introduction

France has never had a great liberal party in the way that Canada or Great Britain have. Furthermore the word ‘liberal’ in France does not mean the same as it does in English. In France, its principal meaning is opposition to state intervention in economic or social life. For the French, Thatcherism is a kind of liberalism. In identifying liberalism in France, therefore, we shall not be looking for a great party with a long tradition but we shall be seeking to identify political forces belonging to Gordon Smith's ‘liberal-conservative’ classification rather than to a ‘liberal-radical’ one.

The chapter chooses to identify the UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Franchise), a federation of parties which were known as the Giscardiens when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was president, as the political force that is best described as liberal. There are two reasons for this. One is that the Giscardiens have always used the word liberal in their appeal to the electorate and in their attempt to distinguish themselves from their coalition partners, the Gaullist RPR. The second is that Giscard d'Estaing as a political leader has been an authentic liberal in the English as well as the French sense of the word. In his speeches and writings before and during his presidency he has argued for tolerance, civil liberties, social reform, a less authoritarian and centralist style of government, and more recently for moins d'état – rolling back the state.

Choosing the Giscardiens as the French liberal party is nevertheless risky. First of all, they are not a party but a collection of three parties (plus several other smaller fragments).