Radical-Socialist and Radical Republican Party

History

Radicals before the party (1830–1901)

After the collapse of Napoleon's empire in 1815, a reactionary Bourbon Restoration took place. The left-wing opposition was constituted by the broad family of Republicans, but these differed over whether and how far to cooperate with liberal-constitutional monarchists in pursuit of their common adversary. In contrast to the Republicans' right wing (then the centre-left of the political spectrum), who were more inclined to accept a socially conservative constitutional monarchy as the first stage to a republic, the Republicans' left wing took a hard line in advocating progressive reforms such as universal manhood suffrage, civil liberties (such as press freedom and right to assembly, among others), and the immediate installation of a republican constitution. They came to be termed Radical Republicans by opposition to the Moderate Republicans.

After the installation of the constitutional July Monarchy (1830–1848), the term Republican was outlawed and the regime's remaining Republican opponents adopted the term Radical for themselves. Following the monarchy's conservative turn, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc formulated a Radical doctrine. At this time, radicalism was distinct from and to the left of the July Monarchy's doctrinal liberalism. Radicals defended traditional peasant farmers and small craftsmen against the new rival economic projects of the 19th century, socialist collectivism and capitalist big business alike.

The Radicals took a major part in the 1848 Revolution and the foundation of the Second Republic, sitting in parliament as the Montagne legislative group. Fifty years later, the Radical-Socialist Party would consider this group its direct forefather. For a few months, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin was Interior Minister in the provisional government. However, the conservatives won the 1848 legislative election, the first election by universal suffrage. The repression of the June 1848 workers' demonstrations disappointed the left-wing supporters of the new regime. Ledru-Rollin obtained only 5% of votes at the December 1848 presidential election, which was won by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who launched a coup, ending parliamentary democracy in favour of a Second Empire.

From opposition, Radicals criticized Bonaparte's autocratic rule and attacks on civil liberties. At the end of the 1860s, they advocated with the Belleville Programme (supported by Léon Gambetta) the election of civil servants and mayors, the proclamation of the so-called "great liberties", free public teaching and the separation of church and state.

Early years: the Radical Republic (1901–1919)

At 1902 legislative election, the Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals allied themselves with the conservative-liberals of the Democratic Alliance (to their immediate right) and the Socialists (to their left) in the Bloc des gauches (Coalition of the Left), with the Radicals emerging 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 laic law which along with the earlier Jules Ferry laws removing confessional influence from public education formed the backbone of laïcité, France's policy of combatting clericalism by actively excluding it from state institutions. From then on, the Radical-Socialist Party's chief aim in domestic policy was to prevent its wide-ranging set of reforms from being overturned by a return to power of the religious right.

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. Nevertheless, the Radical-Socialist Party remained the axis of the parliamentary majorities and of the governments. The cabinet led by the Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau (1906–1909) introduced income tax and workers' pensions, but is also remembered for its violent repression of industrial strikes.

For the latter part of the Third Republic (1918–1940), the Radical-Socialists, generally representing the anti-clerical segment of peasant and petty-bourgeois voters, were usually the largest single party in parliament, but with their anti-clerical agenda accomplished the party lost their driving force. Its leader before World War I Joseph Caillaux was generally more noted for his advocacy of better relations with Germany than for his reformist agenda.

During World War I (1914–1918), the Radical-Socialist Party was the keystone of the Sacred Union while the most prominent Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau led the cabinet again from 1917 to 1919. He appeared as the "architect of victory", but his relationship with the Radical-Socialist Party deteriorated. The Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals entered the 1919 legislative election in opposing coalitions, thus Clemenceau's alliance of the right emerged victorious.

Between World Wars (1919–1946)

By the end of World War I, the Radical-Socialist Party, now led by Édouard Herriot, were generally a moderate centre-left party faced with the governmental dominance of the socially-conservative liberal parties to its right (see Independent Radicals and Democratic Alliance) and pressure from its left by the rise of support for the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and French Communist Party (PCF). With these political forces, Radical-Socialists shared anti-clericalism and the struggle for "social progress", but unlike the other left parties the Radical-Socialists defended the principle of strict parliamentary action and the defence of private property, at least that of smallholders and small business. Additionally, the Radical-Socialist Party had thought before 1914 that its old adversaries among the Catholic, monarchist and traditionalist right had been weakened once and for all, instead these emerged reinvigorated by World War I.

In 1924, Radical-Socialists formed electoral alliances with the SFIO. The Cartel des Gauches (Coalition of the Left) won the 1924 legislative election and Herriot formed a government. However, the Radical-Socialists gradually drifted to the right, moving from left-Republican governments supported by the non-participating Socialists to a coalition of "Republican concentration" with the centre-right Independent Radicals and the more socially-conservative liberal parties in 1926.

Two years later at the Angers Congress, the left wing of the party obtained the withdrawal of the Radical-Socialists from the cabinet and the return to a policy of alliance with the Socialists. Édouard Daladier was elected party leader. However, a section of the party's right-wing defected to form a second centre-right Independent Radical party (the Social and Radical Left) which opposed alliance with the Socialist Party and preferred close cooperation with the centre-right liberals of the Democratic Alliance.

The party claimed 120,000 members in the 1930s, however, these figures were inflated by competitors purchasing party memberships in bulk to influence inner-party votes.

The second Cartel des gauches won the 1932 legislative election, but its two main components were not able to establish a common agenda and consequently the SFIO chose to support the second government led by Herriot without participation. The coalition fell on 7 February 1934 following riots organized by the far-right leagues the night before. The Radical-Socialist Camille Chautemps's government had been replaced by a government led by his popular rival Édouard Daladier in January after accusations of corruption against Chautemps' government in the wake of the Stavisky Affair and other similar scandals.

Fourth Republic (1946–1958)

After World War II, the Radicals, like many of the other political parties, were discredited by the fact that many of their members had voted to grant emergency powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, although senior Radical leaders as Édouard Herriot, then President of the Chamber of Deputies (the parliamentary Speaker), had been ambivalent.

The Radical-Socialist Party was reconstituted and formed one of the important parties of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), but never recovered its dominant pre-war position. It failed to prevent the adoption of the projects of the three-parties coalition (nationalizations and the welfare state). Along with Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, it set up an electoral umbrella-group, the Rally of Republican Lefts (RGR). From 1947, after the split of the governmental coalition it participated to the Third Force coalition with the SFIO, the Christian-democratic Popular Republican Movement and the conservative-liberal 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-Socialist Party after its discredit, was indeed elected on the pledge to stop Indochina War (1946–1954).

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. They split and transformed the RGR in a centre-right party distinct from the Radical Party. Under Pierre Mendès-France's leadership, the Radical Party participated to a centre-left coalition, the Republican Front, which won the 1956 legislative election. Another split, this time over France's policy about the Algerian War (1954–1962), 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 the 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 rule in Algeria and supported its independence.

Fifth Republic (1958–present)

Popular figure Pierre Mendès-France 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 fused into the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) on 3 April 1960. This new socialist party 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 Party (PS) leader François Mitterrand and his Communist allies, leading to a final split in 1972 when the remaining centre-left Radicals left the party and eventually became the Movement of the Radical-Socialist Left. This group, which wanted to be a part of the left-wing Common Programme, broke away to create the Movement of the Left Radicals (MRG) and at the 1974 presidential election, supported Mitterrand, the candidate of the left wing.

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 PCF, which was the foundation of the 1972 Common Programme, the Radicals were still anti-Gaullists. They allied with the Christian Democrats in the Reforming Movement in order to propose another way between the Common Programme's parties and the Presidential Majority led by Gaullists. Finally, they joined it after the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency of France in 1974. They supported most reforms of Giscard d'Estaing's presidency (in particular the authorization of the contraceptive pill and recognition of women's rights). This evolution brought by Servan-Schreiber's influence would end with the latter's failure during the 1979 European elections.

Elected officials

Deputies: Alfred Almont (Martinique), Edwige Antier (Paris), Paul Aubry (Haut-Marne), Jean-Louis Bernard (Loiret), Jean-Louis Borloo (Nord), Claire Bouchet (Hautes-Alpes), Alain Ferry (Bas-Rhin), Jean Grenet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Laurent Hénart (Meurthe-et-Moselle), Françoise Hostalier (Nord), Yves Jégo (Seine-et-Marne), Robert Lecou (Hérault), Jean Leonetti (Alpes-Maritimes), François Loos (Bas-Rhin), Alain Marc (Aveyron), Franck Marlin (Essonne), Frédéric Reiss (Bas-Rhin), Franck Reynier (Drôme), Arnaud Richard (Yvelines), François Scellier (Val-d'Oise), Pierre Souquès (Indre-et-Loire), André Wojciechowski (Moselle), Michel Zumkeller (Territoire de Belfort)

Senators: Jean-Paul Alduy (Pyrénées-Orientales), Alain Chatillon (Haute-Garonnne), Sylvie Goy-Chavent (Ain), Pierre Jarlier (Cantal), Sophie Joissains (Bouches-du-Rhône), Aymeri de Montesquiou (Gers)

MEPs: Dominique Riquet (Nord-Ouest)

Leadership

Party presidents:

Election results