens, the later with 1,500 in attendance.58 But despite communist efforts, the Amiens CdC was still resistant to its political interventions. Again in June the Prefect noted the popular anxiety about worsening unemployment because of the closure of the Saint de Rouvay factory near Abbeville and because several other firms were in similar difficulties. In Vimeu, in particular, popular patience was wearing thin.59 Florian Ducrocq, a local communist, had been a leading spirit on the unemployed committee. His comrade, Victor Flamant, assistant mayor of Friville-Escarbotin and treasurer of the unitaire metalworkers of Vimeu, had overall responsibility for the unemployed committees in the Somme and was the principal organizer of the march. Like elsewhere, the Prefect banned the demonstration in Amiens at the end of the march.60 As a result, the leadership of the CdC of Amiens were hostile to proceeding with such a demonstration. It was a large non-communist organization which held meetings of up to 1,800. At the same time, the CdC was within limits willing to cooperate with the CGTU. It participated in the regional committee of the unemployed established on 8 February 1935 and sent two delegates to the march on Paris of 12 January 1935.61 It eventually lent its support to the march on 18 April as did the local SFIO.62 This issue, however, led to the resignation of the incumbent 55

Ibid., 21 April 1935. AN F7 13551 Special Commissioner (Amiens) to Prefect (Somme), 12 March 1932. At the time of the hunger march to Paris, the CdC succeeded in getting an unemployment fund opened in Vimeu and 50 joined the CGTU. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Charles Tillon’s report on the hunger march, 7 January 1934. 57 AN F7 13029 Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 23 April 1934. 58 Ibid., 30 April 1934; ibid., 7 May 1934; ibid., 14 May 1934; ibid., 4 June 1934; ibid., 11 June 1934; ibid., 18 June 1934. 59 AN F7 13029 Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 4 June 1934; ibid., 11 June 1934; ibid., 18 June 1934. 60 Le Progrès, 9 April 1935. 61 Ibid., 9 February 1935; ibid., 18 January 1935. 62 Le Cri du Peuple, 21 April 1935; ADS 99 M141, Central Commissioner (Amiens) to Prefect (Somme), 8 April 1935; ibid., 19 April 1935. 56

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leadership at a mass meeting on 10 April.63 Amongst the rank and file, there was a certain impatience with the leadership’s cautious approach and Lenglet of the CGTU sought to use these differences to push for more militant action.64 The 60 km route of the hunger march took them three days to complete.65 The first day they journeyed 20 km from Escarbotin along the main road to Abbeville where they stayed the night. As they left Abbeville, their numbers had increased as several unemployed from the town had joined their ranks. The second day’s march took them a similar distance to the Flixecourt via Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher. That evening the workers of Flixecourt, with the militant traditions of the Saint factory, welcomed and fed the marchers. The final stage of the journey, the 20 km from Flixecourt to Amiens counted on the support of the unemployed from La Nièvre. They arrived in Amiens at around 4 pm. That day the march assumed a departmental character as the unemployed took to the road from different points of the compass. 28 km to the north, hunger marchers left Doullens; from the north-east the unemployed of Albert tramped the 27 km and to the west the unemployed of Corbie and Villers-Bretonneux walked the 14–15 km trip to Amiens. From their various directions the unemployed assembled at the Cirque Municipal. At 5 pm, a delegation went to see the Prefect, André Jozon.66 Two thousand hunger marchers and supporters demonstrated through the streets of Amiens and entered the Grand-Cinéma for a meal and a public meeting that 1,200 to 3,000 attended.67 The speakers were Berger of Vimeu CdC, Henri Lenglet the regional CGTU secretary, Flamant, Bellugue, secretary of Comité National des Chômeurs [National Committee of the Unemployed] and Dujardin of the railworkers. Two hundred and fifty unemployed occupied the square in front of the railway station but were dispersed by riot police and five arrests were made.68 That evening the communist council of Longueau, the Amiens suburb, which had previously hosted the hunger marchers in November 1933, were equally hospitable to the marchers

63

Ibid., 11 April 1935. Ibid., 30 January 1935. On 9 January, 300 of them had occupied the Hôtel de Ville, ibid., 9 January 1935. 65 Le Travailleur de Somme et Oise, 92 (6–12 April 1935); ibid., 93 (13–19 April 1935); ibid., 94 (20–26 April 1935). 66 ADS 99 M141 Demands of the Union Départementale des Comités des Chômeurs de la Somme were the right to work, the 40 hour week, public works, creation of a national unemployment fund, the inscription of all unemployed, the abolition of the half wage and the household means test, moratorium on repossessions and evictions, rent exoneration paid for by the state, end of the double income, early retirement, increased benefits, the abolition of forced labour, and benefits for those on short-time working. The delegation were Albert Blot and Marcel Durosel (Amiens), Victor Flamant and Ferdinand Dumont (Friville-Escarbotin), Bertrand Viltart (Albert), Maria Caron (Villers-Bretonneux), Raymond Rambure (Abbeville), Gaston Loeuille (Doullens) and Alphonse Maressel (Fouilly-les-Corbie), ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Central Commissioner (Amiens), 1 May 1935. 67 Ibid., Prefect (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 27 April 1935 quoted 1,400; Le Progrès, 27 April 1935 quoted 1,200; L’Humanité, 27 April 1935 quoted 2,000. 68 ADS 99 M141 Prefet (Somme) to Minister of the Interior, 27 April 1935. 64

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69

from Vimeu. Several squadrons of mounted police patrolled the streets of Amiens turning the city, in the words of the local paper, into a state of siege.70 The political pay-off of the hunger march’s success came with growing credibility for the PCF.71 Later in the year, two leaders of the Ardennes hunger march – Flamant and Grilly – became mayors of Friville and Feuquières-en-Vimeu respectively.72 These four provincial hunger marches do not neatly correlate against the size of the unemployed movements, communist implantation or even unemployment rates. Only Seine-Inférieure was one of the major centres of French industry, Ardennes and Somme were secondary zones and the Breton economy was predominately based on the primary sector of agriculture and fishing. Also the size of the unemployed movement was no reliable guide to the spring campaign of hunger marches. The Ardennes and Somme movements were respectively fourth and eighth in terms of departmental movements ranked by size of membership (Seine-Inférieure and Bretagne were not listed though the former would be one of the larger movements, probably larger than Ardennes, and the latter very small). This would suggest that the PCF made no concerted effort to launch hunger marches in the spring of 1935 underlining the lack of national cohesion. For the Somme, Ardennes, and Brittany, these events were undoubtedly the high point of local unemployed activism, a momentary impact with a varied impression on posterity. In Somme and Ardennes, this moment admittedly contributed to the growing municipal implantation of the PCF. In Rouen too, the activism of the 1930s laid the foundations for a future communist fiefdom. In Brittany, the hunger march did little to alter the prevailing conservative political complexion.73 The seasonal decline in unemployment, as before, constrained the potential for activism. However, this alone is unable to explain the effective termination of unemployed protest in May 1935. Joblessness remained high compared to previous years and began to increase again the other side of the summer. The period offered activists rich opportunities for collective action beyond the question of unemployment. These required communist attention and resources – anti-fascism, the demonstrations of Popular Front unity, the campaign against government retrenchment.74 In addition to short-term factors, the Franco-Soviet Pact of 2 May 1935 engendered a further transformation of the PCF’s outlook, consequentially abandoning its opposition to military service and revolutionary defeatism. The party in effect reconciled itself to French nationalism, to bourgeois allies and to the French state. When the movement emerged from the summer lull it was different: more tentative, less militant and unwilling to engage in protest.

69

L’Humanité, 27 April 1935, who they fed and provided a bed for the night. Le Progrès, 27 April 1935; Le Cri du Peuple, 5 May 1935 also complained about the scale of the police presence. 71 Le Travailleur de Somme et Oise, 98 (19–25 May 1935). 72 Philéas Grilly was the secretary of the CdC in Feuquières-en-Vimeu. 73 There was a solitary communist council elected in Finistère at Douarenez where there had been a major strike amongst the sardinières [sardine cannery workers], for election results see, L’Humanité, 6 May 1935. 74 For instance, the demonstrations of French civil servants. 70

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Sixth UdC Congress (20–23 November 1935) and the Abortive Hunger March, December 1935 As in April 1934, police surveillance in October 1935 furnished evidence that preparation of a hunger march to Paris was in its early stages. At a general assembly of Valenciennes CdC, Mériaux enthused that delegates from all departments would assemble 100 km from Paris for a national hunger march to the capital.75 The Ministry of the Interior despatched letters to all prefects soliciting information as matter of ‘extreme urgency’, expecting the march to take place between the end of November and early December.76 Indeed, the UdC conference with 500 delegates of 20–23 November decided on a new hunger march. The preferred date was to be sometime in late December. Marcel Peyrat, secretary of the UdC, set the tone of conference in his keynote speech listing the failure of the Government to get to grips with unemployment. He condemned the Government’s offensive against the unemployed: ‘So now they punish the unemployed. They disqualify them from benefit on all pretexts. That is to say that they take the last mouthful of bread from a man who has committed no other crime than not being able to find work.’77 A commission des marches [hunger march commission] was constituted on 25 November led by Peyrat. A week after the conference, it had taken no firm decisions about date, form or size of the march, only circulating the conference decision about the march to the provincial unemployed movements.78 By 7 December, the commission was no further forward and a march looked unlikely within the month. The only point of agreement after several meetings was the pacific character of the march, which was to demonstrate the ‘extreme distress’ of the unemployed rather than their ‘willingness to fight’.79 Despite likely support from all popular front groups, the commission members were divided over the character of the march. Peyrat proposed that provincial delegations numbering no more than 50 meet at the Bois de Boulogne and then march down avenue de la Grande Armée, place de l’Etoile, down the Champs-Elysées and disperse at Concorde. Because of this dithering and the caution instilled by Popular Front perspectives, the hunger march never took place. Indeed, the PCF was against committing itself to street demonstrations which might alienate the Radicals with whom they were negotiating. Yet again militants had been let down by ineffectual leadership. The Parisian leadership, which was the closest approximation to there being a national leadership, had failed to live up to the standards set by the more active and militant provincial movements. Thus what would have been the last French hunger march of 75

APP 1868 Minister of the Interior to Prefect of Police (Paris), 14 October 1935. Ibid., Minister of the Interior to all Prefects, 25 November 1935. 77 L’Humanité, 21 November 1935. Note that, unlike that of September 1933, this was not designated a national conference of the unemployed. 78 APP 1868 Director of General Information and Games to Prefect (Paris), 29 November 1935. 79 Ibid., 7 December 1935; for more evidence of this philanthropic attitude, Le Travailleur, 21 September 1935; ibid., 5 October 1935; ibid., 12 October 1935 communists in Vitry even established a Comité d’Entraide des Chômeurs that raised money and collected clothes for the unemployed, Le Travailleur, 19 April 1936; ibid., 14 November 1936. 76

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the 1930s met an ignominious fate, never to set its feet on the cobblestones of Paris. Though unemployment was higher in the late 1930s than it had been in the first years of the decade, these years were not accompanied by hunger marches or militant unemployed protest. The abortive march of December 1935 brought a period of extra-parliamentary action amongst the unemployed definitively to a close. Whilst organizations of the unemployed persisted their aspirations were channelled through the parliamentary project of the Popular Front.

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Chapter 8

The Popular Front Government and the Unemployed The Popular Front won the legislative elections of April-May 1936. Within the Popular Front, the Radicals’ vote declined.1 The SFIO, whose leader Léon Blum became the prime minister, increased their seats, whilst their votes remained static. The PCF, however, witnessed a dramatic surge in its vote. It increased its number of seats by 61. Most dramatically of all, on 4 June, Blum took office amongst an unexpected, nationwide wave of factory occupations (nearly 9,000 workplaces in total). The heady atmosphere of working-class militancy and confidence forced employers and the Government to grant unprecedented concessions at the Matignon talks.2 The pinnacle of the Blum Government’s achievement was the 40 hour week, so long central to the CGT’s plans to combat unemployment.3 These turbulent events instilled a great fear of communism and revolution amongst the right, the bourgeoisie, and even Radical coalition partners. In the Chamber of Deputies, a package of reforms was rushed through though these came to an abrupt halt in the autumn. The Blum ministry lasted until 22 June 1937, having been fatally damaged by the resurgence of the ligues, capital flight that brought devaluation, and divisions over the Spanish Civil War. The Radical Camille Chautemps took over. The Popular Front was able to continue in name but political realities were once again to test its frail cohesion. Although the factory occupation movement ended in the summer of 1936 labour militancy persisted with strike waves in spring 1937 and spring 1938.4 Real prospects for substantial reform had evaporated before the fall of the first Blum government in June 1937 when Radical senators refused to grant Blum exchange controls to stem the flight of capital. The measures in favour of 1

They lost five per cent of the vote, 400,000 votes and 32 seats. They had lost credibility through corruption scandals and the unpopularity of Laval’s deflationary policies. 2 On 7 June, the Matignon Agreement was established. Yet because the strikes continued, on 10 June there were further talks, which resulted in new union rights, collective bargaining, paid holidays, wage rises of 12 per cent and a 40 hour week. 3 Jean-Charles Asselain, ‘La loi des quarante heures de 1936’, in Jean Bouvier (ed.), La France en Mouvement 1934–8 (Seyssel, 1986), pp. 164–92. In the context of persistent mass unemployment it was defended on the grounds of increased leisure rather than as a cure for mass joblessness. The employers fiercely opposed the reform from its first mention. Paul Maquenne, La Réconciliation de l’Homme et de la Machine (Paris, 1933). 4 Months with over 50,000 strikers were February, April and May 1937 as well as March and April 1938 (the last of these months was the post-1936 peak). Antoine Prost, ‘Le climat social’ in René Rémond and Janine Bourdin (eds), Edouard Daladier: Chef du Gouvernement: Avril 1938 à Septembre 1939 (Paris, 1977), p. 101.

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the unemployed had not been implemented or had proved ineffective. The 40 hour week had not eliminated mass joblessness. The public works programme lacked the necessary funds to transform the situation and benefit increases had been overtaken by inflation. A second Blum ministry (13 March–10 April 1938) had proposed the reflationary programme of George Boris and Pierre Mendès France inspired by Keynes. This cabinet fell due once again to Radical opposition in the Senate. The Daladier ministry jolted policy to the right. The Czech crisis marked the point at which the Communist Party opposed the Daladier government, voting against the Munich agreement of 30 September 1938. On 12 November 1938, its internal divisions having long immobilized it, the Popular Front formally came to an end when the Radicals left the Comité National du Rassemblement (established on 14 July 1935). On 13 November Daladier, playing to the demands of big business, amended the 40 hour law allowing a 48 hour week under the guise of overtime. The CGT, which was racked by internal division, countered with a general strike on 30 November but by this time the confidence and spirit of the rank and file had been thoroughly exhausted and the strike call was a failure.5 The era of the Popular Front was definitively at an end. The Popular Front had therefore created a new context for French communists and their unemployed organizations. The year 1936 witnessed phenomenal increases in PCF and CGT membership. The unemployed movement endowed posterity with evidence from Perpignan, Sotteville, Nord, Landes-Pyrénées, Toulouse and Bouchesdu-Rhône of this propitious phase of French working-class history. Regional Unemployed Movements during the Popular Front The Popular Front transformed France’s political landscape and with it the movements of the unemployed. Despite the rapid decline in activity from spring 1935 onwards, CdCs continued to exist and even print newspapers, allowing insights into precisely how the change in PCF perspectives affected the committees of the unemployed. The Perpignan CdC launched Le Cri des Chômeurs on 11 November 1935. It published six issues before Christmas.6 Reporting on the national questions, each edition lamented different aspects of Laval’s decree laws, especially given the rural character of the Pyrénées-Orientales department, the agricultural decree law with its

5

Guy Bourdé, ‘La grève du 30 novèmbre 1938’, Le Mouvement Social, 55 (1966): 87–92. AN F7 13549 Prefect (Pyrénées-Orientales) to Minister of the Interior, 27 January 1932; CGTU, Huitième Congrès de la CGTU: Issy-les-Moulineaux au 24 à 27 Septembre 1935 (Paris, 1935),, p. 20. For an account of the activities of the Jeunesses Communistes in Perpignan in the early 1930s see Leo Figuères, Jeunesse Militante: Chronique d’un Communiste dans les Années 30–50 (Paris, 1971), pp. 31–40. For electoral situation of the PCF in the area, Georges Dupeux, Le Front Populaire et les Elections de 1936 (Paris, 1959), p. 149. Le Cri des Chômeurs (Perpignan), 1 (11 November 1935). The contributors were La Fouine, Jean Dupuy, François Goze, Le Winger, Daniel Chabanié, Irenée Espigulé and Alfred Beaucourt, the secretary of the CdC. 6

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7

deleterious effect on wine and wheat production. Le Cri trumpeted its firm support for the Popular Front.8 Beyond the wider political world, a local story was the real catalyst for the paper. The grape-pickers’ strike and the imprisonment of its leaders ran in every issue of Le Cri and was of paramount importance.9 In contrast, Le Cri could report very little unemployed activism. Other newspapers – La Voix des Chômeurs (Sotteville, November 1935– February 1936) and La Voix des Chômeurs (Landes-Pyrénées, January–October 1936), published around this time – reflected the same Popular Front agenda.10 Three newspapers from major areas of French industry (Nord, Toulouse, Marseilles) allow a closer examination of the interaction between the Popular Front and the movements of the unemployed at the regional level. i) La Voix des Chômeurs, Nord CRC, January–September 1936 La Voix des Chômeurs, the paper of the Regional Committee of Unemployed (Nord), reappeared in early 1936.11 The Nord region had been responsible for the largest provincial unemployed movement and for the most impressive acts of unemployed protest. The paper’s revival invites comparison with the earlier years of the movement. In 1934, the unemployed movement of the Nord had organized five hunger marches, a relief workers’ strike in Cysoing and the occupations of the mairies. From this high point, some decline was evident but the paper showed that the local network of CdCs persisted. The January issue printed reports from 32 localities. La Voix reproduced the very same Popular Front themes found in other unemployed papers of this period. The slogan ‘bread, peace and liberty’ translated into articles on anti-fascism, pacifism and economic injustice. Anti-fascism had a significant profile. La Voix reported on 600 workers in Wupperthal being convicted of high treason against the Nazi state.12 The March–April issue opened with the

7

Ibid. These laws were primarily concerned with bolstering prices through restricting production. They supported agricultural producers but curtailed work opportunities for agricultural labourers. 8 Ibid., 5 (8 December 1935). 9 Ibid. 10 La Voix des Chômeurs (Sotteville), (February 1936). La Voix des Chômeurs (LandesPyrénées), 1 (January–February 1936). Its editor was Elizondo. Contributors were Bac, Laferme, Bonnet and Lucien (Le Boucau CdC), Belade (secretary of Bagnères-de-Bigorre CdC), Dartiguelongue (Bayonne), Albert Mora (secretary of CRC); Alvarez, Roger Laplace, Louis Durgues, Jean Devalay (Biarritz CdC); Bernadet-Pouncet, Bessouly (secretary, Tarbes CdC), Lassallette (Anglet CdC). La Voix des Chômeurs (Landes-Pyrénées), 2 (February– March 1936). La Voix des Chômeurs (Landes-Pyrénées), 3 (April 1936). La Voix des Chômeurs (Landes-Pyrénées), 4 (June 1936). La Voix des Chômeurs (Landes-Pyrénées), 5 (October 1936). 11 Contributors were Berckmoes, Adolphe de Smet (manager), Paul Drève, J. Morel (Sin-le-Noble), Bethune (Lille), Dussart (Waziers), Bourneton, Liebneckt, Jean Claess and Paul Leloir. 12 La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord) (January 1936).

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warning ‘Fascism – It’s War! Save the Peace!’13 The late summer edition had a front page article supporting the Spanish republicans.14 Peace was another Popular Front objective that La Voix conjured with repeatedly. At first, war on two continents – with Italian aggression against Abyssinia and Japanese aggression in Manchuria – was causing popular anger.15 By summer, with war on mainland Europe, the paper was appealing for a mass rising for the peace conference at Brussels.16 La Voix reported on the further Popular Front theme ‘bread’, in other words, economic injustice and the new government’s delivery on poverty and unemployment. The May edition, on the eve of the Popular Front election victory, called for the realization of the Popular Front’s programme.17 It called for closer links between the CGT and the unemployed in order to achieve this. After the election, La Voix announced ‘We will at last have work’ in a front page headline.18 The 40 hour law, paid holidays, the repeal of the deflationary decrees were already in place and 4,000 million francs had been promised for public works before January 1937 to secure employment for 400,000 jobless. A month later, the paper’s front page enthused, ‘Unemployed obtained their first satisfaction’.19 This recorded Blum’s decree to raise minimum benefits by one franc a day, an improvement that had resulted from his meeting with the Union of the Unemployed of the Paris Region. Beyond the slogans of the Popular Front, there were other indicators of the movement’s metamorphosis, such as their attitude to the winter repatriation of foreign workers, adopting a humanitarian tone and lobbying approach.20 It was at the level of the CdCs that the movement’s evolution was most startling. La Voix revealed a widespread, and in some ways still vital, movement. It devoted a large amount of column inches to local stories. In total reports from some 117 localities (almost all from CdCs) appeared in La Voix. They were organized into sectors (Lille, Béthune, Cambrai and Caudry) and were overseen by the regional committees and conferences. To tighten up the organization, the CRC issued monthly stamps to be stuck onto membership cards from March 1936. However, unlike two years previous, the movement was placid and lobbyist in orientation. The days of mayoral occupations, hunger marches and militant demonstrations had passed. Only on one occasion did it call for militant action over a threatened eviction in Fives.21 Whilst committees still reported meetings and recruitment into their ranks, they concentrated on negotiating with local councils over benefits. On one level, La Voix 13

Ibid., 6 (March–April 1936). Ibid., (August–September 1936). 15 Ibid., (January 1936). 16 Ibid., (August–September 1936). 17 Ibid., (May 1936). 18 Ibid., (July 1936). 19 Ibid., (August–September 1936). 20 For accounts of the desperate situation of the Polish unemployed see, Jean Rosner, ‘An enquiry into the life of unemployed workers in Poland’, International Labour Review, 27/3 (March 1933): 378–92. Instytut Gospodarstwa Spolecznego, Pamietniki Bezrobotnych (Warsaw, 1933). La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord), (January 1936); ibid., (February 1936). Perry, ‘“Sans Distinction de Nationalité”?’. 21 La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord), April 1936. 14

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presented a misleading picture. Discontent simmered among the unemployed but the PCF did its utmost to keep the lid on the cauldron. Occupations and rumours of occupations existed in various places in early 1936. On 31 January, after the suspension of benefits for Sunday, the unemployed of Beuvry-lez-Orchies occupied the mayor’s offices for three hours until the police arrived.22 On 27 February, the unemployed of Le Pommereuil did likewise. Another index of this transformation was that the CRC encouraged the CdCs to engage in philanthropic efforts notably the journées de solidarité [solidarity days], tombolas, and Comités de Soutien [Support Committees]. A number of these activities were focused on children’s ill health and malnutrition. The paper ran regular articles on the vexed question of infant mortality and the slump.23 The choice of such a topic showed a plaintiff appeal to reason and middling opinion characteristic of the Popular Front. The January issue reported on several committees organizing Christmas trees or parties for the children of the unemployed. Such philanthropic activities provided occasions to link up with unions and other political parties. These appeals for unity even extended in Billy-Montigny to thanking the Jeunesse Catholique [the Catholic Youth organization] for a donation to hard-up unemployed families.24 Only rarely did local councils or mayors come under direct criticism, though the practices of local employers or commissions paritaires were more likely targets. The mayor of Templemars was one such exception. He was described as inhuman because of his treatment of the unemployed and their representatives. He was ‘an adversary so irascible and treacherous that an entire page … would not be sufficient to reveal his baseness’. The discontent was such that the unemployed occupied the mayor’s offices as they had done in Christmas 1934. This outburst of militancy was mentioned only in passing and the CdC ‘desiring to conciliate as much as possible’ approached councillor Brillois to defuse the situation. After some difficulty, he managed to get the mayor to back down. The article showed how far the CdCs would now go to prevent militancy and to explain militant action as the result of extraordinary circumstances. With the change in government, several committees sent supportive letters to ‘comrade Blum’ raising those unemployed demands with him that were in the Popular Front programme. In the July edition, Paul Leloir, the secretary of the Caudry sector, respectfully addressed ‘Monsieur le Président du Conseil Blum’ in the name of the 2,080 unemployed of Caudry outlining their concerns ‘with the assurance of our great sympathy’.25 The following issue yielded evidence of a concerted letter-writing campaign with letters or replies from Blum’s secretary from five different CdCs.26

22

ADN M616 31 Sub-Prefect (Douai) to Prefect (Nord), 1 February 1936. La Voix des Chômeurs (Nord), (January 1936); ibid., (February 1936); ibid., (March– April 1936); ibid., (April 1936). 24 Ibid. (April 1936). It is worth noting that it was part of the PCF’s strategy to ‘offer the hand to the Catholics’ (Thorez.). 25 Ibid. (July 1936). 26 Viesly, Le Cateau, Avesnes-lès-Aubert, Fontaine-au-Pire and Lambersart. Ibid. (August-September 1936). 23

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Despite the efforts to dampen militancy, the CdCs were drawn into the intoxicating mood of June 1936. A number of CdCs exhibited their solidarity with the strikes and factory occupations of June 1936. For example, Fontaine-au-Pire CdC collected 445 francs for strike funds; Houplines, 920 francs; Quievy, 348 francs.27 The Arras CdC issued a leaflet against employers who attempted to recruit the unemployed as strikebreakers.28 Paul Leloir reported a series of popular meetings for the unemployed about the strike movement in Inchy, Beaumont, Bévilliers, Beauvais, Viesly, Boussières, Quiévy, Solesmes and Le Cateau.29 The mood for action created by the factory occupations infected the unemployed too. On 25 June, at 10.30 am, 150-strong force from CdC of Houplines, led by Roussel and Doolaghe, marched into the mayor’s offices, saying that they would not move until the demands had been met. To show that they meant to stay they had brought tables, chairs and benches to make their stay as comfortable as possible and they fixed a red flag outside the building. It was only after the arrival of the police and negotiations with the authorities that the unemployed consented to leave at 4pm.30 As happened in the winter of 1934–35, the news of one occupation incited its emulation elsewhere. The Divisional Commissioner of Police reporting on the event believed that it would be repeated wherever unemployment was heavy. On Wednesday 8 July, an occupation took place in Inchy and possibly Cambrai.31 In September, the Sinle-Noble CdC was divided between a moderate socialist leadership of Jean Morel, Cupin and Beaucamp and communist activists who pressed for occupation of the mayor’s offices. In late September, the unemployed of Douai threatened to occupy the Hôtel de Ville over disqualifications but Henri Martel, the PCF deputy, advised against this as it would be against the Government. The CRC had also frustrated the unemployed of Douai in their desire to mount a hunger march to Lille in late August over the same issue. On 28 August a CdC meeting of 150 had agreed on the march and decided on the date of 3 September. The Réveil du Nord reported their plans.32 However, on 2 September another meeting was convened with a CRC speaker who opposed the march because it would be against the Popular Front Government and that this tactic was only applicable in the past with former governments. This was a clear statement that what Thorez said about ending strikes [‘il faut savoir terminer une grève’] applied equally to unemployed protest. Poullie who had suggested the march made an implausible face-saving retreat saying that he had not intended the march in the first place.33 Further confirmation of this stifling of action came on 8 October 27

Ibid. (July 1936); ibid. (August–September 1936). Ibid. (July 1936). 29 Ibid. 30 ADN M616 32 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 25 June 1936; ibid., 26 June 1936. Houplines CdC planned a demonstration for 11 July, ibid., Commandant of the Brigade report, 8 July 1936; 500 attended, ibid., 11 July 1936. 31 They attempted this again but failed on 17 September. 32 Réveil du Nord, 29 August 1936; ibid., 3 September 1936. 33 ADN M616 31 Central Commissioner (Douai) report, 2 September 1936. Houplines CdC planned a demonstration for 11 July, ADN M616 32 Commandant of the Brigade report, 8 July 1936; 500 attended, ibid., 11 July 1936. 28

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when Alfred Maton, district secretary of the PCF, persuaded the unemployed of Fourmies not to occupy the Mayor’s offices.34 Anger existed in Fourmies because the new scales of benefit left some unemployed, especially those whose wives were working, worse off. Léon Pottier, an unemployed labourer, repeated Maton’s sentiment to drive the point home despite the desire of several of the hundred present to take such action. These efforts to restrain militant protest were not just isolated or purely pragmatic responses. At the Regional Congress of the Unemployed of 10–12 November, communist officials explicitly articulated this desire to demobilize the unemployed. Detez de la Drève, the secretary of the CRC, cautioned that it was the ‘duty’ of the CRC to be at the side of the Government and assist it in the application of its programme.35 La Voix broke off after the August–September edition. The enthusiasm for the Popular Front remained high throughout the paper’s rebirth. The optimism of its readership waned as the Popular Front entered difficulties. La Voix illustrated how the PCF as part of its strategic reorientation had pacified the most turbulent regional unemployed movement in France redirecting its energies into non-militant channels. ii) The Toulouse Movement: La Tribune des Sans-Travail May–July 1936 and Le Chômeur Occitan September–November 1936. A Toulouse unemployed newspaper, La Tribune des Sans-Travail, appeared in May 1936 opening with a long explanation of why it had come into being. Many difficulties had impeded the founding of the paper. It went further than others in rhetorically distancing itself from its communist political roots. It would be ‘open to all … without any political goal’ and a ‘non-partisan and social project’. In its initial statement, La Tribune made great efforts to absolve ‘worker’s’ (that is, socialist) councils from criticism for the failure to enact seven days a week unemployment benefits. This resulted from late grants from central government and financial difficulties. The paper declared itself willing to ‘collaborate loyally with all those who wished to combat … this terrible crisis’.36 Despite this, on occasions its true colours did show. It ran an article praising the ‘antifascist’ Bagneux council with a PCF majority for its efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the unemployed and the needy.37 More common than communist partisanship was its advocacy of the Popular Front. The issue that coincided with the legislative elections palpitated with excitement. It described the results as ‘a victory, a beautiful victory based on the 34

ADN M616 31 Police Commissioner (Fourmies) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes-sur-Helpe), 8 October 1936. As further evidence of the mood of the unemployed, two hundred demonstrated in Caudry on 4 October, ADN M616 32 Sub-Prefect to Prefect (Nord), 4 October 1936. 35 Reporting on the CRC congress of 9–10 November, ADN M616 32 Central Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 12 November 1936. On 29 October 60 unemployed occupied the vestibule of Merville’s Hôtel de Ville for three-quarters of an hour until the police evicted them, ibid., Special Commissioner (Dunkirk) to Prefect (Nord), 30 October 1936. 36 La Tribune des Sans-Travail (Toulouse), 1 (20 May 1936). 37 Ibid.

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spirit of solidarity and discipline’.38 It confidently anticipated that the new chamber would exonerate rents of the unemployed and prevent evictions. It also expected the Government to disband the vexatious leagues.39 In terms of activity, La Tribune reported regular general assemblies that discussed such matters as paper sales and delegations to the council. Although there seemed little protest to relate, the unemployed played their role in the wider struggles of the time. The second issue remembered Charles Epailly, a member of the Central Committee of the Unemployed (CCdC), who died in Nîmes prison. He had been wrongfully arrested during streetfighting with the gardes mobiles during a Taittinger visit to Toulouse on 18 June 1934.40 On 5 June 1935, 8,000 attended Epailly’s funeral. A civic ceremony honoured Epailly and the council named a street after him.41 The threat of fascist attacks on La Tribune sellers was also recorded in an article.42 Despite the Popular Front, an atmosphere of conflict with socialists existed at the local level. In an acrimonious diversion from matters of unemployed organization and protest, there were repeated articles condemning the divisive Comité Humanitaire des Chômeurs [CHC, Humanitarian Committee of the Unemployed] whose motivations, use of funds, as well as their failure to support May day and strike pickets were questioned. For these reasons, La Tribune placed the CHC firmly in the camp of reaction. Partly, this was because the CHC’s philanthropic efforts rivalled the Comité d’Aide et de Soutien aux Chômeurs [CAS, Committee of Aid and Support to the Unemployed] which CCdC had promoted.43 This led to antagonism with the local SFIO as the socialist mayor and the local socialist paper Midi Socialiste, despite warnings from the CCdC, patronized the CHC.44 La Tribune engaged in a veritable battle of ideas reflecting the troubled intellectual times. It countered bourgeois press misrepresentations of the unemployed as malingerers. Even a SFIO councillor, Desbals, described the jobless as idlers and drug takers. The paper also had to defend its own name as opponents accused it of bankruptcy and purposely confused the CCdC and CAS. La Tribune printed the statutes of the philanthropic CAS in June in order to clarify the distinction between that latter and the protest organization the CCdC. The distinction was not as simple as they suggested. La Tribune apologized on the part of the CCdC because it had not been pressing unemployed demands as it had been preoccupied with planning a party of the kids of the unemployed.45

38

Ibid. Ibid., 2 (2 June 1936). 40 Ibid. An antifascist Roussel also died in clashes between protesters and police with hundreds injured and dozens arrested (the unfortunate Epailly among them). 41 Le Chômeur Occitan, 3 (second fortnight November 1936). 42 It thanked the service d’ordre [security team] for frustrating fascist efforts, La Tribune des Sans-Travail (Toulouse), 2 (2 June 1936). 43 The Comité d’Aide was launched on 10 April 1936 and its statutes were printed in ibid., 3 (14 June 1936). 44 Ibid., 2 (2 June 1936); ibid., 4 (1 July 1936). 45 Ibid., 3 (14 June 1936). 39

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The paper also challenged press attacks on the strike wave of May–June 1936.46 In line with the communist appropriation of French republican symbolism, La Tribune looked forward to the 14 July celebrations commemorating the fall of the Bastille and the French Revolution. It remembered the Battle of Valmy and warned that royalist reaction had its latter-day equivalent in fascism. Coverage of grand political and historical issues ran alongside more mundane questions like the ‘cumuls’ [double earners] who, though they were already on generous pensions or in work, selfishly took scarce jobs. The paper reiterated its adherence to the Popular Front programme and anticipated the introduction of public works, laws on rent and the national unemployment fund. Its slightly impatient but uncritical loyalty to the Popular Front left little room for an appreciation of the Government’s economic constraints (especially the threat to reform that capital flight posed) and the fickleness of Radical allies. On the veterans’ question amongst other articles, the former vice-president of the defunct Anciens-Combattants Chômeurs de Toulouse [Unemployed Veterans of Toulouse] appealed to his veteran comrades to get a better deal by joining the CCdC.47 The change in communist strategy from the Third Period to the Popular Front transformed the discussion of racism deflecting it too along Popular Front lines.48 La Tribune described a wave of enthusiasm amongst immigrant workers for trade union unification of March 1936. La Tribune maintained that the French workers were best served by improving the conditions of the immigrant workers who were the most exploited and least protected in social legislation. With the new orientation on parliamentary reform, it also suggested that the new trade union confederation should take up the proposal for a statute for foreign workers. This statute should establish the right to residence, equal pay and conditions, and equal protection under social legislation. It proposed an equitable and democratic statute for political refugees.49 After a hiatus of two months, the Toulousain unemployed press reappeared on 25 September 1936 under the new title of Le Chômeur Occitan. This was still a putatively bimonthly CCdC publication and still under the editorship of Pollazzon.50 According to the first issue, Le Chômeur Occitan resurrected the local unemployed press after a regrettable gap. This re-emergence, it declared, galled those who wished to see its disappearance. Unemployment’s seasonal decline, the heat and summer distractions had robbed La Tribune of its writers and sellers. This highlighted a general flaw in unemployed newspapers as they relied either on communist officials with other responsibilities or volunteers.51 Le Chômeur Occitan allows interesting insights into the reception of the Popular Front Government. It carried a number of lengthy articles discussing the problem of unemployment as the product of capitalism, a

46

Ibid., 4 (1 July 1936). Ibid., 3 (14 June 1936). 48 McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, pp. 120–30. 49 Le Cri des Chômeurs (Pyrénées-Orientales), 6 (22 December 1936). Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers dans les années 1930’. 50 Though, in reality, it was far from bimonthly. Contributors were E-J. Curou, J. Carapet, A. Dubos, Roger Bontemps and Dréan. 51 Le Chômeur Occitan, 1 (26 September 1936). 47

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feature of automation [‘machinisme’] and a result of the underconsumption of the masses. These longer theoretical articles offered solutions exclusively within the parameters of the Popular Front programme. All formulaically expressing their hopefilled confidence in the Government, their conclusions either called for struggle and involvement in the CCdC around the Popular Front slogan ‘bread, peace and liberty’ or anticipated the implementation of the programme. The prospect of public works was returned to again and again. In one instance, the case was made for priority to be given to public slum clearance and the construction of low-cost housing.52 One indication of the support for the Popular Front was the printing of interviews with Maurice Thorez and Paul Faure, general secretaries of the PCF and SFIO respectively. Thorez wanted to make the rich pay ‘a little’ to finance public works and the national unemployment fund, whilst Faure emphasized the 40 hour week, public works, raising consumption and the retirement of older workers.53 According to the paper, the Popular Front stood in a long quintessentially French tradition of popular movements from the peasant revolts of Jacquerie and the Croquants, through the sans culottes and the quarante-huitards to the Communards themselves.54 They put their faith in the Popular Front and Léon Blum who they respectfully addressed in an article before his visit to Toulouse in October. In the same issue, an article entitled ‘Good faith that thinks it over’ grovelled ‘we are incorrigible optimists … and we have confidence. We know that we will get full satisfaction when we ask our leaders (politely) to replace faithful good will by will itself.’55 This loyalty presented a quandary: if support for the Government were sufficient then involvement in the CCdC must be justified without calling the Popular Front project into question. At the local level, there were still individual cases of injustice to report. One article quoted long extracts from military reports of a much decorated veteran. ‘The recognition of France’ was inscribed upon his medals. Ironically, the authorities did not show their gratitude as they refused to give his wife his benefits when he was too ill to collect them.56 The paper also spoke out against the disqualifications of those deemed too old to work, or widows with families to feed who were refused benefit on their husbands’ death. The paper quoted a ministerial circular asking for considerate treatment in cases of disqualification and a fortnight’s grace for those losing their benefits. These cases added up. Le Chômeur Occitan criticized the operation of the commission paritaire and the council over the introduction of a household means test with inadequate rates of benefit and a

52

Ibid., 2 (second fortnight October 1936). Ibid., 1 (26 September 1936). 54 Jacquerie was the name given to the peasant revolt of 1358 after the mythical peasant hero Jacques Bonhomme. The croquants were peasant tax rebellions in the Aquitaine region (1594, 1624, 1636–7, 1707). The sans-culottes were the urban poor who were the most radical edge of the great French revolution. The quarante-huitards (forty-eighters) were the participants of the 1848 revolution and the communards of the revolutionary Commune of 1871. See YvesMarie Bercé, Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Manchester, 1987). 55 Le Chômeur Occitan, 2 (second fortnight October 1936). 56 Ibid., 1 (26 September 1936). 53

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57

distinct lack of generosity compared to Limoges council. Written not in a ‘spirit of criticism’, these articles contained the caveats of a contortionist in order to exonerate their allies. Several articles applauded the reforms introduced locally and nationally. In Toulouse, signing on had been reduced from daily to three times a week (though it was daily for married women cut from twice daily). The council had introduced Sunday benefits payments. The Government had also alleviated the hardship of the unemployed, decreeing an increase in benefits on 26 August.58 Despite all this, Le Chômeur Occitan could not ignore the economic squeeze on the unemployed. Inflation ate away at the benefit increase and the Government had failed to annul the ‘half-wage’ ceiling on benefits that had caused such hostility from the unemployed. The delays in the introduction of public works smarted all the more as unemployment was increasing and winter was just around the corner. The awkward paradox for the CCdC riddled their practical work. The unemployed movement’s status had changed for communists. One time revolutionary vanguard, the movement now acted as a loyal interlocutor with ‘our’ council and ‘our’ Government. In this context, propaganda was as a means of communication with the authorities and therefore an end in itself. The paper sought to remind the Government of its own programmatic commitments and responsibilities to the unemployed. Beyond the publication and sale of Le Chômeur Occitan, the CCdC did little apart from the occasional delegation to the council and public meetings.59 On 24 October, 1,500 crowded into the salle des Jacobins with the support of unions, parties and veterans’ organizations. Included amongst the speakers was Marcel Peyrat, the secretary of the UdCRP, who outlined the agenda of the National Congress of Unemployed to take place 13–14 November. Like the Toulouse organization the national demands conformed to the Popular Front’s programme. He catalogued the following demands: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The opening of public works. The exoneration of rents. A national unemployment fund. Pensions from older workers. The struggle against the ‘cumul’ [double-earners] and the cost of living.

The movement in Toulouse had evolved into a reformist ginger group as had happened at the national level with the Union des Chômeurs de France.60

57

Ibid., 3 (second fortnight November 1936). Ibid. 59 Ibid., 2 (second fortnight October 1936). A delegation was sent on 2 October. The meetings in Toulouse could be large with as many as 700 attending a meeting on 2 June 1936, La Tribune des Sans-Travail (Toulouse), 3 (14 June 1936). 60 Le Chômeur Occitan, 3 (1936). Union des Chômeurs de France mentioned in ibid., 1 (26 September 1936). 58

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iii) La Voix des Sans-Travail, Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), May 1938–February 1939 La Voix des Sans-Travail appeared between May 1938 and February 1939. It was produced in France’s second city, Marseilles, with a population of 914,232 and it formed the heart of the regional unemployed movement. La Voix was the last of the interwar unemployed newspapers and signalled the greatest remove from the early sectarianism of the movement or the agitational crescendo of 1933–35. Each issue came out in two editions. One in the standard format as the paper of the unemployed movement and the second as a ‘supporters’ edition’ with a higher tariff of one franc so that the receipts could go to ‘those unemployed without benefits and assistance committees’. The paper spoke for the Departmental Committee of the Unemployed Men and Women of Bouches-du-Rhône. The Central Committee of the Unemployed Men and Women of Marseilles was the centre of a dozen local CdCs.61 There was very little sense of local activity. The paper reported on a meeting in La Ciotat of 29 December 1938, that drew up a list of demands and established an organizational structure. There was nothing at the local level in terms of protest. As elsewhere, communist attitudes to charity and relief had softened perhaps even more so than in 1935 and 1936. Whereas the early unemployed movements had staunchly criticized bourgeois charity and philanthropy, later in the decade committees established their own soup kitchens and hostels to undermine fascist ones.62 The paper featured the Foyer des Chômeurs [Hostel of the Unemployed] that the movement had set up. La Voix was more professionally produced than many of its predecessors with regular photographs and well drawn cartoons. It carried several long articles on the ‘social plague’ of unemployment. When it did address different constituents of its audience, it was more likely to be the old, women and veterans than the more politically contentious issue of foreign workers that was to the fore in the earlier newspapers. Its discussion of politics was still framed within the language of the Popular Front despite the policy reversal that the Daladier ministry entailed. The paper repeatedly asked for the enactment of the Popular Front’s programme such as the national unemployment fund and it affected a tone of surprised indignation at the about face over the 40 hour law.63 In June 1938, next to a picture of a closed public works construction site, La Voix sent an open letter to the deputies of the

61 There were CdCs in Aubange, La Ciotat, La Bédoule, Allauch, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Salon, Septèmes, Plande-Cuques, Marignane, Châteaurenard and Saintes-Mariesde-la-Mer. None of these towns and villages compared to the size of Marseilles. Aix had a population of 25,108 and Arles 18,548. For study of PCF in Marseilles, David Levy, ‘Composition de la classe ouvrière, politique locale et implantation communiste: le cas de Marseille’, Communisme, 15–16 (1987): 135–48. 62 For discussion of veterans’ issues and on the establishment of soup kitchens to undermine the influence of the fascists, see La Voix des Sans-Travail (Bouches-du-Rhône) 2 (June 1938); ibid., 3 (1938); ibid., 5 (1938). 63 Ibid., 3 (1938) had noted the press and employers’ campaign against the 40 hour week, ibid., 5 (1938), on Daladier’s repeal of the 40 hour week law.

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64

Popular Front to implement their electoral programme. In the following issue, La Voix printed an ironic open letter to Raymond Patenôtre, the Minister of National Economy, the first ‘fakir’ of the country.65 The open letter tactic was used in every issue of the paper. Irony and surprise not anger were most suited to such a tactic. Where earlier newspapers of the unemployed had called for demonstrations and protests, this paper substituted for the lack of activism with open letters. A marked institutionalization of the movement had taken place. One article described the fusion of the Parisian movement with the trade unions and the arrangements between the unions and different CdCs in the Bouches-du-Rhône region welcoming formal unification.66 Partly this stemmed from the Popular Front strategy of alliances with other organizations. Co-operation with other groups over philanthropy and reporting Popular Front conferences added to this process. In Marseilles, the CCdC helped to establish the Comité d’Entraide aux Chômeurs [Committee of Mutual Help for the Unemployed]. The frequent articles on conferences of Popular Front organizations confirmed this institutional re-orientation and bureaucratization. La Voix reported on the following conferences: the regional and national Secours Populaire de France, the departmental regional and national Popular Front, the departmental and national Old Workers. In addition it reported its own conferences of Le Foyer des Chômeurs [Hostels of the Unemployed], of the departmental Unemployed Committees, and the general meeting of the Marseilles Central Committee of Unemployed Men and Women. In the final edition, published in February 1939, Didier Perez’s annual secretary’s report to the General Assembly of the Marseilles Central Committee of the Unemployed Men and Women revealed the character of their work over the previous year. Despite petitions and interviews with the authorities, their principal demand for parity of unemployment benefits with the Seine department had not been met. Much of the report detailed the creation of the Comité d’Entraide aux Chômeurs, the Foyer des Chômeurs and the paper itself. Beyond these achievements, the juridical commission had sought improvements in treatment of the unemployed by the relief authorities, such representation had secured benefit for unemployed housewives. The sole mention of activity, that against evictions, bemoaned the small numbers of activists who would turn out and how easy it was for the police to get their way. Despite 2,500 members of the committee, it added the gloomy note ‘without the interest of the mass, we will be beaten’.67 The Far Left Critique of the UdC: Les Groupes d’Action Révolutionnaires (GARs) Not only was there considerable rank and file dissent within the Parisian unemployed movement, a left critique emanated from the international fissures of communism in the shape of the Trotskyist Groupes d’Action Révolutionnaire [GARs, Revolutionary 64 65

Ibid., 2 (June 1938). Ibid., 3 (1938). Fakir, from the Arabic word for poverty, is an itinerant Sufi mendicant

mystic. 66 67

Ibid., (May 1938). Ibid., 7 (n.d., c. February 1939).

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Action Groups]. Trotsky’s strategic perspectives were turned into deeds by a small number of often feuding French followers. Nevertheless, the far left did create the space for an interesting critique of the unemployed movement which took seriously the idea of the self-activity and protest of the unemployed (which the SFIO and CGT never really did).68 Alongside French Trotskyists were other revolutionary critics of the PCF’s Popular Front policy.69 But it was the GARs that highlighted the question of unemployment specifically. Georges Ballay, Marc Laurent and Maurice Deglisse, all executive commission members of the Seine Federation of the SFIO, established the first GAR in December 1935. Whilst in the young socialists, the three had been drawn towards Trotskyism.70 By May 1936, the GARs had 500 to 600 members and existed in the 18th, 19th arrondissements, Clichy, Drancy, Nanterre, Saint-Denis, Argenteuil and Lyons (100 of its members were outside Paris). Politically, despite police dismissing their ideas as ‘plus à gauche’ [meaning having to be more to the left than everyone else], they reacted against the nationalism and class collaboration of the Popular Front strategy. They argued that by brandishing the tricolour and by co-operating with the Radicals, the SFIO and the PCF were betraying working-class interests and internationalism. Because of these accusations, the SFIO expelled the three founders of the GARs for producing a GAR poster proclaiming ‘Down with Sarraut’ (the Radical Prime Minister). One of the GARs’ principal themes was unemployment. Their programme called for a 40 hour week and a month’s annual holiday, nationalization and unemployment insurance to combat worklessness. At its first congress, on 23 February 1936, it outlined its position with regard to unemployment: No mendacity, no talk. Organize for direct action, for our demands. We don’t want to stew in miserable conditions but win concessions and overturn this rotten regime which has cut the numbers who can gain their subsistence, whilst waiting to sacrifice us as cannon fodder in the next war. Young comrade, you also, victim of the crisis, here you are forced to come to the unemployment office to get the meagre sum of 4 francs that that they deign to grant you, so that you don’t die of hunger. While this youth press which calls itself ‘L’AvantGarde’, shouts at the top of its voice, ‘Long live joy, long live love and the reconciliation of the French youth’, it should instead be a little more interested in the fate of young unemployed, and those exploited by the bourgeoisie and the big bosses.

68

Leon Trotsky, On France (New York, 1979), pp. 80–87, specifically on the economic crisis, unemployment and the Popular Front. For the prevalence of anti-Trotskyism amongst communist activists, Joyeux, Consulat Polonais, p. 76. 69 The supporters of Marcel Pivert of the Gauche Révolutionnaire [Revolutionary Left] current inside the SFIO, the Que Faire [What is to be Done] group of André Ferrat, the expelled PCF central committee member, and the syndicalists of the Révolution Prolétarienne journal. Jean-Pierre Rioux, Révolutionnaires du Front Populaire (Paris, 1973). 70 The GAR came out of the milieu of the revolutionary left – the Jeunesses Socialistes Révolutionnaires [Young Socialist Revolutionaries], the Bolshevik-Leninist group and the Parti Communiste Internationaliste.

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Their case that the PCF Popular Front strategy had neutralized the effectiveness of the CdCs was compelling. In a poster for a GAR public meeting in Nanterre, the point was made even more bluntly. Unemployed come back to the public demonstration, organize hunger marches. Refuse to be a beggar! Demand worker’s solidarity! Chase from your committees the overweight and sleepy [‘les endormeurs et les beefteckarts’].

GAR propaganda portrayed that the UdC as no longer wanting demonstrations or hunger marches, its leaders as complacent, self-interested and passive. It did not, however, seek to replace the existing CdCs, as a resolution to the second congress in early April 1936 illustrated, but redirect them to militant action. One slogan dominated this conference: ‘Against fascism, poverty and war’. As for poverty, conference resolved, The creation of a GAR section of the unemployed – aiming not to create new committees in the face of existing ones, but to assemble the unemployed and to pull them to direct action and oblige their committee to pursue class politics in the interest of the unemployed.71

At a meeting in May 1936 in the 19th arrondissement with 60 present a delegate from the local CdC spoke from the floor. She exposed the situation of the unemployed and made an appeal on behalf of her organization. A police summary of the GAR activity noted that the campaign amongst the unemployed had not delivered great results and that whilst large numbers of the unemployed where loyal to the UdC, dissatisfaction existed with the communists and this might lead to certain unemployed to join the GAR.72 Second National Conference of the Unemployed, 13–14 November 1936 In November 1936, as the numbers of CGT and PCF swelled dramatically, a second national conference of the unemployed was called. The only previous conference of September 1933 had launched the Lille to Paris hunger march. With a Popular Front Government, a national interlocutor between the unemployed and the Government had a certain logic even if there was little consistent national organization in reality. On the first day of the conference, 13 Friday, 191 delegates attended from the UdC, from other parts of France and north Africa. The honorary chair was a Spanish republican and an address of solidarity with their struggle opened the day’s proceedings. In the morning session, Delaroque of Toulouse presented a discussion on a bill for the exoneration of rent for the unemployed. After a discussion in which André Chipaux of the Fédération des Locataires [Tenant’s Federation] amongst others intervened, the bill was put to a commission to incorporate their amendments. Albert Mora of Le Boucau CdC (Basses-Pyrénées) then introduced a debate on public works. His report contrasted previous Ministers of Labour’s plans of public works to tackle unemployment with that of the Popular Front Government. On 18 71 72

APP BA 1939 Police report, 4 April 1936. Ibid., ‘Au sujet des GAR’, May 1936.

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August, the Chamber had voted 20,000 million francs for public works. This, Albert Mora believed, would bring work to hundreds of the people in the room. He called for the work to be paid at union rates and proposed the creation across the country of ‘comités de propagande, de coordination et de contrôle des grands travaux’ [committees of propaganda, of co-ordination and control of public works].73 A delegate from the Loire chaired the second day of the conference. The first item on the agenda was to select a delegation to send to the Minister for the vote on the bill for the exoneration of rents for the unemployed. Reflecting the geographical diversity of the conference, the deputation included those from Toulouse, the East, Lyons, La Rochelle, Alpes-Maritimes and Algiers. Francon then introduced a session on older workers who were often laid off and then judged incapable of work and therefore declined benefit. He supported Pétrus Faure’s bill for pensions that was the initiative of the Association des Vieux Travailleurs, based in Saint-Etienne. Francon appealed to the conference to create committees of older workers throughout France. In the afternoon, a delegate from Limoges took the chair. As in the morning, a ministerial delegation was selected and sent this time to the Minister of the Colonies to press the demands of the unemployed from France’s colonies. In the afternoon, Marcel Peyrat, the secretary of the UdC, started a discussion on the bill for a national unemployment fund, examining it in detail article by article. Then Prieur, the chef du cabinet [Principal Private Secretary] to Popular Front Minister, Paul Faure, was introduced to the conference. He relayed ministerial greetings and spoke about the relationship between the Government and the unemployed. Amongst other changes, he proposed that the unemployed sit on the commissions paritaire. Another notable, the communist Georges Marrane, followed. The deputy and mayor of Ivry detailed the support that the communists had given to the unemployed both through the municipalities and the unemployed movement. He insisted on the collaboration of all Popular Front organizations to breakdown the resistance of the bosses to public works.74 On Monday at 11 am, a delegation was to seek an interview with Léon Blum, the head of the Popular Front Government. Third National Conference of the Unemployed, 16–18 November 1937 The third national conference of the unemployed opened on 16 November 1937 to a much reduced audience compared to the previous year. This was symptomatic of the fortunes of the Popular Front, the waning confidence of the working class and the contraction of the unemployed movement. Unemployment itself had evolved. The numbers of unemployed remained relatively high but it was increasingly confined to the old and the long-term jobless amongst whom the calls of activism resonated weakly. A great banner strung up in the hall of the Maison des Syndicats, rue de la Grange-aux-Belles, announced the orientation of the conference: Application of the Programme of the Popular Front: 73 L’Humanité, 14 November 1936. Delegates from Calais, Mauberge, La Rochelle, the 9th arrondissement, Vitry and Limoges contributed to the debate. 74 Ibid., 16 November 1936.

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Public works. Pensions for the old. Rent exoneration. National unemployment fund.

Despite the poor attendance of ‘more than 100’ delegates, the conference did seem to be more of a genuinely national organization rather than a Parisian affair with a handful of provincials for show. Breuil from Limoges CdC chaired the first session assisted by Jaillet (Nord) and Phillipi (Marseilles). Delfossé, secretary of the Centre de Liaison des Chômeurs du France [Liaison Centre of the Unemployed of France], took the podium for the morale report. Instead he concentrated on the activities of the Government. The failure to implement the budgetary proposals of the programme had meant that the envisaged public works and retirements for the old had not been forthcoming. The public works that had been undertaken were insufficient and the increase in benefits had been outstripped by rises in the cost of living. Despite these all too apparent shortcomings of the Government, his central thrust aimed at the implementation of the long dead programme of the Popular Front: I am here committed to the renewal of the relationship of the bureau of the centre of liaison of the unemployed of France to the Popular Front and I insist on the absolute necessity of maintaining the unity of this in order that it can implement our programme in its entirety.75

The afternoon session began with the appointment a delegation to attend a meeting of the unemployed Parisian building workers in salle Japy. Transon presented a report on the retirement of older workers and the national unemployment fund. He asked how many unemployed still continued to have no benefit because of the lack of a national unemployment fund. He noted with credulous satisfaction that the national unemployment fund bill adopted at the previous year’s national conference of the unemployed had been proposed by communist parliamentary group on 30 January 1937. Following Transon’s report, de Laroque discussed the increasing costs of living and the need for a law to exonerate the unemployed from rent. The following day, 162 delegates discussed various aspects of their programme and sent a delegation to the Ministry of the Interior, received by Private Secretary to the Minister, Roaul Evrard. Foucauld of the Centre de Répartition de La Rochelle [Distribution Centre of La Rochelle] gave the first report on the splits of that organization. Mora of Le Boucau then spoke on public works. The day’s discussions were dominated by an array of communists representing different mass organizations comprising of Eugène Hénaff (CGT Paris region), Antoine Demusois (PCF Seineet-Oise general councillor), André Trochaud (PCF councillor, Aulnay-sous-Bois), Raymond Latarget (assistant secretary of the JC), Lagarde (ARAC), Maurice Guerin (general secretary of the Federation of Tenants). They underlined the same demands about pensions, public works and the national unemployment fund. They stressed

75

Ibid., 17 November 1937.

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the role of the Communist Party and the need to implement the Popular Front’s programme.76 On 18 November, a similar pattern was followed sending a delegation to the Ministry of Labour and hearing a series of reports.77 This was the final national conference of the unemployed of France. In some ways, it revealed the continued problems that the movement had always had. A dynamic and consistent leadership was lacking. For all their faults, principal leaders of the early movement seemed to be completely absent or displaced. Also, by the time the movement was constituted nationally, unemployed protest was in decline and even then the position of the provincial unemployed in the conference was largely decorative and honorary. Perhaps most revealingly, there was no account of the number of CdCs, their membership or their activities. Instead the eyes of the conference were trained on the Government still under the spell of the programme of the Popular Front, a document in real terms long since abandoned by the Radicals and the SFIO. As a consequence, conference lobbied one minister after another but it was fobbed off with their private secretaries. It considered various bills that had no hope of being passed. As for agitation, it proposed no serious action, no demonstration and certainly no hunger march. After this third national conference, there are only fitful indications of a movement of the unemployed in Paris. Indeed, the UdC dissolved itself on 17 April 1938 and the CGT Trades Council of the Seine (UdS) took responsibility for addressing the interests of the unemployed.78 Ironically, this body had tried and failed to do this in 1921 and this, it seems, was entirely overlooked. On 2 July 1938, it did call a day of action outside the mayor’s offices as had happened on 15 April 1933 and 30 June 1934. Crucially, both previous events were before the expansion of communist municipal territory in May 1935. Given the backing of the CGT and so many local mayors and deputies, the day of action on 2 July 1938 was more impressive than its forerunners.79 This revealed the relatively untested potential for mobilization during the popular front era. The UdS also organized a congress of the unemployed on 27–28 June 1939 in response to the benefit cuts of article 56 of the decree law of 6 May 1939.80 Again delegations of PCF notables were the key mechanism to secure the reversal of the article that had outlawed benefits on Sunday and holidays. 76

Ibid., 18 November 1937. AN F22 682 Centre de Liaison de Chômeurs de France to Minister of Labour, 9 November 1937. 78 The UdS did attempt to reorganize the unemployed movement in 1938 and 1939 with much greater input from union officials. They did claim 230 CdCs in Seine and Seine-et-Oise with 55,000 in 1938. Le Travailleur Parisien, 171 (January–February–March 1939): 20–23; ibid., 172 (June–July 1939): 9–12. 79 L’Humanité, 2 July 1938; ibid., 3 July 1938. Six thousand attended in Montreuil, 3,500 in Aubervilliers, 2,000 in the 20th arrondissement, 1,500–2,000 in the 13th, 1,500 in the 14th, 1,000 each in Drancy, Ivry and Boulogne and 500 in Saint-Denis. The PCF had estimated 6,500 in total on the larger of the previous days of action outside the mairies on 30 June 1934. 80 Eight hundred also attended a mass meeting on 23 June 1939 at which Mercier the deputy for the 3rd arrondissement spoke. L’Humanité, 24 June 1939; ibid., 25 June 1939; ibid., 27 June 1939; ibid., 28 June 1939; ibid., 29 June 1939. 77

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Conclusion The Popular Front entailed a new approach to unemployed movements. This novel strategy possessed a stark uniformity across France. On the question of philanthropy, all the regional unemployed movements altered their attitudes and practices. Whether it was the days of solidarity organized in Sotteville and Nord or the creation of philanthropic sister organizations such as the Comité d’Action et de Soutien aux Chômeurs in Toulouse or the Comité d’Entraide aux Chômeurs and the Foyer des Chômeurs in Marseille, the movement eagerly embraced philanthropic efforts on behalf of the unemployed. Previously this type of work had been condemned, though in places such work had been done disguised by the rhetoric of solidarity. The relationship between the CdCs and other organizations was redefined. All were explicitly in favour of the Popular Front. Although some like La Tribune (Toulouse), were guarded in their communist partisanship. Others were not worried about advertising their sympathy for the PCF. Relations with municipal socialism underwent a radical transformation. Before the council elections of 1932, the unemployed press subjected social or PUP councils to withering criticism. During 1936 an uncritical loyalty and desire for collaboration was the norm only breached in extraordinary cases, or on the detail of local unemployment assistance. The CdCs and their philanthropic offshoots sought to engage with the broadest range of organizations (political, trade union and associational) in the spirit of the Popular Front. The movement also courted respectability. It wanted incorporation into trade union officialdom. This was part of a trend towards greater institutionalization. At the national level, the creation of the Union des Chômeurs de France and the integration of the UdC(RP) into the CGT reflected this. The earlier insistence on illegal demonstrations could not be further from the practices of 1935–39. The price of this institutionalization was sclerosis. As a result it was ultimately unable and unwilling to mobilize the unemployed in defence of their rights. Where partisan hostilities persisted, they were confined to particulars. In Toulouse, an antagonism developed between the CdC and the council because the latter encroached on the former’s prerogatives, supporting a rival philanthropic committee. The uniformity of the movement stemmed from the highly centralized character of PCF policy. Yet this top down centralism was not the whole story. The Popular Front/Third Period turn should not be considered a simple binary divide. Not only was there a transitional period between the two but also there was an immanent logic of events, a cycle of popular mood ranging from bitterness, then hope to disenchantment that even the most committed communist editor could not entirely mask. Early in the Popular Front period, harsh social struggles and Laval’s deflation characterized the unemployed papers. In the course of 1936 a gathering optimism bore fruit in June 1936. As 1936 wore on, the agenda shifted towards an insistence on honouring the Popular Front’s programme. So a shared chronology of national politics conditioned the tone and mood of unemployed movements. A geographical unevenness existed that no amount of communist will power could overcome. Though France is a hexagon, it has a thousand sides. Local context accounted for great differences. Interestingly, four of the papers were from

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the south of France, whilst one each was from the industrial east and north. The south had been distinctly underrepresented in the earlier phase of the unemployed movement. The emergence of unemployed newspapers in predominantly agricultural departments is a surprising feature of the Popular Front period.81 The only exception to this rule amongst the Southern papers was La Voix of Bouches-du-Rhône where those engaged in industry outstripped those in agriculture. Whilst there is an obvious correlation between large cities and unemployed newspapers, the LandesPyrénées paper located in a largely rural and agricultural region with relatively low unemployment demonstrates that unemployed newspapers and movements were not just an automatic reflection of socio-economic circumstances. Agency was a crucial ingredient in the mix. Why there should be the cluster of southern papers is not clear. Other major centres in more industrialized parts of France had already tried and failed to establish unemployed newspapers. Only the Nord, which after all had the strongest unemployed movement, seems to have resurrected an unemployed newspaper. It may also partly be explained by the uneven character of unemployment with certain industries such as mining textiles and engineering being hit earlier than others. As the depression persisted, the impact of unemployment became an issue throughout urban France, including the less industrialized south. The population density, location, the particular balance of town and country, industry and agriculture, the intensity of the factory occupation movement or local conflicts (like the Perpignan grape-pickers) all contributed to important variations in local unemployed movements. For these reasons, the structure of the unemployed movements varied. The instigator of the unemployed newspapers differed. The Sotteville paper was the work of a local CdC, the lowest level in a three-tier hierarchy, which operated within a city-based sector (Rouen) and a departmental regional structure. La Voix was the organ of the highest level within the three-tier regional structure of Nord and spoke for a large network of over 100 CdCs. Other regional papers surveyed less impressive networks: the tri-departmental LandesPyrénées region incorporated 14 CdCs and Bouches-du-Rhône had 12. Other papers like that in Perpignan were produced by isolated CdCs. Whilst nowhere did activity and methods match that of the earlier 1930s, the vitality of local movements was not uniform. The papers also looked dissimilar because of the degree of professionalism and finance. The first two issues of the Sotteville paper were little more than a double sided A4 leaflet, whilst La Voix (Marseilles) had two editions for each issue with good quality photographs, cartoons, and an attractive masthead.82

81

All the departments covered by the Landes-Pyrénées movement had a greater proportion of their active populations in agriculture than industry; this was also true of the department of Haute-Garonne whose capital Toulouse produced two unemployed newspapers in 1936. 82 It has the same masthead as the later Parisian papers, Le Cri des Chômeurs, 72 (1937).

Chapter 9

Unemployment and the War Years, 1940–45 All Frenchmen, workmen, farmers, civil servants, technicians, employers have first of all the duty to work. Those that do not recognize this duty do not deserve citizenship. But all Frenchmen also have the right to work. It is realized that to assure the exercise of this right and the sanction of this duty, a far-reaching revolution needs to be introduced in all our old economic apparatus.1

Marshal Pétain, Message to the French nation on 11 October 1940. With the fall of France, a profound moment of national trauma arrived. Within just six weeks, the French army, which had been the largest in Europe, was defeated. A political crisis engulfed both French politicians and military commanders. Uncertainties abounded: continental Europe was now overrun by German armies, the ability and willingness of Britain to fight on were questioned, the peace between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany seemed tenuous. Two options presented themselves to French elites. The French Chief of Staff, General Gamelin favoured armistice with the Germans, to remain on French soil and accept a negotiated arrangement about France’s territorial and political settlement. The French Government agreed with this perspective, which was predicated upon the view that Britain would soon negotiate its own peace with Hitler. General de Gaulle’s option was to quit France and continue the war from abroad, hoping that Britain would fight on and that the USA would enter the war. The political and territorial settlement cleaved France apart. There were two major zones: one in the north and west including Paris, was under German occupation and central and southern France was in the hands of a French administration based on the spa town of Vichy (Allier). French parliamentarians voted to dissolve the Republic and hand power to Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun. The military disaster and the political crisis was not the only problem that beset France. French society was in turmoil. Its very social fabric was tearing apart with hundreds of thousands of prisoners of wars and refugees separated from their families and homes. These factors compounded the demoralization and recriminations of military debacle. In particular, economic dislocation and demobilization occasioned a precipitous increase in unemployment. Whilst in May 1940 only 152,000 registered as unemployed in France, the figure soared to over one million by November; 60 per cent of them were concentrated in the Seine department. Victor Serge’s novel Les 1

Chantiers, 5–6 (1–15 August 1941).

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Derniers Temps (1951) followed the inhabitants of a street in the Marais district of Paris from the beginning of the German invasion. His description captured the economic dislocation and political disaster of defeat quite poignantly. The chaos, disorientation and the sheer pace of events caught up with everyone.2 The German occupiers of the northern zone interested themselves in unemployment for two reasons. First, given the acute labour shortage in the German war economy, they greedily eyed French labour reserves. Second, they worried that unemployment and the consequent hardship might destabilize the occupation. For the Pétain regime, established in the southern zone, the abolition of unemployment provided a means of winning hearts and minds, instilling loyalty and undermining resistance. Ideologically, the slogan ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie’ [Work, Family, Fatherland] underpinned the new state [‘l’Etat Français’] and its ‘national revolution’.3 The rhetoric of Pétain’s regime indicated the repressive character of their policy, stressing the ‘duty’ rather than the ‘right’ to work, hinting at the moral laxity of the unemployed.4 This discourse also distinguished its policy of full employment from that of the ‘Republic of the lazy’. The Government’s corporatist view of work and industrial relations were codified in the Charter of Labour of 4 October 1941, imitating Mussolini’s statute of the same title.5 The right to strike or join trade unions was abolished and in their place professional syndicates would press for ‘the security of work’ within the corporate state. To combat unemployment, the regime adopted the coercive methods fashioned in the fascist and authoritarian states of the 1930s.6 The Director of Services at the Commissariat à la Lutte contre le Chômage [Commission for the Struggle against Unemployment], J-J. Heilman 2 Victor Serge, Les Derniers Temps (Paris, 1951), pp. 26–32. –32. 32. In one passage, a succession of individual and collective catastrophes form an avalanche. As the German army broke through at Sedan, Mrs Boitelle discovered her son has been killed at the front, the workplace [Passementerie] opposite Flotte’s hotel lost half its staff (‘until the war is over’), two long-standing guests of the hotel the Lancier sisters – ageing spinsters whose wealth derived from a textile firm in Valenciennes – lost everything with German occupation, the airforce was destroyed, France’s allies quitted, the convoys of fleeing soldiers and refugees were seen everywhere, rumours and the apportioning of blame filled the air. 3 Bernd Zielinski, ‘Arbeitslosenpolitik in Frankreich unter deutscher Besatzung, 1940– 42’, 1999: Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20 und 21 Jahrhunderts, 10/3 (1995): 18–21; Bernd Zielinski, ‘Le chômage et al politique de main d’oeuvre en Vichy’, in Les Ouvriers pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, pp. 295–306. 4 Chantiers, 5–6 (1–15 August 1941). 5 François Lehideux, La Charte du Travail (Rennes, 1941); Philippe-Jean Hesse and Jean-Pierre Le Crom (eds), La Protection Sociale sous le Régime de Vichy (Rennes, 2001). 6 For a literature examining the repressive character of the labour camps in fascist and authoritarian Europe see Jean Rosner, ‘Measures to combat the depression and unemployment in Poland’, International Labour Review, 30/2 (August 1934): 158–89; ‘Results of compulsory labour service in Bulgaria from 1933 to 1936–37’, International Labour Review, 38/4 (October 1938): 510–21; Jan Rosner, ‘Productive occupation for the unemployed young workers in Poland’, International Labour Review, 31/4 (April 1935): 512–38; Verena Pawlowsky, ‘Werksoldaten, graue Mandeln, 50-Groschen-Dragoner: der Freiwillige Arbeitsdienst in Österreich’, Zeitgeschichte, 17/5 (1990): 226–35; Jeremy Noakes, ‘Social outcasts in the Third Reich’, in Richard Bessel (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), pp. 83–96.

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contrasted Vichy’s policy with the left republican traditions of public works and the right to work which were ‘synonymous with demagogy and failure’.7 A labour service conscripted young unemployed to public work projects. General de Lattre de Tassigny established the Chantiers de la Jeunesse [youth worksites] initially to cope with young demobilized soldiers. These were officially sanctioned and incorporated into the plan to tackle unemployment. Although they conformed to the regime’s agenda of reducing unemployment, as far as their founder was concerned their primary function was also to inculcate French youth with nationalist values. These labour camps, each housing up to 2,000 young workers, were run along military lines and combined forestry work with physical exercise.8 In October 1940, the regime created the Commission for the Struggle against Unemployment under the tutelage of François Lehideux, the car manufacturer Louis Renault’s nephew.9 Although Lehideux boasted of his achievements in his memoirs, historian Michele Bordeaux described the fall in unemployment as ‘spectacular but fraudulent’.10 Wives and women over 50 years were driven out of the public sector employment and back into the home. The law of 8 October 1940 prioritized the employment of male heads of household and three days later another law limited jobs available to women. A variety of measures (deportation, camps, and so on) coerced foreign workers out of the labour market. Other sections of the unemployed were encouraged to return to the land or to join the ranks of the artisanry. The Commissariat à la Lutte contre le Chômage produced a newspaper extolling the virtues of the camps entitled Chantiers and its backward-looking vision of work, which had at its centre the nostalgic notion of the dignity of rural and artisanal labour.11 The competing fantasies of conservatives and collaborationists in the Vichy regime formed the shadowplay of policy, which in reality was increasingly determined by the needs of the German war effort. 7

Referring to the national workshops of 1848, J-J. Heilman, ‘Un mauvais souvenir’, Chantiers, 7 (1 September 1941). 8 Wilfred D. Halls, Les Jeunes et la Politique de Vichy (Paris, 1988), pp. 293–315. For Vichy and youth: Pierre Giolitto, Histoire de la Jeunesse sous Vichy (Paris, 1991); John Hellman, The Knight Monks of Vichy France: Uriage 1940–5 (Montreal, 1993); Jean-Claude Loiseau, Les Zazous (Paris, 1977), the Zazous were the French equivalent of the German swing kids; Sarah Fishman, ‘Youth in Vichy France: the Juvenile Crime Wave and its Implications’ in Sarah Fishman, Laura Lee Downs, Ioannis Sinanoglou, Leonard V. Smith, Robert Zaretsky, France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Oxford, 2000), pp. 205–21. 9 François Lehideux and Jacques-Alain de Sédouy, De Renault à Pétain: Mémoires (Paris, 2001). On how the commissariat was a refuge for escaped prisoners, Jews and those on the run from the Gestapo, François Lehideux, ‘La lutte contre le chômage’ in Hoover Institute (ed), La Vie de la France sous l’Occupation (Paris, 1957), pp. 190–94; Marie-Antoinette Maux-Robert, ‘Le commissariat à la lutte contre le chômage en zone sud’, Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains, 52/206 (2002): 121–46; Antoinette Maux-Robert, La Lutte contre le Chômage à Vichy: Henri Maux, le Juste Oublié: 1939–44 (Lavauzelle, 2002). René Belin, Du Secrétariat de la CGT au Gouvernement de Vichy (Paris, 1978), pp. 155–9. 10 Michele Bordeaux, ‘Vichy en plein emploi 1940–42’, in Sans-Emploi et la Loi. 11 For a summary of social policy and labour market, including the charter of labour, the family code, the return to the land, the exclusion of women and foreigners and worksharing, see Lucien Gregoire, ‘Legislation sociale: l’oeuvre du maréchal’, Chantiers, 2 (15 June 1941).

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As the fortunes of war turned, it became clear that it was the attitudes of those opposing the regime that would be deciding the future of French social policy. The French resistance and the Government of reconstruction of 1944–47 adopted a new approach to unemployment. The principle of full employment and the right to work were enshrined in the constitution of the French Fourth Republic. This commitment derived from the social thought of the French resistance, partly shaped by the contest between Vichy and the communists over the question of unemployment in the first months after the defeat of France.12 Indeed, full employment was much more prevalent in resistance literature than the reform of unemployment provision.13 With the war and its aftermath, new thinking swept attitudes to unemployment. During the war, this legitimized the Allied war effort as the people’s war and this was embodied in the Atlantic Charter (August 1941), the Beveridge report (November 1942), and the International Labour Organization conference at Philadelphia (May 1944).14 The Beveridge report inspired various summaries and commentaries that circulated in wartime France. Although the report was not viewed as a model, it was a point of departure for reformist visions of France’s future social policy.15 If there was an international context, there were also domestic sources of postwar welfarism to be found during the war. Known as the ‘father of the French Welfare State’, Pierre Laroque, as the first director of Social Security, authored the ordinance of 4 October 1945, which provided the starting point for the era of the French welfare state. This concretized the social aspirations of the resistance. In terms of social policy, a consensus amongst the resistance stretched from the Gaullists to the communists. They shared a productivist emphasis on planning and full employment. Hence, the over-riding priority of post-war reconstruction was work rather than social provision for the unemployed. Also, because unemployment and economic crisis were linked in the popular imagination with the rise of fascism,

12 Claire Andrieu, Le Programme Commun de la Résistance: des Idées dans la Guerre (Paris, 1984); Henri Michel and Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Les Idées Politiques et Sociales de la Résistance, Documents Clandestins 1940–44 (Paris, 1954). 13 Even the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationaliste only demanded the vague ‘benefits not charity’ because it concentrated on an end to unemployment through a sliding scale of hours and measures to combat the fifth column of former collaborators amongst big business and the civil service. Parti Communiste Internationaliste, Du Pain, Du Travail pour Tous: Pour en Finir avec La Misère, La Guerre et Le Chômage (Lyons, 1944). 14 The Atlantic Charter, 14 August 1941, stated, ‘Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security’. The ILO Declaration of Philadelphia made on 10 May 1944, in point III (a) articulated a commitment to ‘full employment and raising standards of living’. 15 Jean-Pierre Le Crom, ‘Les idées de la résistance’, in Hesse and Le Crom, La Protection Sociale sous le Régime de Vichy, pp. 342–3. These currents of reformist thought continued to influence international organizations after the war. In the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1946, article 23 stated, ‘Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment’.

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this added to the emphasis on full employment to the detriment of modernizing the provision for the unemployed.16 The historical literature established a balance between international and indigenous sources of French welfarism as well as the degree of continuity between resistance views and post-war practice. But in these discussions, the popular propaganda of the resistance has been neglected, especially on the question of unemployment. This would be a mistake because, as Herrick Chapman observed, the liberation of France can be understood as a vertical power relationship of power between De Gaulle and the popular movement.17 This context raises the significance of the propaganda relating to the unemployed during the earliest phase of the resistance. Communists Turn to the Unemployed Once More With burgeoning joblessness in the summer of 1940, the unemployed movement revived once again. The communists who had led the movement in the 1930s were in a state of disarray. Historian Philippe Buton estimated that the PCF retained only 5,000 activists during its ‘croix noire’ [darkest hour], the phoney war: ‘In 1939–40, a national communist organization no longer existed, it survived only as a Parisian organization with only a few isolated enclaves in the national territory’.18 After the fall of France in June 1940, the communists turned once more to the unemployed. Successive events – the Hitler-Stalin pact and the fall of France and foreign occupation – dealt hammer blows to the party. These shocks alternated with repression to devastate the organization: banned in autumn 1939 and waves of arrests of its cadres. This period has drawn an almost unparalleled scale of investigation in the party’s history.19 This is due to the highly ambiguous and subsequently embarrassing role of the party between the two Junes (French defeat and Barbarossa). Léo Figuères, in 16 Andrieu, Le Programme Commun de la Résistance, pp. 141–75. Recent academic research has concentrated on the work of the resistance organizations such as the Commission Générale des Etudes with responsibility for economic and social questions. In the hands of this body, full employment and the right to work were written into successive proposals and drafts of the Charter of the Resistance and the Common Programme of the Resistance. 17 This social dimension of the liberation consisted of committees, militias, purges, the confiscation of illicit profits, internment camps, a popular press, factory liberation committees and the nationalization or union control of various workplaces such as Berliet, the mines of Nord and Pas-de-Calais, and Alès. Herrick Chapman, ‘The liberation of France as a moment in state-making’ in Chapman, Herrick, ‘The liberation of France as a moment in state-making’ in Martin S. Alexander, and Kenneth Mouré (eds), Crisis and Renewal in Twentieth-Century France (New York, 2002), pp. 174–98. 18 Philippe Buton, ‘Les effectifs du PCF 1920–84’, Communisme, 7 (1985), 13. David Pike, ‘Between the Junes: the French communists from the collapse of France and the invasion of Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28/3 (1993): 465–85. 19 A sample of a much larger literature: V.P. Smirnov, ‘Le Komintern et le Parti Communiste Français pendant la “drôle de guerre”, 1939–40’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, 65/4 (1993): 671–90; Philippe Buton, ‘Le Parti Communiste Français’, Cahiers de l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, 27 (1994): 59–76; special edition of Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes, 52–3 (1993); Roger Bourderon, ‘Mai–septembre 1940:

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his memoirs Jeunesse Militante, gave the stock PCF response that it was ridiculous to suggest that the communist resistance only began in June 1941. He pointed to the campaign of the Jeunesse Communiste [Communist Youth, JC] who ‘were the only organization to lead independent and original action against the agents of the Nazis and denounced the Vichy policy of dragooning the youth into work camps or movements totally under their orders’.20 Perhaps the most dramatic example of resistance within which the communists participated before the invasion of the Soviet Union was the strike of 100,000 miners in Nord and Pas-de-Calais, lasting from 27 May to 6 June 1941. The reality was more complex than Figuères suggested. In Moscow, Thorez was parleying with Nazis authorities trying in vain to get L’Humanité published legally in line with the peace between Stalin and Hitler. Between 26 June and 13 July 1940, Maurice Tréad and Jean Catelas met with Otto Abetz, the German ambassador to Paris, in an attempt to get permission to print the paper.21 As a consequence, between June and October 1940, the official party line was one of legal rather than clandestine work. Compounding the disarray of the party were the stretched lines of communication, which functioned poorly especially in the provinces. These had to convey information from Moscow, where Thorez sojourned, via Belgium, where Duclos and Clément were based, through Paris to the rest of France. Officially sanctioned propaganda was directed against Vichy rather than German occupiers. The British Foreign Office papers concerning occupied Europe confirm this view. Intelligence reports in November 1940 noted three issues that shaped French popular attitudes in occupied and Vichy France: the return of French prisoners, food shortages and unemployment.22 The British intelligence services noted an uncertainty and ambiguity in the relations between the communists and the German occupiers in autumn 1940. In November, British intelligence believed that the Germans were encouraging the communist propaganda campaign over unemployment, although repression soon followed. Reports reaching London noted the waves of arrests hitting communists. Whilst intelligence reports often noted great sympathy for de Gaulle and pro-British sentiments, it was the communists who were active on the ground in late 1940.23

L’activité de direction du PCF’, Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Institut de Recherches Marxistes, 42 (1990): 51–124. Roger Martelli, ‘Le PCF en 1940’, Pensée, 275 (1990): 81-92. 20 Figuères, Jeunesse Militante, p. 116. 21 Pike, ‘Between the Junes’. This article noted the apologetics of various PCF historians of the Institut de Recherches Marxistes. 22 The objective of these surveys was to fathom the degree of French sympathy to Britain and to de Gaulle whom they were sponsoring. These reports noted the collapse of confidence in all political parties save the communists who were the only organization beyond the fascist right to maintain activity in both occupied and unoccupied France. Because of the challenge of the communists and the issue of food and unemployment, the British counselled de Gaulle to adopt propaganda that preached social justice and utilized the services of the Walter Citrine at the TUC to lend working-class credentials to the project. 23 Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940–1945: selected from PRO class FO 371 (Harvester, 1981–1984).

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Although it worked in some respects to the disadvantage of communists in France, the unemployment campaign had two particular merits for cynical decisionmakers in Moscow. Firstly, its mass character fitted with the attempt to conduct a policy of ‘legality’, believing that the Hitler-Stalin pact allowed the possibility of an open communist newspaper and party organization. Secondly, the demand for work in Paris fitted with the interests of the German war machine. The occupying power wanted the great factories of the Parisian banlieue to run at full capacity but, with the flight of population from Paris and the plant closures, this was far from being the case. The coincidence of interest on this issue at this time might strengthen the case for allowing a legal PCF. Of course, just as Stalin’s naivety on Hitler’s intentions is well documented, so the naivety of the policy of legality had disastrous consequences. It facilitated a clampdown on communist activists. For a time, the German authorities delayed. To move too early would make the task of filling the workplaces more difficult. The cost to the Paris region of the party when repression came, according to Charles Tillon, was 871 of its best activists, though Léo Figuères explained this away as a costly ‘phase of apprenticeship’ that ‘violated the rules of clandestine work’.24 So at a time when Tillon, responsible for south-west France, was reorganizing party activists into groups of three to permit the most effective underground organization, the Paris region of the party under the stewardship of Benoît Frachon favoured popular committees and even open demonstrations.25 A few communist leaders, such as Charles Tillon, anticipated the resistance to the Nazis. Both police and communists in their respective internal documents (of course the police had the advantage of seeing both) recognized the significance of communist propaganda amongst the unemployed in 1940–41. A police report observed that the communist movement expended ‘great efforts’ in attempting to ‘profit from the physical and moral distress of the workless’. Their propaganda concentrated on the inequality of sacrifice as the rich lavished luxury upon themselves through the black market. With 1.5 million unemployed, 2 million prisoners of war and many workers on short-time working, the outlook for the French economy looked grim. This made the terrain ‘particularly favourable to their agitation’. They combined ‘with particular accomplishment’ general and local questions such as opposition to the transportation of the unemployed to Germany and demands for increased benefits, school meals, free coal, milk or clothes. Their activists were encouraged to form CdCs led not by communist cadres but ‘devoted and honest’ non-party unemployed, thereby communists avoiding immediate arrest. The party still wanted to retain control of the CdCs. Their influence had grown over issues like the use of the unemployed as cheap labour in the public squares and parks of Paris.26 The Communist Party, which had been operating in semi-clandestinity since its ban in late September 1939, proliferated the popular committees: in major factories, amongst demobilized soldiers, amongst women, but most commonly amongst the unemployed. Initially the campaign saturated the Paris region with propaganda. 24

Figuères, Jeunesse Militante, p. 114. Tillon, On Chantait Rouge, pp. 287–345. 26 APP BA 1916 report: ‘Mouvement communiste’, June 1941. In, for example, the Bois de Boulogne at Bagatelle. 25

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Grafittied slogans were accompanied by the hammer and sickle and sometimes posters adorned walls. A4 sized leaflets or more discrete ‘papillons’ (two or three inches long) were put in windows, stuck to walls, left on the metro or pushed under doors. The Jeunesse Communiste prominently featured in this work and a considerable part of the propaganda was aimed at the young, in particular, the young unemployed. The campaign’s themes included the guilt of the Vichy leaders, the imprisonment of Communist Party members (especially elected representatives), peace, unemployment and collections for prisoners. Where unemployment was concerned, the principal targets consisted of the rejection of forced labour and the miserliness of unemployment benefits. As early as mid-July 1940, the ‘Parisian region of the PCF’ had issued a doubled-sided leaflet entitled, ‘The great hardship of the unemployed’. It detailed their suffering and called on them to ‘unite to demand bread and work’.27 The party was trying unsuccessfully to get 5,000 of these printed but no print firm would take the job. Instead, they would have to roneo-copy it, as with most, if not all, of the leaflets of this time. On 17 July a leaflet addressed to ‘workers without work, unemployed and mothers’ argued for unity to get an increase in unemployment benefit; 100 copies were left in the Montreuil unemployment office.28 Within days, a leaflet called upon the unemployed of Romainville to form a CdC.29 Underlining the seriousness with which the party took the unemployed during these months, an internal document, ‘Our action programme’ considered there to be five significant areas of political action: internal politics, external politics, the economic situation, the unions and the unemployed. It outlined the defence of the unemployed as one of the party’s ‘big tasks’ which would be achieved through the formation of CdCs, the formulation of demands, delegations to the authorities and the demand for the right of the unemployed to assemble and have access to public meeting rooms.30 This was not the first time that the party leadership pushed for unemployed activism. In the past, these centralized injunctions bore inconsistent results in the localities. On this occasion, the centre found a strong response in the Parisian districts. For an early example in the 20th arrondissement, ‘Du travail! [Work!] Jeunesse Communiste’ was daubed on a wall with a hammer and sickle on 1 August. Two days later, ‘Down with the work camps! Long live Thorez!’ appeared on a wall in the 10th. On 5 August a ‘papillon’ was found in La Courneuve calling for ‘Work for the young. Young communists’. Three days later another reading ‘Down with Laval. Long live the Young Communists. French youth unite against the work camps’ was found. Such propaganda was scattered across the Parisian agglomeration. During August, local leaflets called on the unemployed to form committees in Villejuif, Courbevoie, 20th, 5th and 14th arrondissements. By the second half of September, Comité Populaires des Chômeurs [Popular Committees of the Unemployed, CPCs] were producing their own leaflets in Saint-Ouen, 19th, 27

APP BA 1931, leaflet found 18 July 1940. This leaflet was still being pushed under doors as late as the end of September in the 3rd arrondissement. 28 Ibid., 17 July 1940. 29 Ibid., 19 July 1940. 30 Ibid., Notre Programme d’Action, 26 September 1940.

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th

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th

13 , 20 and 18 arrondissements. The campaign that the authorities detected could only have been a fraction of this activity, otherwise repression would have snuffed it out. As the campaign progressed it became clear that the communists were having some success at reorganizing in the new conditions as leaflets from CPCs multiplied. L’Humanité at the end of September 1940 mentioned CPCs in Neuilly, Palisance, Romainville, Colombes, Suresnes, Sèvres, Meudon, Ivry, Vitry, Montreuil, Bobigny, Alfortville, Nanterre, and Bondy.31 In October 1940, police found leaflets from the CPCs of Saint-Ouen, Argenteuil, of the HBM [Habitations à Bon Marché, low-cost housing] (which was found in the 18th arrondissement), Clichy, 14th arrondissement and Bagnolet as well as ‘Popular Committees of Young Unemployed’ leaflets from the 10th and eastern suburbs.32 The Parisian communist movement utilized a variety of means to press the unemployment question. Produced as a regular underground double-sided news sheet, L’Humanité with room for five or six short articles, featured unemployment prominently from September 1940 to March 1941. A number of issues led with unemployment.33 Professionally printed monthly L’Humanité specials featured the question less however.34 The CGT newspaper, La Vie Ouvrière, also appeared in clandestine form and it too addressed unemployment as a central concern in 1940 and early 1941.35 In mid-September 1940, it exposed the hollowness of the regime’s concern for the unemployed and contrasted their fortunes with the bosses like Rothschild, de Wendel, Renault and Detoef.36 The following month, it complained that the unemployed were being treated like cattle and pressured into working in Germany.37 In December, La Vie Ouvrière hailed the protests of sacked women workers (as a result of the regime’s decree on women’s work) at Michelin works of Clermont and the shoe factories of Limoges. This issue also carried reports on the youth labour camps where hunger strikes and other protests had broken out in Indre and Moussac (Corrèze). It condemned the winter relief distributed by Doriotists as ‘speculation in human misery’ and asserted that the unemployed did not want charity. It also exposed Lehideux and his deputy Baron Petiet, former President of the Confédération Générale de la Production Française [General Confederation of French Production, CGPF], at the Commissariat for the Struggle against Unemployment for their big

31

AN F7 14991 L’Humanité, 76 (27 September 1940). APP BA 1932. 33 With such headlines as ‘Bread and work’ (17 September 1940 and 2 February 1941) ‘The right to live for the unemployed’ (17 November 1940), ‘Against cold and hunger’ (16 January 1941), ‘Enough publicity, Pétain-la-faim: the rich can buy everything: the unemployed have nothing’ (6 February 1941) and few issues did not feature an article on unemployment or the camps. AN F7 14991 L’Humanité, various issues, September 1940–March 1941. 34 Issue no.76 at the end of September noted the growth of the CPCs and reported on local action of the unemployed in Gennevilliers and the 12th arrondissement. 35 André Tollet et Jean-Claude Poitou, Les V.O. de la Nuit: La Vie Ouvrière Clandestine 1940–44 (Paris, 1984). 36 La Vie Ouvrière, 6 (14 September 1940). 37 Ibid., 12 (23 November 1940). 32

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business connections and fake concern for the unemployed.38 By January, however, it was reporting on the repression of the Parisian movement of the unemployed.39 Reflecting heavy unemployment amongst the young, L’Avant-Garde (the paper of the JC) also paid particular attention to this matter. It relentlessly exposed the increasingly authoritarian reaction to the young unemployed through forced labour, work camps and sites. It reported conditions in the camps that would appal every self-respecting French worker. Poverty was one thing, but sleeping on leaves or hay that had not been changed for months was another. The paper cited outbreaks of tuberculosis in Espérou (Hérault) where 36 had contracted the disease. It complained about disciplinarian overseers at the Villematiers camp in Haut-Garonne who beat inmates and shaved their heads as well as forcing them to carry 35 kilo bags of rocks for small infringements. Pay was poor and partly withheld for food. This might consist of 150 grams of bread a day or boiled noodles.40 Such reports came from one end of the country to the other, from Savoie, Avignon, Lot, Dordogne, Isère and Corrèze. ‘Down with the camps’, the paper exclaimed. This precious information was repeated in leaflets of the JC and the PCF. The special November edition of L’Avant-Garde reported on Comités Populaires des Jeunes Chômeurs (Popular Committees of Young Unemployed) in Ivry, Reuil, Gennevilliers and Colombes. La Caserne, the communist soldier’s paper, also warned of unemployment and its attendant miseries as did another paper Le Combattant, aimed at the demobilized who were amongst unemployment’s prime victims. Alongside the communist youth movement, women also contributed significantly to this agit-prop work. The Comités Populaires Féminins [Women’s Popular Committees, CPF] appeared in eastern suburbs and the third arrondissement spreading the popular committee movement. Their leaflets, papillons and newsletters exposed the difficulties that women faced making two ends meet in a situation where unemployment benefits had been fixed but the cost of living had doubled. Their propaganda also exposed the gender iniquities of unemployment benefit which paid women considerably less than their male counterparts. They also condemned the new regime’s belief that the woman’s place was in the home [femme au foyer]. This was wilfully impractical when millions of men were either unemployed, had been killed in the fighting or were in prisoner of war camps. Housewives led protests over food or coal when men were understandably reluctant to join street demonstrations. On 21–23 February, hundreds of housewives demonstrated for bread in the eastern suburbs of Paris.41 L’Humanité des Femmes reported such protests in Marseilles, Narbonne, Carcassone and Beziers.42 Paris’s Prefecture of Police rigorously surveilled the activities of the communists producing arrondissemental and communal breakdowns of the numbers of leaflets, papillons, posters and graffitti for each night. This monitoring could obviously not 38

Ibid., 15 (December 1940). Ibid., 20 (18 January 1941); ibid., 21 (25 January 1941). 40 AN F7 14991 L’Avant-Garde, December 1940; Fédération des Jeunesse Communiste de France, Open letter to Pétain, December 1940. 41 APP BA 1934 leaflet from the CPF de la Banlieue Est de Paris, 28 March 1941. 42 AN F7 14991 L’Humanité des Femmes, December 1940. 39

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have detected all the activity but it did reveal the scope, geography and evolution of the communist propaganda. Unfortunately there was no breakdown as to the subject or which front organization authored such propaganda.43 Given the collection of material at the Prefecture and the Ministry of the Interior, it is clear that for the period September 1940 to March 1941, a large part of this propaganda was either distributed by unemployed organizations or had unemployment as its subject. On the night of 17–18 January 1941, the police recorded 90 inscriptions, 949 papillons, 222 leaflets and 23 posters. This was concentrated in 13th arrondissement, SaintDenis, 16th and 4th arrondissement. Although this level of activity was not untypical, its geography was not a fixed pattern. On 7 March 1941, the greatest number of leaflets were found in Courbevoie, the 15th, 5th and 19th arrondissements, a week later it was Noisy, Vanves, the 2nd and 11th arrondissements. Some areas tended to top the geographical breakdown more than others but activity was widespread within Paris city and in the suburbs. The daily averages of leaflets discovered were 280 for January, 314 for February and 643 for March.44 Posters agitated on the question of unemployment. ‘Unemployed! To feed your young ones, with your committee, demand benefits of 20 francs!’, declared one poster depicting a mother with her children longingly eyeing four loaves of bread. A second juxtaposed a top-hatted capitalist with bags of money marked war profits next to a dole queue. A third called on the unemployed to join the CPCs to eat first before paying the bills. A fourth showed war-damaged Paris with an unemployed man at the labour exchange being offered work in Germany or the forests. Another parodied Pétain’s ‘equality of sacrifice’ contrasting the picture of an unemployed family at the supper table with rich diners at a lavish restaurant.45 Comités Populaires des Chômeurs in the Parisian Region and their Press (1940–41) So when newspapers of the unemployed appeared, they did so amidst an array of other communist propaganda on that subject. Within this division of labour, however, newspapers of the unemployed dealt exclusively with the unemployment question. This was, for a spell of a few months, the single most important means for communists to gain a wider audience. Yet because of the difficulties involved in producing and disseminating material, in assembling their forces and eluding the authorities, the unemployed press was correspondingly fragile, brief and geographically limited. A telegram from the Parisian leadership to Dimitrov, general secretary of the Comintern, talked up the success of their organizations. One hundred and twenty CPCs and 143 CdCs existed in the Paris region producing a print-run of 140,000 local Parisian newspapers by 17 September.46

43

Though the material was collected separately in the files by date. APP BA 1934. 45 Ibid.; APP BA 1932. 46 Bernhard H. Bayerlein, Mikhail Narinski, Brigitte Studer, Serge Wolikow, MoscouParis-Berlin: Télégrammes Chiffrés du Komintern (1939–41) (Paris, 2003), p. 180. 44

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At least five improvised unemployed newspapers appeared between September 1940 and March 1941. The unemployed groups assumed a new sobriquet, Comités Populaires des Chômeurs. 47 The propaganda sheets were all located in the Paris region: 18th arrondissement, Montreuil and Bagnolet to the east, Montrouge to the south. In terms of population, Montreuil (71,737 inhabitants), Montrouge (32,820) and Bagnolet (28,052) were large suburban centres in Paris’s red belt. The first and last had been communist councils since 1935. All had had unemployed committees in the 1930s. On 4 November, the federation of CPCs in the Paris region issued La Voix des Chômeurs, their weekly bulletin. It opened with a description of the peaceful mass protest of 1 October. La Voix also spoke of the successes of Reuil-Maison, Bezons, Chatenay and Houilles CPCs in extracting concessions from their respective mayors.48 The second issue of La Voix followed the same roneo-typed double-sided format. It bore articles about the work of the CPCs, the onset of winter and the threat of forced labour that was hanging over the Parisian unemployed. In its round-up of local news, it reported on the CPCs of Ivry, Houilles and Carrières. At the regional level, a youth paper of the unemployed Vivre appeared in the new year. It began spelling out what the 150,000 unemployed youth in the Paris region wanted. Its list of grievances denounced the labour camps and it applauded the CPCs for their attempts to assist the unemployed at Christmas.49 The Popular Committees of Young Unemployed of the 10th, the CPC of the 17th also put out their own news sheets. The papers suited wider communist objectives of setting up Popular Committees and renewed propaganda efforts. The production standards attest to the hazardous conditions in which they emerged and only one seems to have run to a second issue. All the papers denounced the collaborationist politicians – Pétain, Laval, Marquet and Belin – who were responsible for ‘crushing our country’. The goal of these ‘pseudo-leaders’ who viewed the unemployed as ‘exploitable cattle’ was to turn France into a ‘worksite of poverty’.50 Lehideux, who was responsible for combating unemployment in the new Government, was singled out for criticism. The ‘dictator of unemployment’s’ uncle was none other than ‘war profiteer’ Louis Renault who wanted his nephew to ensure the increased exploitation of workers.51 Lehideux was called to account for attempts to force unemployed fathers to work away from their families. The papers also alerted the unemployed to the activities of indigenous fascists such as Doriot, who were trying to recruit the young and the unemployed to enforce 47

There were probably more. La Défense des Chômeurs (Bagnolet), (September 1940); La Voix des Sans-Travail: Organe du Comité Populaire des Chômeurs du 18e, 1 (October 1940); La Voix des Chômeurs, 2 (12 November 1940); La Voix des Chômeurs: Journal de Défense des Chômeurs Montreuillois, 1 (March 1941); Le Sans-Travail: Organe du Comité Populaire des Chômeurs de Montrouge (February 1941). Joël Clesse and Sylvie Zaidman, La Résistance en Seine Saint-Denis 1940–44 (Paris, 1994), pp. 44–7. 48 La Voix des Chômeurs, 1 (4 November 1940). 49 APP BA 2355 Vivre, 1 (1941). 50 La Voix des Chômeurs (Montreuil) 1, (March 1941). 51 La Voix des Chômeurs, 2 (12 November 1940).

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the new dictatorship. La Voix des Chômeurs reproduced the menu of Le Lido where Doriot dined on lobster, champagne and caviar while the jobless lived in misery. The papers repeatedly pointed out that the rich were still living in luxury and could be made to pay to alleviate the hardship of the unemployed. Their slogan ‘bread, coal, work’ addressed the hardships and wartime shortages of the jobless. The papers outlined the inadequacy of benefits through detailing household budgets. In a day, an unemployed father of three received only 30 francs 50, whereas his expenditure without meat cost 35 francs 80 centimes and with meat 48 francs 30 centimes. The papers complained about the increasing coercion of the authorities. In November 1940, 100 Parisian building workers were to be sent to Orléans. When they protested they were threatened with disqualification. Le SansTravail and La Voix des Chômeurs warned the unemployed that this practice was continuing in February and March 1941.52 Despite promises of good conditions, the workers slept in barracks and on rotten hay. When they left the job, the benefits office refused them re-inscription. Fathers were also expected to leave their families behind. The papers returned to the question of forced labour recalling the feudal term for obligatory service to the lord – the corvée. The CPCs also organized practical activity. Self-help was stressed. La Défense des Chômeurs (Bagnolet), the earliest unemployed paper, explored the need to set up a Comité d’Entraide Populaire (committee of popular assistance).53 The Carrières CPC successfully lobbied for the authorization of a food cooperative. The Houilles CdC opened a cooperative with the agreement of the council.54 When the Prefecture called for councils to set up soup kitchens, Le Sans-Travail (Montrouge) argued that this would in a sense lend official legitimacy to the CPC’s efforts in this direction.55 In the uneasy conditions of the new dictatorship, self-help was an important cover for the creation and organization of the CPCs. The movement transcended mutual support and even engaged in protest action. In autumn 1940, a delegation of women from the Ivry CPC secured heating for the local school. One trade unionist remembered the growth of the popular committees and the role of the unemployed in the first protests after defeat. It was thus … that from the month of August, demonstrations of unemployed broke out at the mairies. In reality our objective was to influence the workers, but as production was disorganized the workers were unemployed. We therefore went to the unemployed. At the same time, we began to reconstitute the different threads of federations and unions. The first demonstration took place at the mayor’s offices of the fourth arrondissement. They multiplied. The workers who were unprovided for demanded benefits. On several occasions, there were hundreds of arrests in the suburbs. Afterwards the demonstrators were released.56

52 53 54 55 56

La Voix des Chômeurs (Montreuil), 1 (March 1941). La Défense des Chômeurs (Bagnolet), September 1940. La Voix des Chômeurs, 2 (12 November 1940). Le Sans-Travail (Montrouge), February 1941. Henri Noguères, Histoire de la Résistance en France (5 vols, Paris, 1967), vol. 1, p. 87.

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La Vie Ouvrière reported on successful delegations of the CPCs of the Paris region. In August, Meudon CPC’s delegation to the town hall and the secretary general of the Prefecture (of Seine-et-Oise at Versailles) agreed to special unemployment benefits and their back-dating to 13 July. Vitry CPC’s demands about signing on, gas and electricity bills were successful and the town hall agreed to fortnightly meetings with the CPC. The 18th arrondissement CPC succeeded in stopping forced labour at Clignancourt barracks.57 In early September, a delegation from Aulnay CPC persuaded the local authorities to open a public works site and confer control over recruitment to the CPC.58 On 1 October 1940, the CPCs sent delegations to the mairies across the Paris region with lists of demands [cahier de doléances]. In Paris city, 17 out of 20 delegations gained a hearing. There were, according to La Voix des Sans-Travail, a total of 220 delegations.59 As a result of these protests, the paper claimed, the mainstream press was once more concerned with unemployment, though it did not mention the event itself. A month later, La Voix des Chômeurs asserted that this mass action had not only broken the silence of the unemployed but also wrought concessions from the Government. Pétain had been forced to sign a decree raising benefits and equalizing rates in Seine and Seine-et-Oise. The strategy of protest, however, had a price.60 The Montreuil paper reported on the arrest of those involved in unemployed action and called for the ‘liberation of our defenders’.61 The CPCs signalled the revival of unemployed activity but for obvious reasons they operated within certain limits. Spontaneous anger occasioned protests. On 1 November 1940, the unemployed of the 15th arrondissement went to sign on at the Javel benefit office only to discover that it was closed. They went immediately to the mayor’s offices to protest. Hoping to intimidate them, the mayor suggested that they go to the police station, which they duly did to the mayor’s surprise. On another occasion, Mimile, a local politician, found a barrage of complaints on a visit to a workers’ hostel about the lack of food.62 The CPC papers pressed these bread and butter issues. Le Sans-Travail (Montrouge) asked why the local soup kitchen was giving such small rations and poor value compared with other councils. It also asked where the money from the collection for the unemployed had gone. The papers urged such action time and again. La Voix des Chômeurs reasoned there were ‘tens and tens of thousands’ without work in the 18th arrondissement and that therefore ‘we are strong’.63

57

La Vie Ouvrière, 4 (31 August 1940). La Vie Ouvrière, 5 (7 September 1940). 59 La Voix des Sans-Travail (18th arrondissement), 1 (October 1940); La Voix des Chômeurs, 2 (12 November 1940) claimed that in Clichy – 450, Gennevilliers – 200, Ivry, Vitry, and 18th – 150; Malakoff and 19th – 100 accompanied their list of demands to the mayor’s offices. 60 Ibid. 61 La Voix des Chômeurs (Montreuil), 1 (March 1941). 62 Le Sans-Travail (Montrouge), (February 1941). 63 La Voix des Sans-Travail (18e arrondissement), 1 (October 1940). 58

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Repression and Decline of the Unemployed Movement Despite the persistence of communist activity, the police made regular swoops against militants. On 24 September, the police caught a JC group distributing a leaflet entitled, ‘Young unemployed. What do they do for you?’, in the 19th arrondissement. They were young: the youngest 17 years, the oldest 24. Two, Roger and Marcel Mercier, were brothers; the eldest, Mario Ripa, lodged with them. They were amongst ten militants in the 19th and Villejuif who were arrested and sent to the Prison de la Santé. Such a story was repeated time and again. The Prefecture of Police, with the go-ahead from the Gestapo in Berlin, launched major round-ups of communists between 5 and 16 October interning about 300 communist officials at a concentration camp at Aincourt (Seine-et-Oise).64 Nevertheless as soon as the police managed to break a group in a particular area, they had a problem in another. Soon enough communist propaganda would return to the arrondissement that had been subject to a raid. Of course the police staged certain coups that set the organization of propaganda back, such as the discovery of a distribution point in Noisy when the police seized 6,000 leaflets, or in Montreuil where police arrested five at a printing and distribution centre in early November 1940.65 These reverses meant that the police at times believed that they had broken the opposition. At the end of December 1940, their internal reports suggested that repression was working.66 La Vie Ouvrière reported hundreds of arrests and internment of the unemployed for their participation in the CPCs though it also detailed their achievements in the shape of benefit increases, soup kitchens, distributions of clothes and so on.67 The climate had changed from August to January. The overall tendency was towards greater repression. The German occupying forces were dismayed at the level of communist activity and the public protests in the form of housewives’ demonstrations or delegations to the mayors. In August, French army leaders instructed Parisian police chiefs to liase with the German occupying authorities in cases of infractions of the general ban on assembly (this was on the eve of the delegations to the mairies). Marquet, the Vichy interior minister, also instructed prefects to visit former communists and threaten them that they were being watched and would be interned for the slightest misdemeanour.68 In January, delegation from an unspecified part of the banlieue which merely sought the improvement in the menu of the soup kitchen was arrested and handed over to the Germans.69 The communists pressed ahead despite the repression and surveillance. One leaflet of the Paris region of the CPCs neatly exposed the strategy of their opponents. The mayor of Rouen had disclosed German intentions to a delegation of unemployed. These consisted of: 64

Bayerlein, Moscou-Paris-Berlin, p. 332. APP BA 1933 police report, 7 November 1940. In the last week in October there were 46 arrests alone. APP BA 1916 police report, 27 October 1940. 66 Ibid., 28 December 1940. 67 La Vie Ouvrière, 20 (18 January 1941). 68 APP BA 1916 Général de Corps de l’Armée to Prefects, 31 August 1940. Adrien Marquet, Minister of Interior, to Prefects, 16 August 1940. 69 La Vie Ouvrière, 21 (25 January 1941). 65

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1. sending all foreign unemployed to Germany without exception; 2. enrolling all French unemployed 15–21 years into work camps (for forestry work, etc.); 3. sending to the camps all French unemployed over 21, particularly married men, bachelors can be sent to Germany; 4. wages will be able, according to the job, to go up to 32 francs a day and on this salary 12 francs a day retained for food. Unemployed engaged in this way will have the right to 24 hours off a week or month. In case of resistance to these measures: 1. time off will be denied; 2. with repeat offence, they will be sent to a camp with the occupation forces in charge; 3. in serious cases, deportation to Germany.70 Whether the mayor’s disclosure was an apocryphal device is uncertain but the plans do correspond roughly to the direction of policy towards the unemployed, and more generally to authoritarian and fascist policies to the unemployed. The stakes were high and the leaflet unintentionally revealed the strategic urgency of resistance that went beyond the CPCs. The CPCs and the campaign of propaganda amongst and about the unemployed lasted only a few months. Its brevity is not surprising. First, such is the character of unemployed movements, phases of militancy are short. Movements are also sensitive to changes in the levels of unemployment. From November unemployment itself went into sharp decline. The communist chiefs correctly anticipated the importance of the unemployment question. But they had in the past been deceived by the short-lived character of its importance. On this occasion, communists found fertile ground for propaganda amongst the unemployed. Combined with the purgative effects of the imprisonment of much of the PCF leadership, the reliance on youth and the adrenaline of semi-clandestine work initally created a powerful dynamic from below. A telegram between Duclos in Paris and Thorez in Moscow noted the stagnation of the CPCs in late January 1941 (and the commitment to overcome it).71 By March 1941, the jobless figure had halved from its November high. Clearly with unemployment declining, the communists had to adapt. On 26 April 1941, the PCF called for a ‘National Front’ for the independence of France with the Gaullists. In so doing, orientation of the CPCs changed. Worklessness became less of a priority even before the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, which of course transformed the communists’ view of the war. Vichy promised and provided France with work but in the shape of labour camps for the young or conscription to German

70 APP BA 1933 leaflet found, 2 November 1940. It was entitled, ‘Is it true? The unemployed ask’. 71 Bayerlein, Moscou-Paris-Berlin, p. 371.

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72

factories. Longer hours, reduced pay, coercion, this was the familiar heightened mode of exploitation when dictatorship confronted mass unemployment. So the campaign of unemployed self-organization evolved into campaigns against industrial slavery and for worker’s sabotage of the German war effort; that is, the negation of an unemployed movement. With Barbarossa in June 1941, the communists stepped up their activities against the German authorities turning increasingly to the guerrilla tactics of ‘la lutte armée’ [armed struggle] from August 1941. By the summer of 1941, the evidence of CPCs and an unemployed movement disappeared. Their papers had vanished by the spring. By December 1941, unemployment stood at 200,000, a fifth of what it had been 13 months earlier. Conclusion The unemployed activity of 1940–41 was an important part in the history of French movements of the unemployed and in the regrouping and recovery of the PCF. It had largely been forgotten because it occurred during the phase of amnesia between the two Junes. The unemployment campaign was a part of a defining moment for the PCF, one that Sartre wrote of in Iron in the Soul, a moment of steely determination to persist against the prevailing chaos of the time.73 Like PCF historians, Sartre was keen to show the continuity before and after June 1941. This stood in sharp contrast to the Thorez-Duclos attempt to find a modus vivendi with the German authorities. Communist activity on the unemployment question therefore entailed a paradox. It revealed the cynicism and opportunism from the leadership but a courageous commitment of the rank and file. This was not the manifest heroism and martyrdom of the armed struggle but it was, if not an essential precondition, a determinant of the magnitude of that resistance. In the campaign about unemployment in Paris the PCF broke out of its isolation after the catastrophic collapse in its numbers, gaining recognition from broader layers of Parisians. Without this neglected part of its history, explanations of the PCF’s re-emergence miss an important dimension. Without relating to the onset of mass unemployment, the PCF would have recovered and it would have been active in the resistance, but that recovery would have been weaker and slower particularly in Paris and industrial France. The campaign also makes the failure to modernize the provision for the unemployed at war’s end all the more stark.

72 La relève from September 1942 and the Service du Travail Obligatoire [Compulsory Labour Service, STO] from February 1943. 73 Jean-Paul Sartre, Iron in the Soul (Harmondsworth, 1963; first published in French as La Mort dans l’Ame, 1947).

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Conclusion The unemployed movement is at the same time the blue-print of a collective organization, and a chain reaction of which it is the product and which it itself contributes to producing: from isolation, depression, shame, personal resentment, revenge on scape-goats, to collective mobilization; from resignation, passivity, individualization and silence to gaining the right to speak; from depression to revolt, from the individual unemployed person to the collectivity of the unemployed, from misery to anger. That’s how the slogan of the marchers ends up in reality: “Who sows misery, reaps anger”. Pierre Bourdieu, Frederic Lebaron and Gerard Mauge, 17 January 1998.1 Nous voulons un boulot de merde, payé des miettes [We want a sh*t job, paid in crumbs]. Unemployed protest banner, France 1997–98.

Structures and the Patterns of Protest The peculiarities of unemployment in France during the period 1914 to 1945 shaped a unique pattern of responses from the unemployed. The French experience of unemployment differentiated itself at several levels: the provision for the unemployed, the business cycle and economic geography of unemployment. This idiosyncrasy conditioned the patterns of protest. Unlike Britain or Germany, there was no continuous problem of mass unemployment during the 1920s. Whilst during the mid- to late 1930s local or regional concentrations of persistent unemployment made likely significant unemployed protest and organization, these concentrations were not static but subject to fluctuations and turnover. Throughout the industrial world, all unemployed movements in the 1930s were of a much more regionalized character than trade unionism or political parties. This was even more pronounced in France than Britain or Germany. It is France’s economic geography that goes some distance to explaining its distinctive patterns of protest. As a function of the flows into and out of unemployment, unlike trade unions which are permanent organizations, impermanence was a trait of the organizations of the unemployed.2 If a concentration of the unemployed was a necessary precondition, the equation between high unemployment and protest was not straightforward as a number of factors mediated this relationship. Branch of industry appears to be one such factor. The most dramatic mobilizations were confined to mining, metalworking and coastal 1

On 17 January 1998, the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu, Frederic Lebaron and Gerard Mauge published this text in Le Monde, which they launched as a petition. 2 Richard Croucher made this point at the Society of the Study of Labour History Conference, ‘Towards a History of the Unemployed’, at the Institute of Historical Reserch, 1 October 2005.

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areas. But protest does not arrive on cue according to the industrial make-up of a region. To be precise, one should talk of a series of disconnected movements of the unemployed emerging from France’s far-flung industrial regions rather than a coherent national one. Industrial geography alone does not explain the failure to establish such a national movement. There could have been more determined co-ordination at a national level. Regional unemployed movements could have coalesced into a national one through such means as a national executive, nationwide activities (there was no national hunger march), a national newspaper, a constitution, annual national conferences and a national delegate structure.3 This did not happen. Instead, there were national conferences in 1933, 1936 and 1937 as well as, formally speaking, a national organization from 1936 onwards but there was no national movement in any real sense. Unlike the NUWM in Britain, national direction came either from the leadership of the Parisian unemployed movement or the CGTU. Without an appreciation of the chronological patterning, unemployed activism becomes unintelligible. Much of this book has necessarily emphasized the mid1930s because the other phases of activity were so brief that it is difficult to talk of a movement of any abiding character at all. During the less sustained phases of organization – 1921, 1927 and 1940–41 – activity was concentrated on the Paris region. In 1921, instances outside Paris were sparse, but did include what might even be considered the first hunger march.4 In 1927, significant organizations of the unemployed emerged in Le Havre, Saint-Etienne and Limoges but these certainly could not be considered a nationwide, let alone a national, movement. In a number of these localities, however, there seems to be continuities between the different chronological phases: a know-how memory tantamount to a cumulative learning process.5 On rare occasions, there are even continuities in terms of leading personalities.6 For this reason, these lesser periods have a considerable bearing on the overall understanding of unemployed protest in France. The movements were not uniform, undertaking different functions in varying combinations. The emphasis in both police sources and those generated by the movement itself is on protest, campaigning and public meetings. This can lead to an underestimation of some of the other functions of the movement. Advice work was very significant to many CdCs especially because of the peculiarities of the French system of relief for the unemployed. Having established a CdC in the commune, Adolphe Glay, the PCF mayor of Avesnes-lès-Aubert, carefully detailed the circumstances of the local seasonal agricultural labourers with the result that they eventually gained

3 On the occasions that the CGTU attempted nationwide days of action (6 March 1930 and 25 February 1931), the conditions were too immature for a national response. 4 In Neuves-Maisons on 13 August 1921. 5 It is surely more than coincidence that hunger marches took place in Neuves-Maisons in 1921 and 1934. 6 For example, Marcel Thibaud was the main figure in 1927 and the 1930s in the Stéphanois movement, AN F7 13527. AN F22 682, Saint-Etienne CdC to Minister of Labour, 24 July 1936.

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admission into the departmental unemployment fund. The CdCs prepared the claims of their members at commissions paritaires [the adjudication and appeals commissions] and pressed for representation on these bodies. Disqualifications were a particular focus not only for such case work but also agitation. The Parisian movement, perhaps an exception because of the resources at its disposal, wrote two legal guides which listed those offices (in CGTU or council premises) where the unemployed could seek advice about benefits.8 The CdC of the fourth arrondissement provided a very useful insight into such work in an exercise book detailing its casework of unemployed victims of disqualification or refused inscription.9 Alongside advice work, the CdCs, particularly later on, engaged in self-help work such as fundraising, musical or dramatic events, Christmas parties for children, the distribution of food and winter clothes. The Saint-Etienne committee perhaps went furthest in this regard attempting to establish a co-operative to provide cheap food for its members.10 Self-help, however, usually came second to raising the funds that were needed to maintain the organization because one of the major difficulties confronting these movements was financial. Money limited the propaganda that could be produced. The financial burden of newspapers of the unemployed was perhaps the principal reason that they had such patchy geographical coverage and intermittent circulation. Beyond these grander efforts, given the hardships of the unemployed, money was a source of temptation, accusation, recrimination and slander.11 The existence of 7

Réveil du Nord, 18 February 1934. AN F22 682 CGTU Agricultural Labourers (Avesnesle-Sec) to Minister of Labour, 3 March 1933; ibid., from Villiers-en-Louchies, 1 March 1933; ibid., from Cattenières, 25 February 1933; ibid., from Rumilly, 26 February 1933. 8 Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1932); Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1935); the party published a similar pamphlet, Charles Bonnel, Les Droits des Chômeurs (Paris, 1939). 9 AN F22 682 Comité des Chômeurs du Quatrième Arrondissement, Le Cahier de Situations de Chômeurs du Quatrième Arrondissement (n.d., c. 1933). 10 AN F22 682 CCdC (Saint-Etienne) to Minister of Labour, 17 July 1933. Frot noted such activities amongst some CdCs in Paris region and suggested that co-operatives be considered more widely. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. 11 On several occasions members of the CdCs demanded to see the books and expelled those for whom the temptation had become too great, Journal de Saint Denis, 26 January 1935. After a long-running feud over money, the former leading figure of the Nantes CdC, Moreau, having been expelled, accused his comrades of being a band of communists and robbers and demanding five francs a day salary for his time as secretary! AN F7 13547 Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Prefect (Loire-Inférieure), 9 February 1932; ibid., Central Commissioner (Nantes) to Minister of the Interior, 20 March 1932; ibid., 12 June 1932. The treasurer of the CdC of the 3rd arrondissement embezzled 206 francs, AN F7 13550 police report, 5 June 1932; the treasurer of of Maisons-Alfort CdC took 700 francs, ibid., 6 March 1932. An internal report to the PCF leadership described money as the bête noire of the movement and described the corrupt use of expenses by several CdC leaders, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. This latter point was also noted in Fauxbras, Viande à Brûler, p. 211.

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philanthropic committees for the unemployed drew the routine complaints from the CdCs that the money from collections had not been distributed.12 When considering the agitational dimension of the CdCs, it would be wrong to think of protest in undifferentiated terms. There were stark differences between the forms of protest such as the hunger march, the militant events of Calais or SaintQuentin, the archetypal demonstration of the unemployed and the occupations of the mairies. Some of these forms of protest – the events of Calais, or the occupations of the mairies – could not take place without high levels of militancy and they involved greater spontaneous involvement of the unemployed. They were usually led by unemployed organizations themselves. The hunger march in contrast typically required less direct involvement from the unemployed, with more spectating than participating. To compensate the hunger march needed greater institutional input from the CGTU and the PCF (or on the case of Saint-Nazaire and Neuves-Maisons, the CGT). The time-frame and geographical aspect of protest also differed according to form of protest with the fixed nature of the hunger march, but the open-ended character of a wave of occupations or the Calais-type events. These patterns of protest also elicited different responses from the authorities. In the case of the hunger march, it was the state that was in control of events and had the overwhelming balance of forces in its favour throughout. In the case of the occupations or Calais and SaintQuentin, the local authorities were overwhelmed and only with the deployment of police resources from outside the area did the state restore its control of the situation. For this reason, different types of protest had quite different effects upon the mood and consciousness of the unemployed. Whilst some protests evoked stoic dignity, confrontation with the authorities provided an elemental surge in adrenalin. The experience of unemployment did generate the patterns of mobilization and the forms of protest distinct from those in employment. Despite the utility of differentiating protest, in reality these different forms fed into one another. Indeed managing to mobilize hunger marches at lower levels of militancy was important in generating activists and activism. Distinguishing the characteristics of mobilizations does open the question of the interaction between the unemployed condition and the historical conjuncture. For contemporary social psychologists, this issue was closed: the unemployed condition resulted in apathy. Agency and the Unemployed Condition As well as structural factors, in particular the economic cycle and socio-economic geography, human agency was a key mediating feature in the relative success of unemployed movement and protest. This agency can be understood at three levels: at the level of the individual activist, at the level of local traditions of activity and at the intangible level of collective psychology of action. The mettle of individual activists was critical. So too was their decision-making needing a sense of timing, tactical flexibility and the temperament to adapt to radically altered circumstances.

12

For an example from Aubervilliers, Le Cri des Chômeurs (Paris), 9 (20 March 1932). Also CdC accused the Comité des Fêtes du 13e, AN F7 13550 police report, 24 February 1932.

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Yet agency should also be conceptualized in a broader collective sense in terms of past activity, local patterns of struggle, traditions of militancy, the action of local union and party groups. Those coastal and mining regions (Saint-Etienne, Rouen, Calais, Saint-Nazaire and Nord) that were the scene of militant protest were areas of existing traditions of working-class activism. Lorraine, with its coalfields and large workplaces, did not produce an unemployed movement of comparable stature. From the perspective of the economic complexion, there was also notable activity amongst the unemployed in unexpected areas. Grape-pickers of Perpignan, the agricultural labourers of the Cambrésis and the comb-makers of Oyonnax defied complacent assumptions about the sites of working-class militancy. Judging from the figures given for unemployed committees by department at the 1935 CGTU congress, the successful construction of unemployed movements coincided with strong PCF implantation, high levels of industrialization, and heavy concentrations of unemployment. Disentangling cause and effect here is difficult. Although there was a clear preponderance of organizations launched on the initiative of the communists, there were other committees. In many cases local elites reverted to the methods of patronage and initiated committees to relieve the unemployed. A more serious challenge to the communists materialized where others sought to group the unemployed for purposes of self-help and/or protest. Sometimes this would be on the initiative of political rivals, sometimes due to the frustrations of activists with the clumsy politicking of the PCF in the movement. Anarchosyndicalists established the committee in Saint-Claude (Jura) but within a few week local CGT activists were the dominant political force.13 In Reims, a non-political unemployed committee existed.14 In Amiens, the CdC was stubbornly beyond the control of the PCF for much of the 1930s.15 In Perpignan, frustrated with the political domination of the communists, the Comité des Chômeurs Français Indépendent was briefly established.16 In other places, such as Bordeaux and Roubaix, rival efforts were also short-lived.17 In Bordeaux, Robert, an anarchist, attempted to set up a Ligue des Chômeurs Français et Ancien Combattants (League of Unemployed Frenchmen and Veterans) in 1934, which called for work to be reserved for Frenchmen and veterans.18 The Bordeaux CdC also engaged in a sectarian tussle with the Fédération Locale des Chômeurs (Local Federation of Unemployed), another local rival, which 13

AN F7 13546 Special Commissioner (Lons-le-Saunier) to Prefect (Jura), 18 January 1932; ibid., 29 January 1932. 14 AN F22 682 Prefect (Marne) to Minister of Labour, 14 February 1933. It organized a music festival and distributed clothes and food to the unemployed. It had the support of the council, the deputy and mayor Marchandeau and senator Jacquy. 15 ADS 99M 141 for its lobbying, casework, fundraising evenings and opposition to evictions. The PCF tried various means to increase its influence on the committee including the work amongst the young unemployed. Ibid., Central Commissioner to Prefect (Somme), 4 July 1935, on the growth of PCF influence on the committee. 16 AN F22 682 Comité des Chômeurs Français Indépendent (Perpignan) appeal to Minister of Labour, 16 February 1935. 17 ADN M616 32 Central Commissioner (Roubaix) to Prefect (Nord), 23 June 1936. 18 AN F7 13559 Central Commissioner (Bordeaux) to Director of General Security, 23 February 1934.

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had the support of the council and the local CGT.19 The Toulouse committee, which eventually fell to communist influence, also initially succumbed to racist formulae.20 In Lille in 1933, the bewildering situation came about whereby there were seven unemployed committees. Admittedly, the Fives and Wazemmes committees were both part of the communist led CRC. Others were not. Kléber Lahaye, the PUP councillor, founded the Comité d’Entente aux Chômeurs in October 1931 (that is even before the communists). Registering the continuing resistance to communist influence, on 20 May 1935, the Comité Autonome des Chômeurs de Lille was launched with the telling motto ‘outside all politics, for the unemployed’.21 The Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne created a network of relief stations and offices to find work for young Catholic unemployed. Despite this, overall the CdCs were in the main creations, and under the influence, of the PCF. The majority of members of the unemployed movements were not in the PCF, as were the majority of those on the hunger marches and other protests. Most committees involved some non-communists in their key positions and in some places the influence of the party was minimal. It took a certain calibre of activist who had both the trust and confidence of the unemployed, sufficient independence of mind to realize when real opportunities for protest arose and enough commitment to the cause not to be worn down by disparity between the ultra-left perspectives and the low ebb of communist fortunes. Otherwise, the exhilaration of leading protest would quickly dissipate as frustration with PCF politicking set in. Consider those who rushed into the limelight of protest such as Martinod of Calais and François of Saint-Quentin only to drop out of PCF ranks shortly afterwards.22 That the PCF failed to hold onto such people is instructive. People like Hannington and McShane in Britain had enough credibility to stand up to their communist superiors and enough influence that their replacement would be at too high a price. A few figures stand out in the French movement of this character. The popularity of Lacroix, the president of Solesmes CdC, was such that he was known as ‘the king of the unemployed’.23 Public meetings of the Central Committee of the Unemployed in Saint-Etienne would on occasion end with cries of ‘Vive Thibaud!’ at the height of his popularity.24 Bakery worker Eloi Mériaux of the Valenciennes unemployed committee was also such a leader. From 1930, he was secretary of the Valenciennes Communist Party but concentrated his efforts on organizing the unemployed from early 1931. In December 1932 he was subjected to

19

La Voix des Chômeurs (Bordeaux) 26 April 1933. AN F22 682 Comité Indépendant d’Action Intégrale des Chômeurs (CIADICH) to Minister of Labour, 31 May 1932. 21 ADN M616 32 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 26 June 1936. Ibid., Central Commissioner (Roubaix) to Prefect (Nord), 23 June 1936 22 As for Alexis François, his expulsion is recorded in a mid-July 1935 edition of L’Exploité, AN F 13024 L’Exploité, 13 July 1935. 23 ADN M616 32 Commandant of Brigade (Solesmes) report 26 January 1936. 24 AN F7 13547 Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 1 April 1932. 20

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25

a disciplinary hearing for opportunism. He was stripped of his official position in the party but was irreplaceable in the unemployed committee, one of the most active and effective in the country. His persistence stands out as one reads his case-by-case appeals against disqualifications to the Minister of Labour or the propaganda sheet of the Valenciennes committee.26 Others were a different type of politician. Many of those who led the unemployed movement particularly in its higher ranks in Paris were selected for their loyalty and obedience to the party. In some cases, this involved spells in Moscow to instil this subservience.27 These characters sometimes became quite unpopular with the rank and file of the movement.28 The bureaucratic hold was firmest in Paris and consequently this region never matched the dramatic events in some parts of the provinces, despite the concentration of unemployment and party cadres. Yet, paradoxically, communist advance in electoral terms was strongest in this very region. The Paris region could compensate for an unimpressive record of protest because it could offer the strongest network of offices for advice usually staffed by CGTU officials and it could point to the achievements of nearby PCF councils in providing for the unemployed. One of the great contradictions of the French unemployed movement was the schizophrenic combination of these two types of leadership which was a characteristic of the communist movement more generally. The bureaucratic type of leadership predominated in the thoroughly Stalinized Comintern twisting this way and that according to the whim of the ECCI and Stalin. Despite the PCF’s ability to concentrate knowledge from all parts of working-class France, its strategy bore little relation to the complex mood shifts of the unemployed. An odd symmetry existed between the communist leaders and the Ministry of the Interior, both were uniquely placed to understand and shape the contestations between the unemployed and the state. Great irony lies in the fact that successive bourgeois Ministers of the Interior played their hands with much greater realism, skill and understanding of the unemployed than the communists who lived in their midst.

25

He was expelled for criticizing a local party candidate in Valenciennes, which led to allegations (possibly smears) that he was a police informant, RGASPI f.495 op.270 d.7158. 26 F 22 682 Mériaux (Valenciennes CdC) to Ministry of Labour, 21 June 1934; ibid., 16 March 1935; ibid., 4 April 1935; ibid., 8 April 1935; Le Cri des Chômeurs (Valenciennes Nord), 1 (October 1934); ibid., 2 (November 1934); ibid. (December 1934). 27 Pierre Mercier – the most prominent and longstanding organizer of the Parisian movement, one-time editor of Le Cri and general secretary of the UdC – spent time under instruction in Moscow. He and Bataille were expelled for ‘divisiveness’ and ‘associating with dubious elements’, Journal de Saint-Denis, 14 December 1935. On the general resistance to UdC directives, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. 28 Not to be confused with Jules Auffret the assistant mayor of Bondy, Jean Auffret, was another general secretary of the UdC. His appointment was termed temporary because the PCF leadership knew of his unpopularity. They were mightily embarrassed and initially suppressed knowledge of his flight and embezzlement of 2,600 francs. AN F7 13320 police report on UdC, 13 April 1935; Auffret was eventually expelled on 27 April 1935 and this was only made public two months later, Le Travailleur, 22 June 1935.

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However, there was another aspect to the leadership of the movement. There were individuals, the likes of Martinod and François, who exhibited quite different qualities of leadership: audacity, decisiveness, courage and above all a talent for gauging the collective mood. This was very far from the bureaucratic model of leadership and was much more decentralized. An internal report on the Parisian movement to the PCF noted that the leaders of the local committees often ignored directives from above and worked on their own initiative in a spirit of self-sacrifice. It is hard to imagine any significant unemployed protest without these people.29 From the analytical point of view, the danger is to romanticize such examples. The point that needs to be emphasized is the effectiveness of such leadership in building organizations of the unemployed and in leading vibrant protests. The odds stacked against these people were great. The repression meted out against the unemployed was substantial. Marches were routinely banned. Authorization came with considerable restrictions. Demonstrators were at times asked to take down placards or banners.30 The police might apprehend paper sellers, postering teams and leafletters. The authorities disposed of a network of spies and informants.31 There were few meetings beyond the range of the Interior Ministry. Behind the neat euphemism, the police on many occasions ‘dispersed’ the unemployed with truncheons crashing down on skulls and even, on occasion, drew and discharged their revolvers. Indeed, two unemployed protesters – Fritsch and Mérelle – lost their lives at the hands of the ‘flics’.32 Others were badly injured.33 Others faced jail for their involvement in protest: seven were jailed after the Calais riot, three after the Ardennes hunger march. The police netted large numbers of arrests on days of action. On 12 January 1932, 5,140 met this fate.34 In addition, it is also significant that this organic form of leadership was at odds with the bureaucratic aspect. It was this organic leadership on whom the greatest

29

ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 Léon Frot, ‘Rapport sur le mouvement des chômeurs’, 1934. ADN M616 29 Police Commissioner (Aniche) to Sub-Prefect, 17 December 1931. 31 A local informant told of the CdC’s intention to occupy the mayor’s offices in Chapelle d’Armentières, ADN M616 32 Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 28 March 1936; on police presence and note-taking in meetings, ibid., Central Commissioner (Douai) to Sub-Prefect, 20 November 1931; after a tip-off about a woman who had offered to inform on the unemployed meetings in Saint-Etienne, she was exposed during an assembly of 400, AN F7 13547 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 22 July 1932; an audience in Nantes were warned about the police snitches who betrayed their comrades, AN F7 13547 Director of the Special Police to Special Commissioner (Nantes), 10 March 1932. 32 AN F7 13562 police report on Saint Denis CdC protest, 8 January 1934. Mérelle, the Parisian unemployed protester, who had been killed by police. Meret (sic) was mentioned in a meeting on 4 February 1934 in Valenciennes, AN F7 13560 Prefect (Nord) to Minister of the Interior, 5 February 1934. 33 Marcel Thibaud was severely beaten on 23 October 1933 when the unemployed demonstrated against a presidential visit to Saint-Etienne. Mériaux was seriously injured at an eviction on 22–23 August 1934. 34 Arrests on days of action: 25 February 1931: 188; Christmas eve 1931: 54; Christmas eve 1932: 24. 30

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successes of the movement relied precisely because it was closest to the spontaneous libido of unemployed mass psychology.35 To compound the deadening bureaucratic approach, the PCF’s desire for monopoly and control also seriously hampered unemployed protest. There were many complaints in the unemployed committees of communist domination and politicking.36 Public meetings did not generally air such views because discussion was structured so that speakers from the unemployed committee, local CGTU and the local party were lined up at the top table.37 Unemployed committee meetings invariably concluded with injunctions to join the CGTU or the correctness of the CGTU and PCF perspectives. Where the PCF faced rivals, it could act in highly counter-productive ways. Lille was an extreme example where leading PCF activists went to perverse lengths to undermine the leaders of other organizations of the unemployed, in particular Kléber Lahaye. The feud began in late 1931 when the PCF set up rival organizations and called demonstrations to undermine those of Lahaye.38 The determination to discredit Lahaye continued into 1933 when PCF official Berckmoes claimed that Lahaye ‘distributed food and coal in order to slow the revolutionary ardour of the unemployed’.39 Berckmoes even duplicitously used a unity body representing all the committees and a common demonstration on 11 March 1933 for these ends. Such divisiveness only served to weaken the committees and alienate the unemployed who registered their disapproval at such antics.40 This hostility towards other non-communist tendencies involved in the movements of the unemployed declined in 1934 and it would be tempting to think of this as the principal reason for the dramatic transformation in the mobilizing capacity of movements that year. The months from the beginning of 1934 to early 1935 was indeed the zenith of unemployed protest. During this period, a number of factors coalesced that could not individually explain the radical metamorphosis in 35

It would also be wrong to characterize all leading members of the PCF in the bureaucratic mould, as the police noted of Monjauvis, a member of the PCF Central Committee and the leading light in Paris’s most active CdC, or even that particular individuals could only embody one type of leadership. 36 AN F7 13550 Ministry of the Interior report, 20 February 1932; AN F7 13557 Ministry of the Interior report, 10 November 1933; AN F7 13320 police report on UdC, 13 April 1935. AN F 13559 police report, 3 January 1933. AN F7 13557 police report, 27 March 1933. Ibid., 10 October 1933. AN F7 13320, police report on UdC, 13 April 1935. The audience of Montreuil CdC heckled PCF deputy Capron calling for ‘no politics’, Journal de SaintDenis, 12 January 1935; in June 1935, a vote was taken in the Pierrefitte CdC between a communist leadership slate and one that represented all political tendencies, Journal de SaintDenis, 8 June 1935. A letter from an expelled member of Nîmes CdC complained of political interference on that body and smears against him, Républicain du Gard, 10 April 1935; for his expulsion, ibid., 29 March 1935. 37 Joyeux, Consulat Polonais, pp. 30–40. 38 ADN M616 26 Special Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 27 October 1931; Lahaye’s committee was able to attract 250 to its demonstration and the CdC led by the communist Quique attracted 550, ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 17 December 1931. 39 ADN M616 28 Central Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 31 January 1933. 40 Ibid., Special Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 30 March 1933.

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the situation. The contrast between the Lille to Paris hunger march and the events in Calais indicates the significance of this transformation. ‘Le grand tournant’ [the great turning point] of 6 February 1934 cannot chronologically explain this. In January 1934, the movement operated with the same sectarianism of previous years. Therefore it was an impalpable and spontaneous change in consciousness, and an explosive sense of having had enough that had taken place, what the police routinely euphemized as ‘effervescence’. This was confirmed in the powerful response to the fascist riot of 6 February. The police noted the unusual way that by-standers joined the Saint-Etienne hunger march (10 February 1934) and connected this with the recent turn of events. As the months unfolded, the possibility of unity between the two largest camps of the working-class movement also spurred unemployed campaigners on. Repression exaggerated the volatile dynamics of unemployed protest. Where intimidation worked, it confirmed the commonplace view that the unemployed were simply disinterested, passive and apathetic. Where unemployed anger boiled to the point of being able to challenge that repression, as in Calais and SaintQuentin, it must have seemed like a revolutionary force. Unemployed protest, often in conditions of police repression and press hostility, required bold determined leadership. If one judges the actions of Martinod and Brasseur in Calais, Thibaud in Saint-Etienne or the many anonymous leaders in places like Etaples who took instantaneous decisions in the course of events, this is clear. This was very different from the kind of leadership that characterized the Lille to Paris hunger march. Yet, as we have seen, in several cases, these were the very same people. Something had transformed them. The experience of the hunger march must have played its part, boosting the confidence and credibility of those who had participated and reinforcing their determination against the authorities that had gone to such lengths to stop their march. Local conditions may also have contributed. In Calais, the recent dockers’ strike had hardened opinions and radicalized attitudes. Across Nord and Pas-deCalais, the hunger marchers formed a cadre with the knowledge of how to organize a hunger march. The tactic proliferated across the region in 1934; not only was there the regional hunger march and the miners’ march but local hunger marches in Valenciennes, Avesnes, Douai, and Cambrai. Yet, the very success of organizing the hunger marches made the limitations of this tactic apparent to the participants and in some cases spurred the desire to transcend it with more militant action such as the occupation of the mayor’s offices or relief strikes. Prevarication, so the saying goes, is the thief of time. This could not be more true for unemployed protest. Here individual agency was at a premium. In some cases the opportunity to launch effective hunger marches was lost. Plans for a hunger march between Lille and Paris in early 1932 came to nothing.41 In Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), the prospect of a hunger march to Colmar was first mooted at a meeting of 100 in 23 May 1934. By 7 December, after six months’ delay, at a mass meeting of 700 to 800, the committee could only regret not having organized a hunger march and proposed 41 ADN M616 27 Sub-Prefect to Prefect (Nord), 16 March 1932; ibid., Central Commissioner (Douai) to Sub-Prefect (Douai), 2 March 1932; ibid., Police Commissioner (Aniche) to Sub-Prefect, 7 March 1932.

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42

a demonstration in Mulhouse in the new year. Lyons, France’s third city, failed to emulate its smaller neighbour, Saint-Etienne, in having its own hunger march.43 Like Mulhouse, indecisive leadership thwarted efforts for such an event in November 1934. All was set for a march but when authorization was denied, and despite several other marches having defied or circumvented bans, it was called off.44 Yet delay and indecisiveness were also the product of a failure of the PCF and CGTU national leaderships to exhibit the necessary conviction and sense of urgency. Unlike the NUWM in Britain, there was no effective national unemployed organization that could provide a national overview and to some extent shelter its own tactics from the Machiavellian drama of the Comintern. The Parisian unemployed movement suffered from successive leadership coups as well as local committees that wearied of such antics. This failure was demonstrated most obviously in 1934 at the very height of unemployed anger and receptivity to agitation. A spontaneous metamorphosis in mass unemployed psychology could be illustrated with dozens of examples. In this context, a national response could have generalized and heightened this effervescent mood. It would also have forced unemployment onto the national political agenda in a new way. After the seasonal summertime wane, it was evident to many in the movement that powerful mobilizations were possible. In such circumstances, the PCF leadership, which on so many occasions had artificially forced the pace of protest, allowed the mood to dissipate. The regional hunger march to Lille at this time was a considerable success and conditions were very much more propitious for a hunger march to Paris than the previous year.45 The overall effect was plain to observe. In late 1934, the contrast was stark between the elemental anger and boisterous selfconfidence of the occupations of the mairies on the one hand and the absence of a national initiative on the other.46 The regional and Parisian leaderships continued to disappoint the expectations of the membership. Yet, in a new phase of activity from spring 1935 onwards, this was more conscious demobilization than vacillation.47 The CRC (Nord) doused the flames of local militancy, opposing occupations, a hunger

42 AN F7 13561 Special Commissioner (Mulhouse) report, 23 May 1934; idib., Inspector to Special Commissioner (Mulhouse), 7 June 1934; ibid., 20 July 1934; ibid., Prefect (HautRhin) to Minister of the Interior, 20 September 1934; ibid., Special Commissioner (Mulhouse) report, 19 December 1934. 43 AN F7 13561 Divisional Commissioner (Lyons) report, 3 November 1934. 44 In the place of the hunger march, a meeting was held that attracted 300, ibid., police report, 6 November 1934. 45 AN F7 13560 police report, 11 April 1934; ibid., Special Commissioner (Valenciennes) to Sub-Prefect (Valenciennes), 20 April 1934; ibid., Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), report on regional congress of 24 November 1934, 26 November 1934; AN F7 13562 police report, 12 November 1934. 46 Duez called for a hunger march to Paris in front of 825 unemployed at a CdC meeting, ADN M616 29 Police Commissioner (Mauberge) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes), 26 October 1934 47 Martha Desrumeaux quoted in BM PCF CC minutes, October 1935 quoted in Tartakowsky, ‘Syndicats et mobilisations de chômeurs dans les années trente’, p. 7.

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march from Douai to Lille and a call for another march to Paris.48 Disagreements within the movements emerged between those who, following the PCF’s line, called for loyalty to the Popular Front Government and those who were dismayed at the inadequacy of the Government’s measures for the unemployed.49 However 1934 and early 1935 witnessed too much activity for it to be ascribed exclusively to local conditions. The broader political canvas must be sized up. The gradual realization by French working-class activists that Hitler’s accession was not just another cabinet re-shuffle had a radicalizing effect as did events in Austria. Also the political climate in France was changing with corruption scandals and the rise of the indigenous fascist ligues. The unemployed movement probably profited from the greater numbers drawn into left activity during these months. It is also true that anti-fascist and trade union activity ultimately drew the energies of the PCF, CGTU and other key militants away from the unemployed.50 Not only were there competing pressures for the time of such activists, over time the central directives insisting on interventions amongst the unemployed petered out. The Lille to Paris hunger march had required the resources of the two strongest regions of the party and the talents of some of its most capable organizers like Charles Tillon and Martha Desrumeaux. This was never repeated. Indeed the PCF sought to demobilize social protest as part of its efforts to bind its alliance with the Radicals and Socialists. But this alone is an inadequate explanation of the movement’s decline as a powerful upsurge of protest could have by-passed or dragged communist leaders in its wake. The pattern of unemployed protest conformed to the wider picture of a social group capable of outbursts of radical action but less able to mount sustained organization and protest. This was the characteristic of all unemployed movements in the 1930s. During the Third Period (1928–34), the communists had exploited the embittered response of the unemployed to local social hierarchies and those in petty positions of power. In the these years, the jobless and the PCF had overlapping demonologies. The CdCs had branded landlords ‘vultures’, condemned Christians

48

Le Réveil du Nord, 29 August 1936; ibid., 3 September 1936; ADN M616 32 Central Commissioner (Douai) report, 2 September 1936. For opposition to an occupation in Fourmies, ibid., Police Commissioner (Fourmies) to Sub-Prefect (Avesnes-sur-Helpe), 8 October 1936; on the CRC congress of 9–10 November, ibid., Central Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 12 November 1936. 49 For example, at the conference of the CRC (Nord), ibid., Divisional Commissioner (Lille) to Prefect (Nord), 9 November 1936. AN F22 682 Prefect (Landes) to Minister of Labour, 20 April 1937 attached report of Tarnos CdC meeting where ‘the CdC considers that the government can no longer delay executing the programme of the Popular Front which must be applied in a general manner’. 50 For example, Marcel Thibaud organized the Saint-Etienne hunger march on 10 February 1934, the local CGTU’s part in the general strike of 12 February, an anti-fascist demonstration against the Taxpayers’ League on 15 April, the May day demonstration, a strike of metalworkers in Rive-de-Gier (2–12 May). In the same month, he was elected to SaintEtienne council and became assistant mayor the following year. Thibaud’s long association with the unemployed began in 1927, AN F7 13527 Special Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to Director of General Security, 12 February 1927; ibid., 9 March 1927.

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for their charitable efforts and had antagonized rate-paying shopkeepers. Yet with the Popular Front, their demonologies diverged. Now the middle classes were allies that the PCF did not care to alienate. The directly visible antagonists of the unemployed were not the haute bourgeoisie – or in the PCF’s demonology of day, the ‘200 families’ – but these more lowly tormentors. The experience of the Popular Front also disorientated movement politically. The unemployed themselves participated in the momentous demonstrations and events of 1934–38. A subtle mutation in the political outlook of the movements can be identified in the reformulation of demands. Former enemies of the unemployed became allies of the party. As Dmitri Manuilsky, President of the Comintern, stressed to French delegates in Moscow in 1933, the CdCs were for ‘imposing the rights of the unemployed, above all on the socialist councils’.52 Progressively, the call for a national unemployment fund which was part of the Popular Front programme eclipsed the old demand for unemployment insurance. The communists encouraged illusions in the Government long after its reforms had come to a halt. Even after the second Blum ministry’s demise, the unemployed committees clung to the demands of the Popular Front programme which had long since become a dead letter. Even the last newspaper of the unemployed before the outbreak of war, La Voix des SansTravail (May 1938–February 1939), echoed these sentiments. A third distinct phase in unemployed protest arrived after the defeat of France. Confined to the Paris region, the PCF used unemployment for a major propaganda thrust in an attempt to regroup the shattered forces of the party and to recover some of its former influence. Again the movement’s vitality was short-lived. This mass work put the party back in touch with larger forces than itself and prepared the ground for resistance. However, as Charles Tillon pointed out when he criticized the PCF leadership of Thorez and Duclos, this campaign made activists the easy targets of repression. At a time of the gentleman’s agreement between Hitler and Stalin, the focus on the social issue of unemployment deflected hostility from the occupiers and created the illusion that open organization and legal publications were a possibility. In sum, human agency and the institutional resources of organizations of the French labour movement at times overcame the demoralizing effects of unemployment. Time and again, activists did despair at the ‘indifference’ of the unemployed. Nevertheless, there was another ‘effervescent’ dimension to collective psychology of the unemployed. Unemployment was not simply a one-way street to apathy. In some localities, though clearly not all, the unemployed were touched by the great radicalization of the years 1934–38 in France. Despite the pronounced value to the historian of the patient observations of the social psychologists and their ‘thick descriptions’ of the experience of the unemployed, the limits of their behaviourist assumptions and of the applicability of their conclusions should be understood.

51 Of course, some of the unemployed, internalizing a reactionary discourse peddled in much of the press, supplemented this list with foreigners, women and non-veterans. 52 OSA Comintern archive f.495 op. 55 d.27 l.185 Manuilsky’s response at French Commission, 17 March 1933.

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Unemployment, the PCF and the Remaking of the French Working Class Considering the movements at their height in the mid-1930s, unemployed activity was part-cause and part-effect of a recovery in the fortunes of the PCF as well as that of working-class consciousness and organization more generally. The period of the greatest activity of the unemployed 1934–35 preceded significant electoral gains in the municipal (1935) and legislative elections (1936). Party membership was growing and the path was being cleared for the explosion of party and union membership during the early months of the Popular Front government. There is only limited evidence about the numbers who joined the PCF as a result of its work amongst the unemployed.53 What evidence there is does suggest that the PCF had some success at recruiting the unemployed, or, equally significantly, retaining members who lost their jobs. Across the US and Europe, the communists and the unemployed engaged in a contradictory and unstable relationship. For the partnership to work well, both sides had to play their part. The communist strategies most favourable to unemployed mobilization were no guarantee of success; neither did widespread anger amongst the unemployed automatically lead to effective agitation; nor, for that matter, did government concessions necessarily follow these two features. The ultra-left strategy of the Third Period (1928–34) with its particular sociological analysis and orientation impelled the communist leadership repeatedly and insistently to pressure the lower echelons of its organization to work amongst the unemployed. Such work was often exasperating and bore capricious rewards.54 These activists sought to mobilize those that seemed to be on a downward path to apathy and resignation. Unemployed movements were not spontaneous creations but were formed through tireless and frustrating activism. Trickling down the communist hierarchy, from the international via the national and regional leaderships to the local, those formulating perspectives and policy amongst the unemployed were not those who carried them out. On several occasions, during the period 1930–33, international pressure was brought to bear on French communists to agitate amongst the unemployed. The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) was highly prescriptive on this matter and loyal 53

In 1931, 3.6 per cent of PCF members were unemployed; in 1932, 16.9 per cent were, ibid., l.92 Albert Vassart’s report, 14 March 1933. In the first six months of 1932, 36.4 per cent of new members were unemployed in the Saint-Denis district, L’Emancipation, 28 May 1932. In the City of Paris at the end of June 1935 roughly a third of PCF members were unemployed. The CdC of the third and fourth arrondissements in particular noted recruitment of the unemployed. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 118 report to Central Committee on the PCF in the city of Paris, 1935. 54 Activists regretted the ‘indifference’ of the unemployed on many occasions: in SaintPol CdC, ADN M616 29 Special Commissioner (Dunkirk) to Prefect (Nord), 31 January 1934; in Alès, AN F7 13546 Prefect (Gard) to Minister of the Interior, 13 December; in Cette, ibid., Special Commissioner (Cette) to Prefect (Hérault), 16 June 1932; even, Thibaud, the leader of the Saint-Etienne movement on occasion deplored the apathy of the unemployed, AN F7 13547 Central Commissioner (Saint-Etienne) to the Director of General Security, 12 June 1932.

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national leaderships imposed policy on the communist leaders of the unemployed movement. If such pressure is visible to historians, then in all likelihood, behind the scenes pressure, through Comintern agents such as Clément (Eugèn Fried), multiplied this.55 Historians are sometimes tempted by the seductive dangers of reifying of the working class or the working-class movement. During the interwar years, there were great structural forces reshaping the labour force. The idealized French working class blooded during the battles of the 1830s and 1848 or the Paris Commune provided a very misleading picture of what workers were like in the 1920s and 1930s. For much of the 1920s a labour shortage drew fresh recruits from rural areas and from abroad who had not been schooled by past struggles. Many were first generation workers of peasant backgrounds or perhaps Poles or Italians drawn into expanding urban landscapes. Indeed by the onset of the depression in France only 10 per cent of the working class were in a union and only 4 per cent were under collective bargaining agreements.56 With the depression, the numbers and the success rate of strikes declined.57 Thus, whilst rationalization and the growth of new industries had reconfigured the working class, its activists and their struggles allowed them to discover themselves as a class. The unemployed movement was one site in which these diverse human elements came together. This was not automatic and for the unemployed not the only possible outcome.58 The balance sheet for the PCF of campaigns against unemployment relies, to borrow a financial analogy, on many invisible earnings. Even propagandizing about unemployment, given the press climate hostile to the ‘idlers’ on the ‘taxpayers’ generosity’, gained some sympathy for the communists.59 Their protests registered amongst politicians and public. When Paul Guitard interviewed figures from the political elite including former ministers and police chiefs, several made specific mention of those who protested in the street for ‘bread and work’.60 The files of the Ministry of Interior filled with the reports of their activities as did those of the Minister of Labour who received their petitions and lists of demands. Beyond this intangible propaganda effect, the PCF expected that its ‘mass organizations’, such as the CdCs, would act as a conveyor belt of recruitment and influence between itself and the working class.61 The unemployed and tenants’ movements were distinct from other mass organizations because they combined agitation, propaganda and representational or advice work. As such their reach was more extended than say Les Amis de l’URSS that simply attracted fellow travellers on propaganda grounds. The committees could draw into their ranks a proportion of the mass of unemployed and introduce them to political activism for the first time. Three 55

Annie Kreigel and Stéphane Courtois, Eugèn Fried: le Grand Secret du PCF (Paris, 1997). Dufraisse, ‘Le mouvement ouvrier français “rouge” devant la grande dépression économique de 1929 à 1933’, pp. 164–7. 57 Ibid., p. 180. 58 In some instances, such as the Reims tramworkers’ dispute in 1933, the unemployed undercut those in employment and broke the strike. 59 Figuères, Jeunesse Militante, p. 21. 60 Guitard, Chômage, pp. 32, 96, 143, 151, 183. 61 Membership of mass organizations 1930–33, see Appendix 10. 56

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causes – anti-fascism, unemployment and workplaces struggles – had the immediacy to spark political engagement during the 1930s. The balance between these issues changed over time. During 1931–32 and 1934–35 unemployment was to the fore; in the latter fusing with anti-fascism. From 1936–38, workplace struggles swept France in great waves. Of the three issues, unemployment counted the fewest activists but because of the connection of these issues it, to a certain extent, conditioned the scope of the others. This process is observable in microcosm through the prosopography of militants. Communist work against unemployment aided one of its tangible achievements of this period: its electoral, and in particular its municipal, advance. In terms of the chronology of left departmental hegemony (SFIO/PCF), Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Charente, Oise and Seine-et-Oise became left electoral territory in the interwar period.62 These were notable, with the exception of Charente, for their movements of the unemployed. Within this pattern older socialist areas – such as the red belt of Paris – shifted allegiances to the communists. Yet if we consider the first round of voting in the 1936 legislative elections, there is certainly no obvious correlation at the departmental level between the strength of the movement of the unemployed and PCF votes.63 In areas with vibrant communist-led movements of the unemployed, the Loire, Seine-Inférieure, Aisne and Somme, for example, the PCF scored a mediocre 10–15 per cent. This is perhaps testimony to the social isolation and minority character of the unemployed even inside the working class. During these years, the communists patiently build up the bastions of municipal communism.64 Many of them survived into the 1990s. These provided a more detailed estimation of the relationship between the unemployed and communist advance. The question of social provision for the unemployed played no small role in the establishment of local communist credentials in the red belt of Paris, Nord and Pasde-Calais. Activism undermined the credibility of incumbent non-PCF left councils.65 62 François Goguel, Géographie des Elections Françaises sous la Troisième et la Quatrième République (Paris, 1970), pp. 116–17. 63 30–40 per cent: Seine; 25–30 per cent: Seine-et-Oise, Lot-et-Garn; 20–25 per cent: Paris-ville, Cher, Allier, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Ariège; 15–20 per cent: Nord, Pas-deCalais, Ardennes, Bas-Rhin Dordogne, Corrèze, Vaucluse, ibid., pp. 94–5. 64 Tyler Stovall, ‘French communism and suburban development: the rise of the Paris red belt’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24/3 (July 1989): 437–60. He argued that changing social composition and attention to local issues in particular housing were key to this growth. 65 On the responsibilities of the communist councils, Victor Cat, ‘Les municipalités communistes et le chômage’, Cahiers du Bolchévisme, 65 (1 February 1927): 118–20. On Halluin council, which had ignored the stipulation that only those in workplaces of less than ten employees could receive partial unemployment benefits, gave seven days a week benefit to the unemployed and was then investigated. The state subsidy for unemployment benefits was withheld and gardes mobiles sent to the town. Because of the strength of local feeling, the Prefect restored the subsidy. Fernand Grenier, Ce Bonheur-Là (Paris, 1974), pp. 119–21; Michel Hastings, Halluin La Rouge: Aspects d’un Communisme Identitaire (Lille, 1991); for the CdC’s news sheet, Le Cri des Chômeurs (Halluin) 1 (1932); ibid., 2 (1932); ibid., 5 (1932); On the experience in Ivry, Francis J. Murphy, ‘Red flag over the city hall: French municipal

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Whilst central government restricted the latitude of communist councils, the PCF claimed that municipal communism was distinguished in its welfare provision for the unemployed. In Letellier’s brief survey of the Parisian banlieue, she did mention the activity of several communist councils but also socialist Anthony for the efforts on behalf of the unemployed.66 Indeed, Louis Sellier, former general secretary of the PCF and pupiste leader and Parisian deputy, stated that communist councils did no more than several non-communist ones.67 In the early 1930s, however, it was the Saint-Denis council that the communist press and the unemployed movement held up as the model of municipal communism in the face of economic crisis.68 There was even recognition of the exceptional character of the Saint-Denis council’s work for the unemployed amongst those who an agenda against Doriot.69 The expulsion of Doriot on 27 June 1934 posed a serious problem from this point of view as did his later political conversion to fascism. His personal standing in Saint-Denis was crucial to his ability to launch the Parti Populaire Français in 1936. The communists lost control of their crimson citadel and their most celebrated example of municipal provision for the unemployed.70 But there were other communist mayors who made a special claim to caring for the unemployed and the resources of PCF councils created advantages to the local unemployed movement. Sometimes, for council employees the distinction between council work and activity in these movements blurred. In a small number of cases, the combination of the crisis of public finances and militant unemployed action led to the resignations of socialist councils in NeufMesnil (Nord) and Deville (Ardennes) in late 1934. Less directly, the height of unemployed agitation preceded the municipal elections of 5 and 12 May 1935, in which the PCF marked a considerable advance. In Jacques Duclos’s pamphlet communism in Ivry’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 5 (1977): 363–70; Maurice Thorez, Le Fils du Peuple (Paris, 1960), pp. 118–19. 66 Letellier, Enquête sur le Chômage, vol. 1, pp. 284–6. 67 Louis Sellier, La Crise Economique, le Chômage, la Solution: le Déshabillage d’André Marty: Deux Discours de Louis Sellier au Conseil Municipal de Paris (Paris, 1932). 68 La Voix des Chômeurs (Limoges), 1 (March 1932); ibid., 4 (July 1932); La Voix des Chômeurs (Saint-Etienne), 2 (30 January 1932); La Lutte des Chômeurs (Rouen), 1 (February 1932); Union des Comités des Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, Les Armes Légales des Chômeurs (Paris, 1932), pp. 17–19. Doriot spoke at the rally of the Lille to Paris hunger march outlining his council’s efforts on behalf of the unemployed. AN F7 13565 police report: ‘On the subject of the hunger march organized by the Region Union of Unemployed Committees’, 2 December 1933. 69 On Doriot’s exemplary role, OSA Comintern archive f.495 op.55 d.27 ll.185–7 Manilusky’s response at French Commission, 17 March 1933; Jean-Paul Brunet, Un DemiSiècle d’Action Municipale à Saint-Denis la Rouge 1890–1939 (Paris, 1981), pp. 170–74; L’Humanité, 6 November 1931. 70 Standing as the ‘majority of Saint-Denis district of the PCF’, Doriot won the municipal elections at the first round with 9,796 votes against 3,958 communist votes, L’Humanité, 6 May 1935. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 111 Doriot affair; ADSSD 3 Mi 6 112 Doriot affair. On his subsequent conversion, Jean-Paul Brunet, Jacques Doriot: du Communisme au Fascisme (Paris, 1986); Gilbert G. Allardyce, ‘The political transition of Jacques Doriot’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1/1 (1966): 56–74.

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produced for these elections the record of PCF councils on the question of unemployment was emphasized. Their deeds included the distribution of milk, coal, clothes, school meals, soup kitchens and free healthcare. Elsewhere the unemployed were not so favourably treated; indeed in 35,000 communes there was not even an unemployment fund.71 Overall in towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants, the numbers of PCF municipalities rose from 38 to 90.72 Whilst this turning point in PCF electoral fortunes followed shortly after the highpoint of militancy of the unemployed movement, the relationship between the two is complex. Socialist désistement (withdrawal in the second round of voting for communist candidates with larger first-round votes) considerably helped the PCF and built on the electoral progress scored at the cantonal elections of October 1934. In the Parisian region, their progress was most spectacular. In Seine, they now held 26 town halls where they had previously held only nine; in Seine-etOise, 29 against six. This constituted the suburban red belt that the party held until the 1980s. On the City of Paris municipal council, seven comrades joined André Marty who was the only communist councillor before the election. This was the election when the Parisian red belt decisively turned communist. Outside the Paris region, the most creditable advance was in Nord and Pas-deCalais where the party took over control of 50 municipalities where before it had held only 17.73 This region witnessed a differential pattern of recruitment and electoral success and did not simply map onto the areas of highest unemployment. Recruitment fared better amongst the miners than the textile workers, and in the banlieue of Lille than the town itself. In Calais, the communists also advanced taking 10 seats as part of a Popular Front list.74 The party however made little impact amongst the family farmers of the region who practised polyculture and husbandry.75

71

Jacques Duclos, Elections Municipales de 1935 (Bourges, 1935), p. 23; Le Travailleur (Ivry), election special, April 1935. In Choisy-le-Roi, the CdC had been used as a long-term instrument to dislodge mayor Gourdault. In April 1935 the committee held a meeting of 450 with the election in mind. Ibid., 28 April 1935. For PCF programmes and strategy for this election, ADSSD 3 Mi 6 118 municipal elections, 1935. 72 Georges Dupeux, Le Front Populaire et les Elections de 1936 (Paris, 1959), p. 90. Whereas in 1929, the PCF won only 150 councils, their tally improved to nearly double with 297. Thirty one of these were in middling sized towns (populations of 20,000–50,000). 73 Le Travailleur de Somme et Oise, 98 (19–25 May 1935). 45 were in Nord. In the first round, they held Aniche, Douchy, Halluin, Avesnes-lès-Aubert, Erre, Onnaing, Maing, Somain, Petite-Forêt, Waziers, Villiers-Campaux, Anstaing, Hautay, Hérin, Neuf-Mesnil (but lost Montigny-en-Gohelle) and won Fenain, Haveluy, Saultain, L’Humanité, 6 May 1935; ibid., 7 May 1935; in the second round, the PCF won Fresnes-sur-Secaut, Hasnon, Lezennes, Marly, Quarouble, Saint-Saulve, Vieux-Condé, Wallers, Aulnoye-les-Berlaimont, Cantin, Roncq, Sars-Poterie, Popular Front coalitions with PCF participation won in Maing, a unity list of 14 PCF and 13 SFIO won in Denain, six councillors were elected in Iwuy, ibid., 13 May 1935. A number of these localities – Iwuy, Sars-Poterie – had witnessed occupations or other significant forms of protest in the previous months. 74 With 20 SFIO against six right-wingers, ibid., 13 May 1935. 75 Girault, ‘Pour une problématique de l’implantation du parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, pp. 33–4, 37–8 and 55.

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Other notable conquests were in Allier and Gard. The extent to which unemployed protest contributed to this advance is impossible to say but those areas that performed well at these elections with the exception of rural Allier had relatively powerful unemployed movements. In Gard, a hunger march had taken place recently with Fernand Valat the mayor of Alès being instrumental to building the event.76 Progress was less spectacular elsewhere but no less significant. In Saint-Etienne, another area of intense unemployed agitation, the PCF doubled its previous score and Ramier and Thibaud headed the 14 strong group of communist councillors to be elected on a cross-party Popular Front slate.77 In May 1935, communist leaders of the Somme hunger march became mayors in Friville and Feuquières-en-Vimeu. This case should not be overstated. The situation in Saint-Quentin offered an opposite scenario because of its local electoral arithmetic. The political repercussions of local protests registered some qualified advance for the communists. At the municipal elections of May 1935, the communists of Saint-Quentin overtook the incumbent socialists, perhaps influenced by the actions of the unemployed committee, but they lost out in the second ballot to the moderate list.78 Although some months had passed since the most intense phase of unemployed militancy, in some areas a connection can be seen with the legislative elections. At least 14 out of 24 of PCF candidates in the Nord had been active in the agitation of the unemployed.79 For sitting deputy Suplice Dewez, the fact that he too was unemployed was deemed worthy of advertising on his election posters.80 Dewez had been a stalwart of the movement from the first, speaking at meetings, leading hunger marches and demonstrations.81 Though there is no evidence to show that 76 Valat was imprisoned during the election campaign and this may have contributed to PCF successes in Gard in 15 communes, L’Humanité, 8 May 1935; ibid., 15 May 1935. Républicain du Gard, 7 March 1935; ibid., 26 March 1935. 77 With four socialists and 22 others, L’Humanité, 13 May 1935. They unanimously elected the former villain of the unemployed movement, the Radical Soulié, as mayor, ibid., 15 May 1935. Unemployed activists Chopin and Dolmason became councillors. 78 In the legislative elections of the next year in the first conscription of Saint-Quentin, they gained 24.5 per cent of the votes but withdrew in the second round allowing the socialist candidate to be elected. Under Georges Pelat’s entry in Pennetier, Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. 79 Of the PCF candidates in the 1936 legislative elections in Nord: Sevrez, Glay, Leloir, Martel, Ramette, Dutas, Muller, Hilde, Deschamps, Manguine, Declercq, Raux, Musmeaux, Dewez all appear in police records of unemployed activity. Lemine, Stievenart, Hyceelynck, Baene, Hentges, Pattinez, Durot, Moehman, Colbaert and Casier do not, though this does not necessarily mean that they played no role in the movement, ADN M616 26-32; AN F7 13549; AN F7 13560; AN F7 13565. Of the candidates, Louis Manguine had participated in the hunger march to Paris and others, Marcel Dutas (Dunkirk) and Lucien Muller (Hazebrouck), had taken part in the regional hunger march to Lille. Paul Leloir’s election propaganda made the most of his secretaryship of the Caudry committee of the unemployed (which he had held for at least three years). Valenciennes councillor Lucien Sevrez had been closely associated with the movement since December 1931. 80 ADN M37 90 Suplice Dewez’s election poster for the legislative elections of 1936. 81 For example, Dewez led demonstrations of the unemployed in Denain on 2 December 1931, 3 January 1932, and 22 August 1932. He led the Valenciennes and Cambrai hunger

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the candidates in the Nord entered the PCF through this route, for such large proportion of their candidates to have a close relationship with the protest of the unemployed, it must have been seen as an electoral asset and central to the party’s work in the region. Of the large increase in communist deputies being returned to the Chamber, a fair sprinkling had prominent associations with the movement of the unemployed. Amongst the 72 PCF deputies elected in 1936, Suplice Dewez of Nord, Pierre Lareppe of Ardennes, René Nicod of Oyonnax, Fernand Valat of Alès, all associated themselves with local hunger marches. This was not true of the PCF in other parts of the country. Of all the 32 deputies from the Seine, which had the highest concentration of PCF success, only Charles Tillon had played a leading role in the movement.82 In summary, there is sufficient evidence to challenge the current assumptions about the movements of the unemployed in France in these years. Their relative neglect is undeserved and their place in French labour history requires revision and enhancement. They constituted a significant component cause of the growth in the PCF in the 1930s and contributed the remaking of the French working class. Memory and Unemployed Protest The protest of the unemployed has remained a quicksilver aspect of working-class history: elusive, forgotten, reappearing from nowhere. The French unemployed protest movement of 1997–98 and the recent piquetero [picketers] movement (of nationwide road blocks from August 2001) in Argentina remind us that the unemployed cannot simply be discounted from the historical record.83 The reemergence of unemployed protest highlights certain historical continuities. First of all, unemployment remains a site of discursive and material contestation.84 The social policy vogue for the concept of ‘social exclusion’ is in some of its manifestations tantamount to a linguistic de-recognition of unemployment. Even the notion of new social movements, despite its undoubted insights, blurs the specific social locations of the unemployed in the framework of a capitalist class society in preference for the nebulous notion of citizenship beyond class and political alignments. The French unemployed movements have demonstrated the way in which ‘welfare reform’, privatization and ‘délocalisation’ [relocation of work] has created conditions and grievances in the European Union for renewed unemployed protests. The piqueteros revealed the connections between neo-liberalism, International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment, and job loss, and so highlight unemployment as a

marches of early 1934. 82 Even in the case of Tillon, his role was not in the UdC, the Parisian movement, but in his native Ile-et-Villaine and in his capacity as the leader of the Lille to Paris hunger march. 83 Luis Oviedo, Una Historia del Movimiento Piquetero: de las Primeras Coordinadoras al Argentinazo (Buenos Aires, 2004); James Petras, ‘The unemployed workers movement in Argentina’, Monthly Review, 53/8 (2002): 32–45. 84 Michael Moore, Downsize This! (London, 1996), p. 271, for a parody of the euphemsitic language of business that disguises unemployment.

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85

global issue. The critique of ‘globalization’ has included condemnation of effects on employment of neo-liberal policies. For these reasons, the history of unemployed protest is a history of the past, present and future. To some extent, present day social movements of which the unemployed movements are one example, are coalescing into a broad anti-capitalist movement embodied in the mobilizations and counterconferences of the European, Asian and World Social Forums. Reflecting on past social movements, unemployment in itself is neither a catalyst of paralysis nor revolution. More normally, joblessness breeds passivity and demoralization. The complexity of these movements cannot be reduced to the formula of apathy that social psychologists, all things being equal, imputed to an unemployed condition. All things never turn out equal. The radical impermanence, the late discovery and the contested recognition of unemployment mean that historians share a tendency to forget unemployed protest. In a sense this reinforces a particular view of unemployment and its relation to labour history. The concentration on the 1930s on the part of historians is understandable but it has obscured the fact that agitation and organization of the unemployed took place before and after. Indeed, this book has conceived of four phases of unemployed protest: 1921, 1927, 1931–36 and 1940–41 in the period of the two world wars. Whilst that of the 1930s was the most sustained there were significant continuities and an incremental learning process both from earlier efforts and from other national experiences. Ironically, by 1940–41, the methods of developing a movement of the unemployed had been so thoroughly assimilated that those active in the Comités Populaires des Chômeurs failed to recognize the inappropriateness of these methods in conditions of military occupation. Despite caution against hindsight, it is hard not to have one eye on the Second World War when studying France in the 1930s. Where the unemployed movement is concerned a number of tentative observations are possible. First, there is the way in which the communists turned once again to the unemployed in 1940–41 and the new popular committees of the unemployed and unemployed propaganda sheets of the Paris region. The transition from accommodation to resistance passed through a stage in which the unemployed were seen as a priority for communist activity to an extent that had not been the case since the early 1930s. Beyond this, earlier movements of the unemployed were significant to the war experience in another way. There were thousands of biographical journeys from the unemployed activism in the CdCs in the 1930s to collaboration, passivity or resistance during the Second World War. The overwhelming majority of these journeys are lost but for some are open to the scrutiny of posterity. Those whose political life histories are known form a small sample of the tens of thousands who participated in the unemployed movements of the 1930s. They are not a typical sample of the whole but representative of a specific part of the movement: its activists. The Dictionnaire Bibliographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français, more commonly known as Le Maitron, registered 249 individuals connected to the unemployed activities of the 1930s. For 53, unemployed activism 85

Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (London, 2002), p. 15; on Argentina and Greg Pallast, The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy (London, 2002), pp. 157–64.

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is the only recorded entry into the political field. More common were those for whom unemployed protest followed or led onto other campaigns (anti-fascism, the International Brigades, union militancy) or party activism. Four volunteered to fight with the Spanish republicans.86 The importance of the PCF in the sample is underlined in this sample: 139 (well over half) were definitely members of the party; a further two members of the Young Communists, 11 in the CGTU, one in the SOI. The unemployed movement acted and was intended to aid recruitment as in the case of Maurice Lefebvre who was the secretary of the Stains CdC before joining the PCF in November 1932. But generally amongst this sample of political activists, the CdCs were not a ‘conveyor belt’ into the party and unemployed protest was not the monopoly of the PCF. Of the sample from Maitron, nine unemployed activists were members of the SFIO and eight were Trotskyists. Some passed between different organizations with the intense arguments and rivalry on the left. Roland and Yvonne Filiatre were both SFIO members and CdC activists before becoming Trotskyists. Maurice Loriot, Sotteville (Seine-Inférieure), the secretary of the PCF rayon, had created the CdC in 1931 as its secretary, but left the PCF for the SFIO in 1933–34. The wartime activities of those involved in the unemployed movements also varied. Nineteen were known to be members of the resistance and five died at the hands of the Nazis.87 For most there is no record. Some, nine, even joined the ranks of the collaborators or fascists; six through the route of Doriotism.88 The many roads travelled during these troubled times helps to explain why individual experience of unemployed protest did not translate more effectively into collective memory. The institutional framework is significant too. Existing from 1920 to 1946 as a national organization, the British NUWM had greater occasion to fashion its own collective identity and memory and transform individual reminiscence into corporate identification. The NUWM bequeathed its own official histories: Hannington’s Unemployed Struggles (1936) and A Short History of the Unemployed (1940). No equivalent existed in France. The epilogue to the hunger marches of the 1930s in many countries was the establishment of a welfare state in the aftermath of the Second World War with a

86

The ‘Union des Syndicats des Chômeurs du Front Populaire’ at 33 rue de la Grangeaux-Belles was used to recruit foreign volunteers for the republicans during the Spanish Civil War, AN F7 14723 French Consul (Netherlands) report, 29 January 1937. 87 Jules Fuzellier from Joigny (Ardennes) had participated in the Ardennes hunger march for which he was fined. In the May elections of that year, he became Joigny’s mayor and in February 1942 he was shot as a resistor. Gaston Manneville of Dives (Calvados) set up a CdC in September 1940 and was arrested and deported when he tried to prevent the deportation of 200 unemployed. 88 Adolphe Glay, PCF mayor of Avesnes-lès-Aubert (Nord) and a CGTU textiles branch secretary, set up a local CdC in December 1931, was involved in organizing unemployed meetings in early 1934 with Thorez’s wife Jeanette Vermeersch and was even the president of the Cambrésis congress of the unemployed in February 1935. But he left the party over the HitlerStalin Pact and ended up as a collaborator. ADN M616 26 Sergeant report, 8 December 1931.

Conclusion

253

substantial improvement in the provision for the unemployed. Unemployment was a blindspot for the French état providence. This may be connected to the forgetting of unemployed struggles. In Britain, memories of the hunger marches and the Beveridge report go hand in hand. Yet in France, the two were decoupled though this was not because the PCF were excluded from power. Like Britain, with Ellen Wilkinson the leader of the Jarrow Crusade as Minister of Education, France’s postwar cabinet could boast a leader of the French hunger marches, Charles Tillon. In France, memory and class consciousness projected different images, different conclusions. More precisely, the French Communist Party abandoned its demand for radical action for the unemployed twice. Once, it was submerged in the rhetoric of the Popular Front as a vague commitment to ‘bread, peace and liberty’ and then, with the ‘national front’ of the resistance, programmatic assertion of ‘the right to work’ obscured the need for reforms for the unemployed.

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Appendices Appendix 1

Source: Annuaire Statistique de la France, 1936.

Appendix 2

Unemployment in France, 1914–39

Source: Claimant Count.

256

Prisoners of Want

Appendix 3

Source: International Labour Review.

Appendices

Appendix 4

Source: Labour Exchange Returns.

257

258

Prisoners of Want

Appendix 5: Rival Estimates of Unemployed Protest in Paris, 1927–35 Event

PCF figure

Police figure

4/2/27

Day of action, Paris

50,000

6,825

12/11/31

Protest at Chamber of Deputies

2,500–3,000

1,500

24-5/12/31

Protest at nightclubs (réveillon)

1,000

100s

12/1/32

Protest at Chamber of Deputies

20,000

6,000

4/2/32

Day of action

n/a

n/a

Fritsch funeral

120,000– 100,000

15,000

30/6/32

Bagnolet demonstration

n/a

250

19/11/32

Saint-Denis demonstration

n/a

600

9/12/32

March on Paris

30,000

10,000

24-5/12/32

Protest at nightclubs (réveillon)

n/a

400

11/3/33

13th arrondissement demonstration

3,500

400

19/3/33

Fritsch commemoration

n/a

2,500

15/4/33

Day of action at Mairies, Paris

3,230

730

2/12/33

Hunger march reception, Paris

50,000

7,000

19/3/34

Fritsch commemoration

12,000

2,800

30/6/34

Meetings at Mairies

6,500

2,100

12/1/35

Paris hunger march

20,000

n/a

17/3/35

Fritsch commemoration

8,000

1,800

24/3/32

Sources: PCF and police documents.

Appendices

Appendix 6: Map of the Lille to Paris Hunger March, 1933

Source: Institut d’Histoire Sociale, CGT.

259

260

Prisoners of Want

Appendix 7: French Hunger Marches

Appendices

Appendix 8: The Loire Hunger March and Movement of the Unemployed Centred on Saint-Etienne

261

262

Prisoners of Want

Appendix 9: The Occupations of the Mayors’ Offices in the Nord

263

Appendices

Appendix 10: Membership of Mass Organizations, 1930–33 Organization

1930

Amis de l’URSS [Friends of Soviet Russia] Association Révolutionnaire des Anciens Combattants [ARAC, communist veterans’ organization], Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires [AEAR Association of Revoutionary Writers and Artists]

1931

1932

1933

1934

2,000

4,500 4,393

6,000 8,550

9,075

10,000

16,000 14,484

375

21,000 21,000

23,250 47,500 (P)

600 600

Camarades Distributeurs de L’Humanité [Newspaper sellers]

16,200

14,800

Federation Sportive de Travail [Workers’ Sporting Federation]

10,700

10,700 10,093

12,967

31,800

28,700

31,256 35,000 (P)

32,000 31,000 (P)

3,900

8,126

5,400

6,500

67,000

56,300 53,600

55,826

56,500

2,800

10,000 4,300 10,000 (P)

4,300 10,000 (P)

Secours Rouge Internationale [SRI, International Red Aid]

42,000

Secours Ouvrier International [SOI, International Workers’ Aid] International Tenants’ Associations Travailleurs sans Dieu [Workers without God]

75,000

OSA f.495 op.55 d.27 ll. 103–6 Vassart’s report, 14 May 1933. ADSSD 3 Mi 6 107 figures for mass organizations 1932–34. These sources provide different figures and the latter source is in italics. Figures for press circulation is followed by (P).

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Prisoners of Want

Appendix 11: Statistics of the Unemployed Movement Department, ranked by size of movement 1. Seine, Seine et Oise 2. Nord 3. Loire 4=. Ardennes 4=. Haut-Rhin 6. Aube et Haute-Marne 7. Rhone 8. Somme 9. Bas-Rhin 10. Aisne 11. Pas-de-Calais 12. Haute-Vienne 13. Gironde, Lot-Garonne, Gers 14. Oran 15. Herault 16. Moselle 17. Alpes-maritimes 18. Calvados 19. Aude 20. Gard 21. Basses-Pyrenees 22. Alger 23. Indre-et–Loire 24. Tarn 25. Cote d’Or et Yonne 26. Finistere 27. Isere 28. Sarthe 29. Drome 30. Pyrenees-Orientales 31. Dordogne 32. Meuse, Vosges, Meurthe-et-Moselle 33. Morbihan 34. Landes 35=. Correze 35=. Haute-Garonne 37. Maine-et-Loire 38. Aveyron 39. Hautes-Pyre 40. Eure-et-Loire 41. Tarn-et-Garonne 42. Ardeche

Number of members in CDCs* 41,500 20,000 10,000 8,000 8,000 6,000 5,000 4,730 4,300 3,000 2,000 1,900 1,850 1,800 1,650 1,500 1,490 1,230 1,210 1,200 1,040 1,000 900 655 650 610 600 500 490 480 450 390 350 340 300 300 250 210 180 160 100 35

Number of CDCs 200 75 7 30 7 12 26 10 8 17 3 2 9 3 8 6 6 11 4 5 12 4 7 5 3 6 2 1 3 2 1 4 4 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1

* Gers included in Haute-Garonne; CDCs = unemployed committees Source: CGTU, Huitième Congrès de la CGTU: Issy-les-Moulineaux du 24 à 27 Septembre 1935 (Paris, 1935).

Appendices

Appendix 12: The Hunger March on 2 December 1933

Permission: Archives Municipales de la Ville de Saint-Denis.

265

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guerre”, 1939–40’, Revue des Etudes Slaves 65/4 (1993): 671–90. Sowerwine, Charles, ‘Aux origines du communisme à Oyonnax: socialisme et la maison du peuple’, in Jacques Girault (ed.), Des Communistes en France (années 1920 – années 1960) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002). Stovall, Tyler, ‘French communism and suburban development: the rise of the Paris red belt’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24/3 (July 1989): 437–60. Tartakowsky, Danielle, Les Manifestations de Rue en France 1918–68 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998). ———, Le Pouvoir est dans la Rue: Crises Politiques et Manifestations en France (Paris: Aubier, 1998), ———, ‘Syndicats et mobilisations de chômeurs dans les années trente’, Cahiers de Ressy, 3–4 (June 2000): 16–21. Topalov, Christian, Naissance du Chômeur, 1880–1910 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994). Vanthemsche, Guy, ‘Unemployment insurance in interwar Belgium’, International Review of Social History, 35/3 (1990): 349–76. Waters, Sarah, ‘New social movements in France: une nouvelle vague citoyenne?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 6/4 (1998): 495–505. Weil, Simone, La Condition Ouvrière (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1951). Whiteside, Noel and Gillespie, James A., ‘Deconstructing unemployment: developments in Britain in the interwar years’, Economic History Review, 44/4 (1991): 665–82. Whiteside, Noel and Salais, Robert (eds), Governance, Industry, and Labour Markets in Britain and France: the Modernising State in the Mid-Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1998). Wihtol de Wenden, Catherine, Immigrés et la Politique (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1988). Zielinski, Bernd, ‘Arbeitslosenpolitik in Frankreich unter deutscher Besatzung, 1940–42’, 1999: Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20 und 21 Jahrhunderts, 10/ 3 (1995): 18–21. ———, ‘Le chômage et la politique de main d’oeuvre à Vichy’, in Peschanski, Denis and Robert, Jean-Louis (ed.), Les Ouvriers en France Pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Paris: Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, 1992), pp. 295–306. ———, Staatskollaboration. Vichy und der Arbeitskräfteeinsatz im Dritten Reich. Westfälisches Dampfboot (Münster, 1995).

Index

Abbeville 187, 188 Abetz, Otto 218 Achères 183 Achicourt 129, 136, 137 Achiet 136n Adam, Maurice 135 Agence National Pour l’Emploi, ANPE, National Agency for Employment, Aigo Boulido (Gard) 166 Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher 188 Aimargues 166, 167n Aincourt 277 Aisne 72n, 96, 138, 151–5, 182n, 184, 246 Aix-en-Provence 204n Albert 129, 131, 136–8, 188 Albi 142 Alès 9, 166, 217n, 244n, 249, 250 Alfortville 78, 87n, 89n, 90n, 96, 121, 131, 139, 183, 221 Alfred, Ali 76n, 78n Allauch 204 Allier 167, 213, 246, 249 Alsace-Lorraine 6, 61 Alvarez 195n Amiens 25, 62, 65, 125, 129, 131, 137–8, 187–9, 235 Andry, Robert 185n Anglet 195n Aniche 137, 141, 161, 164, 165, 238n, 240n, 248 Anor 162, 168, 170n ANPE 3 Anzin 8, 110, 134, 135, 136, 159, 160, 164 Anzincourt 165 Arcueil 52n Ardennes 6, 10, 16, 38n, 122, 124, 184–5, 189, 238, 246n, 247, 250, 252n Argenteuil 59, 60, 66, 82, 89n, 93n, 206, 221 Arles 204n Armentières 27, 110, 127n, 129, 143, 163, 165

Arrachard, René 74, 180 Arras 27, 110, 127–9, 135–7, 141 Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR) xiii, 39n, 126 Association des Maires de France 27 Association des Vieux Travailleurs 208 Astier 167 Aubange 204n Aubervilliers 7, 52n, 60, 61n, 75, 83, 134, 139, 183, 210n, 234n Auffray, Charles 85n Auffret, Jean 78n, 181, 183, 237n Auguet, Ernest 115n Aulnay-sous-Bois 60n, 85n, 183, 209, 226 Aulnoye 248n Auray, Charles (mayor of Pantin) 81n Avelin 168, 171n Aveluy 136 Avesnes-lès-Aubert 160–1, 197n, 232, 248n, 252n, Avesnes-le-Sec 160, 232n Avesnes-sur-Helpe 8, 161–2, 164, 167–71, 173 Avignon 222 Avion 129 Aygaling, Marcel 78n Bac 195 Bagnères-de-Bigorre 195n Bagneux 199 Bagnolet 74n, 87n, 92, 95, 96n, 126, 139, 179, 182, 183, 221, 224–5 Bail 152 Bailleul 127n, 136n, 143, 159, 163, 164 Ballay, Georges 206 Banc 112n Bapaume 128–9, 137 Baraques 148, 150 Barbé, Henri 75, 185n Barentin 186 Bar-le-Duc 55

286

Prisoners of Want

Barral 78n Basses-Pyrénées 145, 155, 173, 182, 207 Bataille 171, 237n Bayonne 195n Beaucourt, Alfred 194n Beaumont 198 Beauvais 156, 198 Beauvois 160 Belade 195n Belfinger 78n Belfort 142 Belle Equipe, La (1936) 3, 42, 48 Bellevilloise, La 74, 75, 126n Berckmoes 195n, 239 Berliet 9, 114, 217n Bernadet-Pouncet 195n Bessèges 9 Bessouly 195n Béthune 8, 127, 137, 146n, 195n, 196 Beuvrages 159n Beuvry-lez-Orchies 164, 197 Bévilliers 198 Beziers 142n Bezons 59, 60n, 87n, 89n, 93, 126 Biarritz 195n Bicêtre 52, 140, 182–3 Bigne, Boué 115n Billoud 112n Binet 101n, 103 Blanchard 112n Blanketeers, the (1817) 5 Blanzy 9 Bloch 85 Bobigny 60n, 70, 80, 89n, 126, 132, 139, 183, 221 Bondy 60n, 82n, 84, 183, 221, 237n Bonnet 195 Bontemps, Roger 201n Bordeaux 9, 24, 27, 57, 62, 100, 115–16, 173, 182, 215, 235–6 Borgniet, Achille Boris, George Bouches-du-Rhône 6, 23, 194, 204–5 Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (1932) 45 Bougros, Fernand 63 Boulogne-Billancourt 7, 58n, 74n, 84, 85n Boulogne-sur-Mer 124–5, 127, 129, 130, 134–6, 148, 167–8 Boulogne-sur-Seine 52, 60n, 61n, 74, 210

Bourneton 128, 131, 148, 195n Bousies 168, 171n Boussières 198 Boussingault, Jules 159 Bouvier 101n Brasseur, Xavier 125n, 134, 147–51, 240 Brau 184 Brèmes-lez-Andres 148 Bresson 78n Breteuil 137 Breuil 209 Briey 8 Brillois 197 Broc 167 Brodel 160 Brout 63 Bruay 8n Bugain, Marcel 155n Buis, Berthe 112n Buland, Jeanne 35, 92, 83n, 95 bureaux de bienfaisance, poor law offices, 26 Cachan 7, 82n, 177, 179 Cachin, Marcel 85, 151 Cadras, Félix 148 Caffiaux 171 caisses de chômage 21–3, 26, 44, 65, 110 Calais 16, 24, 26, 62, 72n, 127, 134–5, 141, 173, 208n, 234–6, 238, 240 Calais riot, 5 January 1934 146–51, 158–9 Calas, Felix 136 Calvisson 166 Cambier, Charles 153–5 Cambrai 128, 163–4, 170–1, 173, 196, 198, 240 Cambrai Hunger March 160–1, 249n Camines-Wervian 127n Caniez 78n Capelle 78n Capron, Marcel 90n, 96, 131, 180, 239n Carapet, J. 201n Carcassone 222 Caresmil 183 Carmaux 9 Carrère, André 52 Carrières-sur-Seine 93n, 224, 225 Carvel 63 Cassel 164

Index Cateau, Le 164, 197n, 198 Catelas, Jean 218 Caudry 40, 135, 149, 196–7, 199n, 249n Cazeux 52 Celor, Pierre 75 Centre de Répartition de La Rochelle, Distribution Centre of La Rochelle, 209 Centre du Liaison des Chômeurs de France, Liaison Centre of the Unemployed of France, 209 Cerfontaine 168–70 Cette (Hérault), the official name changed to Sète in the late 1920s 15, 57, 244n Chabanié, Daniel 195 Chabila, Djilali 78n, 95 Chaligny 55–6, 166 Chambon, Le 101, 102 Chambon, Marius 112n Chambon-Feugerolles 31, 101n, 102, 103n, 157n Chambre des Députés, Chamber of Deputies 15, 16, 37, 44n, 74, 78n, 84, 86, 88, 93, 94n, 140–1, 182, 193, 200, 208, 250 Champagnac 9 Champigny 61n, 84n, 183 Champion 78n Chantiers de la Jeunesse, Youth Worksites, 215 Charenton 60n, 126n, 139 Charleville 10, hunger march 184–5 Chateau 183 Châteaurenard 204n Chatenay 224 Chatou 183 Chautemps, Camille 93n, 117, 127–30, 193 Chauvin 78n Chavigny 165 Chaville 183 Chelles 183 Cher, Edmond 134 Cherbourg 65 Chevalier 77, 78n, 126n, 181 Chipaux, André 207 Chochois, Albert 125 Choisy-le-Roi 7, 81n, 82n, 139n, 248n chômage partiel, underemployment, 20, 26

287

Chômeur Occitan, Le 199–203 Chopin 157, 249n Chretein 171 Citroën 7, 67, 87n, 96, 133, 183 Claess, Jean 195n Clamamus, Jean-Marie 75, 126n class against class policy (or Third Period) 15, 71, 94, 115 Clément (Eugèn Fried) 156n, 218, 245 Clermond-Ferrand 9, 99n Clermont 138, 221 Clichy-sous-Bois 7, 28n, 43, 52, 60n, 61n, 85n, 183, 206, 221, 226n Clignancourt 226 Coal 8, 9 Collignon 78n Collineau 78n Colly, Fernand 59 Colombes 7, 82n, 139, 221, 222 Comintern 15, 71–3, 75, 79–80, 83, 87, 93n, 96n, 121, 156n, 176, 178n, 179n, 201n, 223, 237, 241, 243, 245 Comité Central des Chômeurs (CCdC), Central Committee of the Unemployed Marseilles/Bouches-du-Rhône region 205 Paris region 58–61, 69, 74–7 Saint-Etienne region 64–5, 101–3, 156–8, 233 Toulouse region 200–3 Comité de Secours Diocésain, Committee of Help of the Diocese 28 Comité Intercommunal et Régional des Chômeurs du Bassin de la Sambre 161, 168 Comité National du Rassemblement 194 Comité Populaire des Chômeurs 220–29 Comité Régional des Chômeurs (Nord) 158, 163–5, 195–9, 236, 241, 242n Comités de Réception 129 Comités de Soutien (CdS) 125, 126n, 181–2 Comités des Chômeurs Français 29, 235 Comités Populaires Féminins (CPF) Women’s Popular Committees, 222 Commentry 9 Commission Générale des Études 217 commissions paritaires 23, 89n, 150, 153–4, 197, 202, 208, 233

288

Prisoners of Want

Compas, Jean 185n Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT),General Confederation of Labour 12, 15, 28, 30n, 38, 55n, 56n, 57–8, 63–5, 69n, 76n, 84–5, 90n, 96, 104, 108, 112–13, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 135, 137n, 138, 146n, 151, 155, 161–2, 165–7, 175n, 176n, 185, 194, 196, 206–7, 209–11, 215n, 221, 234–6 Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (CGTU),General Confederation of United Labour 15, 30n, 48, 57–69, 71–2, 74–80, 82, 84, 87–8, 90–1, 94–5, 99–101, 103–6, 108, 112, 119–21, 126, 129, 135, 138, 140, 142n, 146n, 158, 160, 162, 163, 166–7, 170–1, 175, 177, 180, 183–4, 187–8, 194n, 232–5, 237, 239, 241–2, 252, 264 Conflans 183 Copin, Pierre 135 Coquelles 148 Corbeil 93 Corbie 188 Corneilles-en-Parisis 93n Corrèze 221–2 Côte d’Or 183 Coulogne 148, 151 Courbevoie 7, 52n, 60, 87, 220, 223 Courneuve, La 7, 52n, 87n, 220 Courrel (mayor of Champigny) 84n Coussières 136 Couturier, J. 113 Creil 138 Crespin 135 Creuse 6 Croix de Feu 29 Cuincy 171n Curou, E-J. 201n Cysoing 27, 164, 172, 195 Dabit, Eugène 39 Daladier, Edouard 72, 194, 204 Dalimier, Albert 30 Darnétal 8 Dartiguelongue 195n de Gaulle, General Charles 213, 217–18

de Laroque 207, 209 de Lattre de Tassigny, General 215 de Routours, (deputy-mayor) 171n De Smet, Adolphe 195n De Wendel 221 Dealcourt, Charles 155n Decazeville 9, 11n Dechaume 78n Dechy 161 Decize 9 Deglisse, Maurice 206 Delage factory 87 Delansorme (mayor of Achicourt) 129 Delfossé 209 Delion 78n Deloffre 163 Delorme, Claudius 101n, 102, 103n, 157, 158 Demaretz 153, 155 Demusois 209 Denain 8, 95n, 110, 128, 132, 134–6, 141–2, 159–60, 163–4, 171, 248n, 249n Denimal, Eugène 134–5 Desbals 200 Desbois, François 159 Deschamps (mayor) 169, 249n Desrumeaux, Martha 108, 128, 130, 138–41, 148, 159, 163–4, 173, 241n, 242 Detez de la Drève, Paul 195n, 199 Detoef 221 Deudon, Dr 161–2, 165, 168 Devalay, Jean 195n Deville 8, 184, 247 Dewez, Suplice 123, 140, 151n, 160, 249–50 Didier, Henri 76n, 78 Dieppe 55 Dimitrov, Georgi 176, 223 Dinofalis 101n Doeblé, Victor 63 Dölker, Frédérick 56–7 Dolmason, Albert 157, 249n Domière (mayor of Aniche) 164 Doolaghe 198 Dordogne 222, 246n Doriot, Jacques 73, 75, 80n, 81, 85–6, 94, 139–41, 143, 176n, 177–81, 184, 221, 224–5, 247, 252

Index Douai 8n, 25n, 109, 110n, 128, 137, 141, 161, 163–4, 173, 198, 238n, 240, 242 Doubois 171 Doullens 188 Doumerge, Gaston 145, 158 Drancy 32, 45n, 85n, 89n, 92, 94n, 126, 139n, 183, 206, 210n Dréan 201n Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre 34 Dubos, A. 201n Duchanel, Eugène (mayor of Drancy) 85n Ducheme 126n Duclos, Jacques 85, 218, 228–9, 243, 247, 248n Ducrocq, Florian 187 Duez, Irénée 161, 165, 168, 241n Dufrenoy, Lucien 155n Dunkirk 26, 55n, 99n, 110, 124n, 127, 134, 136, 140, 143, 164, 199n, 249n Dupuis 125n, 129, 131 Dupuy, Jean 194n Durgues, Louis 195n Duscien, Auguste 155n Dussart 195n Dusseldorf international conference on unemployment 72 Duvivier, Julien 33, 42, 48 Ecouen 138n, 139 Elbeuf 8, 32n, 111n, 167n, 186–7 Elizondo 195 Émile Perard 125n, 148 Epailly, Charles 200 Ermont 33 Escarbotin 187–8 Escarpelle 165 Escaupont 159 Escaut 8, 142n Espérou (Hérault) 222 Espigulé, Irenée 194n Espoir de Vivre, L’ 34 Estivalet 185n Etampes 128, 139n Etaples 167–8, 240 Etoile Nord-Africaine 66 Evrard, Roaul 209 Fabry 101n

289

Fajon 166 Faubourgs de Paris, Les (1933) Faure, Paul 202, 208 Faure, Pétrus 31, 102, 208 Fauxbras, César 32, 34, 45, 233n Fay, Lucien 185 Fédération des Locataires 207 Feignies 161–2 femme au foyer familiale, ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ 34, 222 Ferrat, André 206 Ferrière-la-Grande 168, 169n Ferrières 162 Fichelle, Jules 169 Fiévet, Marcel 78n Figuères, Léo 194n, 217–19 Firminy 9, 65, 101n, 102, 157n Fives 109n, 127n, 136–7, 165, 196, 236 Flamant, Victor 187–9 Flandin, Pierre-Etienne 27 Flers-en-Escrebieux 165 Flins-lès-Raches 161 Flixecourt 188 fonds de chômage, unemployment funds 21, 64 Fontaine-au-Pire 197n, 198 Forbach 8 Foucauld 209 Fourmies 8, 135, 162, 164, 199, 242n Foyers des Chômeurs, unemployed hostels 29 Frachon, Benoît 78n, 86, 219 François, Alexis 152–5, 236, 238 François, Louis 55 Francon 78n, 97, 208 Francs Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) 134 Franson 78n, 92, 96 Fresnes 142n, 159, 248n Fréthun 148 Fritsch, Edmond 15, 52, 88–90, 92, 96, 106, 140, 238 Friville-Escarbotin 187, 189, 249 Fromage, René, pseud. Fronsac 135 Frot, Léon 140 Fuscien 152 Fuzellier, Jules 184–5, 252n Gaillard 101n, 103n Galant, Louis 138

290

Prisoners of Want

Gallit, Emile 185n Galodin 158 Gard 9, 40, 99n, 145, 166–7, 173, 246n, 249 Gardes mobiles (riot police) 16, 41, 104, 130, 132–3, 151, 155, 157, 161, 170–2, 179, 200, 246n Gargan 177 Garnier 104, 157 Garraty, John 4–5 Gauche Revolutionnaire, Revolutionary Left, 206n Gautier, Henri 63 Gélis, Louis 59 Gennevilliers 7, 52, 126n, 183, 221n, 222, 226n Génon, André 185 Génon, Lucien-André 185 Genovesi, Jules 178–9 Gentilly 7, 52, 126n, 183, 221n, 222, 226n Gérard, Georges (mayor of KremlinBicêtre) 85n Ghent system 2–3, 22, Gilbert 52 Gilles (1939) 34 Gillot 183 Gimel 101n Gitton, Marcel 87, 151 Glageon 135 Gobet 101n Goffroy, Arthur 125n Golliot (mayor) 168 Gonesse 89n Goze, François 194n Graissesac 9 Grand-Croix 157n Grande Menterie: Histoire d’un Chômeur (1935) 33 Grande-Couronne 8 Grandel, Jean (mayor of Gennevilliers) 183 Graulhet (Tarn) 65 Graux, René 155n Grilly, Philéas 189 Grisoni, André (mayor of Courbevoie) 87n Groupement des Chômeurs de Calais 102, 125, 146–51 Groupes d’Action Révolutionnaires (GARs), Revolutionary Action Groups, 205–6 Guerin, Daniel 176n

Guerin, Maurice 209 Guines 148, 151 Guiraud, Gaston 127 Guironnet, Maurice 161 Halluin 8, 72n, 100, 109–10, 127n, 132, 134, 136–7, 164, 246n, 248 Haubourdin 168, 171n Haute-Vienne 6n Hautmont 161–2, 168–70 HBM, Habitations à Bon Marché 42, 221 Hellemmes 109, 127n Hénaff, Eugène 90n, 94, 140, 209 Henrot 185 Henry 73 Hérin 142n, 159n, 248n Herriot, Edouard 24, 27–8 Hog, Paul 78n, 94, 95 Hollande, Fernand 154 Hornaing 171 Hotz, Jean 76n, 78n Houilles 60n, 93n, 224–5 Houplines 109, 127n, 136n, 159, 173, 198 Houron 78n Humbert, Lucien 55–7 Immigrant workers 35–8 Inchy 26n, 198 Indre-et-Loire 182–3 Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, INSEE, National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies 3 International Labour Organization 3 Internationale 1 Isère 222 Issy-les-Moulineaux 7, 52n, 194n, 264, 274 Ivry 7, 58n, 60–1, 80, 82n, 88, 93, 139, 175, 177, 180, 183, 206, 210n, 221–2, 224–6, 246 Iwuy 160, 168, 170–1, 173n, 248n Jacquemain 56 Jacquin, Henri 125 Jahoda thesis 13 Jaillet 209 Javel 7, 226 Jebs 113n Jenot, Camille 161–2

Index Jeumont 162, 169n, 171 Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC), Catholic Worker Youth 28–9, 236 Jeunesses Socialistes Révolutionnaires, Young Socialist Revolutionaries, 206n Joigny 185, 252 Jonet, André 185n Jouhaux, Léon 57n, 84, 112 Journal d’un Intellectuel en Chômage (1937) 45 Jouvance, Emmanuel 65, 116–18 Jouy 183 Juvisy 96, 177 Kremlin-Bicêtre 7, 52, 85n, 89–90 La Bédoule 204n La Bellevilloise 74–5, 126 La Ciotat 204 La Courneuve 7, 87n, 220 La Fouine 194n La Grand’Combe (Gard) 9, 166 La Madeleine 127n, 168, 169 La Nièvre 188 La Nouvelle Famille, The New Family 131 La Ricamarie 66, 101–3, 137, 157n Labonne, Victor 51–2, 57 Lacroix 236 Laferme 195n Lagarde 209 Lagrange, Léo 161–2 Lahaye, Jean 125, 134–5, 147–9 Lahaye, Kléber 26n, 109, 236, 239 Lallaing 161 Lambersant 165 Lamorlaye 138 Landrecies 171 Langumier 183 Laniece, Marius 63n Lanquetin, Gaston 111n Laplace, Roger 195n Lareppe, Pierre 184, 250 Laroque, Pierre 216 Lartizien 153–4 Lassallette 195n Latarget, Raymond 209 Laurent, Marc 206

291

Laval, Pierre 16, 26, 72, 84, 106, 178, 193–4, 211, 220, 224 Law for the Protection of National Workforce 37 Lazard, Max 31 Le Bellec, Joseph 186 Le Boucau 9, 155, 156n, 182n, 195n, 207, 209 Le Chambon 101–2 Le Goff 68 Le Havre 6 Le Pommereuil 197 Le Provins 128 Le Puy 27, 40, 48, 99n Le Quesnoy 163, 170–1 Le Winger 194n Lebrun 59, 76n, 78n Lecompte, Fernand 135, 159 Lefebvre, Eugène 125n, 134 Lefebvre, Maurice 252 Lefevre, René 127 Lehideux, François 214–15, 221, 224 Leloir, Paul 195n, 197–8, 249n Lemaire 78n Lénart, the Bishop of Lille 28 Lenglet, Henri 138, 188 Lenglet, Marcel 155 Lens 8n, 125, 127, 129, 133, 135–6 Lepetit, J. 111n Lepreux, René Letang 101n Levallois 7, 52n, 60n, 71, 126n, 182–3 Levasseur 76n, 78n Levis 90 Levrézy 184, 198 Lewarde 161 Liautey 78n Lichon, Claude 58, 76n, 78n Liebneckt 195n Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR), Revolutionary Communist League 12 Ligue de la Mère au Foyer, League of the Mother in the Home 34 Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, League of the Rights of Man 38 Lille 8, 24 14n, 24, 28–9, 62, 99, 108–10, 149, 154, 162–5, 167–71, 177, 181, 196, 207, 241–2, 248, 249n

292

Prisoners of Want

Lille to Paris hunger march 16, 78n, 91, 97, 116, 123–43, 173–4, 259 Limoges 10, 16, 22n, 24, 64–5, 99–100, 113, 142, 203, 208–9, 221, 232, 247n Livemont 163 Livry-Gargan 183 Loire 9, 31, 40, 100–4, 158, 99–100, 113, 142, 203, 208–9, 221, 232, 247n Lompret 173 Longueau 103, 143, 150–2, 202 Longwy 8, 22, 25 Loos 182, 185 Loret 78n Loriot, Maurice 252 Lorraine 6, 8, 11n, 78, 235 Lot 24n, 222 Lourches 142n, 163 Louviers 8, 111 Louvroil 109, 162, 168–70 Lucien 195n Lyons 1, 6–7, 9, 16, 24–5, 28–9, 91n, 99–100, 107, 111, 114–16, 122, 142n, 173–4, 206, 208, 241 Madeleine-lez-Lille 168 Magnier 130 Mahistre 64 Maing 159n, 248n Maisons-Laffite 139 Malakoff 52, 60n, 61n, 84, 95n, 96n, 133n, 139n, 183, 226n Malbos 166 Malo, Yves 78n, 95 Malthusian model 19 Manuilsky, Dmitri 71n, 121, 179n, 243 Marchetti, Marcel 134 Marck 148, 150–1 Marienthal 12, 47 Marignane 204n Marly 159, 164, 248n Maromme 111, 186 Marpent 162 Marquet plan 27, 72, 80, 145, 154–5, 163, 177 Marquet, Adrien 72, 154, 224, 227 Marquette 171n Marrane, Georges 180, 208

Marseilles 6, 8–9, 24, 27, 29, 43, 66–7, 99n, 111, 142n, 195, 204–5, 209, 211–2, 222 Martel, Henri 198, 249n Martinod, André 125n, 134–5, 146–50, 236, 238, 240 Marty, André 80n, 85, 183, 248 Masselot 172 Maton, Alfred 135, 199 Mauberge 8, 29, 109, 128, 161–5, 168–70, 208, 241n Mayeur, Marcel 159 Meaux 128 Mendès France, Pierre 194 Mention, Robert 78 Mercier, Pierre 77–8, 83, 92, 95–7, 123n, 126, 139–40, 160, 181 Mériaux, Eloi 159, 162–3, 190, 236–8 Méru 128, 156 Mesol 76n, 78 Mestdagt, Achille 173 Metivier 129 Metz 63–4, 66, 68 Meudon 82n, 221, 226 Meurant, René 138, 155 Meuse valley 185n Michelin 9, 221 Midol, Lucien 180 Mitry-Mory 183 Monceaux, Edgard 74–6, 78n, 83n Moncornet 185 Monjauvis, Lucien 75, 78, 92, 96, 151n, 153n, 239 Monmousseau, Gaston 60 Montataire 138 Montbéliard 55 Montceau-les-Mines 9 Montchanin (Creusot) 9 Montereau 99n Montesson 93n Montfermeil 183 Monthermé 184 Montigny-en-Gohelle 136–7, 149, 218 Montluçon 143, 167 Montreuil 60n, 61n, 87n, 139, 177, 179, 183, 210n, 220–1, 224–7, 239n Montrouge 52, 60n, 139n, 224–6 Mora, Albert 195n, 207–9 Morel, Eugène 146, 148, 151

Index Morel, Jean 195n, 198 Moselle 8 Mossé, Robert 30–1 Moussac (Corrèze) 221 Mynck 160 Nancy 8, 29, 31, 44, 55, 142n, 165–6 Nanterre 52n, 60, 206–7, 221 Nantes 6–7, 9, 24, 27, 62, 65, 68, 123n, 142n, 233n, 238n Narbonne 222 National Unemployment Fund 22, 26, 28, 31, 102n, 175, 182, 186, 188, 201–4, 208–9, 243 Neufmanil 185 Neuf-Mesnil 161, 168, 247, 248n Neuilly 60n, 221 Neuves-Maisons 15, 48, 55–6, 165–6, 232n, 234 Nice 24 Nieppe 165 Nilès, Maurice 58, 78n Nilles 63 Nîmes 166–7, 200, 239n Nivelle 159 Nogent 138 Noisy-le-Sec 60, 90n, 183, 223, 227 Nord 2, 6–8, 14, 16, 23–4, 39, 51, 62, 72n, 91n, 99–101, 104–5, 107–10, 122–42, 145, 156, 158–65, 167–73, 180–1, 183, 194–9, 209, 211–12, 217–18, 235, 240, 246–50, 252n, 262 Nord Regional Hunger March to Lille 154n, 163–5, 167–8, 240–1, 249n Nouzonville 124, 184–5 Offroy, Henri 55 Oissel 186 On Chantait Rouge (1977) 2 Ondres 156 Onnaing 110, 136n, 248n Onof, Michel 126, 135, 139–40 Orchies 110, 163 Orléans 142n, 225 Ott, Emile 164 Oyonnax (Jura) 10, 99n, 105–7, 156n, 178, 235, 250

293

P’tit Quinquin, Le 140 Panhard factory 87 Pantin 7, 52, 81, 139 Parent, André 129 Paris 6–7, 15, 24, Parisian region 21, 23, 26, 36n, 43, 47, 49, 51–4, 74–97, 123n, 124–8, 139–41, 173, 177–84, 190–1, 219–229, 246, 248, 250 Parmentier 148 Parti d’Unité Prolétarienne (PUP), Party of Proletarian Unity 81, 84–5, 102, 109, 211, 236 Parti Populaire Français (PPF), French Popular Party 155n, 177n, 247 Pas-de-Calais 6–8, 100, 107, 108n, 122, 124, 125, 130–2, 134, 136, 137n, 145, 167, 217–8, 246, 248 Patenôtre, Raymond 205 Pavillons-sous-Bois 126n Pavilly 186 Pecq 183 Pelat, Georges 154n, 249n Péna, Jean 78, 82n, 95 Perard, Emile 215n, 134, 147, 148, Pérenchies 173 Perez, Didier 205 Perol 64 Perpignan 194, 212, 235 Perrier 167 Perrot 77 Perse, Maurice 155–6 Pétain, Marshal 213–15, 222–4, 226 Petiet, Baron 221 Petit, Georges 125 Petite-Fôret 134, 136, 142n, 159, 164, 248 Petit-Quevilly 8, 11 Peuple, Le 38, 65 Peyrat, Marcel 78n, 90n, 181, 190, 203, 208 Phillipi 209 Picavet 78n Pierlot, Clément (mayor of Deville) 184 Pierrefitte 94, 126n, 139, 239n Pius XI 28 Pivert, Marcel 206n Place 129, 136 Plande-Cuques 204n Planta 112n Poincaré, Raymond 23, 62, 72, 165

294

Prisoners of Want

Poirieux 101n Poissy 60n, 93n Pollazzon 201 Pont-à-Marcq 164 Pont-à-Meppe 136n Pontault-Combault 183 Pont-de-la-Deule 72n, 165 Pontet 78n Pontey 78n Pont-l’Abbé 186 Pontoise 93, 177, 179 Pont-St-Vincent 55, 57, 166 Porez 171 Pottier, Léon 199 Poullie 198 Pourquet, Maurice 147 Pozières 129 Prémesques 173 Pré-St-Gervais 54 Primard 90 Primes d’embauchage 27 pro-natalism 34 Protests of 1997–98 1, 10–12 Puech, André 160 Puteaux 7, 22n, 52, 60, 82, 87n, 177, 179

Reyne 112n Rhône 182 Rhône-Loire 6 Rieux 160 Rigault, Marcel (mayor of Vitry) 88, 90n Ringot, Henri 125n Ringuier 152–3 Ris-Orangis 47 Rive-de-Gier 9, 101, 157n, 242n Roanne 101, 103 Robert, Adolphe 125, 135 Roeulx 142n, 163 Roissy-en-Brie 183 Romains, Jules 33–4 Romainville 60n, 96n, 183, 220–1 Roncq 127n, 248n Roubaix 8, 24, 29, 38n, 55n, 72n, 86, 109n, 110, 132, 163, 164, 235, 236n Rouen 8, 16, 24 Roufflanges 88 Rougemont, Denis de 45 Rousies 168–9 Roussel 198, 200n Royon 101n, 103n Rueff, Charles 30

Que Faire 206n Quesnel, Henri 55, 57 Quiévrechain 135 Quiévy 160, 165, 198 Quimper 185–6

Saint-Amand 163 Saint-Avold 8 Saint-Chamond 101–3, 157n Saint-Claude (Jura) 26, 99n, 182, 235 Saint-Denis 7, 39, 47, 52, 60n, 61n, 74n, 79–81, 85n, 86–7, 93–4, 96, 108, 113, 121, 139–42, 177–9, 183–4, 206, 210n, 223, 244, 247 Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer 204n Saint-Etienne 6, 7, 9, 16, 24, 26n, 41n, 55, 62–4, 66, 69, 99–105, 137n, 142n, 147, 156–8, 208, 232–3, 235–6, 238n, 240–2, 244, 249, 261 Saint-Etienne-du-Rocheurs 186 Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray 8 Saint-Germain 84 Saint-Gilles 166 Saint-Hilaire 160 Saint-Just-en-Chaussée 137–8 Saint-Laurent d’Aigouzé 166 Saint-Maur 60n, 65, 87, 132n Saint-Nazaire 6–7, 9, 16, 48, 57, 65, 99n, 116–23, 234–5

Raches 161 Raismes 110, 136–7, 159n, 162, 164 Ramette, Arthur 129, 164, 249 Ramier 101, 157–8, 249 Rancy 179 Raynaud, Henri 58n, 60, 75, 94 Reims 24, 235, 245n Remousin, Louis 63n Renaud 166 Renaud, Lucien 161–2, 171 Renault 7, 30, 67, 73, 87n, 215, 221, 224 Renault Boulogne-Billancourt 7, 58n, 74n, 84, 85n Reuil 60n, 183, 222 Reuil-Maison 224 Revin 184–5 Révolution Proletarienne 89, 206

Index Saint-Ouen 7, 60n, 75, 121n, 124, 177, 179, 220–1 Saint-Pierre-des-Corps 62 Saint-Pol-sur-Mer 148, 244n Saint-Quentin 27, 95n, 96, 128, 138, 141, 151–5, 167–8, 172–3, 180, 234 Saint-Sambre 159n Saint-Saulve 159, 248n Saint-Vaast 160 Salais, Robert 3–4, 19 Salengro, Roger 109, 129, 164 Salon 204n Sambre 8, 161–2, 164, 168 Sangatte 148 Sannois 93n Sanvic 187 Sartouville 93n Saultain 159n Sautières, Lucien 135 Sauvy, Alfred 19 Savoie 25n, 222 Scherpereel, Alidor 134 Seclin 110, 127, 136, 169 Secours Populaire de France 205 Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) 12, 38, 57, 64, 69, 75, 84–5, 90n, 96, 102, 108–9, 117, 119–21, 125, 127, 129, 135, 148, 150, 152, 154, 155n, 160–2, 164, 166–7, 175–6, 180, 183–4, 185n, 187, 193, 200, 202, 206, 210, 246, 248n, 252 Seine-Inférieure 6, 55n, 73n, 99, 100, 110–11, 138, 167n, 182, 184, 186, 189, 246, 252 Sellier, Louis 85, 247 Sémard, Pierre 73, 100 Semay valley 185 Septèmes 204n Serengulian, Haik 67 Serret, Victor 150 Sevran 139, 183 Sèvres 142, 221 Sevrez, Émile 135 Sevrez, Lucien 160, 249 Simon 63, 78n Sin-le-Noble 100, 129, 159, 161, 165, 195n Solesmes 198 Solidarité Française 29, 153n

295

Somain 110, 128, 132, 135, 161, 164, 248n Somme 17, 25n, 38n, 45n, 124, 125n, 129, 131, 133, 137, 184, 187–9, 235, 246, 249 Sotteville 8, 95n, 111, 186–7, 194–5 Soulié, Louis (mayor of Saint-Etienne) 63, 249 Sous-le-Bois 162, 168 Souvarine, Boris 53 Soyez, Paul 111n Sparta 113n Staquet, Gaston 168 Stations du Metropolitain des Sans-Travail, Underground Stations of the Unemployed 29 Steeg 72 Stillin 87 Strasbourg 43, 142 Suarnet, André 33 Suckerdorff 129 Sucy-en-Brie 126n Suicide 44–5, 112n Suresnes 7, 52n, 60, 85n, 87n, 139n, 221 Taillard, Pierre 185 Taittinger, Pierre 200 Taquet 160, 168 Tarbes 63, 195n Tardieu, André 84, 140 Tarnos 156, 242n Tartakowsky, Danielle 97, 146 Templemars 168–9, 197 Templeneuve 171 Terrenoire 101n, 102, 157n Thaurin 78n Thiant 159 Thibaud, Marcel 63–4, 66, 101, 103–4, 157–8, 232n, 236, 238n, 240, 244, 249 Thionville 8 Third Period 13, 17, 71, 84, 96, 175n, 176, 201, 211, 242, 244 Thorez, Maurice 58n, 73, 108, 143, 177n, 179n, 183, 197–8, 202, 218, 220, 228–9, 243, 247n, 252 Thouron 76–8, 92n Thurotte 153 Thurrotte, Pierre 155 Tillon, Charles 2

296

Prisoners of Want

Timbaud, Jean-Pierre 94 Tommasi, Joseph 52, 57 Toulon 73n, 142 Toulouse 6, 9, 14, 20, 194–5, 199–203, 207–8 Tourcoing 8, 29, 99, 110, 127n, 132, 164 Tours 55, 62, 99n, 142n Congress of 69, 71n Transon 209 Tréad, Maurice 218 Treissedre 166–7 Tremblay-la-Gonesse 183 Trihoux 171 Trith-Saint-Leger 159 Trochaud 209 Tronc, Henri 76n, 78n Trouville 24 Troyes 31n, 72n, 142n, 182 Unemployment, late discovery of 5 Union Féminine Civique et Sociale, Feminine Social and Civic Union 34 Urbe, René 76n, 78n Vadecart, Louis 51–2, 57 Valat, Fernand 166, 249–50 Valence 10, 16, 99–100, 111–13 Valenciennes 8, 38n, 110, 128–9, 134–5, 137, 141–2, 147, 158–60, 162–4, 170, 173, 190, 214n, 236–8, 240–1, 249 Valière 185 Vallée du Cailly 186 Vantielcke 148 Vanves 60n, 133n, 223 Vaubaillon, Louis 111n Velizy 183

Venet 88 Vénissieux 9, 114n Verdier, Cardinal, the Archbishop of Paris 28 Vergnolle 167 Verité, La 127, 177n Verlinghem 173 Verre 101n Versailles 8, 93, 124, 128, 132, 133n, 226 Viande à Brûler: Journal d’un Chômeur (1935) 32, 34, 45, 233n Viesly 197–8n Vieux-Condé 248 Villars 101n Villejuif 7, 52n, 60n, 80, 127n, 139n, 220, 227 Villematiers 222 Villeparisis 183 Villepinte 89, 183 Villers-Bretonneux 188 Vilvandré, Jean 185 Vimeu 187–9, 249 Vireux-Wallerand 184 Vitry 7, 60n, 80, 82, 88–9, 131, 139n, 190n, 208n, 221, 226 Walle 150 Wallers 248n Waziers 110, 136–7, 161, 198, 248 Weil, Simone 48, 89–90 Wiguelners 162 Women 33–5 Xavier Brasseur 125n, 134, 147–51, 240 Zachs, Joseph 78n, 92–7, 126n