The industrial unrest of November–December 1947 constitutes a major signpost in post-World War Two French society and politics, and, indeed, it has served to indicate the hardening of the then-emerging Cold War divide in and beyond France. Strongest in centers of Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) power, this strike wave symbolized the definitive end of the postliberation tripartite governmental alliance among centrist Catholics, social democrats, and communists. The strikers' oftentimes militant activism led hostile observers to detect insurrectionary aims on the part of blue-collar workers, the CGT, the PCF, and the Kremlin. Because of the obvious centrality of the “red strikes” in late 1947, the paucity of serious analyses is all the more remarkable.