The right now assailed Blum, who headed the
Popular Front government, not only for serving
as a cover for the communists, but also as an alien,
as a Jew. In few countries outside Nazi Germany
was anti-Semitism as crude and virulent as in
some sections of French society. Blum was sensi-
tive to these attacks; he followed in the socialist
traditions of pacifism and humane consideration
for the poor. He could never quite rise above the
viciousness of the onslaught on him and too self-
consciously sought to prove himself a patriot and
conciliator. In his Cabinet when facing opposition
he was prone to indecision and weakness, as
became very clear when the Popular Front gov-
ernment in Madrid appealed to France for help at
the outset of the Spanish Civil War. There was
every reason why the French Popular Front gov-
ernment should help republican Spain with arms,
not only on ideological grounds but also because
a fascist victory threatened to encircle France.
This, too, was Blum’s view. But the outcry of the
right and the weakness of his Radical and Socialist
ministerial colleagues changed Blum’s mind and
he reversed his earlier decision to respond to
Madrid’s appeal.
In domestic affairs, Blum’s government scored
one spectacular success. At the time that he took
office, France was hit by a huge wave of strikes and
factory sit-ins. Discontent with low wages and
poor working conditions in industry and on the
land had finally led to this confrontation which
served notice to the politicians that as in other
Western countries – except, of course, in fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany – organised labour
demanded basic rights and higher wages. The
employers and propertied were thoroughly fright-
ened. Blum brought the employers and the trade
unionists – the Confédération Générale du Travail
- together at his official residence, the Hôtel
Matignon on Sunday, 7 June. After a night’s dis-
cussion there emerged a package: a substantial
wage increase, two weeks’ paid holiday, a forty-
hour week and, most important of all, the employ-
ers’ acceptance of the trade unions’ bargaining
rights; in return the unions would persuade the
workers to end their sit-ins and the strikes.
Believing themselves on the verge of social revolu-
tion, parliament rushed this constructive legisla-
tion through in a few days – an uncharacteristic
show of good sense and urgency. Industrial peace
was restored for a time. But the impact of the Blum
government on the health of the economy was
small, despite the belated devaluation of the franc
in October 1936. Blum was determined to work
pacifically, by seeking the cooperation of big busi-
ness and high finance, which loathed all his gov-
ernment stood for. There was to be no enforced
socialism. After a year, the stagnating economy and
price rises had wiped out much of the advantage
the workers had gained by wage rises.
Soon after coming to office, Blum banned the
‘leagues’. This proved as ineffectual as in Germany
in 1932. The leagues assumed a new ‘legitimate’
political garb – but the street brawling continued
as before. A particularly violent clash between the
communists and the right in March 1937 ended
in bloodshed; it horrified Blum and damaged the
reputation of the Popular Front. Blum was ready
to resign immediately but, in the end, carried on.
He resigned three months later, in June 1937,
disillusioned and frustrated in his domestic and
foreign policies, when a hostile Senate, dominated
by the Radicals, refused to give him the powers
he had asked for so that his government could
deal with the financial crisis. For a further year a
hollowed-out Popular Front continued. The dis-
unity of the left, its weakness, the bitterness of
class war, which even took the form of making it
fashionable on the right to mouth ‘better Hitler
than Blum’, allowed government to fall into the
hands of a coalition of the disunited Radicals
and the right. Édouard Daladier in April 1938
emerged as another supposedly ‘strong’ man
whose actual performance belied his reputation.
His finance minister, Paul Reynaud, tried to
restore the economy by increased taxation and a
longer working week. The employers, recovered
from the early days of the Popular Front, were
able to redress the balance again in their favour
but at the expense of social bitterness. The reper-
cussions for world peace of France’s feebleness
were immense. It was a misfortune that all this
occurred when across France’s eastern frontier a
determined and ruthless dictator was taking full
advantage of the French political and social crisis.
Political division at the centre of government in
the years between the wars did not lie at the root
1
THE DEPRESSION, 1929–39 159
