Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Summary
On the rue de Varenne, at the entrance of the Hôtel Matignon, office of the prime minister, uniformed Gardes Mobiles snapped into salute at the arrival of Maurice Gamelin, the French army's chief of staff and inspector-general. It was 10 June 1936, four days since the Chamber of Deputies had invested Léon Blum's government by a 174-vote majority, confirming the electoral triumph of the Popular Front. Just two nights earlier, in these Matignon offices, Blum had concluded the tense negotiations for an economic and social settlement which ended the strikes and factory occupations that had crippled French industry since mid-May. This had been a nerve-stretching but exhilaratingly successful first three days for what Blum called his ‘exercise of power’. Resistance to the left and its reforming government seemed in disarray. ‘A large number of entrepreneurs’, Gamelin reflected, ‘had lost their heads and panicked …’. The conservative parties licked their wounds and opened their post-mortems on defeat. With business bosses as cowed as the political right, the only possibility for repressing the workers' carnival seemed to lie with the army. Perhaps the greatest unspoken question in France that turbulent May was whether the military would cohabit with the Socialists.
The doubts hung heavily as France's most distinguished serving officer strode through the Matignon courtyard to meet Blum. Gamelin noticed the calm prevailing inside the offices, sharply contrasting with the continuing tension outside, product of what the general later decried as ‘the criminal demagoguery of the “Popular Front”’.
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- The French and Spanish Popular FrontsComparative Perspectives, pp. 62 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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