1951,saw
the forceful emergence of Charles de Gaulle’s RPF with 21.7% of the
popular vote. However, less than five years later, the Gaullist
movement which had marked French politics since 1947 was, by all
accounts, practically dead. Yet, only a bit more than two years
later, Gaullism was resurgent with the birth of the Fifth Republic.
After the RPF in 1951, the novelty of 1956 was the emergence of the
Poujadiste movement (mouvement
Poujadiste),
named after its founder, Pierre Poujade. Its emergence marks the
first post-war far-right movement to grow in France, and the first
far-right movement in the ‘modern’ sense – that is, rid of its
pre-war monarchist or elitist-nationalist overtones. Its emergence,
however, is all the more puzzling given that the years 1953 to 1955
were, in the most part, synonymous with economic growth, rapid
development and also the stabilization of prices following the
inflationist years which had directly succeeded the end of
the war. Usually, it is economic instability and recession which has
allowed for the emergence of the far-right in France.
France
in the post-war era, like most of western Europe, was undergoing
rapid economic transformations, the most notable of which were
urbanization and a shift away from family businesses or farms. The
primary victims of the rapid economic changes were individual farmers
(agriculteurs)
and small shop-owners (artisans
et commerçants).
As a kind of petit bourgeois, the shopkeeper or merchant is at the
confines of the middle and lower classes, not entirely bourgeois like
those above him but not entirely working-class (or populaire) like
those below him. In a certain way, he is constantly fearful of
proletarization or déclassement. In
this vein, the shopkeeper, merchant or small-town employee –
republican, egalitarian and fiercely individualistic – have always
been wary of socio-economic changes which always threaten to crush
him. He is not a capitalist like the upper or middle bourgeoisie,
because he feels his way of life threatened by the “aggressive
capitalism”. He is not either a natural revolutionary, because he
resents ‘proletarization’. Unsurprising, therefore, that these
instinctively conservative (in the pure sense of the term) and
individualistic voters should offer a natural breeding ground and
captive clientele for all sorts of populist conservatives, the
Georges Boulanger of times past and the Le Pens of today.
1956
was a period of rapid economic growth in France, especially with the
emergence of large commercial surfaces, supermarket and price-point
retailers – known in France in 1956 as theprisunic (equivalent
of dollar stores in North America). Supermarkets and price-point
retailers were a direct threat to small-town shops, with the
individual butcher stop, the bakery or the delicatessen. Besides
these broader factors and the social psyche, there was a key
contextual factor at work here in 1956.
In
1953, Antoine Pinay’s government had succeeded in dramatically
reducing inflation – from 12% in 1952 to -1.8% in 1953, then
0.5%-1% in 1954 and 1955. Inflation had been high in the post-war
era, peaking at 59% in 1948 and never dropping any lower than 10-11%.
The main benefactor of inflation was the small shopkeeper, who
amassed more and more wealth and cared much less about taxes given
that it was paid with depreciating money. These businesses had
benefited spectacularly from inflation, but they had failed to adapt
to modern economic conditions of retail. The Poujadist movement was
the child born of deflation and the stabilization of prices.
The
traditional literature treats the birth of Poujadism as an anti-tax
revolt (révolte
du fisc),
but the tax revolt which started brewing in 1953 was more
the reason of
Poujadism’s birth than its deep cause. Inflation
had made taxes bearable, deflation made them unbearable. A state of
affairs intensified by the government’s “fiscal Gestapo” which
strictly enforced the collection of taxes. The Union
de défense des commerçants et artisans (UDCA)
was created in 1953, as a corporatist union founded by Pierre
Poujade, a stationer from Saint-Céré (Lot), with his great oratory
talents and room-filling charisma.
Derided
as fascist, true in part, it is fairer and better to view the UDCA
was a defensive reaction by small-town shopkeepers, merchants and
small farmers who were attached to the founding republican values of
private property, individualism and small community but who were
almost condemned to disappear in the wake of France’s economic
evolution in the post-war era. Depending on your perspective, the
instinctive conservatism of yesteryear had perhaps been
transformed into a reactionary movement, violent reaction to a
‘natural evolution’ of things.
For
Poujade and the UDCA, the culprits were the same: the big businesses
and corporate leaders, le
fisc,
the revolutionary trade unions, the left and its anti-individualism,
the corrupt parliament and the regime of parties, foreigners and all
those who were “selling off” France and its empire (especially
Algeria); all with a dose of conspiratorial antisemitism,
attacking the Jews who allegedly owned the big business and big
retailers but also thinly veiled jabs at Pierre Mendès France’s
Jewish faith.
The
surprise of the January 1956 was the Poujadist movement, whose lists
(Union
et fraternité française,
UFF or UDCA etc) won 51 seats and some 11.5% of the popular vote. The
map below shows the results of Poujadists by 1936 constituency.
Gray
departments had no Poujadist lists.
For
those of us used to the tidy and orderly map of the French far-right
in its FN incarnation, the first thought which comes to mind upon
seeing this map is a very puzzled “what the hell is this mess?”
Indeed, when we’re used to the tidy map of the FN and its bases
east of the Le Havre-Valence-Perpignan line, this map is
an disorderly mish-mash of colours all over the place with
little pattern. What is even more puzzling is that the Poujadists,
oft called the ancestor of the FN – with reason – should have a
map which is diametrically different from that of the far-right as we
would learn to know it some 30 years later. The Poujadists are almost
totally absent from a line going from Le Havre to Belfort, where the
FN today flexes its muscles the best. Certainly some of the Poujadist
strongholds such as the Vaucluse, Gard and Hérault have always given
the FN strong showings, but other strong points – Maine-et-Loire,
Charente-Maritime, Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, Aveyron, Gers and
even Isère to an extent – are not places where the FN does
particularly well.
The
most basic explanation for the Poujadist’s success would be to
conclude that they simply took the succession of the Gaullists. It is
not a ridiculous proposition. The RPF in 1951 and the Poujadists in
1956 both appealed to a certain conservative anti-system and
anti-regime vote – both were in direct opposition to the Fourth
Republic and the rhetoric of the Poujadists in 1956 vis-a-vis the
‘regime of the parties’ and the anti-parliamentarianism were
quite similar to the Gaullist rhetoric of 1951 which targeted the
regime of the parties. A cursory look at the raw statistics leads us
to the same conclusion: besides the MRP, all other major forces (PCF,
SFIO, Radicals, moderates) maintained or built on their 1951
electorates in 1956. The MRP only fell from 12.5% to a bit less than
11%, and the MRP had little in common with the Poujadists. However,
the Gaullists won 21.7% in 1951 but their successors in 1956 won
4.5%. The far-right and Poujadists won 12%. We could conclude, pretty
easily, that while not all Gaullists voted Poujadist, most Poujadists
had voted Gaullist some four years prior.
Problem
solved? No, we’ve only dug ourselves into a hole. If you remember
the 1951 map of the RPF’s strength, we had seen that its bases had
been concentrated almost quasi-entirely in northern France or what
was occupied France in 1941. It had been absent from the bulk of
southern France. In contrast, the Poujadists were more geographically
spread out but they had their big strongholds (Vaucluse, Hérault,
Gard, Aveyron) in southern France and only the Maine-et-Loire was a
stronghold of the RPF and Poujadists. It is possible and even logical
that the Poujadists received the support of many voters who had voted
RPF in 1951. But like Boulanger in 1889, Poujadism cut vertically
across all established
political parties. He even took left-wing votes. In most cases, the
main victims of Poujadism were the right. The return of Gaullist
voters to their traditional right-wing (moderate, MRP) roots likely
hide compensated loses to the Poujadists.
There
were, after all, key differences between Gaullism and Poujadism.
Gaullism, through its leading figure, appealed widely to a certain
conservative electorate, through its emphases on order, hierarchy and
stability. Through its historical roots, it likely appealed very much
to those who had been the fiercest of résistants during
the War. On the other hand, Poujadism did not have a similar appeal
to a conservative electorate fond of order and stability but rather
appealed to another electorate, this one either apolitical or weakly
politicized, anti-parliamentarian in its sympathies and quite keen to
Poujadism populism and nationalism. In addition, often derided as
fascist (and its leader as ‘Poujadolf’), the Poujadists were more
likely to appeal to those more supportive of the Vichy regime and its
traditionalist, “old France” rhetoric. Finally, Gaullism was in
some ways a right-wing reformist movement in 1951 despite its
Bonapartist overtones, it appealed to modern and industrial France.
Poujadism was in many ways reactionary, the last-straw defense of a
drowning type of old and traditional France. It had little in its
rhetoric to appeal to modern and industrial France.
Poujadism
through its roots in the UDCA and Pierre Poujade carried a
distinctive appeal to shopkeepers and merchants. I think it quite
fair to assume that most shopkeepers and merchants voted Poujadist.
For curiosity’s sake, I attempted to compare the Poujadist vote by
department in 1956 to the percentage of artisans,
commerçants et chefs d’entreprises in
each department in 1968 (the earliest I have departmental census data
for). It isn’t perfect, the two data sets being 12 years apart, but
the general pattern in terms of distribution of artisans/commerçants
can be reasonably expected to have been similar in 1956. In
general, there seems to be a general increase in Poujadist votes as
the weight of artisans/commerçants increases. But there are some big
outliers: the best Poujadist department (Vaucluse, 22.5%) had only
12.3% of shopkeepers and merchants in 1968. Similarly, the highest
percentage of shopkeepers and merchants in 1968 (Alpes-Maritimes,
16.2%) gave the Poujadists only 7.3. I calculated the correlation
coefficient to be 0.31, indicating a very weak medium positive
correlation. It is even stranger when you take only departments with
over 12% of artisans/commerçants in 1968, the correlation is
actually negative:
-0.35! In those with over 13% of artisans/commerçants, there is a
strong negative correlation
again: -0.68.
While
it likely that a good number of Poujadist voters were small or medium
business owners in small towns in rural ‘declining’ France, its
success cannot be explained solely by that factor. In
departments where the Poujadists did least well, it is likely that
their success was largely limited to the UDCA’s base social
category. But the Poujadist success was built on a heterogeneous base
of support, especially in the Midi and the centre-west. By its form
as a conservative populist reaction to rapid industrialization and
“aggressive capitalism”, the Poujadist rhetoric was not only
a sectional message designed for one social group, namely
shopkeepers.
Besides
the growth of mass retail and large commercial surfaces, the other
victim of deflation post-1953 were small landholders – agriculteurs
exploitants. Small
landholders, owning and cultivating their own parcel of land, were
the product of the Revolution and the rural bedrock of the Republic
in the 1870s. Like shopkeepers, small landholders were not
particularly affluent but by their ownership of land they were (in
most cases) instinctively conservative and deeply attached to the
republican values of private property. But like shopkeepers, they
were the ‘forgotten’ victims left behind by economic
modernization.
Inflation
had been advantageous for farmers who had gotten artificially rich.
Deflation brought along a massive drop in prices, and thus a loss in
revenue for farmers. Inflation had been advantageous for farmers not
only because they got rich but also because it had provided them with
the revenue to pay for expensive new, modern machinery. The drop in
prices post-1953 meant that this revenue dried up, and small
landholders found themselves struggling to continue the ‘silent
revolution’ in French agriculture. In many cases, this sped up the
(inevitable?) decline of small property and the amalgamation of
several unviable small properties into larger,
modernized exploitations.
Owners
of small family farms and small business owners, had, in many cases,
many shared common interests even beyond politics. In a small town
feeling, they knew each other and were allied and linked to each
other. In a certain sense, one’s destiny impacted the other’s
destiny and they were perhaps even liked to a certain extent.
Poujadism should not be understood solely in terms of a single class’
defensive reaction, which it was in part, but as being a broader
movement of resistance to economic modernization. André Siegfried
had talked about Poujadism as being a rear-guard’s defensive
reaction pitting rural peasant against cities, the province against
Paris, the artisans against factories, of regions in decline against
booming neo-industrial regions and of the individual against “an
invading socialist state”.
No
surprise then that Poujadism viewed in those terms would carry an
equally as powerful appeal to those who in 1956 suffered a plight
similar to that of the shopkeeper. In the Orléanais, the Beauce
and the Brie, Poujadism appealed to rural workers in the wheat basket
of the country. In the Berry and parts of Champagne, Poujadism
appealed to poor peasants in declining regions with an outdated
agricultural economy. In a region stretching from continental
Brittany to the Anjou, Poitou and Charentes, Poujadism broke
cleavages such as the all-important religious cleavage to appeal to
regions where rural poverty was everywhere a reality, mixed in (in
certain cases) with a local base of shopkeepers.
In
the Languedoc and especially the Vaucluse, the strength of Poujadism
was furthered by the local crisis in the wine industry which
swelled the ranks of the discontent. The Poujadists, judging simply
from an unscientific inductive observation of the map, seem to have
enjoyed some success with wine growers in the Loire valley, the
Bordelais and Beaujolais but far more limited success with those in
Bourgogne and Champagne.
So
far we have added one variable to our explanation besides
shopkeepers, which had a 0.31 correlation. We have added the variable
of revenue. Measured against the individual average revenue in each
department in 1951 (measured with France being 100, and departments
being either above or below 100 based on individual revenue), we find
a negative correlation of -0.27, indicating that Poujadists did
better in departments with lower individual revenue. But the
correlation is rather weak.
I
n some isolated areas like the Aveyron, the Alps or Isère,
Poujadism was a reaction of ‘regions in decline’ as Siegfried had
noted. The Aveyron’s population declined by 4.9% between 1946 and
1954, and the Poujadists (18.8% of registered voters in the
department) did best in those more mountainous areas who
suffered the highest decline. In taking only those departments whose
population declined between 1946 and 1954, the correlation between
population decline and Poujadist vote is 0.53, a pretty strong
correlation. But it is not universal: Lozère had the steepest
decline at -9% yet the Poujadists won only 8% of the vote. The Cantal
and Haute-Loire both declined by more than the Aveyron, but had
weaker Poujadist results (11%). Local factors, some of them political
such as other incumbents, lists and the strength of the Poujadist
slate must be considered.
Isère
is a particularly interesting department. Its population grew by 9%
between 1946 and 1954, and it was quite industrialized, yet the
Poujadists did particularly well with 15% of the vote (registered
voters). Isère’s population growth and industrialization in that
era was widely seen as being particularly rapid and regionally
uneqal. It came mostly to the benefit of Sud Isère and the
Grenoble region, and to a lesser extent the industrial centres of the
Nord Isère in proximity to Lyon. It left behind declining rural
regions lying between the two urban centres of attraction of
Lyon-Vienne-Bourgoin and Grenoble.
The
overall correlation between population change and Poujadist vote is
weak but negative (as expected) at -0.26. The link between
industrialization, as measured by employment in industry or
transportation in 1951, and the Poujadist vote is more significant
and negative (as expected) at -0.35.
Poujadism,
born as anti-parliamentary movement, was perhaps ultimately unable to
survive the contradiction between its aim and founding value
(anti-parliamentarianism) and being a parliamentary actor. Its
emergence as a last-straw reaction to industrialization and
modernization which would only intensify in the 1960s precluded it
from being anything more than a temporary feu
de paille (flash
in the pan) in the realm of French politics. The emergence of the
Fifth Republic and the shift away from the
parliamentary partitocratie killed
off a lot of the movement’s anti-institutional and anti-system
rhetoric. Gaullism would re-emerge as an attractive and viable
political option a bit more than two years later. The only thing left
of Poujadism, it seems, is the use of “Poujadist” as a blanket
term for most populisms of that kind.
But
despite it going down in history as a feu
de paille,
as a curiosity of history but ultimately a futile and quixotic
single-issue movement, Poujadism has had a deeper impact on French
politics and the far-right in France. Not only because Jean-Marie Le
Pen was elected as a young UFF deputy for the Seine in 1956. The
rhetoric behind Poujadism with the attacks on the corrupt political
establishment, the big corporations, the foreign profiteers,
aggressive nationalism and part of wider movement which appealed to
those who felt ‘forgotten’ by the political elites and those who
fell behind economically. What is pejoratively called the petite
bourgeoisie,
or more specifically the shopkeepers and merchants who formed the
backbone of the UDCA, have remained one of the FN’s backbones
though the FN has never been as closely identified to that social
category as the Poujadists were and their influence on the modern FN
is fading, though certainly present. To a good extent, the FN has won
votes from voters who are neither part of the unionized working-class
or the wealthier upper middle-classes, and who are at odds both with
the traditional right in its old elitist Orleanist incarnations and
with the left in its old traditional sense described, by Poujadists,
as ‘anti-individualists’. I think the FN vote in places like
rural and exurban Champagne, Bourgogne and Picardie are quite
reflective of a rural, “forgotten” electorate which is not
particularly well-off and gets put off by both the right and the
left. Not working-class in the industrial sense, but of some small
town working-class tradition. These particular types of people might
not have voted Poujadist in 1956 (although some certainly did), but I
feel that the rhetoric which appeals to them on the FN’s behalf is
similar to the Poujadist rhetoric of 1956.
Pierre
Poujade quickly broke with his young MP, and disavowed any links
between his movement and the FN. Poujade was not a politician, he was
far more of a corporatist unionist with a talent for oratory. But his
movement had deep repercussions on the FN in terms of ideology and
orientation. The Poujadist vote in 1956 was remarkable for its
strength and its homogeneity across the country, but in the details
the Poujadist vote is also remarkable for its composition’s
heterogeneity. In almost each region, it seems as if the makeup of
the vote was different and as if the impetus to vote for Pierre
Poujade’s movement varied significantly from region to region: wine
crisis here, population decline there, shopkeepers and merchants
angers there, falling behind on industrialization here, structural
rural poverty there. Despite its short life as a political movement
and regardless of whether you have a positive or negative view of
Poujade and his movement, Poujadism had a deep impact on the French
far-right after 1945.
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