Everything about Radical Party France totally explained
The
Radical Party (
Parti radical, Rad., also called
Parti radical valoisien after the scission of the
Radical Party of the Left in 1972) is a
liberal and
centrist French political party.
Founded in 1901 as
Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party (
Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste) is the oldest French political party among the active ones. Coming from the
Radical Republican left-wing tradition, the Radical Party always upheld the principles of
private property and
secularism. The Radicals were considered in the 1880s as a
far-left group, but with the emergence of the
Socialists in 1905, they shifted to the centre-left. Sinche then they shifted increasingly to the centre and finally to the centre-right. They are currently an associate party of the
Union for a Popular Movement.
History
Radicals before the Radical Party
After the collapse of
Napoleon's Empire (1815), a monarchic
Restoration took place. The
Republicans constituted the left-wing opposition. During the
July Monarchy (1830-1848), the word "Radical" was used to name the uncompromising part of the Republican left. It advocated
democratic reforms, notably universal suffrage, freedom of press, right of meeting, etc. Led by figures such as
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin or
Louis Blanc, it took a major part in the
1848 Revolution and the foundation of the
Second Republic. The first election by universal suffrage was won, however, by the conservatives, and
Napoléon III established the
Second Empire after the
1851 coup.
From opposition, Radicals criticized personal power and the attacks on freedoms. At the end of the 1860s, with the
Belleville Programme (supported by
Léon Gambetta), they advocated the election of civil servants and mayors, the proclamation of the so-called "great liberties", free public teaching, and the separation between Church and State.
After the collapse of the Second Empire following the 1870
Franco-Prussian War, the
Third Republic was proclaimed in September 1870. The
Orleanists and
Legitimists monarchists won the first
elections in February 1871, but eventually the Republicans won the
1876 elections, leading to the firm establishment of the Republic. Radicals formed the far-left opposition to the moderate Republican ("
Opportunist Republicans") governments.
Georges Clemenceau was the leader of the parliamentary group, who criticized colonial policy as a form of diversion from
"revenge" against Prussia, and, due to his ability, was a protagonist of the collapse of many governments.
In the 1890s,
Léon Bourgeois renewed the Radical doctrine, including social reforms such as the progressive
income tax and
social insurance schemes. After the
Dreyfus Affair, Radicals joined forces with other Republicans and some Socialists in
Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet (1899-1902). The
1901 Act on the right of association was voted, and the Radicals created their party in 1901 in order to defend governmental policy from the
Roman Catholic Church's influence and the conservative opposition.
The Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party was the first large political party established at a national level in France, which contrasted with previous parliamentary groups or local electoral committees. The idea of establishing a national party deeply modified the political scene. Several Radical figures had already been presidents of the Council (
Ferdinand Buisson,
Emile Combes,
Charles Floquet, etc.) and the Radicals already benefited from a strong implantation in the country. The party was composed of an heterogeneous alliance of electoral committees,
masonic lodges, sections of the
Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League) and of the
Ligue française de l'enseignement (French Teaching League, which was active in favor of public, secular education, an aim achieved first by the
Jules Ferry Laws and then by
Combes' cabinet at the turn of the century).
The Radical Republic and the Sacred Union (1901-1919)
At
1902 legislative election, the Radicals allied themselves with the Radical-Socialists and the Socialists in the
Bloc des gauches (Left-Wing Blocks) coalition and became the main political force.
Émile Combes took the head of the
Bloc des gauches cabinet and led a resolute anti-clerical policy culminating in the
1905 secularity law which, along with the
Jules Ferry laws on public education voted in the 1880s, formed the backbone of
laïcité, France's separation of Church and State. After the withdrawal of the Socialist ministers from the government following the
International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam in 1904, the coalition dissolved and the Radicals went alone into the
1906 legislative elections.
For the latter part of the
Third Republic (1870-1940), Radicals, generally representing anti-clerical peasant and bourgeois voters, were usually the largest party in parliament, but with their anti-clerical agenda accomplished, the party lost their driving force. Its leader before
World War I (1914-18),
Joseph Caillaux, was generally more noted for his advocacy of better relations with Germany than for his reformist agenda.
During World War I, the Radical Party was the keystone of the
Sacred Union and its historical leader, Georges Clemenceau, led the cabinet from 1917 to 1919. He appeared as the architect of the victory, but his relation with the party deteriorated and Radicals lost the
1919 legislative election
After World War I: from the Cartels des Gauches to the overthrow of the Republic
By the end of the
First World War the Radical Party, now led by
Édouard Herriot, were generally a moderate centre-left party, faced with the rise, on its left, of
SFIO and
PCF. With these political forces, Radicals shared anti-clericalism and the struggle for "social progress". But, unlike the other left parties, they defended the principle of private property.
In
1924, and again in
1932, Radicals formed electoral alliances with the Socialists, but then gradually drifted to the right, moving from Radical governments supported by the non-participating Socialists (called "
Cartels des gauches" or "Coalitions of the Left" - 1924-1926, 1932-1934) to coalitions with more conservative parties (1926-1928, 1934-1936). After the fall of the first Cartel a group of Radicals defected They formed the
Independent Radicals group, who opposed left-wing alliances and were close to the conservative
Democratic Alliance.
The second
Cartel des gauches fell on
7 February 1934, following
riots organized by the far-right leagues the night before. Radical
Camille Chautemps's government had been replaced by a government led by his popular party rival
Édouard Daladier in January, after accusations of corruption against Chautemps' government in the wake of the
Stavisky Affair and other similar scandals.
This pattern of initial alliance with a socialist party unwilling to join in active government, followed by disillusionment and alliance with the right seemed to be broken in
1936, when the
Popular Front electoral alliance with the Socialists and the Communists led to the accession of Socialist leader
Léon Blum as Prime Minister in a coalition government in which the Radical leaders
Camille Chautemps and
Édouard Daladier (representing respectively left and right of the Radical Party) took important roles. For the first time of its history, the Radical Party obtained less votes than the SFIO.
Over the tempestuous life of the coalition, however, the Radicals began to become concerned at the perceived radicalism of their coalition partners. Hence, they opposed themselves to Blum's intention to help the Republicans during the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39), forcing him to adopt a non-interventionist policy. Following the failure of Blum's second government in April
1938, Daladier formed a new government in coalition with conservative parties.
After the
29 September 1938 Munich Agreement, which handed over
Sudetenland to
Germany in exchange for what proved to be a temporary peace, Daladier was acclaimed upon his return to Paris as the man who had avoided the war. However, with the
invasion of Poland on
1 September 1939, two days later the French government led by Daladier made good on its guarantees to Poland, by declaring war alongside Britain. Following the
23 August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the
Soviet Union, Daladier engaged in an
anti-communist policy, prohibiting PCF's activities and the party's newspaper,
L'Humanité.
Furthermore, Daladier moved increasingly to the right, notably repealing the
40 hour work week which had been the Popular Front's most visible accomplishment. Daladier would eventually resign on March 1940, and take part in
Paul Reynaud's (
Democratic Republican Alliance, center-right) government as minister of National Defense and of War. After the defeat of the
Battle of France, the French army being overwhelmed by the Nazi
Blitzkrieg, the French government declared
Paris an "open city" on
10 June and flew to
Bordeaux. The same month, Daladier would escape to
Morocco in the
Massilia. Thus, he wasn't there during the controversial
10 July 1940 vote of the full powers to Marshall Pétain.
Charles de Gaulle and several historians (
Michel Winock, etc.) refused to recognize this vote, arguing that although it had superficially respected legality, it had taken place amid lies from
Pierre Laval, pressure on deputies, and the absence of the main political figures such as Daladier, despite the 1875 Constitutional amendments which prohibited any interference with the Republican nature of the regime (see
Vichy France).
The Fourth Republic (1946-1958)
After
World War II (1939-45), Radicals, like many of the other political parties, were discredited by their earlier support for granting emergency powers to Marshal
Philippe Pétain on
10 July 1940, which led to the establishment of the
Vichy regime (
Etat Français), although such senior Radical leaders as Edouard Herriot, then President of the Chamber of Deputies, had been ambivalent.
Daladier was tried in 1942 by the Vichy regime (see the
Riom Trial), which accused him, as well as other political leaders such as Socialist
Léon Blum and conservative
Paul Reynaud, of being morally and strategically responsible for the loss of the
Battle of France.
After the war, the Radical Party was reconstituted, and formed one of the important parties of the
Fourth Republic (1946-58), but never recovered the dominant pre-war position. Along with
Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, it formed an electoral entity, the
Rally of the Republican Lefts. It participated to the Third Force coalition with the SFIO, the christian-democratic
Popular Republican Movement and the liberal-conservative
National Centre of Independents and Peasants.
In the early years of the Fourth Republic the party returned to the moderate left under the leadership of
Pierre Mendès-France, a strong opponent of
French colonialism whose premiership from
1954 to
1955 saw France's withdrawal from
Indochina and the agreement for French withdrawal from
Tunisia. Mendès-France, a very popular figure who helped renew the Radical Party after its discredit, was indeed elected on the pledge to stop
Indochina War (1946-54).
Mendès-France hoped to make the Radicals the party of the mainstream centre-left in France, taking advantage of the difficulties of the SFIO. The more conservative elements in the party, led by
Edgar Faure, resisted these policies, leading to the fall of Mendès-France's government in 1955. Another split, this time over France's policy at the beginning of the
Algerian War (1954-62), led to his resignation as party leader and the party's move in a distinctly conservative direction.
The Fourth Republic was characterized by constant parliamentary instability because of divisions between major parties over the Algerian War, which was officially called a "public order operation" until 1990s. Mendès-France opposed the war and
colonialism, while the SFIO led by prime minister
Guy Mollet supported it. Because of the start of the
Cold War, all political parties, even the SFIO, opposed the
French Communist Party (PCF), which was very popular due to its role during the Resistance (it was known as the
parti des 75,000 fusillés, "party of the 75,000 executed people"). The PCF was also opposed to
French Algeria and supported its independence.
In the midst of this parliamentary instability and divisions of the political class,
Charles de Gaulle took advantage of the
May 13, 1958 crisis to return to power. On
13 May European colonists seized the governor general's building in
Alger, while
Opération Résurrection was launched by the right-wing
insurrectionary
Comité de Salut Public. De Gaulle, who had deserted the political arena during a decade by disgust over the parliamentary system and its chronic unstability (the
système des partis which he severely criticized), appeared on this day as the only man able to reconciliate the far-right and the European settlers, which were threatening Paris of a coup d'état, with the Republic. He was thus called to power and proclaimed the end of the Fourth Republic, according to him too weak because of its parliamentarism, and replaced it by the
Fifth Republic, a hybrid
presidential-parliamentary system tailored for himself.
The Radical Party supported de Gaulle at this crucial moment, leading Pierre Mendès-France to quit the party. Opposed to the proposed constitution, Mendès-France campaigned for the "no" on the
28 September 1958 referendum. However, the
new Constitution was finally adopted and proclaimed on
4 October 1958.
The Fifth Republic (1958)
Popular figure Pierre Mendès-France (or PMF as he was familiarly called) thus quit the Radical Party, which had crossed the threshold to the centre-right, as early moderate Republicans did at the beginning of the Third Republic, when the Radical Party, appearing to their left, pushed them over the border between the left-wing and the right-wing, a process dubbed
sinistrisme.
Mendès-France then founded the
Centre d'Action Démocratique (CAD), which would later join the
Autonomous Socialist Party (PSA, which had split from the
SFIO), which in turn would fuse into the
Unified Socialist Party (PSU) on
3 April 1960. This new socialist party thus gathered all the dissidents from the Radical Party and the SFIO who were opposed to both the Algerian War and the proclamation of the new presidential regime. Mendès-France would officially become a member of the PSU in 1961, a year before the
18 March 1962 Evian Accords which put an end to the Algerian War.
The Radical Party returned from support of the government to opposition in 1959 and declined throughout all the 1960s. Allied with the SFIO in the
Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, it supported
François Mitterrand for the
1965 presidential election. This federation later split, in 1968.
Under the leadership of
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, President since
29 October 1969 issued from the left-wing, the party again made tentative moves to the left in the 1970s, but stopped short of an alliance with
Socialist François Mitterrand and his
Communist allies, leading to a final split in
1972 when the remaining left-wing Radicals left the party and eventually became the
Movement of the Radical-Socialist Left. This group wanted to be a part of the left-wings
Common Program spinned-out to create the
Movement of the Left Radicals (MRG) and supported the candidate of the left-wing,
François Mitterrand, at the
1974 presidential election.
Radical Party valoisien
Henceforth, the Radical Party began to be known as
valoisien, from the location of its national headquarters at the
Place de Valois in Paris, in order to distinguish it from the MRG. Opposed to an electoral alliance with the
French Communist Party (PCF) — which was the foundations of the 1972 Common Program — the Radicals were still anti-
Gaullists. They supported most reforms of
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's presidency (in particular the authorization of the
contraceptive pill, recognition of
women's rights, etc.). This evolution, brought by Servan-Schreiber's influence, would end with the latter's failure during the
1979 European elections.
Following the left-wing scission in 1971, the Radical Party
valoisien maintained the judicial rights to the official name of Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party and is its legal continuation. The Valoisien Radicals don't use the term "Socialist" anymore since 1981, although the term is still present in their official denomination.
After the failure of the alliance with the Christians Democrats into the
Reforming Movement, the Radical Party maintained its influence by participating to the creation of
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's
Union for French Democracy (UDF) in 1978. It was one of its six components, along with the centrists of the
Centre des démocrates sociaux, the liberals of the
Republican Party and of the
National Federation of Perspectives and Realities Clubs, the social-democrats of the
Socialist-Democratic Movement and of the new members of the UDF. Through the UDF, the Radical Party participated to all of the governments issued from parliamentary majorities of the
Rally for the Republic (RPR)/UDF.
Association with the Union for a Popular Movement
An important split took place after the
1998 regional elections during which some members of the party composed electoral alliances with the far-right
National Front party. Those members created the
Liberal Democracy party, while the Radical Party remained a member of the UDF. During the
2002 presidential election,
François Bayrou presented himself as a candidate for the UDF, while the Radical Party supported his rival,
Jacques Chirac (RPR).
After Chirac's re-election in 2002, most radicals participated to the creation of his new party, the
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The Radical Party then quit the UDF to associate itself with the UMP, sharing its memberships and budget with the latter. Some members, however, such as
Thierry Cornillet, continue to be part of UDF. It was then headed by
Jean-Louis Borloo and
André Rossinot.
After the rise of
Nicolas Sarkozy to the leadership of UMP, Radicals launched a sort of re-foundation of their party in order to create a counterbalancing moderate and social wing within the UMP. The party soon started to attract other centrists (as
Jean-Louis Borloo,
Renaud Dutreil,
Véronique Mathieu and
Françoise Hostalier) and even some anti-Sarkozy neo-Gaullists (as
Serge Lepeltier and
Alain Ferry).
As a result, the Radical Party is having an unexpected comeback in French politics. It now has 18 deputies (1 more from those elected in 2002), 7 senators (two more from 2002) and 8,000 members.
Jean-Louis Borloo is a high-ranking minister in
François Fillon's government, as
Minister of the Environment and
Minister of State.
Even today, Radical senators of both left and right-wing sit in the same group, the "Democratic, Social and European Rally", and their
anti-clericalism, although softened, still separates them from the conservatives on specific and exceptional issues (such as the conservatives' demonstrations in the 1980s against president
François Mitterrand's bill on private schools, which are mostly
Roman Catholic).
Trivia
The youth organizations of the Radical Party and the Radical Party of the Left called for, on 16 May 2007, for the "re-unification" of the two parties, claiming as common values Republicanism and European federalism.
Leadership
This is a list of party Presidents since 1901:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Radical Party France'.
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