The Origins of the Banlieue Rouge: Politics, Local Government and Communal Identity in Arcueil and Cachan, 1919-1958

Home , Arcueil, Bloc des gauches, Camille Pelletan, Ceinture rouge, Communism in France, Georges Weill

The Origins of the Banlieue Rouge: Politics, Local Government and Communal Identity in Arcueil and Cachan, 1919-1958.

Jasen Lewis Burgess

A thesis submitted to the University of New South Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

2005

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the numerous individuals and various institutions that assisted me in the completion of this thesis. The critical appraisal, guidance and support provided by my supervisor Professor Martyn Lyons during the writing of this thesis have been indispensable. Professor Lyons helped initiate my research topic, gave firm, fair and timely advice on the structure and content of this thesis, and has commented on and proofread innumerable drafts. I would also like to thank him for his general support of my candidature, in particular the support he gave to me when I suspended my candidature at the time of the birth of my first son Leon and then when I resumed my candidature some time later. I would like to thank Professor Jacques Girault who suggested Arcueil and Cachan as a thesis topic when I met with him during my first research trip to Paris in 1998, and who also gave me invaluable advice on where to research my thesis in Paris and what journals to consult. I am also grateful to the staff of the Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne at Creteil, France, for the vital assistance they gave me in my research, including posting material to me in Sydney. Thanks also to the Documentation and Archival Services for the Commune of Arcueil for sending material to me in Sydney, and to the staff at the Musée sociale and the Centre du Recherches d’Histoire des Mouvements Sociaux et Syndicalisme for the assistance they gave me when researching my thesis in Paris. I am grateful to the support provided by the School of History and its three Heads, Roger Bell, Ian Tyrrel and John Gascoigne, during my PhD candidature. The School of History awarded me an APA and later a Completion Scholarship, both of which enabled me to write this thesis. The School and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences have been generous in defraying some of the costs associated with my PhD candidature. I also thank the staff at the University of New South Wales library, and in particular the Inter-Library Loans unit, for the important assistance they have rendered to me. Special thanks goes to those who undertook the laborious task of proofreading the final draft of this thesis, namely Anne and Janet Linklater, Katie Wrigley, Katherine McKernan, Matthew Swan, and especially Louise Downe. Thank you to my mother and

ii Introduction

father, Sandra and Jim Burgess, for the support they have given to my academic studies, and to Colleen Parrett for providing essential baby-sitting and other assistance which has facilitated the completion of this thesis. The Postgraduates in the School of History provided a congenial and stimulating milieu which fostered the production of this thesis, and in particular I would like to thank Craig Turnbull and Sophie Lieberman for their practical assistance during the final stages of completion. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Josephine Parrett without whom I could not have produced this thesis. She has given me practical and moral support that has been critical to its completion, including proof-reading innumerable drafts of chapters and encouraging me to believe I could complete a PhD despite many obstacles. She has endured the financial sacrifices and stresses concomitant with the production of a PhD thesis without ever wavering in her commitment to me finishing my PhD. For her support, I am eternally grateful. Thanks also to my young sons Leon and Edyn who have been a source of joy and inspiration during the production of this thesis.

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Abstract

By elucidating the origins of the banlieue rouge, a belt of communist-dominated suburbs surrounding Paris that arose during the interwar years and reached its apogee under the Fourth Republic, this thesis addresses the problem of why twentieth-century France was home to a pro-Soviet communist party with mass support. Specifically, a local study of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan, two neighbouring communes south of Paris with divergent political evolutions since World War I, is used to discern how and why the Parti communiste français (PCF) came to exert hegemony in the working-class suburbs of Paris. After surveying the historiography of communism in France and beyond, this thesis concludes that the communist banlieue rouge was born of working-class alienation from bourgeois society that was nourished by a communist counter-society that was contingent upon the PCF’s capacity to adapt and respond to local circumstances. Using archival sources and statistical analysis, it demonstrates that in Arcueil and Cachan rapid suburbanisation and an attendant proletarianisation created the pre-conditions for the rise of the PCF. This study finds that during the interwar period the PCF rapidly emerged as an electoral force in both suburbs as it set about laying the foundations of a communist counter-society, especially in Arcueil where it won control of local government in 1935. In Arcueil, the PCF spearheaded the local Resistance movement during World War II and then under the Fourth Republic went on to consolidate a nascent communist communal identity, while in Cachan its influence fell victim to Cold War politics. The pre-conditions for the rise of communism were apparent earlier and to a greater degree in Arcueil, an industrialised, working-class suburb with long-standing radical traditions, than in the traditionally conservative Cachan. In Arcueil, the PCF was more successful than its counterpart in Cachan at exploiting an alienation that was not only part of the deep-seated historical traditions of the French working class but was also part of everyday life f or workers forced to live in miserable conditions. In suburbs such as Arcueil, suburban working-class pride at being a social outcast was conflated with communism to create a durable communist communal identity.

Table of Contents

List of Maps vii

List of Figures viii

List of Tables x

Abbreviations xi

1. Introduction 1

2. The Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge 56

3. The Origins of Communist Hegemony I: The Suburbanisation of Arcueil 89 and Cachan

4. The Origins of Communist Hegemony II: The Socio-Economic 141 Substructure of Local Politics in Arcueil and Cachan

5. Toward Hegemony I: The Electoral Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and 177 Cachan Between the Wars.

6. Toward Hegemony II: The Social Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and 262 Cachan Between the Wars.

7. The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?: The PCF in Arcueil and 332 Cachan, 1940-1958.

8. Conclusion 384

Bibliography 404

v Introduction

Maps

1 The Department of the Seine xiii

2 Arcueil circa 1936 xiv

3 Cachan circa 1936 xv

4 & 5 The PCF’s inheritance of the SFIO electorate in the banlieue rouge 65

6 & 7 The banlieue rouge at the time of the Popular Front 66

8 Industry in Arcueil during the interwar period 95

9 Demarcation of Arcueil’s electoral sections 101

10 PCF municipalities in the mid-1980s 385

Figures

4.1 PCF candidates in Arcueil’s Municipal elections, 1923-1935 155

4.2 Summary of PCF candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's 156 municipal elections, 1923-1935

4.3 SFIO candidates in Arcueil’s Municipal elections, 1919-1935 158

4.4 Summary of SFIO candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's 159 municipal elections, 1919-1935

4.5 RSP candidates in Arcueil’s municipal elections, 1919-1935 161

4.6 Summary of RSP candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's 162 municipal elections, 1919-1935

4.7 PCF candidates in Cachan’s municipal elections, 1923-1935 164

4.8 Summary of PCF candidates’ socio-professional character in Cachan’s 165 municipal elections, 1923-1935

4.9 SFIO candidates in Cachan’s Municipal elections, 1919-1935 167

4.10 Summary of SFIO candidates’ socio-professional character in Cachan’s 168 municipal elections, 1919-1935

4.11 CURSDIGC candidates in Cachan’s Municipal elections, 1919-1935 170

4.12 Summary of CURSDIGC candidates’ socio-professional character in 171 Cachan’s municipal elections, 1919-1935

5.1 Arcueil: voting in municipal elections 1919-1935 188

5.2 Arcueil: voting in legislative elections 1919-1937 188

5.3 Centre: voting in municipal elections 1919-1935 190

5.4 Centre: voting in legislative elections 1919-1937 191

5.5 Laplace: voting in municipal elections 1919-1935 192

5.6 Laplace: voting in legislative elections 1919-1937 193

5.7 Cité-Aqueduc: voting in municipal elections 1932 & 1935 194

5.8 Cité-Aqueduc: voting in legislative elections 1932-1937 194

5.9 Cachan: voting in municipal elections 1919-1935 196

vii Introduction

5.10 Cachan: voting in legislative elections 1919-1937 196

7.1 PCF vote in Arcueil & Cachan municipal elections 1945-1953 354

7.2 PCF vote in Arcueil & Cachan legislative elections 1946-1958 361

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Tables

3.1 Arcueil & Cachan: growth in population 93

4.1 Socio-professional categories used for analysis of 1936 census & of 143 candidates in municipal elections

4.2 Heads of households 1936: socio-professional breakdown of Arcueil & 148 Cachan

4.3 Heads of households 1936: socio-professional breakdown of Arcueil’s 150 electoral sections

4.4 Heads of households 1936: socio-professional breakdown of Arcueil & 151 Cachan

5.1 Interwar municipal elections in Arcueil & Cachan: voters enrolled & 187 abstentions

5.2 Interwar legislative elections in Arcueil & Cachan: voters enrolled & 187 abstentions

5.3 1919 legislative election: voting in Arcueil-Cachan 200

5.4 1919 & 1920 municipal elections: voting in Arcueil 201

5.5 1923 & 1929 municipal elections voting in Arcueil 206

5.6 1929 & 1932 municipal elections voting in Arcueil 211

5.7 1923 & 1925 municipal elections: voting in Cachan 215

5.8 1928 & 1929 municipal elections: voting in Cachan 220

5.9 1924 legislative election: voting in Arcueil & Cachan 223

5.10 1928 & 1932 legislative elections: voting in Arcueil & Cachan 233

5.11 1935 municipal election: voting in Arcueil 243

5.12 1935 municipal election: voting in Cachan 249

5.13 1936 & 1937 legislative elections: voting in Arcueil & Cachan 254

7.1 Municipal elections 1945-1953: voters enrolled & abstentions in Arcueil 353 & Cachan

7.2 Legislative elections 1945-1958 voters enrolled & abstentions in Arcueil 361 & Cachan

Abbreviations

AD75 Archives de Paris (75) et de l’ancien département de la Seine

AD94 Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne (94)

AN Archives Nationales

APP Service des archives, Préfecture de Police (Paris)

ARAC Association Républicaine des anciens combattants

BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France

CGT Confédération générale du travail

CGTU Confédération générale du travail unitaire

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CRHMSS Centre du Recherches d’Histoire des Mouvements Sociaux et Syndicalisme

CURSDIGC Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan

DBMOF Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français

DCMA Délibérations du Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil

DCMA-C Délibérations du Conseil Municipal de Arcueil-Cachan

DCMC Délibérations du Conseil Municipal de Cachan

ESOAC Étoile Sportive Ouvrière d’Arcueil et de Cachan

ETP École des Travaux Publics

FFI Forces Françaises à l'Intérieur

FOP Fédération ouvrière et paysanne

FTP[F] Francs-tireurs et Partisans [Français]

HBM Habitation à bon marché

HLM Habitation à Loyer Modéré

INSEE L’Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques

MLN Mouvement de Libération Nationale

x Introduction

KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands

MRP Mouvement républicain populaire

OPHBMS Office public d’habitations à bon marché du Département de la Seine

PCF Parti communiste français

PCI Partito Communista Italiano

PCP Partido Communista Português

PPF Parti populaire français

Parti socialiste (name given to the SFIO after its re-foundation PS under Mitterrand in 1971)

PSDF Parti socialiste de France

PSF Parti socialiste français

PSF Parti social français

PUP Parti d’unité prolétarienne (Pupistes)

RER Réseau express régional

RGR Rassemblement des gauches républicaines

RPF Rassemblement du peuple français

RPR Rassemblement pour la République

RSP Radical-Socialist Party

SFIC Section française de l’Internationale Communiste (original name by which the PCF was known)

SFIO Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (French Socialist Party)

SKP Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue (Finnish Communist Party)

SOI Secours Ouvrier International

SRI Secours Rouge International

[S]TCRP [Société des] transports en commun de la région parisienne

USA United States of America

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

xi Introduction

MAP 1 The Department of the Seine

SOURCE: Les Archives de L’Ile-de-France: Guide de Recherches, Geneviève Gille and Georges Weill (eds), Bobigny, Cergy-Pontoise, Corbeil-Essonnes, Créteil, Melun, Nanterre, Paris, Versailles, 1989, Map 7.

xii

MAP 2 Arcueil circa 1936

SOURCE: Canton de Villejuif, Indicateur Bijou des Villes de Villejuif, Le Kremlin–Bicêtre, Arcueil, Gentilly, Cachan, L’Hay-les-Roses, Fresnes, Chevilly, Rungis, 1936.

xiii Introduction

MAP 3 Cachan circa 1936

SOURCE:Canton de Villejuif, Indicateur Bijou des Villes de Villejuif, Le Kremlin–Bicêtre, Arcueil, Gentilly, Cachan, L’Hay-les-Roses, Fresnes, Chevilly, Rungis, 1936. xiv

1. Introduction

The collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and of the communist Eastern Bloc was a manifestation of the obvious failure of the Marxist- Leninist utopia that the Bolsheviks thrust upon Russia and then attempted to export. In the context of this failure, the rise of a mass communist party in France during the interwar and postwar years and the persistence of a number of communist municipalities to this day appear as something of an enigma. France, a western industrialised nation, a lynchpin of the European Economic Community, has until relatively recently had a strong Communist Party, a situation usually associated with less developed countries. Not only that, its capital, Paris, was a centre of communist power, for it was in the working-class suburbs that almost surrounded Paris that the most impregnable communist bastions existed. While other Western European countries such as Italy and Finland also had strong communist movements, their situations were quite different from that of France in that economic prosperity did not come to these nations until the postwar era. France on the other hand, has long been a European and world power, and one of the world’s most developed nations. How is it that France, almost alone among Western European powers has had a strong and enduring communist movement? Why did this movement find one of its strongest bases of support in the suburbs of the French capital? In an effort to answer these questions my study will be concerned with the period from 1919 to 1958 which represents both the birth and the apogee of the banlieue rouge, the cordon of communist suburbs that almost encircled Paris under the Fourth Republic. During the interwar Third Republic, World War II and the Fourth Republic the Parti communiste français (PCF) built and then consolidated its hegemony over the working-class suburbs of Paris, with particular strengths in the south-east and north-east of the Department of the Seine which then encompassed Paris and its surrounding suburbs (see Map 1 page xiii). The success of the Parti socialiste - Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (SFIO)1 in the municipal elections of 1919 saw a nascent banlieue rouge emerge with the party winning control of 24 municipalities (compared

1 In this thesis the term SFIO denotes the Socialist Party prior to its re-foundation under Mitterrand in 1971, while term PS refers specifically to the party since the re-foundation. I have used the term ‘Socialist Party’ when referring to the socialists in broad terms that encompasses both the periods before and after the re-foundation. 1 Introduction

with seven in 1912), while socialist minorities existed in six others.2 However, following the Congress of Tours in December 1920 at which the SFIO split with a majority going on to form the PCF, the political affiliation of the working-class suburbs of Paris became more complex. Though only six municipalities remained with the SFIO after the Congress of Tours by 1923 the PCF had lost half of its municipalities.3 Thus, the creation of a communist banlieue rouge was a gradual, uneven process, with the SFIO, the Radicals, Independent Socialists and even the Right maintaining control of working-class suburbs along with the PCF.4 It was not until 1935 with the advent of the Popular Front that the banlieue rouge emerged more or less in its definitive form as the PCF swept to power in 26 municipalities, with significant communist minorities in four others, and small minorities in a further two.5 However, prior to the Popular Front the seeming inability of the PCF to assert its dominance with regard to the mayoral control in the working-class suburbs of Paris masked a fledgling banlieue rouge. The PCF was the dominant party of the left in the Seine suburbs throughout the interwar period as it polled, in terms of valid votes cast, 31.5% in 1924, 29.7% in 1928, 25.7% in 1932 and 43.4% in 1936, compared with a high of 17% for the SFIO in 1932, at the height of the

2 Jacques Girault, “Les Municipalités Communistes et Le Logement dans l’entre-deux-guerres”, Cahiers de recherches marxistes, no. 2, 1980, p. 64. 3 For the affiliation of SFIO municipalities post-schism see: Claude Pennetier and Nathalie Viet- Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue (milieu XIXe siècle-milieu XXe siècle)”, Chapter VI in Annie Fourcaut (ed), Un Siècle de Banlieue Parisienne (1859- 1964): Guide de recherche, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1988, p. 198. In 1923 the mayors of Saint-Ouen, Boulogne-Billancourt, Pantin, Aubervilliers, Pre-Saint Gervais, Pavillons-sous-Bois, Drancy and Bagnolet left the PCF to form the Union Socialiste-Communiste, see Michel Dreyfus: “Implantation municipale et dissidences communistes dans la banlieue parisienne (1920-1940)”, in Katherine Burlen (ed), La Banlieue Oasis: Henri Sellier et les cités-jardins, 1900-1940, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, Saint-Denis, 1987, pp. 51-52. After the partition of Arcueil-Cachan in 1923, the two new municipalities respectively elected Radical and moderate municipalities. 4 On the eve of the 1925 municipal elections the PCF only controlled four municipalities, after which they controlled nine, all north and south of Paris. After the 1929 elections the party controlled eleven municipalities, but this position was weakened when the mayors of Clichy and Villetaneuse left to join the socialist-communists. See Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 199 and Annie Fourcaut, Bobigny, Banlieue Rouge, Les Éditions Ouvrières/Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris, 1986, pp. 36-37. 5 L’Humanité 14 May 1935; Les Echos du Grand Paris, Journal d’Informations Générales, Administratives et Economiques des Communes de la Région Parisienne, Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et- Marne, Oise, June 1935, p. 3 (AD 36J11 – Press clipping). According to the latter the SFIO controlled eleven municipalities, with significant minorities in nine others, and smaller minorities in a further three, including Cachan. Doriotists controlled a number of municipalities, such as Saint-Denis, which, had it not been for Doriot’s exclusion from the PCF, would probably have been communist. The Parti d’unité prolétarienne (PUP - Pupistes) and Independent Socialists controlled a number of other municipalities. The PCF went from holding 43% of municipal council seats in 1929 to 60% in 1935, with the SFIO declining from 43% to 26%, Claude Pennetier and Nathalie Viet-Depaule, “Pour un Prosopographie des élus de la Seine (1919-1940): Premier Bilan d'un enquête”, La Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, Paris et Ile-de-France – Mémoires, vol. 38, no. 2, 1987, 2 Introduction

PCF’s sectarian isolation.6 The suburban communes won by the PCF in the 1935 municipal elections became the core of the postwar banlieue rouge. At Liberation they were solidified as bastions of communism when, out of 80 communes in the Department of the Seine, the PCF won outright control of 50 suburban communes and was elected to power in alliance in a further ten.7 The following year the party confirmed its dominance in the Seine suburbs by polling 42.6% of the valid votes cast.8 In 1947, following the party’s ousting from the national government with the onset of the Cold War, the PCF lost 22 municipalities, often due to alliances between the SFIO and the Gaullists.9 However a solid core of communist suburbs emerged which roughly accorded with the suburbs where the PCF had been victorious in 1935 – in 1953 at the height of the Cold War the PCF won control of the same number of Seine communes as in 1935.10 From 1924 until the 1980s, these communist communes enabled the PCF to routinely out-poll the SFIO in the Paris suburbs as the latter dominated the PCF’s electorate and provided the party with its largest single block of parliamentarians.11 Well into the Fifth Republic the PCF maintained resilient strongholds in suburbs that were dominated by detached housing and large housing estates, or which had long been industrialised, and which more often than not had stable or declining populations.12

1988, vol. 38, no. 1, 1987, vol. 38, 1987, p. 14. 6 Jacques Girault, “Vers la banlieue rouge. Du social au politique”, in Jean-Paul Brunet (ed), Immigration, vie politique et populisme en banlieue parisienne (fin XIXe-XXe siècles), Éditions L’Harmattan, Paris, 1995, p. 256; Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 198. 7 See Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 200. The SFIO won control of 15 municipalities, Annie Fourcaut, “Banlieue Rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, in Annie Fourcaut (ed), Banlieue Rouge 1920-1960: Années Thorez, années Gabin: archétype du populaire, banc d’essai des modernités, Éditions Autrement, Paris, 1992, p. 27. 8 Girault, “Vers la banlieue rouge”, p. 256. 9 The SFIO won eleven from the PCF (total 21), the Gaullists ten (total 24), see Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 200. In 1947 the PCF lost Cachan in spite of forming single group after the SFIO refused to elect a communist mayor, thus allowing a Gaullist to be elected, see Chapter 7 below. 10 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, pp. 199-200; Fourcaut, “Banlieue Rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, p. 27. 11 See Jacques Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste dans la Région Parisienne”, in Jacques Girault (ed) Sur L’Implantation du Parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1977, pp. 62-63 ; Girault, “Vers la banlieue rouge”, p. 256; Jean-Claude Boyer, Jean-Francois Deneux, and Pierre Merlin, in Jean Lacoste (ed), Géopolitiques des Régions françaises, vol.1, La France Septentrionale, Fayard, Paris, 1986, pp. 411, 427. 12 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, pp. 430-431, 452, 464, 467, 484, 486; Simon Ronai, “Comment Conserver une Municipalité Communiste: Observations de Terrain”, Communisme, no. 22/23, 1990, pp. 95-100; Simon Ronai, “Évolution de la Géographie des Municipalités Communistes 1977-1995, Communisme, 47/48, 1996, 170-172. 3 Introduction

Today, however, the decline of PCF in these strongholds appears ineluctable in the face of advances by the Parti Socialiste (PS) and the Front National. Although the Socialist Party retained a foothold in the Paris suburbs throughout the period of this study, and in the postwar years did better than the PCF in outer suburbs which experienced rapid social and demographic change, it has only been since the 1970s that it has posed any challenge to the communist hegemony in the working-class suburbs of the former Department of the Seine.13 In their 1995 Histoire du Parti communiste français, Stéphane Courtois and Marc Lazar set out two dimensions to the PCF, the teleological and the social.14 The teleological dimension concerns the revolutionary project the PCF inherited from the Bolshevik Revolution. For French communism the teleological legacy of the Bolshevik revolution was a Marxist-Leninist party of professional revolutionaries governed by democratic centralism and the dominant strategic principle of unconditional defence of the USSR and the communist camp (a central element of French communism right up until the USSR’s demise). This led to the adoption of tactics that responded to the interests and ideology of the USSR. The social dimension refers to the way in which the PCF inserted itself into French society as a whole (not just its political system), namely the variety of social, political and cultural circumstances that the party confronted. Courtois and Lazar note that the social dimension sometimes functioned in harmony and sometimes in conflict with the attempt of Moscow to impose homogeneity on the communist parties of the Communist International. The PCF’s role as the revolutionary vanguard of the Communist International meant deferring to the leadership of the USSR as the legitimate leader of the international proletarian revolution, and drove it to act in a manner often inimical to its national or even local interests.15 It is in this context that the PCF has often been viewed as little more than an appendage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to conclude that the PCF’s centralised administration meant that the centre of the party overwhelming dominated the periphery, especially in light of recent local studies.16 Michel Hastings’ study of Halluin,

13 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, pp. 425, 428, 430-432 14 Stéphane Courtois and Marc Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1995, pp. 17-18. 15 Ronald Tiersky, French Communism, 1920-1972, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1974, Chapter 8. 16 Frédéric Sawicki, “Questions de Recherche: Pour une Analyse Locale des Partis Politiques”, Politix, no. 2, Spring, 1988, p. 15. 4 Introduction

an interwar bastion of communism on the Franco-Belgian border, found that local communists were reticent in their relations with the centre, gave little weight to national congresses or the International when defining themselves and were ill at ease with a rigid Moscow-Paris-Halluin axis.17 Furthermore, when the PCF suffered its most acute crises, for example during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact when the party disaggregated in the face of severe repression, a significant degree of local autonomy emerged.18 Moreover, the geographical specificity of communist implantation in France in itself warrants an emphasis on the PCF’s French roots, whether local or national. It is for this reason that I have chosen to use the local study as an approach to the study of the origins of French communism and of the hegemony that it exerted over much of the French working class, an approach which has led me to emphasise the social, and in particular, cultural dimensions of French communism, while always remaining mindful of the teleological dimension of the PCF and its impact at a local level. Thus, south of Paris in the suburbs of Arcueil and Cachan, the electoral progression of the PCF was stalled in the late 1920s and early 1930s by the extreme sectarianism dictated to the party by the International, while on the other hand local conditions and developments over which the party had little or no control acted to facilitate the implantation of communism. In 1935, Arcueil was part of the communist wave which swept the Seine suburbs, as the PCF won control of 22 municipalities in the Department of the Seine. Except during its period of illegality between 1939 and 1944, the PCF retained control of Arcueil’s municipal government from 1935 until the 1990s. However, the political trajectory of Cachan has been different. After separation from Arcueil, Cachan’s municipal government was controlled by an alliance of moderate republicans and radicals. It was briefly communist from 1945-1947, was controlled by Gaullists from 1947-1953, but from 1953 until this day it has remained a socialist bastion. Why did the political development of Arcueil and Cachan differ? Why did the former become a communist bastion after 1935, and the latter a socialist bastion in the 1950s? In setting out to answer these questions, I will re-visit the debates regarding the nature of working-class consciousness and political identification, their relationship to the origins

17 Michel Hastings “Jalons pour une Anthropologie Culturelle des Implantations communiste en France”, Cahiers du CRAPS, no. 3, September 1987, p. 56. 18 H. R. Kedward, “Behind the Polemics: French Communists and Resistance 1939-41”, in Stephen Hawes and Ralph White (eds), Resistance in Europe 1939-1945, Penguin, Harmondsworth, United Kingdom, 1976, pp 101-104. 5 Introduction

of French communism and the primacy of localism in the creation and maintenance of communist hegemony at a local level. My thesis diverges from other studies of the banlieue rouge not only in its choice of suburbs but in its comparative approach and in its time frame, which spans the interwar period, World War II and the Fourth Republic. Typically, studies of the banlieue rouge are limited to a single commune and to a single epoch, such as the interwar period. I have chosen the divergent political evolution of two similar, adjoining suburbs, in the years between 1919 and 1958, in order to critically analyse the nature of the French working class in general, and the origins of French communism in particular. In doing so I will provide some answers to the problem posed above of how and why France developed a strong communist movement in the twentieth century and why this movement was so strong in the Paris region. Until its abolition in the 1968 restructure of the departments of the Ile-de- France, Arcueil and Cachan formed part of the Department of the Seine and more particularly the petite couronne, the inner ring of suburbs surrounding Paris. (The Department of the Seine was abolished in the administrative reforms of 1968, at which time Arcueil and Cachan became part of the new Department of the Val-de-Marne, encompassing suburbs to the southeast of Paris.) Before 1923, Arcueil-Cachan formed a single administration, but from 1900 onwards it had been, for the purposes of municipal elections, divided into two electoral sections each with their own separate representatives, a reflection of the growing separatist feeling in Cachan. This separatism was exacerbated when Arcueil-Cachan passed into Communist control in 1922 following the Congress of Tours. In reaction, Cachan’s moderate municipal councillors successfully lobbied for a partition of the commune which was enacted by the French parliament on 26 December 1922. Two separate communes, Arcueil and Cachan, were created along the boundaries of the electoral sections, Cachan being the larger of the two in surface area (289 hectares compared with Arcueil’s 250) but smaller in population.19 At the time, commentators from the left to the right claimed that the underlying cause of the partition of Arcueil-Cachan was the fact that Arcueil was a suburb dominated by manual workers, many of them new arrivals, who had been won over to radical opinions, while Cachan’s population was more petty-bourgeois in aspect. However, by the mid-1930s, a rapid growth in population had led to Cachan’s progressive proletarianisation, and to rising support for the PCF. Moreover, the

19 These figures are taken from Conseil Municipal de Cachan (Le troisième depuis création), Cachan: Création de la commune, son évolution, sa modernisation 1923-1935, p. 13. 6 Introduction

spectacular success of the PCF in the 1935 municipal elections meant that Arcueil and Cachan were now located in an area of the Department of the Seine which henceforth would form a bastion of communism. The most notable feature of Arcueil and Cachan is the aqueduct which dominates the skyline near the Arcueil-Cachan Réseau express régional (RER) station and forms part of the boundary between the two communes.20 According to the 1937 chronicler of the Paris suburbs, Albert Demangeon, this aqueduct introduced into a “banlieue disgracieuse” some “traits plus nobles.”21 The name Arcueil probably derives from the Latin arcus and alludes to the Gallo-Roman aqueduct that once traversed the suburb, a small ruin of which can still be found today adjoining its larger counterpart.22 Less noble is Arcueil’s association with the shooting of six Dominicans by the Paris Communards on 25 May 1871 – the Dominicans had been taken from the Albert-le- Grand Dominican institute located in Arcueil.23 The twentieth-century composer Erik Satie lived in Arcueil from 1898 until his death in 1925, founding the so-called École d’Arcueil and participating in local politics as a member of the SFIO and then the PCF.24 Satie is buried in the local cemetery. Cachan is notable for the fact that the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins lived for a time in Cachan and to this day a street in the commune bears his name in recognition.25 Until the 1950s, the historically significant Bièvre River could be seen traversing Arcueil and Cachan, flowing on to Gentilly and Paris to their north, and emptying into the Seine near the Pont d’Austerlitz and Notre Dame.26 However, by the 1930s this river had become little more than an

20 The aqueduct at Arcueil in fact consists of two aqueducts, namely the Medicis aqueduct built in the first half of the seventeenth century and another aqueduct which was constructed on top of it between 1868 and 1872, Jean Bastié, La Croissance de la banlieue parisienne, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1964, p. 45; Jacques Hillairet and Georges Poisson, Évocation du Grand Paris: La Banlieue Sud, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1956, pp. 418-421. 21 Albert Demangeon, Paris, la Ville et sa Banlieue, Bourrelier, Paris, p. 55. 22 Marianne Mulon, Noms de lieux d’Ile-de-France: Introduction à la toponymie, Paris, Editions Bonneton, 1997, pp. 45-46 ; Hillairet and Poisson, Évocation du Grand Paris, pp. 418-421. 23 Eugène Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, Vol. 66, Banlieue Parisienne, III, Région Ouest et Sud-Ouest, 3e Partie, Autour du Mont Valérien-Saint-Cloud et Bois de Ville d’Avray Vallée de Sèvre et Bois de Meudon-Région de Sceaux-Boss-Vallée de la Bièvre, Berger-Levrault, Nancy-Paris-Strasbourg, 1921, pp. 228-229. 24 Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne [AD94], E Dépôt Arcueil 3D5: Biographies, Dossier 13 – Erik Satie; George Poisson, Le Val-de-Marne, Art et Histoire, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1968, p. 53; AD94 1J821, Press clipping (unidentified newspaper). 25 “Cachan-Arcueil”, Article by Léandre Vaillat, Le Temps, 29 April, 1936 (AD94 35J251 – Press clipping).

26 Cercle de Cartophilie et D’Histoire Locale du Club Léo Lagrange de Cachan, Cachan: Mon village, Cachan, 1994, p. 49. 7 Introduction

open sewer and was a metaphor for problems plaguing the working-class suburbs of Paris, much to the profit of the PCF. Just how and why the PCF profited from the problems encountered by residents of suburbs such as Arcueil and Cachan goes to the heart of the origins and nature of the PCF itself.

1. FRENCH COMMUNISM DEBATED

Until relatively recently, Marxism has cast its shadow over the historiography of French communism, and more particularly French historiography of the communist movement in France. This is because most researchers of the topic were marked at some time or other (and in some rare cases still are) by their membership of the PCF or its affiliates, or else adhered to the extreme Left (particularly in 1968 and after), or were marked by their rejection of Marxism and the proletarian revolution and communist utopia it espoused.27 Under such circumstances the capacity of researchers to approach the topic of French communism with objectivity has varied greatly. Since 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the communist states of Eastern Europe and of the Soviet Union has ensured that a polemic which had already at the time lost much of its power has now run its course. With the end of the Cold War and the ensuing terminal decline of communist parties in Western Europe (a decline well under way even before the end of the Cold War), historians and researchers from other disciplines are more able today to study communism free of ideological encumbrances than at any time in the past. Moreover, the opening of formerly closed archives of the former Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc has furnished researchers with untapped sources with which new histories of communism can be written. The debate today has been de- politicised as ex-communist historians and those who were once in the opposing camp have converged in their emphasis on studying the PCF in its totality – both in its dimension as part of the International and in its French context – and are more willing to

27 Stéphane Courtois, “Penser le Communisme”, Communisme, 45/46, 1996, p. 85. 8 Introduction

appreciate the value of each other’s work.28 Nevertheless, in order to re-visit the origins and nature of French communism one must first re-visit a historiography distinguished as it is by ideology and polemic. With this in mind, I will now examine the historiography of the origins and nature of French communism in terms of the three poles of interpretation proposed by Stéphane Courtois and Mark Lazar in their 1995 Histoire du Parti communiste français.29 After locating these interpretations in their ideological context, I will outline and critically examine, albeit briefly, these interpretations. The first pole of interpretation is that established by Annie Kriegel who argued that the PCF was a historical accident, the product of an alien graft on native traditions, creating a radically new organisation, a communist counter-society whose meaning could be found in the worldwide communist system. The second pole of interpretation developed in the 1970s as a response to Kriegel by communist historians in the universities and the Institut Maurice Thorez (later the Institut de recherches marxistes) and its historical journal. This pole rejected Kriegel’s central assertion as to the foreign derivation and nature of French communism and the critical importance she gave to the international communist movement in her analysis of the PCF. A third pole of interpretation is that of the political scientists and sociologists who have applied the methods, concepts and sometimes the models of their disciplines to an analysis of the origins and nature of communism. Kriegel’s interpretation must be assessed against the background of her break with the communist movement in which she had participated as a member of the Resistance, in the direction of the PCF and in the milieu of the communist intelligentsia. In the wake of 1956 when the Budapest uprising and Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin created disarray in communist circles, Kriegel was one of the first of many intellectuals to break with the PCF.30 Her subsequent right-ward political trajectory

28 Courtois and Lazar indicate that having initially been suspicious of Communisme, communist historians came to accept the quality of its work, Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 15-16. Girault wrote in 1998 that Courtois appeared to have retreated from the approach of the journal he directed, Communisme, which privileged the PCF’s role in a worldwide communist movement dominated by USSR, something which, according to Girault, was denied by French militants, their memory, and by extension the suburban residents under their influence, Jacques Girault, “Problématique du Séminaire”, in Girault (ed), Ouvriers en banlieue XIXe-XXe siècle, Éditions de l’Atelier, Paris, 1998.p. 19. Communist historians have indicated that by 1980s their work in the Institut Recherches Marxistes was regarded more positively outside of communist circles, see Jean Burges, Richard Lagache, Roger Martelli and Serge Wolikow, “Postface”, in Roger Martelli, Le Rouge et Le Bleu: Essai sur le communisme dans l’histoire française, Les Éditions de l’Atelier/Les Éditions Ouvrières, Paris, 1995, p. 261-262. 29 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 14-15. 30 Madeleine Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, Le Mouvement 9 Introduction

took her from being a Communist, to a Gaullist, a Figaro editor and an ardent Zionist who has expressed regret with regard to her role fighting in the communist Resistance rather than doing charity work.31 It was under these circumstances that communist historians criticised her version of communist history as tainted by ideology, and the emphasis she placed on the role of the International and on the foreignness of French communism.32 Certainly, Kriegel’s notion that the PCF was a foreign import was succour to a strong anticommunist movement in France and provided a strong rationale for keeping the French communists at the social and political margins of French society. For their part, Courtois and Lazar have claimed that the autonomy of communist historians was limited when it came to access to archives or re-interpretations of certain episodes in party history, and by their refusal to write a history free from the political and ideological battles of the time.33 In their view, at worst communist historians saw Kriegel’s work as an ideology which had to be combated, and at best they simply drew from her the idea that the PCF was a strict appendage of the International. The tendency of communist historians to deliberately reduce to a minimum the influence of Moscow on the PCF or their reluctance to appreciate the insights into the PCF that can be gained from Kriegel’s analysis was arguably the result of their own ideological stance.34 It is not an unreasonable assumption that the writings of communist historians were ipso facto affected by ideology as a consequence of their very membership of the PCF. The stated objective of the Institut Maurice Thorez was to “perpétuer l’oeuvre théorique” of its namesake, and the young communist historians who were attracted to the institute were active in the party, generally accepted its political line and, by their own admission, were often polemical.35 These historians also now admit that the early editions of the institute’s Cahiers d’Histoire were awkward in their communist classicism, and indicative of a very orthodox conception of the history of Marxism and Communism.36 However, the party was at best ambivalent to their work, and at worst hostile, and according to communist historians, never brought any official pressure or

Social, no. 172, July-September, 1995, pp. 89, 90. 31 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, pp. 93, 95; Roger Magraw, A History of the French Working Class, vol. 2, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, Blackwell, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, United States of America [USA], 1992, p. 194. 32 Jacques Girault, “Introduction”, in Girault (ed), Sur L’Implantation du Parti communiste français, p. 10; “Naissance du PCF et traditions ouvrières”, Cahiers d’histoire de l’institut Maurice Thorez, no. 3, April-May-June, 1973, pp. 152-182. 33 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 14-15. 34 Courtois, “Penser le Communisme”, Communisme, pp. 85-86. 35 Jean Burges et al, “Postface”, pp. 256-258, 260. 10 Introduction

censure upon their work, while they had access to untapped archives of the PCF.37

The Kriegel Orthodoxy: French Communism as an Alien Import

Using unexploited sources and the personal insights into the PCF she gained by participating in the communist movement, Kriegel set out her central thesis in her 1964 classic Aux Origines du communisme,38 and in subsequent works on French communism39, a thesis which became a veritable orthodoxy with respect to the origins of communism40, and which underpinned the approach of the journal Communisme which she founded with Courtois in 1981.41 According to Kriegel the birth of French Communism was an historical accident, the product of a unique and unrepeatable set of circumstances post-World War I, namely a quasi-revolutionary socio-economic crisis, disenchantment with French Socialism, and the ill-informed prestige attached by the French labour movement to the Russian Revolution.42 Only under such circumstances could a fraction of the French working class have turned to an alien doctrine, Bolshevism. More particularly, the defeat of the SFIO at elections in 1919 and the failure of the railway strike in May 1920 disorientated and ultimately split the working- class movement. The PCF that emerged from the SFIO’s Congress of Tours in December 1920 was a graft of two very different traditions, revolutionary Bolshevism and reformist French socialism. Kriegel gives added weight to the historical specificity of the origins of French communism by claiming that youthful new recruits and the peasantry, the class which bore the brunt of wartime slaughter, pushed the SFIO toward schism. In Kriegel’s view, the new party then set about reversing the integration of the working class into the nation-state, an integration which was evident in the pre-war

36 Jean Burges et al, “Postface”, pp. 256-258, 260. 37 Jean Burges et al, “Postface”, pp. 257-259. 38 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, pp.90-91. 39 See, for example, Annie Kriegel, The French Communists: Profile of a People, trans. Elaine P. Halperin, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1968. 40 For example Ronald Tiersky’s 1972 work, French Communism, 1920-1972, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1974, is essentially an extension of Kriegel’s analysis. A decade later, much of Duncan Gallie’s analysis in his comparative study of class in Britain and France, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983 is contingent upon Kriegel’s account of the birth of French communism, see especially Chapter 12. 41 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, pp. 89-90. 42 Annie Kriegel, Aux Origines du communisme français 1924-1920, Mouton & Co, Paris, 1964, especially pp. 11-16, 31-66, 348-353, 538-547, 812-874, and “The PCF and the Problem of Power (1920- 1939)”, in John C. Cairns (ed), Contemporary France, Illusion, Conflict and Regeneration, New York and London: New Viewpoints, 1978, pp. 94-96. 11 Introduction

patriotism of French workers and in the fact that the leadership of both the political and industrial branches of the French labour movement rallied to their nation’s defence in 1914 and willingly collaborated with the bourgeois state.43 This reversal was achieved not only via the application of the Leninist revolutionary model that necessitated the construction of a Bolshevik Party, but also by the parallel creation of a communist micro-society in the image of the party.44 Thus communist counter-society functioned as a form of dual power that bypassed bourgeois society and its state institutions whose very foundations it called into question. With the Soviet Union as its model, the PCF constructed a counter-society which prefigured a socialist society of the future and enabled the party to systematically resist working class assimilation into the national community. These communist bastions provided the structural basis for continued resistance to the assimilationist precedent of the social democrats. They did so by maintaining a cohesive society that had at its heart a perpetual negation of the status quo, an externalist psychology and an enduring support for the PCF’s role as vanguard of the revolution. The creation and maintenance of a communist bastion was contingent upon the PCF’s all-encompassing influence which attempted as far as possible to satisfy the material needs and cultural aspirations of its members and supporters. In the event of a revolution, the PCF’s bastions would become legitimised as the new establishment or conversely their expansion under the guidance of the PCF would signal the occurrence of a revolution. In positing the existence of a communist counter-society prescribed by Leninist theory and modelled on the Soviet Union, Kriegel concluded that the “ultimate meaning” of French Communism was to be found in an understanding of Russian Bolshevism.45 In setting out my arguments below regarding the origins and nature of French communism I will take issue with Kriegel’s assertions regarding the integration of the French working class, the foreign derivation of the PCF, and the view that its birth was an accident of history. At this stage I need only point out some of the fundamental weaknesses of the Kriegel thesis. Magraw’s comprehensive review of local and other studies relating to the origins of French communism found at best only partial support for the Kriegel thesis.46 A detailed study of the voting of delegates at the Congress of

43 See Kriegel, Aux Origines, vol. 1, especially chapters 1 and 2. 44 Kriegel, The French Communists, see especially pp. 140-145, 173-174, 181-184, 254-268 and “PCF and the Problem of Power (1920-1939)”, pp. 96-101, 106-109. 45 Kriegel, “The PCF and the Problem of Power (1920-1939)”, p. 94. 46 Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, pp. 193-198. 12 Introduction

Tours found little support for Kriegel’s assertions as to the role of generational change and peasant discontent in the SFIO’s schism47, while the notion that those who voted to adhere to the Third International were naive or ill-informed and taken advantage of by the more tactically savvy Bolsheviks is questionable.48 A re-evaluation of the social movement at the origins of French communism leads, in the view of Madeleine Rebérioux, to the conclusion that the PCF was a product of a slow maturation project, not an accident.49 Moreover, research undertaken since the 1970s has gradually built up a clearer picture of the growth and development of both socialism and communism at a local and regional level, a picture that is far more complex than the analysis of communism and its origins that Kriegel advances.50

Communist Historiography and the French Roots of the PCF

Communist historians can take much of the credit for broadening the picture of French communism. This is especially the implantation approach, one of two approaches that Courtois and Lazar discern within their second pole of interpretation. Pioneered by Jacques Girault, this approach locates the rise of communism within structural realities that engendered it.51 In particular, the seminal 1977 work Sur l’Implantation du Parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres edited by Jacques Girault, paved the way for subsequent studies of communism in the Paris suburbs, including this thesis, as well as elsewhere in France.52 “Etudier une implantation, c’est saisir une situation concrète et expliquer les résistances ou les facilités du développement”, wrote Girault in his 1977 work, “C’est chercher ce qui dans les données structurelles variées (économie, démographie, composition socio- professionnel, facteurs religieux, etc.), permet la réussite ou contribue à faire échouer le mouvement.”53 Reacting against what he and other researchers on communism saw as the ‘ideological’ approach of Kriegel, Girault argued for history founded on a complex,

47 “Introduction”, in Jean Charles, Jacques Girault, Jean-Louis Robert, Danielle Tartakowsky and Claude Willard (eds), Le Congrès de Tours (18e Congrès national du Parti socialiste – texte intégral), Éditions Sociales, Paris, 1980, pp. 77-83. 48 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, p. 92; According to Robert Wohl, when Bolshevik policy succeeded it was often for the wrong reasons, Robert Wohl, French Communism in the Making, 1919-1924, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1966, pp. 443-444. 49 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, p. 93. 50 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, pp. 92-93; Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, pp. 195-201. 51 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 14-15. 52 Jacques Girault, Sur L’implantation du Parti communiste français dans l’entre-deux-guerres, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1977. 13 Introduction

even contradictory, relationship between the PCF and local society.54 This appreciation of the diversity of French communism is the major contribution that has been made to the history of French communism by Girault and other communist/ex-communist historians. It provided much of the impetus for the challenge subsequently mounted to Kriegel’s accidental thesis by the journal Le Mouvement Social, to which Kriegel was a contributor up until 1968, as it attempted to re-orient the analysis of French communism toward a minute study of its social origins.55 However, the emphasis on the structural foundations of communist implantation has its limits. As Michel Hastings points out, the risk in this approach is a tendency to concentrate too exclusively on the objective conditions of implantation, and to risk privileging the latter as the sole determinant of communist hegemony.56 Certainly there is a tendency in some of the maîtrise theses on the local implantation of communism, which have proliferated from the 1970s onwards, to present a mass of structural data which gives the impression of an inevitable progression of a commune toward communism as it is conquered by a factory proletariat. Nevertheless, Girault’s advice was not to simply concentrate on the objective conditions but to integrate the PCF in its milieu, to understand the motivations of the electorate, perceptions and lives of militants, to establish a correspondence between social and mental structures, and to gain an understanding of ideology and the way it is elaborated, perceived and transmitted.57 The second approach of communist historians was that of Roger Martelli and Serge Wolikow58 which underlined the national imperatives which determined PCF strategy and designated the party as essentially French. This approach has provided a counterweight to Kriegel’s inflexible emphasis on the international aspect of the PCF. Nonetheless, the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union and the communist regimes in Eastern Europe that it supported has called into question some of the central

53 Girault, “Introduction”, p. 11. 54 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 192. 55 Rebérioux, “Pour un dialogue avec Annie Kriegel et son oeuvre”, p. 92. 56 Hastings, “Jalons pour une Anthropologie Culturelle des Implantations communistes en France”, p. 57. 57 Girault, “Introduction”, p. 11. 58 See for example, Serge Wolikow, Chapter 4 “Analyse des classes et stratégie du P.C.F.: Période ‘classe contre classe’ au front populaire”, in Michel Dion et al, La Classe ouvrière française et la politique, pp. 109-136. 14 Introduction

assumptions made by Martelli and Wolikow.59. According to Courtois, these archives demonstrate conclusively the minute control exerted by communist International, and by extension the CPSU and Stalin, over the PCF’s Central Committee, and consequently the operations of the PCF and its strategy.60

The Social Science Approach to the PCF

If the challenge posed by communist historians to the Kriegel orthodoxy has led to a broad re-evaluation of French communism, so too has the third pole of interpretation, that of sociologists and political scientists who have produced precise, detailed studies on strategy in electoral competition, the organisational sociology of adherents and directors, and of the evolution of French opinion with regard to communism. Some notable approaches include that of Lavau, who emphasised the PCF’s tributary function and the inevitability of the definitive integration of communism, Bernard Pudal61, inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, saw the PCF as a product of oppressed French workers in quest for legitimacy but, in the view of Lazar and Courtois, he neglected the imperatives and characteristics of international communism.62 I will argue below that the tributary function Lavau ascribes to the PCF is only one, albeit important, aspect of the way in which the PCF created and maintained its bastions, a view shared by other historians of the PCF, notably Michel Hastings.63 In particular it does not sufficiently explain how the PCF put down such durable roots in French society. In my view the PCF functioned as more than simply a voice of protest. Pudal’s view of the French communists as oppressed workers in search of legitimacy is echoed in my analysis as the underlying basis of communist support in Arcueil and Cachan which I argue had as one of its central pillars the quest for dignity on the part of workers whose living conditions were miserable. Other sociological studies have seen French communism as fundamentally the product of the prevailing industrial relations system in France. Duncan Gallie’s revisionist Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain argued that French communism was initially nourished by the legacy of bitterness deriving from the

59 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 14-15. 60 Courtois, “Penser le Communisme”, pp. 88-89. 61 Bernard Pudal, Prendre Parti: Pour une sociologie historique du PCF, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris, 1989. 62 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 14-15. 63 Michel Hastings, Halluin la rouge, 1919-1939: Aspects d’un communisme identitaire, Presses universitaires, Lille, 1991, p. 303 and “Jalons pour une anthropologie culturelle des implantations 15 Introduction

war (which he argues had a greater impact upon France than Britain or Germany) and continued to expand its influence owing to the persistence of an extremely authoritarian system of employer control that generated a high level of work grievance.64 The Depression and World War II then enabled the PCF to expand its influence and replicate its worldview among French workers, hence opinion surveys of the English and French working classes found a higher degree of class consciousness among French workers, a consequence, Gallie argued, of the influence of the PCF.65 In my view, Gallie’s analysis is far too narrow. He rejects arguments which locate the origins of French communism in the revolutionary tradition or uneven economic development. It does not adequately explain how the PCF could put down enduring roots in French society in the 1920s during a period of organisational weakness, dissidence, government repression, extreme social marginalisation and when the very nature of industrial relations in France meant the PCF’s network of factory cells was generally weak.66 Moreover, prior to the Popular Front, the most outstanding and durable area of success for the PCF was in the area of municipal politics, not in its workplace organisation, which suggests the key to the PCF’s implantation is not the industrial relations system of France. This is not to deny that industrial conflict was a strong generator of support among French workers for radical doctrines such as communism, as Shorter and Tilly have shown.67 However, Gallie does not give sufficient weight to bourgeois attitudes and the impact they had on class formation in the context of a bourgeois-dominated state. The political orientation of not only French but also European workers was not simply a function of the conditions under which they worked. Rather changing identities and national variations suggest political consciousness was determined by other factors such as popular culture, residential patterns, and especially the attitudes of the bourgeois elites and the role of the state.68 Hence Jean-Paul Brunet, the author of the classic study of a communist

communistes en France”, p. 62. 64 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain, pp. 23, 224-251, 258, 266-268. 65 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain, pp. 27-87, 251, 267. 66 See Girault: “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste Français dans Entre-deux-guerres Quelques Jalons”, pp. 21-22 and “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste dans la Région Parisienne”, pp. 64, 72-73, 91, 93-94, Sur L’implantation du Parti communiste français; Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 28-30, 36-37; Patrick Fridenson, “Les usines Renault et la banlieue (1919-1952)”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 128-140; Dreyfus, PCF Crises et dissidences, pp. 15-41. 67 Charles Tilly and Edward Shorter, Strikes in France 1830-1968, Cambridge University Press, London, 1974, pp. 306-329. 68 Dick Geary, “Working-Class Identities in Europe, 1850s-1930s”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 45, no. 1, 1999, pp. 24-25. 16 Introduction

bastion, Saint-Denis la ville rouge, asserts that while working conditions had an impact on working-class attitudes one must look beyond them to sociological, religious and cultural factors, and in particular to the prevailing conditions into which PCF was implanted.69 A broader perspective is that of Gérard Noiriel whose Workers in French Society advances an essentially structuralist interpretation of the rise of the PCF. Noiriel argues that the Communist conquest of the French labour movement between the wars represented a complete break with preceding working-class traditions.70 According to Noiriel, the general framework of the working-class tradition in France was disturbed by the economic and social upheaval beginning in 1905, intensified by the war and lasting until 1930, as the rationalisation and modernisation of the French economy and the concomitant growth in heavy industry wrought profound changes upon the French proletariat. By the end of war, Noiriel argues, deskilling and demographic breakdown meant that the artisanal working class, which was the inheritor of nineteenth-century labour traditions, gave way to a new industrial proletariat. The latter’s rise represented the eclipse of radical artisan and nineteenth-century revolutionary traditions. Rootless, without traditions and accustomed to factory discipline, the industrial proletariat turned to a new doctrine, Bolshevism, whose authoritarianism was more suited to the new circumstances. The Popular Front represented the industrial proletariat’s coming of age since, with its workplace and urban environment in a state of flux, this new working class had up until this point been in the process of formation. According to Noiriel it was only by resorting to myth, for example the 5 June 1936 commemoration of the Paris Commune, that the communists, who represented the new type of militant worker, were able to establish continuity between the new working class and the traditions of the nineteenth century. Many local and regional studies have associated the rise of

69 Jean-Paul Brunet, “Ouvriers et politique en banlieue parisienne”, in Girault (ed) Ouvrières en Banlieue XIXe-XXe Siècle, pp. 289-290. 70 See Noiriel, Workers in French Society, chapters 4 and 5. 17 Introduction

communism with a rupture in local working-class traditions,71 and in the Paris region the PCF had its principal interwar successes in those suburbs affected by rapid demographic growth.72 Of the three socio-professional groups that Molinari designates as forming the working-class core of the PCF – miners, railwaymen, metal workers – it was the metal workers who formed the richest group of adherents to the PCF from the late 1920s onwards, and many of these previously unorganised workers flowed into the PCF and Confédération générale du travail (CGT) at the time of the Popular Front.73 However, one must approach with some caution Noiriel’s emphasis on the interwar period as a rupture. To some extent the uneven industrialisation of France prior to 1914 flowed over into the interwar period since rationalisation and technological change did not have a uniform impact on all branches of industry and socio-professional groups, and therefore prewar economic structures survived well into the interwar period.74 Rationalisation did not have a great impact upon the town of Le Chambon- Feugerolles in the Department of the Loire where artisanal work and mid-sized factories meant that interwar communism did not represent any distinct socio-economic constituency.75 Instead strong interwar support for the PCF was preceded by a long prewar tradition of solidarity and collective action among artisanal, semi-skilled and unskilled workers.76 There is a myriad of other examples of French communism as a continuation of radical traditions. Hastings argues that in Halluin there was not really a

71 For example, the communes of Le Boucau and Tarnos in the Basque Country had nothing to predispose them toward the PCF but passed to the Communist Party after a strike in 1920, and remained in communist hands for the next 50 years. The most obvious explanation for the durable implantation of communism is the effect of the war upon the working population of the two communes, Paul Daljean et al, “Naissance du PCF et traditions ouvrières”, Cahiers d’histoire de l’Institut Maurice Thorez, no. 3, April-May-June, 1973, p. 161. Similarly, a comparative study of two sociologically akin but politically opposed mining villages in the Pas-de-Calais lends weight to the rupture thesis. The village of Sallaumines was almost totally destroyed in World War I and was subsequently subject to a massive wave of foreign migration. It became a communist bastion. By contrast, the neighbouring Noyelles-sous- Lens social structures remained relatively intact and the village remained faithful to the SFIO. Claude Dubar, Gérard Gayot and Jacques Hédoux, “Sociabilité minière et changement sociale à Sallaumines et à Noyelles-sous-Lens (1900-19080), Revue du Nord, vol. LXIV, no. 253, April-June, 1982, pp. 367-398. 72 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, pp. 198-199. 73 Jean-Paul Molinari, Les Ouvriers Communistes: Sociologie de l’adhésion ouvrière au PCF, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1996, pp. 36-40, 79, 117. 74 Robert Boyer, “Le particularisme français revisité: La crise des années à la lumière de recherches récentes”, Le Mouvement Social, no. 154, January-March, 1991, pp. 3-20; Kathryn E. Amdur, “La tradition révolutionnaire entre syndicalisme et communisme dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres”, Le Mouvement Social, no. 139, April-June, 1987, pp. 43-46. 75 Kathryn E. Amdur, Syndicalist Legacy: Trade Unions and Politicians in Two French Cities in the Era of World War I, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1986, pp. 246-250.

18 Introduction

schism in the labour movement but instead a convergence between the programs, and social and political combats of the prewar Guesdists and the interwar PCF, with the latter simply being judged as a better way to maintain the combat.77 In the Department of the Cher, interwar support for communism was part of a tradition of voting for the extreme Left which dated back to 1849.78 Those workers that flocked to the rapidly industrialising towns or suburbs of France brought with them their own traditions, traditions that may have been permeated by radicalism. Not only did provincial migrants to the Paris suburbs often bring with them their own traditions of radical working-class politics, but many of them chose to or were forced to move because of their militancy – for example many of the thousands of Northern metal workers who moved to the Paris region during World War I did not necessarily forget their union traditions and become submissive and obedient workers once they reached Paris.79 In Arcueil, the quarry workers who helped to give the suburb a radical heritage were mostly from the Department of the Corrèze and the Limousin region, both of which have given enduring support to the PCF which inherited the pre-schism electorate of the SFIO.80 Moreover the view of migrant workers as a rootless, floating mass has to be balanced by the fact that often there were existing social networks of migrants which acted to socialise the new arrivals.81 There was also a strong will among the latter to be assimilated into the commune that they inhabited. Berlanstein argues for the continuity between the radical working-class traditions of Paris and those of suburban workers, and that connections between Parisian and suburban workers were maintained in the interwar period (see Chapter 2 below). Thus, French communism cannot simply be seen as the product of a rupture in the lives, modes of work and traditions of the French working class. More recently, the French historian Michel Hastings has argued for an anthropological approach to French communism, one which looks at communism in its

76 Michael P. Hanagan, The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns 1871-1914, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1980, pp. 3-32, 168-191; Amdur, Syndicalist Legacy, p. 245. 77 Hastings, Halluin la rouge, pp. 175, 205, 213-214. 78 Frédéric Salmon, “Quelques Remarques sur le Vote Communiste”, Communisme, 45/46, 1996, p. 164. 79 Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, p. 212. 80 See Laird Boswell, “The French Rural communist Electorate”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII, 4, Spring 1993, pp. 719-749 and “Le Communisme et la Défense de la Petite Propriété en Limousin et en Dordogne”, Communisme, no.51/52, 1997, pp. 7-8, 19. 81 Jean-Claude Farcy, “L’immigration Provinciale en Banlieue au Début du XXe Siècle”, Immigration, vie politique et populisme en banlieue parisienne, pp. 60-61. 19 Introduction

totality, examining not only specific actions and institutions but also the cultural dimension of French communism, its use of rituals, symbols and the like to shape communities and in turn the local community’s impact on communist practice.82 “En dégageant la notion d’espace politico-culturel, nous faisons de l’implantation locale du communisme, la confrontation entre le Parti, instrument de socialisation, et le milieu, qui possède son propre système de références fait d’héritages et de traditions.”83 In the case of Halluin, Hastings demonstrates how the communists democratised local folklore, reclaimed local festivities and re-interpreted local history as a way of defending and empowering a marginalised group.84 Hastings’ approach of requiring one to examine the meeting of PCF and its ideological project with the prevailing socio- economic conditions and cultural traditions has echoes elsewhere. Similarly, Kathryn Amdur claims in Le Chambon-Feugerolles that the communists were better able to exploit favourable conditions rather than alter those conditions or attitudes that obstructed party's aims.85 As Frédéric Sawicki has indicated, there are “multiples manières d’être communiste.”86

The Origins and Nature of the PCF: A Synthesis

From a critical analysis of the various interpretations of the nature and origins of French communism discussed above I have concluded that there are three factors which historically have been critical in the rise of the PCF. 1. The nature of working-culture in France, in particular the strong sense of social alienation which had permeated working-class mentalités as mediated by revolutionary and working-class traditions, bourgeois attitudes and the structure of their workplace and of French society. 2. The local milieu in its totality. This includes the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the locality into which the PCF attempted to implant itself, and the

82 Michel Hastings, “Le communisme saisi par l’anthropologie”, Communisme, 45/46, 1996, pp. 100-107. 83 Hastings, “Jalons pour une anthropologie culturelle des implantations communistes en France”, p. 57. 84 Hastings, “Jalons pour une anthropologie culturelle des implantations communistes en France”, p. 56; Michel Hastings: “Communisme et folklore: Étude d’un carnaval rouge Halluin 1924”, Ethnologie française, 16 (2), April, 1986, pp. 137-149; “Identité culturelle local et politique festive communiste: Halluin la Rouge 1920-1934”, Le Mouvement Social, no 139, April-June, 1987, pp. 7-25; “Le migrant, la fête et le bastion Halluin-la-Rouge 1919-1939”, in Alain Corbin, Noëlle Gérôme, Danielle Tartakowsky (eds) Les Usages Politiques des Fêtes aux XIXe-XXe Siècles, Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris, 1994, pp. 211-221. 85 Amdur, Syndicalist Legacy, p. 255. 20 Introduction

way PCF went about its implantation. The character of a locality either exacerbates the influence of the first factor, and thus facilitates the implantation of communism, or mitigated it, and with it truncated the ability of the PCF to create a communist counter-society. 3. Extrinsic forces. Namely, the impact of specific historical conjunctures and of the PCF’s teleological project. The socio-economic crisis post-World War I was undoubtedly fundamental to the rise of the PCF because it created a fertile breeding ground for communism, while the Depression, the Popular Front and the party’s role in the Resistance enabled the PCF to extend its audience and transform itself into a mass party. The machinations of the International and CPSU undoubtedly affected the ability of the PCF to establish a local hegemony since they could either foster or inhibit the influence of the PCF locally. My analysis below of the implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan between 1919 and 1958 and its attempt, successful or otherwise, to impose a localised party-political hegemony will privilege the first two factors because I will argue that they had the most immediate impact upon communist implantation at a local level. I will set out below why I think the alienation of the French working class and the traditions this gave rise to are central to an understanding of origins and implantation of French communism. I will then argue that the counter-society model best describes the way the PCF was implanted but only if one inverts the model given to us by Kriegel. The counter-society model should lead us to privilege the local dimensions of French communism rather than the international. In the chapters that follow on Arcueil and Cachan, I will analyse the impact of the international communist movement and the USSR on the local PCF, and in the conclusion I will return, in light of my research on Arcueil and Cachan, to the debate around the importance of the PCF’s teleological project.

2. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A COMMUNIST COUNTER-HEGEMONY

The outstanding feature of popular communism in France, Western Europe and western liberal democracies is its foundations within marginal, alienated social groups. This conclusion is inescapable if one surveys studies of communism in its local, regional or national contexts. A longstanding alienation from national society and culture has been a feature of French communists, from the winegrowers of Broussan in

86 Sawicki, “Questions de Recherche: Pour une Analyse Locale des Partis Politiques”, p. 15. 21 Introduction

rural Languedoc87, to the migrant Flemish workers of Halluin on the northwest frontier of France88, and the immigrant workers – Italians, Poles, Czechs – of Longwy89, the banlieusards of the Paris region.90 It helps explain the recent embrace by workers in the large-scale naval and aeronautical industries who inhabit the Brière marsh, a rural area adjoining the industrial town of Saint-Nazaire in the Loire-Atlantique, of a stigmatising political identity that has been discredited and de-legitimised on a national and international level.91 Similarly, the membership and constituency of the first mass-based communist party of the interwar period, the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), was overwhelmingly dominated by the unemployed, a significant section of the German working class which had been driven to the margins of economic life by rationalisation, state welfare policies, and the economic crisis.92 In Italy, where the Partito Communista Italiano (PCI) was the largest communist party (in terms of membership and votes) in postwar Western Europe, there were echoes of the experience of France and Germany. The PCI was a product of sharp, at times violently expressed, ideological and social divisions and its initial working-class and peasant support base was isolated from bourgeois society.93 The ruthlessly exploited rural proletariat of the agricultural plain of Alentejo were the source of the significant, but geographically

87 Lem Winnie, Cultivating Dissent: Work, Identity and Praxis in Rural Languedoc, State University of New York Press, New York, 1999, pp. 42, 99. 88 Hastings, Halluin la rouge, pp. 168, 223, 272-299, 364-365, 375, 421-423. 89 Gérard Noiriel, Longwy: Immigrés et prolétaires 1880-1980, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1980, see especially chapters 6 and 7. 90 Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 12, 13, 64-67; Annie Fourcaut, “Banlieue Rouge, au-delà du mythe politique” and John Merriman, “Banlieues comparées”, Banlieue Rouge 1920-1960, pp. 29, 30, 35, 267- 268. 91 La Brière rouge is a fascinating case of working-class support for the PCF, and one of the clearest examples of how such support is a function of working-class alienation. While PCF has been in decline nationally since the end of the 1970s, La Brière rouge only emerged during this decade, consolidating in the 1980s. Identification with the PCF has allowed the workers of the Brière marsh to express their alienation from a French state that does not recognise the validity of their views and ignores their interests, see Julian Mischi, “La Brière Rouge: L’utilisation identitaire d’une marque politique”, Communisme, no. 51/52, 1997, pp. 59-71. 92 Geary indicates that the KPD received 3 million votes in 1924, Dick Geary, European Labour Protest, 1848-1939, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1981, pp. 145, 152, 154, 162; Eric D. Weitz, Popular Communism: Political Strategies and Social Histories in the Formation of the German, French and Italian Communist Parties 1919-1948, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1992, pp. 7, 12, 14. 93 Marc Lazar, Maisons rouges, Maisons rouges: Les Partis communistes français et italien de la Libération à nos jours, Éditions Aubier, Collection Histoires, Paris, 1992, pp. 32, 219; C. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilisation in France, Germany and Italy in the decade after World War One, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1975, p. 5; Tilly and Shorter, Strikes in France, pp. 326-329. Lazar indicates that at its height the PCI had 2.25 million members in 1947 and in 1976 it received its best result of 34.4% of the vote. However, its support was geographically concentrated in central Italy (Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marches), and in the industrial triangle of Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, with localised support elsewhere. 22 Introduction

isolated, support received by the Partido Communista Português (PCP) after the fall of Salazar in Portugal94, while the Finish Communist Party (Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue – SKP) also found significant postwar support in the geographical periphery and among isolated, marginal social groups, with its working-class supporters being politically and socially segregated.95 The Japanese Communist Party has had some success since the 1970s via the parallel organisations it has formed which incorporate socially and economically marginal groups.96 Though a marginal force in both the interwar or postwar years, the Communist Party of Great Britain found isolated pockets of support among the socially isolated, for example the communist miners of the Scottish village of Lumphinnans.97 As the cases of France, Italy, Portugal, Finland and Great Britain indicate, Communist party support in western liberal democracies is remarkable in its geographical concentration. This fact not only underscores the overriding importance of studying communist implantation in its local context, but this geographical specificity of communism may in fact be a function of a strong sense of group alienation. Moreover, in my view the very durability of French communism suggests that its roots go far deeper than a set of unrepeatable circumstances. The PCF has retained significant influence and support within the French working class in spite of dissidence and the numerous party crises they have engendered, sectarianism, organisational weakness, government repression, and extreme social marginalisation, while the

94 In 1985 the PCP polled 19.4% of the vote in local elections and 15.5% in general elections, however, its support was heavily concentrated in the industrial zone south of Lisbon and in adjacent districts that make up the agricultural province of Alentejo, where it was the strongest party. Many of these landless labourers migrated to the Lisbon industrial belt, thereby linking the two regions, see Tom Gallagher, “The Portuguese Communist Party”, in Bogdan Szajkowski (ed), Marxist Local Government in Western Europe and Japan, Frances Pinter (Publishers), London and Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., Boulder, 1986, pp. 48-51. 95 Until the 1970s the SKP, operating under its front organisation the People’s Democratic League (SKDL), polled around 20% of the vote in general elections, with peaks of 23.5% in 1945 and 23.2% in 1958, with similar figures in local elections where it peaked in 1950 and 1953 with 23.0%. Its support has been concentrated in the extreme north among rural poor loggers, fisherman and smallholders and among the traditional working class in the south west in Turku and industrial villages, see David S. Bell and Bogdan Szajkowski, “Communism in Local Government in Western Europe and Japan”, p. 11-12, 17 and David Arter, “Communists in Scandinavian Local Government”, 97-98, 110-11, Marxist Local Government. On the isolation of communist workers see also Matti Hyrärinen and Jukka Paastela, “The Finnish Communist Party: The Failure of Attempts to Modernise a C.P.”, University of Tampere, Department of Political Science, Occasional Papers, 39, 1985, pp. 2-3, 20. 96 Bell and Szajkowski, “Communism in Local Government in Western Europe and Japan”, p.15- 16 and Richard Boyd, “The Japanese Communist Party in Local Government”, p. 185, in Marxist Local Government. The Japanese Communist Party received 9.3% of the vote in the legislative elections of 1983, see Marxist Local Government, p. XVI. 97 Stuart Macintyre, Little Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Interwar 23 Introduction

dissident political parties or movements that it gave rise to were ultimately ephemeral.98 Arguably this is because the PCF has its origins in a profound alienation of the French working class from bourgeois society resulting from a structural and cultural blockage within French society that prevented the integration of a substantial segment of the French working class. This blockage was the corollary of an alliance between conservative peasants and a dominant bourgeoisie, both fearful that social reform would bring social revolution, and willing to tolerate authoritarian regimes to maintain the social order. The inability of the ruling elite to co-opt the working class (as the British elites succeeded in doing much sooner than their French counterparts) and the often heavy-handed response of authorities to social discontent fuelled a resentment that boiled over into periodic violent outbursts that were ruthlessly suppressed. The latter in turn reinforced the fears of the peasantry and bourgeoisie, and consequently their resistance to reform. It also made the authorities prone to overreact to social discontent.

The Stalemate Society and the Alienation of the French Working Class

As a consequence of the unique circumstances of industrialisation in France, an industrial sector pervaded by pre-industrial features arose alongside an archaic agrarian economy, a situation which was in fact common throughout Europe, with the exception of England.99 The survival of a substantial peasantry - the urban population of France only became a majority in 1931 - and petty bourgeoisie coincided with industrialisation and the ensuing growth of an industrial working class.100 According to Stanley Hoffman, the result was that under the Third Republic two types of society coexisted in equilibrium: a

Britain, Croom Helm, London, 1980, p. 55 98 The Union Socialiste-Communiste which had been formed in 1923 following the exclusion of a number of suburban mayors in Paris from the PCF (see footnote 3) was transformed in 1927 into the Parti socialiste-communiste. The Parti ouvrier paysan was formed in 1929 by PCF dissidents opposed to the aggressively anti-SFIO stance of the PCF which followed its adoption of class-against-class tactics in 1927. With the aim of unifying the French labour movement, in December 1930 the Parti socialiste- communiste fused with the Parti ouvrier paysan to create the PUP which survived until 1937. Having lost its raison d’être with the advent of the Popular Front, it was absorbed into the SFIO. This was confirmation of a pre-existing trend whereby communist dissidents tended to re-join the SFIO, as was the case with Sellier, mayor of Suresnes, who re-joined the SFIO in 1925 and Morizet, mayor of Boulogne- Billancourt, who re-joined the SFIO in 1929. See Michel Dreyfus: PCF Crises et dissidences De 1920 à nos jours, Éditions complexe, Brussels, 1990, pp. 35-36 and “Implantation municipale et dissidences communistes dans la banlieue parisienne (1920-1940)”, La Banlieue Oasis, pp. 52-53; Claude Pennetier and Nathalie Viet-Depaule, “Biographies croisées des maries de banlieue”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 189, 192 and “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 198. 99 See Gerard Noiriel, Workers in French Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries, trans. Helen McPhail, Berg Publishers, New York, 1990; Geary, “Working-Class Identities in Europe, 1850s-1930s’, p. 27.

24 Introduction

static, traditional feudal-agrarian society and a dynamic, industrial society where a meritocracy underpinned social mobility.101 This stalemate society was contingent upon the maintenance of this equilibrium, the core of which was a consensus between those of independent means (non-wage earners), the peasantry and the middle classes. The working class was excluded from this consesus and, as a consequence, confined to the social ghetto. Transcending Hoffman’s analysis, Herman Lebovics traces this immobilism to the deliberate effort of Opportunist republicans and former monarchists to craft a conservative coalition to defend rank, wealth and aristocratic family heritage once the Republic had been firmly entrenched.102 (Contemporaneously, similar coalitions were formed by the new Italian Republic and the German state). A bourgeoisie not completely at ease with the costs and conflicts of modern industrial society set the tone for this alliance of iron and wheat, as Lebovics terms it.103 Epitomised in the great general tariff of 1892, this was a conservative alliance of big agriculturalists and industrialists, the former wanting to resist growing restiveness on the land, the latter the growing militancy of workers. The ralliement between Opportunists and the Catholic Church which came about because of a mutual desire to protect the social status quo underscored the essentially conservative character of the Third Republic.104 Sanford Elwitt has concluded from his analysis of bourgeois reform in the early decades of the Third Republic that bourgeois social politics prior to 1914 remained “fundamentally counter-revolutionary.”105 The Opportunists fashioned a Republic which had no place for workers, and the escalating revolutionary rhetoric and labour militancy which ensued was the working-class response to the checkmate of reform and political isolation.106 The French working class was faced with a broad social alliance. It encompassed the petty-bourgeoisie, which, fearing proletarianisation clung to its privileges and attempted to strengthen the barriers that blocked the social advancement

100 Phillipe Bernard and Henri Dubief, The Decline of the Third Republic, 1914-1938, trans. Anthony Forster, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 242. 101 On the stalemate society in France see Stanley Hoffman, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community”, in Harvard University Centre for International Affairs In Search of France, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963, pp. 3-7. 102 Herman Lebovics, The Alliance of Iron and Wheat in the Third French Republic 1860-1914: The Origins of the New Conservatism, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1988, p. 7. 103 Lebovics, Alliance of Iron and Wheat, pp. 7-8, 16, 23-24. 104 Lebovics, Alliance of Iron and Wheat, pp. 24-25. 105 Sanford Elwitt, The Third Republic Defended: Bourgeois Reform in France, 1880-1914, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1986, p. 298. 106 Lebovics, Alliance of Iron and Wheat, p. 191. 25 Introduction

of the proletariat,107 and land-owning peasants who had little interest in funding social legislation which they saw as being of scant benefit to them.108 Radicals and Radical- Socialists were soon accommodated within this conservative coalition which outlasted the Dreyfus Affairs, surviving up until the mid-1930s.109 In fact the Radical-Socialist Party which dominated government from 1902 until the demise of the Third Republic became the main instrument for maintaining the stalemate society. In spite of its political rhetoric steeped in the French revolutionary tradition and ideas of progress, by the interwar period the Radical-Socialist Party was in essence a deeply conservative party seeking to stabilise rather than to transform society and therefore leaving it basically untouched.110 Fiercely class-conscious, the French bourgeoisie implacably defended its social advantages and political hegemony in the belief that the working class had made gains at its expense.111 For the French patronat, the protection of employer authority at the workplace took precedence over the profit motive, hence its fierce opposition to attempts by French workers to organise or bargain collectively.112 After World War I, in France (and as well in Italy and Germany which had similar traditions of sharp ideological and class division within society), the bourgeoisie attempted to return to its prewar stability and status by excluding the socialists from any decisive influence on the state since the prominence and power of working-class organisations was seen as a threat.113 Social democrats could only be accepted into an alliance if they accepted the economic conceptions of their bourgeois allies, though the bourgeoisie was prepared to make some compromises, by dealing with reformist unions, giving state agencies some controls over the market and building spokespeople from

107 Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic, pp. 157-158. 108 Maurice Larkin, France since the Popular Front: Government and People 1936-1986, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988, pp. 38-39. 109 Lebovics, Alliance of Iron and Wheat, pp. 184, 191. 110 With the separation of the church and state in 1905 and the introduction of income tax during the war, the Radical political program was largely achieved, and henceforth Radical politics was largely reduced to the preservation of the revolutionary myths and their re-enactment in ritual form. Thus interwar Radicalism chiefly consisted of a pronounced anti-clericalism, opposition to strong government, Jacobin patriotism, and the championing of the small man against the depredations of the state and big business. Moreover, Radical political doctrine viewed government principally in negative terms, stressing the need to limit and control its power, and as such was opposed to any far-reaching social reform. See James F. McMillan, Twentieth-Century France: Politics and Society 1898-1991, Edward Arnold, London, 1992, pp. 20, 90-91; Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic, pp.161-162; Larkin, France since the Popular Front, pp. 38-9. 111 McMillan, Twentieth-Century France, pp. 50-51, 82 112 Tilly and Shorter, Strikes in France, pp. 33-39; Noiriel, Longwy, pp. 107-11. 113 Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe, pp. 5, 6, 581. 26 Introduction

interest groups into the state.114 It was in this context that the PCF arose. Moreover, working-class exclusion was not only political: it was also cultural. Bourgeois dominance of all facets of French life – spiritual, temporal, economic, political – was protected by state policy that preserved the overall structure of society and by the identification of bourgeois values - stability, harmony, and permanence rather than competition – with those of society as a whole.115 The stalemate society celebrated the free, individual work of the peasant and reviled that of the worker for being exactly the opposite.116 Under such circumstances all French society had to offer workers was a bourgeois individualist ethos, an ethos that flew in the face of traditions of collective solidarity so valued by French workers. “If the peasantry was the reservoir of French society”, writes Hoffman, “the working class was its swamp.”117 It is in this context that the culture wars of the Third Republic raged, with proponents of an antique France and of a France with workers at its heart battling to speak for what Lebovics has termed True France.118 This Franco-French Kulturkampf pitted the Left and Right against each other in a dispute as to what was the French patrimoine.119 “By the 1920s and 1930s”, writes Lebovics, “the candidates of the right and of the left, respectively, were peasants alone and both workers and peasants.”120 Consequently, it comes as little surprise that much of the French proletariat experienced a profound alienation from and resentment toward bourgeois society, especially since this was an alienation which was reinforced by historical experience. The experience of revolution and repression was central to the rise of a highly developed working-class consciousness in nineteenth-century France.121 In Limoges, the revolutions experienced first-hand by workers in 1830 and 1848, which brought them into violent conflict with the bourgeois state, led directly to the forging of class solidarities, and to the concomitant transformation of Limoges’ working class from clerical sympathy to militant class-consciousness and fierce anti-clericalism.122 The

114 Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe, pp. 581, 594. 115 Hoffman, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community”, p. 5. 116 Hoffman, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community”, p. 7. 117 Hoffman, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community”, p. 7. 118 Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945, Belin, Paris, 1996, pp. 138-139. 119 Lebovics, True France p. 139. 120 Lebovics, True France p. 139. 121 See Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left, Clarendon Press, Oxford and Oxford University Press, New York, 1986, Chapter 2; Magraw, A History of the French Working Class, vol. 1, The Age of Artisan Revolution 1815-1871, especially pp. 281-292. 122 See John M. Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century, Oxford 27 Introduction

betrayal by the bourgeoisie of working-class revolutionary aspirations in the 1830 Revolution was a pivotal event in the generation of class-consciousness among French workers. At the time of 1848 Revolution, it fuelled the working-class demand for the instigation of a social republic, with pitiable consequences. Determined to defend the social order, the bourgeois state slaughtered thousands of workers during the June Days, a week of savage civil war which soon found pride of place in the martyrology of the French proletariat. By the time that the Second Empire collapsed in 1870-71, working- class alienation from the bourgeois state, a corollary of the twin experiences of revolution and repression, had engendered the belief that it was only through their own actions that workers could be emancipated from the bourgeois yoke. This was the message of Proudhon who, in entreating workers to seek emancipation independently of the bourgeoisie and the state, found an attentive audience among workers. The ideal of the social republic also lived on, as the Paris Commune of 1871 demonstrated. A mixture of Proudhonist sentiment and revolutionary patriotism drove workers to establish, fleetingly, their own government, the 1871 Paris Commune. The savage repression unleashed upon the Commune during la semaine sanglante which resulted in the deaths of between 10,000 and 30,000 Parisians, demonstrated the lengths to which the French bourgeoisie was prepared to go to defend the status quo.123 Given the sheer brutality that bourgeois republicans visited upon workers in the 1848 and 1871 insurrections one can understand how many French workers could feel alienated from the bourgeois society and its bourgeois republic, especially those who lived in the Paris region, the revolutionary epicentre. In spite of the granting of an amnesty to the Communards, the inability of the newly installed Third Republic to deal with the social question only reinforced working- class alienation. The Fourmies massacre of May Day 1891, when the army was used against working-class demonstrators with nine people killed and 33 injured including children and adolescents, confirmed the willingness of the bourgeois state to use force against the working class.124 The case of Fourmies, where conflict between the state and workers had been engendered by an employer’s reaction to working-class militancy, is indicative of how, beyond the celebrated revolutionary uprisings of the French

University Press, New York and Oxford, 1985, pp. 55-69, 72-79 123 Figures according to: Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society, Palgrave, Basingstoke, United Kingdom, 2001, p. 25.

28 Introduction

proletariat, a strong tradition in France of industrial conflict in itself represented a force that shaped enormously the collective action of the working-class. According to Tilly and Shorter, the propensity toward industrial conflict was both inherited from forebears and determined by occupational status – French workers were “enmatrixed” in “a community with firmly rooted conflictual institutions and with collective mentalities of an ancient pedigree.”125 In the Paris region, radical working class traditions ensured a geographical continuity in industrial conflict independent of the rise and fall of industries.126 Conflict not only permeated industrial relations but also working-class culture in the Paris region and beyond. In prewar and interwar Saint-Denis, workers expressed their class identity through processions and demonstrations that frequently ended in ritualised violence between the police and workers, often after the police brutally and provocatively attempted to prevent the unfurling of the Red Flag, the symbol of working-class identity.127 Hence the ambivalence of the French proletariat toward the Republic, even after the Dreyfus affair. That workers were republicans went without saying, their revolutionary heritage determining for them that a Republic was the best possible form of government. In this respect, they agreed with the bourgeois republicans. However, it was the form that this Republic took which created a chasm between proletarian and bourgeois republicans. The social republic so dear to workers was an anathema to bourgeois republicans and anti-republicans alike. Under such circumstances a liberal alliance between the proletariat and the radical bourgeoisie could not be formed, except in times of crisis when the Republic itself was threatened. Both had internalised the myths of the French Revolution which had become the common heritage of the Left, bourgeois and proletarian. The working class accepted as a given fact that the Republic was the best form of government that would guarantee civil liberties and provide the best solution to the social question.128 However, acceptance of the republican form of government did not imply working-class acceptance of or integration into the bourgeois social order. One could accept a republic as the most desirable form of government but reject it in its

124 Rolande Trempé, “Deuxième Partie: 1871-1914”, in Claude Willard (ed) La France Ouvrière: Histoire de la classe ouvrière et du mouvement ouvrier français, L’Atelier, Paris, 1995, vol. 1 Des origines à 1920, pp. 316-317. 125 Tilly and Shorter, Strikes in France 1830-1968, p. 286. 126 Tilly and Shorter, Strikes in France, pp. 236-38, 266, chapter 9. 127 Jean-Paul Brunet, Saint-Denis La Ville Rouge: Socialisme et communisme en banlieue ouvrière 1890-1939, Hachette, Paris, 1980, pp. 97-120, 264-267, 326-27. 128 See in particular Judt, Marxism, Ch. 2; Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, pp. 319-

29 Introduction

bourgeois form. Moreover, prior to 1914 the hostile attitude of the bourgeois parties merely reinforced the ideological commitment of many in the SFIO and the CGT to irreconcilable class struggle. This is not to deny that the forces of integration were at work prior to World War I, as the rapidity with which the socialist and union leadership in France rallied to the cause of national defence suggests.129 Reformists, revolutionary socialists and syndicalists, even anarchists rallied to their nation’s defence in the belief that France had not been bellicose and that World War I would not be a war of reaction but instead would be fought in the tradition of 1792.130 With its echoes of 1870-71, 1914 was a republican reflex that rested on a belief that France was a victim of aggression from an imperialistic, autocratic and barbarous Prussian regime and was fighting for civilisation, progress and liberty. Moreover, the working class and its leaders did not necessarily make an about-face from pacifism to chauvinistic patriotism since pacifist and nationalist sentiment co-existed throughout the war.131 Support for national defence was based upon a consensus conflictuel, with the working class expressing discontent with regard to the bourgeoisie concerning issues such as rents and the war profiteering of employers. In wartime Saint-Denis the prewar polemics continued between the socialist organ L’Emancipation and conservative Journal de Saint-Denis,132 with the former attacking members of the bourgeoisie for acting against the interests of the working class and for shirking their national duty. Moreover, despite the prewar rhetoric of the revolutionary syndicalists, the French working class was always more anti-militarist than anti-patriotic. As Geary has pointed out with regard to the German working class, one cannot assume that workers supported their nation’s war effort for the same reasons as the middle classes.133 In the case of France, leftwing patriotism had its origins in the popular defence of revolutionary France against foreign invaders and hostile counterrevolutionary émigrés, thus for workers defending the nation meant defending the promises of liberty and the social republic born of the Revolution. By contrast, a

320. 129 Wohl, French Communism, pp. 54-55. 130 See Jeremy Jennings, “Syndicalism and the French Revolution”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, no. 1, 1991, pp. 71-83, 92. Kriegel, Aux Origines, Vol. 1, pp. 60-61, 69; Jean-Louis Robert “Troisième Partie - 1914-1920”, France Ouvrière, pp. 415-417; Wohl, French Communism, pp. 552-558. 131 Robert, France Ouvrière, pp. 415-17, 419, 421-22, 429-32. 132 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 188-196.

30 Introduction

substantial segment of the French middle classes assimilated the chauvinistic, counterrevolutionary patriotism of Action française and its celebration of martial and traditionalist values which ultimately underwrote the official ideology of the collaborationist Vichy régime alien to French labour traditions.134 Those bourgeois Frenchmen who joined the fascist leagues in the 1920s and 1930s might see workers as bad patriots, but they in turn saw capitalist elites not only as exploiters but also as traitors. “They were the natural moral heirs of the émigrés of the 1790s, of the capitalistes - capitulards who had surrendered to Bismark in 1870-71,” writes Magraw, “In an era of nationalism, what ploy could be more effective for the far left than to claim, with some conviction, that French workers had always been more patriotic than their class enemies?”135 The effect of World War I was to reinforce appreciably the level of proletarian class-consciousness that was by its very nature anti-bourgeois in sentiment.136 A prewar crisis in liberal values was exacerbated by the combined effect of war, the modernisation it entailed and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.137 The French bourgeoisie was thrust toward reaction and a fragile wartime social truce unravelled Comment [DJO1]: When did even before the war was at an end. Clemenceau returned to power and adopted what Clemenceau return to power – see Sowerwine were in effect the policies of the Action française - severe repression of pacifists, resistance to a Wilsonian peace, intervention in Russia - while the acquittal of Jaurès’ assassin at the end of March 1919 signalled to workers a return to open class conflict. In the words of Wohl:

In France, the break between the Socialists and the liberal bourgeoisie had long been pending. A bourgeoisie trained to think of itself in absolutes could not accept a program that aimed at transcendence, no matter how nobly conceived. What was needed was a shock of such proportions as to make the potential benefits of renovation outweigh the bitter pleasures of class

133 Dick Geary, “Identifying Militancy: the Assessment of Working-class Attitudes towards State and Society”, in Richard J. Evans (ed), The German Working Class 1883-1933: The Politics of Everyday Life, Croom Helm, London and Barnes & Noble, Totowa, New Jersey, 1982, p. 236. 134 See Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The First Wave, 1924-1933, Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1986, pp. 10-20; Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940- 1944, Columbia University Press, New York, 1972, pp. 166-167. 135 Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, pp. 320-21 136 See also Robert, France ouvrière, pp. 430-432. 137 Wohl, French Communism, pp. 97-99, 117-118, 127-129, 448-453. 31 Introduction

hatred.138

The result was that between the wars an intense civil conflict raged in France, one which quickly transmogrified into an all-out civil war under Vichy.139 According to Wohl, interwar France stood somewhere between the two extremes of Russia, where the lack of a civil society and a precious Westernisation radicalised the entire country, and Britain, where a combination of prosperity and the willingness of ruling elites to compromise rendered the working class reformist.140 Whereas Britain’s postwar government, seeing an incorporated labour movement as a barrier to revolution, chose to negotiate social and labour legislation with a large and stable union movement, the French government and patronat ignored a smaller and divided CGT.141 As Wohl wrote:

Long-term economic advance and political democracy had undercut the basis for a proletarian revolution. Yet, the narrow class nature of the republican regime and revolutionary memories kept radical sentiments alive. The worker was an outcast in his own society: a leper who could neither surmount nor destroy the walls that hemmed him in. Hence his susceptibility to Communist appeals.142

The post-World War I socio-economic crisis reinforced the predisposition of French working-class mentality toward Bolshevik influence.143 The latter was also facilitated by the loss of prestige on the part of the ruling class, with many French workers becoming partisans of the Russian Revolution simply because their government opposed it. The distinctive mentality of the French working class was formed in opposition to the values of a hostile bourgeoisie. A legacy of the past and a product of experience, it determined how workers responded to the events of 1917-20. In its stress on the separateness of workers from bourgeois society, the essence of this working-class mentality was its sense of alienation. It was this sense of alienation that produced revolutionary syndicalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, and which predisposed the French working class to embrace the Russian Revolution and the USSR. In subsequent years,

138 Wohl, French Communism, p. 451. 139 Paxton, Vichy France, 243-299. 140 Wohl, French Communism, pp. 445-446. 141 By late 1920, the only significant piece postwar labour legislation, the eight-hour day of April 1919, was so whittled away by an employer’s counteroffensive and governmental concessions as to only cover 27% of workers, Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, pp. 178-180. 142 Wohl, French Communism, p. 446. 143 Wohl, French Communism, p. 444.

32 Introduction

maintaining illusions regarding the only proletarian state made life easier for French workers in a society that was cruelly indifferent to their plight.

Working-Class Traditions in France

The twin schism in the French labour movement, that of the SFIO in December 1920 which produced the PCF and of the CGT in mid-1921 which produced the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU), were undoubtedly a product of the post-World War I socio-economic crisis, but they were also a legacy of history. In those nations of Western Europe where the labour movement split after the war – France, Germany, Italy – radicals and reformists had entered the war in an uncomfortable alliance which soon broke down when war ended as prewar labour militancy, grievances and divisions re-emerged.144 Arguably, World War I delayed the resolution of an impasse reached in France between 1909 and 1914 with the French syndicalists and socialists unable to bring about revolution or to secure reform.145 “When working- class leaders think, they think in categories which they have inherited from their fathers and which they have tested against the facts of life,” writes Wohl, “When they organise, they choose the forms of organisation that historical experience lays before them.”146 For some leaders this meant remaining faithful to the liberal, reformist traditions of Jaurèsian socialism, or to the traditional autonomy of French syndicalism. For others it meant following the will of the revolutionary masses for whom the move to extremism was not only a legacy of the revolutionary tradition but also the product of the alienation experienced by a substantial segment of the French working class. What were the fundamental traditions of the French working-class movement which propelled some workers toward communism and others toward social democracy? Taking my cue from Rémond’s analysis of the post-revolutionary traditions of French Right147 – of which he identifies three, the counterrevolutionary, Orleanist and the Bonapartist - I also believe that one can distinguish, before the advent of communism, three traditions within the working-class movement. These are the reformist, neo-Babouvist and neo-Proudhonian traditions. Though rhetorically the reformist tradition often expressed a desire for a fundamental transformation of

144 Geary, European Labour Protest, pp. 144-147. 145 Daljean et al, “Naissance du PCF et traditions ouvrières”, pp. 166, 170; 146 Wohl, French Communism, p. 434. 147 See René Rémond, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle, trans. James M. Laux, Second American Edition, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1969. 33 Introduction

bourgeois society, it engendered attitudes and methods of action that inevitably meant compromise with the bourgeoisie. The neo-Babouvist and neo-Proudhonist traditions are part of what Gallie has termed the insurrectionist current of the French revolutionary tradition,148 a current which in my view absolutely rejects bourgeois society and any accommodation with it. However, there were two fundamental differences between these two traditions. The neo-Proudhonist tradition sought to eliminate the capitalist state through associations of workers as a basis for an alternative society; the neo- Babouvist tradition sought, through centralised and often clandestine organisation, to seize control of the state on behalf of the working class and use it for the latter’s benefit. The social democratic tradition developed last century with Utopian socialists such as Saint-Simon and republican socialists such as Louis Blanc. At the turn of the century, it was represented by the reformist trade unionism of the miners in the Nord, the various Independent Socialists throughout France, and by the reformist PSF formed in 1902.149 The SFIO which was formed in 1905 by the unification of the PSF with revolutionary Parti socialiste de France (PSDF), included reformist republican socialists such as Jaurès and a ministerialist right.150 This social democratic tradition encompassed those socialists and unionists who assimilated the values of the liberal bourgeoisie and accommodated to the bourgeois order. This entailed piecemeal reforms and state intervention on behalf of workers, as well as the inclusion of socialists in a governing majority or even participation in a progressive bourgeois government. In its willingness to ally with progressive forces in the bourgeoisie in order to prepare the way for such a transformation, the French reformist tradition differed fundamentally from the neo- Babouvist or neo-Proudhonian traditions. The neo-Proudhonian and neo-Babouvist traditions are similar in many respects. In the same way that integral nationalism in France is uncompromising in its rejection of republicanism and the values of the French Revolution, so too the neo-Babouvist tradition refuses any accommodation with the bourgeois Republic and rejects the values it espoused. Both give a strong emphasis to proletarian identity and working-class culture and its separateness from the bourgeois state and society. Concurrent with this is an emphasis on independent action by workers on behalf of workers, which meant a rejection in principle of alliances with the bourgeoisie. Workers could only liberate

148 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism, p. 181. 149 Trempé, France Ouvrière, pp. 209-298, 303-304, 310. 362-364. 150 Trempé, France Ouvrière, pp. 352-362. 34 Introduction

themselves through their own efforts. However, on the questions of party-political activity and the conquest of the state apparatus the two traditions have differed sharply. The neo-Proudhonian tradition encompasses those militants, anarchist, anarcho- syndicalist, revolutionary syndicalist and the like, for whom anti-statism has been a defining characteristic. This anti-statism, a legacy of Proudhonist influence, held that since the state was the instrument of bourgeois oppression, the liberation of the proletariat could only be achieved outside of the state or through the destruction of the state. Coupled with anti-statism has been an eschewal of any party-political activity, with primacy given to autonomous working-class associations and spontaneity. Voluntary association among autonomous, federal or confederal units of organisation is preferred to the centralised, hierarchical organisation of political parties. The neo- Proudhonian tradition of the French labour movement has been an extreme manifestation of working-class alienation from the bourgeois nation-state. Often expressed in ways that were marginal to working-class life, for example anarchist terrorism, this tradition also attained a mass following, such as in prewar revolutionary syndicalism. Whereas social democracy looked toward labour-capital cooperation and wanted to work with liberal elements of the bourgeoisie in order to achieve practical reforms, to neo-Babouvists such action risked the co-option of the Socialist Party by the bourgeoisie and the loss of its working-class and revolutionary identity. Reforms could be prised from the state but workers had to keep their distance and wait for the time when the proletariat would be sole masters. The central difference between the neo- Babouvist tradition and the neo-Proudhonian tradition is that the former holds the conquest of the state – violent or otherwise – to be a necessary precondition for the revolutionary elimination of bourgeois society. The neo-Babouvist tradition encompasses divergent strands of the labour movement whose common thread is a belief in the primacy of politics and that the state, particularly when it is in working- class hands, can be used as a means for the betterment of workers. Hence, the first step in the revolution is the conquest of the state by workers and the instigation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Primacy is therefore given to party-political activity. The revolution can only succeed through the creation of a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries - this belief of Babeuf’s was also fundamental to the Bolsheviks. The party acts as an essential instrument of propaganda and education among the masses, thus preparing the ground for the revolution in which it would play a guiding role.

35 Introduction

The early emphasis in this tradition on insurrection, as encapsulated by Blanqui and the revolutionary impulse of Parisian workers, gave way, with the establishment of the Third Republic and under the influence of Guesde’s interpretation of Marxism, to a stress on organisation. Guesde’s emphasis on education and propaganda was more in tune with the industrial age, hence his success among the industrial workers of the Nord. Nevertheless, what Marx and (especially) Lenin wrote on revolutionary insurrection and the dictatorship of the proletariat bore the imprint of Babeuf and Blanqui, while Marxist-Leninists and Blanquists shared a belief in revolutionary professionalism and centralised organisation. Both Guesdists and Blanquists saw electoral campaigning as essentially a tool for educating and mobilising the masses, while piecemeal reforms ameliorated the living conditions of workers.151 Vaillant, the post-Boulanger heir to the Blanquist tradition, was heavily influenced by Marx, and found enough in common with Guesde to form the anti-ministerialist PSDF in 1902. This was a party of class and of revolution that was opposed to any alliance or collaboration with the bourgeoisie, withholding support for or participation in bourgeois governments. When a unified socialist party was formed in 1905, the Guesdists and Blanquists of the PSDF survived as distinct groups, thus ensuring that the neo-Babouvist tradition co-existed alongside the other traditions that made up the heterogeneous SFIO.152 French communism arose as the heir to the neo-Babouvist tradition. Thus, it inherited the Guesdist penchant for propaganda and organisation, as well as Guesde’s dogmatism and sectarianism, which it combined with the revolutionary mythology and insurrectionist impulse of the Blanquists. The similarities between the Guesdists, the first mass propagators of the Marxist doctrine in France, and the communists are striking, even if Guesde chose not to join the new party. Guesde’s Parti ouvrier français and the PCF were sectarian and dogmatic, and the structure of both parties was highly centralised.153 In both cases, there was osmosis between the party and the unions, with the latter always subordinate to party control, while primacy was given to politics, with elections seen as above all means of propaganda. In my view, in dismissing the role of revolutionary tradition in the formation of the PCF, Gallie gives too little weight to the influence of revolutionary groups and underplays the continuity between socialist

151 Trempé, France Ouvrière, pp. 295-298, 301-303, 304-305, 310-311, 352-362. 152 R. P. Baker, “Socialism in the Nord 1880-1914”, International Review of Social History, vol. XII, no. 3, 1967, pp. 357-389. 153 On the Guesdists see especially Claude Willard, Le Mouvement Socialiste en France 1893- 1905: Les guesdistes, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1965; See also Trempé, France ouvrière, pp. 301-303, 36 Introduction

tradition and PCF hegemony in the working-class Paris suburbs.154 In Chapter 2, I will argue that measuring the PCF’s inheritance of socialist tradition in the Paris suburbs is a much more complex process than simply pointing out the limited number of former SFIO suburbs that went over the PCF after the schism, as Gallie more or less does.155 In the Pas-de-Calais and the Var it was the Guesdist fiefs that became the principal bases of communism after Tours.156 Revolutionary socialism had a strong prewar presence in Paris, with the Blanquists having had a significant presence in the suburbs.157 While the Guesdists were generally weak in the Paris region, nevertheless, prior to the formation of the SFIO they made progress in the south of Paris and in the southern suburbs, advancing in suburbs from Vincennes to Vitry.158 Ivry and Vitry were their strongholds. This placed Arcueil and Cachan in an area of Guesdist strength. Just as Guesdism and Blanquism were incarnations of the neo-Babouvist tradition, so too was French communism. What made French communism unique was its synthesis of the neo-Babouvist tradition and the revolutionary syndicalist impulse. Within the general framework of Leninist theory, practice and organisation it assimilated the revolutionary syndicalist emphasis on union organisation, revolutionary activism and confrontation with the bourgeois order.159 Marxism, the official ideology of the Bolsheviks, had many similarities with French socialism, with Marx’s theoretical perspectives on insurrection, revolution, the dictatorship and the revolutionary potential of the proletariat having been inspired by the French revolutionary tradition, by the experiences of French workers and the examples of great French revolutionaries such as Babeuf and Blanqui.160 The Bolsheviks certainly saw themselves as the natural inheritors of the French Revolutionary tradition, an integral part of the revolutionary traditions of proletarian internationalism. The French Revolution was the harbinger of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, with the revolutionary epochs of the French proletariat, 1789, 1792-94, 1830, 1848 and 1871 having prefigured the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Hence, when the French working class opposed Russian intervention in

310-311 370, 404-405. 154 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism, pp. 177-189. 155 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism, p. 205. 156 Frédéric Sawicki, Les Réseaux du Parti Socialiste: Sociologie d’un milieu partisan, Belin, Paris, 1997, pp. 91, 107, 196-197 and “Questions de Recherche”, p. 23. 157 Willard, Les guesdistes, p. 205; Lenard R. Berlanstein, The Working People of Paris, 1871- 1914, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1984, pp. 160-161; Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 37-42, 45-94. 158 Willard, Les guesdistes, pp. 498-499. 159 Wohl, French Communism, pp. 439-441. 37 Introduction

support of counterrevolutionary forces, it clearly saw itself as the faithful heir to the French Revolutionary tradition.161 Frossard’s campaign in favour of adhesion to the Third International attested to the bond between the Bolshevik Revolution and the inheritance of the French revolutionary tradition, a sentiment shared by numerous Congress delegates, party members and French workers who thought that in attaching the SFIO to the prestige of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, they were not only staying true to the revolutionary heritage and traditions of the French Labour movement but also breathing new life into them. 162 “Jacobinism had inspired the Bolsheviks who now, in turn, in a new historic context, were reciprocating by offering fresh inspiration to progressive forces in France,” writes Magraw.163 To French and Soviet communists alike, the CPSU had, by the example of having mounted the only successful socialist revolution, rightfully assumed from the French labour movement the revolutionary mantle of the worldwide movement for proletarian revolution.

The Communist Counter-Society

French communism was, therefore, yet another manifestation of the working- class movement’s neo-Babouvist tradition, itself a product of the insurrectionist current of the French revolutionary tradition. Here I want to draw on Lazar’s analysis of the PCF’s place in French society as set out in his comparative study of the PCF and PCI, Maisons rouges.164 Always exterior to bourgeois society – its democracy, its state and its social system - the PCF posed itself, in the name of the French revolutionary tradition, as the best defender of the Republic. In the face of the irresistible attractions of bourgeois representative democracy, of which French workers had a long experience, the PCF tried to preserve its base by developing the (in my view pre-existing) hostility of a section of the working class toward the bourgeoisie via the maintenance of the social exclusion of the diverse working-class communities that formed its base. This left the PCF socially and politically isolated, especially since anticommunism was powerful on the socialist left, a corollary of the fact that the PCF was a particularly pernicious enemy for the republican state, contesting the latter's very legitimacy by claiming to be

160 See Kriegel, Aux Origines, p. 579. 161 Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, p. 194. 162 Wohl, French Communism, p. 185; Girault et al, Le Congrès de Tours, in particular the conference proceedings, pp. 69-75, 334, 368-379, 662 ; Robert, France ouvrière, pp. 434, 438-39. 163 Magraw, Workers and the Bourgeois Republic, p. 194. 164 Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 283-285, 294-296, 302 38 Introduction

the inheritor of the French Revolution.165 According to Lazar, both the Republic and the PCF were bearers of antagonistic universalisms each of which hoped to control and dominate society, its values and political socialisation.166 Hence the ambivalence of the PCF towards the Republic since, though it defended the latter, the PCF was also part of a revolutionary vanguard that held the truth and was therefore willing to subvert republican institutions and democratic practice, on the Jacobin and communist model, in the name of the people. Always encouraging the growth of state power which it hoped to one day control, the PCF simultaneously held up the state as the source of all evil and itself as the antidote through its own capacity to modify the economy and society. It was intransigent in its opposition to the bourgeois state but at the same time its Jacobin model saw that control of the state permitted a permanent rupture. Hence, in the postwar years the PCF combined an incessant rejection of the bourgeois state with a fascination for the power of the state, its bellicose sentiment reinforced by isolation. In Lazar’s view, the PCF existed simultaneously inside and of society. “Dedans, à cause de sa présence dans les institutions. Dehors, parce que tout l'effort de sa direction consiste à limiter les contacts et les effets désagrégateurs de cette situation.”167 In my view, then, one can describe the PCF and its communist bastion in French society as forming, both in their function and their mode of operation, a counter-society. The notion of a counter-society has been echoed in Stuart Macintyre’s chronicle of the Welsh village of Mardy, one of the few ‘Little Moscows’ of interwar Great Britain, and in accounts of divergent communist bastions such as Halluin168, while Helmut Gruber169 has used the notion of a counter-culture in his description of Red Vienna, the interwar bastion of the Austrian Social Democrats that shows marked resemblance to the communist bastions of France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe. The counter-society notion which I want to adopt for describing the PCF’s bastions in the Paris suburbs and elsewhere in France has much in common with Kriegel’s counter-society model

165 My analysis below of PCF propaganda in Arcueil and Cachan indicates that the revolutionary myth was fundamental to communist appeals even at the time of class-against-class tactics and, was not as Courtois has asserted, only taken up by the PCF under the Popular Front. See Courtois, “Penser le Communisme”, p. 91. 166 See especially, Lazar, pp. 283, 294-296. 167 Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 297. 168 Hastings, Halluin la Rouge, pp. 236-245. 169 Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919-1934, Oxford University Press, New York, 1991, p. 82. 39 Introduction

outlined above, which influenced Tiersky’s170 similar notion of the PCF as a countercommunity. However, in my view the counter-society model works best if one inverts the model used by Kriegel. The level of support for the PCF in a given locality was contingent upon its degree of local implantation, which in turn depended on the particular local situation and the ability of Communists to respond to it. Therefore, the counter-society model entails that the PCF is a product of and is conditioned by its local environment as well as being a shaper of it, with the degree of support for the Party contingent upon local factors. Thus, I would argue that the key to understanding the function and mode of operation of the PCF’s counter-society (and ergo the origins and nature of French communism) is in the way it has functioned locally and the local circumstances that engendered strong support for the PCF. It is for this reason that micro-studies of the Paris suburbs (and other areas of Communist implantation) play an important role in identifying key factors in the rise of the PCF in France. I view the PCF’s counter-society as a subnational grouping, a product of the contradictions within French society as much it was an outgrowth of the Soviet-dominated International. By rooting the PCF’s counter-society in its French context - local, social and cultural - one can therefore overcome the objections that have been made regarding the use of this model by historians such as Jacques Girault and Eric D. Weitz. In his efforts to root French communism in a French reality, Girault rejected Kriegel’s counter-society model because it was predicated on a monolithic PCF that was highly centralised and subject to close supervision by the CPSU171, while Weitz has contended that the entire notion of a counter-society is nonsensical on the basis that a group cannot exist outside of society and yet be a part of it.172 The communist counter-society springs from the fact that in those localities where it is hegemonic, communism has had two functions: firstly, to defend a marginalised group against external threats, and secondly to assert a positive identity for this group. Thus, the winegrowers of the midi rouge studied by Lem Winnie were heirs to a long and vigorous tradition of class struggle and a culture of opposition that pitted

170 Ronald Tiersky, French Communism 1920-1972, pp. 311-330, 349-363. 171 Jacques Girault, “Introduction”, p. 10. 172 This is one of the objections that Eric D. Weitz makes to Kriegel’s stark definitions of a counter-society. He claims that the notion of society itself does not permit the idea of exteriority since individuals or institutions are a product of their society and therefore cannot exist outside of it. One can overcome his objections by seeing the PCF’s counter-society as a sub-national group and by locating it within French society, as I have done above. Weitz prefers Lavau’s explanation of the PCF role, which I have argued above is an inadequate explanation for the extent and durability of communist influence, see.

40 Introduction

them against the state in a bid to resist modernisation and defend their way of life.173 They had a strong sense of identity as part of the midi rouge, as Frenchman and Occitans and as members of the working class which they defined through the referent of exploitation - like factory workers, wine growers too were exploited. In Halluin, Flemish migrants defended the communist bastion which they had won from local reactionaries, while the local PCF which they dominated aggressively asserted their class and ethnic identity by reclaiming local festive culture and re-interpreting local history.174 Recourse to communism has permitted the besieged workers of the Brière marsh to defend the marsh’s proletarian character, their traditional activities, communal culture, and a long tradition of democratic and collective custodianship of the marsh against the exterior threats of urbanisation, industrialisation, gentrification, and environmental protection.175 By inheriting a long tradition of struggle for local autonomy - against the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie - the PCF has enabled Brière’s workers to perpetuate their own particularism, namely combining a rural lifestyle with industrial work, and to affirm their distinct group identity vis-à-vis the regional financial elite and the middle-class standard bearers of socialism and the ecological movement in the region. Through its defensive function, couched in the language of class and the French revolutionary tradition, the PCF has become firmly bound to local identity. In Italy, the PCI defended the interests of inhabitants in its red bastions such as Bologna, while at the same time developing their societies and economies and offering them up as social models.176 Beyond France, in the ‘Little Moscows’ of interwar Great Britain, in communities characterised by a deep-rooted oppositional culture, a strong socialist morality, a rich proletarian culture and a tradition of resistance to authority, communists led the defence against external threats while spearheading the drive to create an alternative institutional authority based on a socialist lifestyle and the primacy attached to basic human rights.177 In the Paris suburbs the PCF and its communist municipalities enabled working-

Weitz, Popular Communism, p. 61. 173 Winnie, Cultivating Dissent, pp. 11, 12, 43, 81, 234. 174 Hastings, Halluin la rouge, p. 245, 307-345, 379-415; “Communisme et folklore: Étude d’un Carnaval Rouge Halluin 1924”, “Identité culturelle local et politique festive communiste: Halluin la Rouge 1920-1934, pp. 7-25; “Le migrant, la fête et le bastion Halluin-la-Rouge 1919-1939”, Les Usages Politiques des Fêtes, pp. 211-221. 175 Mischi, “La Brière Rouge: L’utilisation identitaire d’une marque politique”, pp. 66-71. 176 Stephen Gundle, “Urban Dreams and Metropolitan Nightmares: Models and Crises of Communist Local Government in Italy”, Marxist Local Government, pp. 78-80, 86-88. 177 Macintyre, Little Moscows, pp. 168, 169, 170, 172-173, 179, 183, 192-193. 41 Introduction

class banlieusards to defend their interests against their authoritarian employers, the neglect or hostile actions of the bourgeois state, and against unwelcome invaders of their territory, such as groups of fascists.178 Communists combined pride in proletarian identity with a “patriotisme de clocher à base de classe”179 which took pride in the banlieue rouge as a positive affirmation of working-class identity, a future society contrasted with a decadent city but also an embodiment of revolutionary identity and a continuation of the revolution.180 The excluded thus had their social revenge, forming a Red Centre surrounding and terrorising the bourgeois city as the communists, through their application of Leninist doctrine, created numerous bastions in the Paris suburbs during the interwar period where ideal pre-conditions existed for the rise of communism. This was due to two factors: firstly, the strong revolutionary heritage of the Paris region and secondly, the dreadful living conditions that the working class endured in the suburbs to which they had been banished by the gentrification of Paris. Both factors bespoke of the alienation of French workers from bourgeois society. Under the Fourth Republic the PCF prevented the integration of a substantial portion of the French working class into bourgeois society by consolidating their stranglehold in the working-class suburbs of the Seine Department via its communist counter-societies where the PCF created a strong communist communal identity. Under the Fifth Republic, this identity has been eroded, slowly at first, but more rapidly in recent years, in the wake of administrative and industrial decentralisation, followed by progressive de-industrialisation, demographic transformation and the attitudinal changes they engendered, all of which have had deleterious effects on support for and identification with the PCF in the Paris suburbs. To successfully create communist bastions the PCF had to be closely attuned to each local situation and the integration of Communist and communal identity was the key to the creation and maintenance of local hegemony. In my view, there were four steps by which communist hegemony was created and maintained, each of which had to be adequately accomplished in order to construct a durable communist bastion. First, the

178 On 23 May 1934, around 2000 communists, socialists and antifascists gathered in Cachan to defend the suburb against 500 members of Solidarité Française and Jeunesses Patriotes, see Chapter 5 below. For other examples see Danielle Tartakowsky, “Les Croix de feu à Villepinte, octobre 1935”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 68-75. 179 Annie Fourcaut, quoted in Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 202. 180 Fourcaut: Bobigny, Chapter II and “Banlieue Rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, p. 35; Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 210-211; Tyler Stovall, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt, University of California Press,

42 Introduction

PCF had to provide a dynamic leadership of the working class at local level which entailed a strong, identifiable presence. Second, the PCF needed to create new forms of participatory democracy that gave a voice to the voiceless by providing workers with fora in which they could present and discuss their views. These organisations empowered workers by giving them the means to defend and promote their specific interests, acting as alternative sources of power for the otherwise powerless. Third, the PCF needed to reinforce class identity and forge a communist communal identity. It did this in the first place by promoting and reinforcing collective solidarity and a class- based local identity in suburbs in order to overcome the divisions brought about by the fact that the suburbs were composed of disparate groups, many of whom were recent migrants. This meant bringing people together, encouraging mutual support and building community networks. The PCF also achieved this goal by becoming the major source of popular culture, a central shaper of the identity of local residents. By promoting communist doctrine and celebrating local working-class traditions and myths, sometimes all at once, at other times separately or in combination, the communists actively shaped the identity of local residents. Crucial to this process was the conquest of municipal government. Fourth, with the Soviet Union as its model, the PCF had to provide an efficient administration able to respond to complex demands and problems. In doing so, it demonstrated that workers could govern themselves and offered a vision of an alternative society in the making. Thus, as Lavau and Tiersky181 have argued, the PCF gained and maintained its hegemony in part via what was essentially a militant form of sans-culottisme whereby the party acted as a tribune, mobilising and moulding the resentments of les petits in support of the communist movement and against les gros. However, the negative, protest function of the PCF is only a partial explanation of its role since the PCF also had a positive social and cultural function, that of mobilising and asserting class pride. It used this pride to underpin the construction of local communist communal identity which formed the basis of a communist counter-society. Similarly, Stovall is correct to argue that this was an important aspect in the construction of the Red Belt because the communists could not have succeeded if communist government had not brought tangible benefits to its supporters.182 However, efficient administration alone is not an

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California and Oxford, 1990, p. 177. 181 Ronald Tiersky, French Communism, 1920-1972, Chapter 10. 182 Tyler Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development: The Rise of the Red Belt”, 43 Introduction

adequate explanation for communist success since the case of Cachan among others demonstrates that anti-communists could also be effective in this area. Therefore, we need to look at deeper reasons for the origins of the Paris Red Belt.

3. APPROACH AND SOURCES

Sources

My study of Arcueil and Cachan in Chapters 3 to 7 is primarily based on archival sources from the Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne (AD94) at Creteil. The latter holds some of the most important sources of information for the history of Arcueil and Cachan for the years between 1919 and 1958, namely the E Dépôt Arcueil, the Communal Archives of the Ville d’Arcueil that are held at the Archives Départementales, and the private Fonds Desguine and mixed private/public Fonds Eyrolles (series 35J and 36J respectively). The E Dépôt Arcueil material was mainly concerned with Arcueil, and that of the Fonds Desguine and Fonds Eyrolles with Cachan. These were important sources for official correspondence and reports, the procès-verbaux of various municipal and legislative elections, party political propaganda and other material that has been essential to my account of the history of Arcueil and Cachan. However, their coverage of the political situation during the interwar period is often fragmentary, especially for the 1920s. I have therefore complemented these sources by reference to the proceedings of the municipal councils of Arcueil-Cachan, and of Arcueil and Cachan for the period from 1918 to 1947. The proceedings help to broaden the picture of local politics, particularly during periods of intense political conflict, but their value is limited by their major pre-occupation with the minutiae of local government. Municipal bulletins were also an important indicator of the social and political situation in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar and postwar periods. The objectivity of the material found in the abovementioned sources varied greatly. Some sources such as election results can be taken as objective, while official letters and reports, municipal bulletins, and council deliberations are subject in varying degrees to anti- or pro-socialist or communist bias, while party political propaganda was by its nature ideologically tainted. To broaden my account of interwar politics I have also looked to the Archives

Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 24, 1989, pp. 453-454. 44 Introduction

nationales (AN), and in particular series F7 Police reports - on the SFIO, the PCF and its operatives, the moral and political situation, the municipal elections and on unemployment – and the series F2 reports to the prefect - for the social situation in interwar Arcueil. In addition, the series F17 on public instruction provided information on the postwar situation in Arcueil. While the AN were an important source of information on the political, social and economic situation in Arcueil and Cachan, helping to fill the gaps left by the material I sourced from the Archives Départementales, their material on Arcueil and Cachan was slight to say the least. Similarly, the Service des archives of the Préfecture de Police in Paris (APP) furnished me with one important report on Léon Eyrolles and resistance activities in Cachan during World War II. The Archives de Paris et de l’ancien département de la Seine (AD75) was also an important source of electoral results and propaganda for those legislative elections held in Arcueil and Cachan under the Fourth Republic. The important light shed on local politics by police and prefectural reports held in the AN and the APP has to be balanced against the fact that the officers of the Prefecture were generally anticommunist and antisocialist and that this would have been reflected in their reporting of communist and socialist activity and support. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) was an important source for electoral propaganda in the Canton of Villejuif during the Fourth Republic. As is often the case for historians, newspapers have been an important though problematic source. Newspapers, and in particular regional newspapers, were a supplementary source for election results and an important source for the social and political situation in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period and the Fourth Republic. However, these newspapers always represented a political perspective, whether overtly or thinly veiled. Nevertheless, they have been important sources of local information on the PCF, the SFIO and the political and social situation in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period and the Fourth Republic. The PCF regional newspapers covering the canton of Villejuif were L’Aube sociale (1927-1929) and Front rouge (1933-1939) during the interwar period and under the Fourth Republic La Vie nouvelle, which sometime around 1952 became La Voie nouvelle, Hebdomadaire communiste [d’information] du Canton de Villejuif; the words in brackets having been added to the subtitle. For the interwar period I also used the SFIO’s Le Socialiste and for the postwar period its Paris-Sud and L’Avenir de la banlieue. The leftwing press was generally explicit in its indication of political allegiance, for example Le Socialiste

45 Introduction

(1929-1935) was subtitled Organe Socialiste SFIO de la Banlieue Sud and Front rouge (1933-1939) Bi-mensuel du Rayon communiste de Villejuif. The national communist and socialist dailies, L’Humanité and Le Populaire were also important supplementary sources on local politics in Arcueil and Cachan. There were also some intermittently published Radical newspapers which were generally anticommunist though not necessarily antisocialist and gave an important insight into interwar Radical politics. By contrast, rightwing newspapers often maintained the pretence of being independent in spite of the fact that they had a clear political perspective of their own. For example, the Banlieue de Paris, an important source of information for the interwar politics of Cachan and Arcueil, claimed to be “absolument indépendant” but was in fact extremely anticommunist and antisocialist and was also highly critical of those on the Left of the Radical-Socialist Party who were willing to act in alliance with the socialists.183 Similarly, Le Moniteur de Gentilly-Cachan-L’Hay, later renamed Le Moniteur de la Capitale et de la Banlieue Sud, was essentially a mouthpiece of the conservative, anti- Popular Front Radical Auguste Gratien. At times when using newspapers as a source I have borne in mind their inherent political bias and what impact this may have had on the reportage contained within. The problem of bias also arises with regard to some of the published works I have used on Arcueil and Cachan. Jacques Varin’s Mémoires d’Arcueil has been an important source because of his use of oral history, in particular the interviews Varin recorded with people who lived in Arcueil during the period of my study.184 The Archives Départementales in fact hold the transcripts for many of these interviews under series 1S11-12 and I have made use of these interviews as a means of incorporating oral history into my account of the history of Arcueil. This oral testimony held at the archives or published in Varin’s Mémoires d’Arcueil is a first-hand account of peoples’ living conditions and the political, social and economic situation in Arcueil during the interwar period, World War II and the postwar years. However, as is always the case, the use of oral history raises problems in itself, namely the accuracy of a person’s memory and to what extent these memories are tainted by subjective judgements. Moreover, the use of Varin’s work also raises the additional problem of bias since his history of Arcueil was commissioned by Arcueil’s communist

183 It was subtitled Ancienne ‘petite banlieue’, Journal républicain, absolument indépendant, organe des intérêts suburbains. 184 Jacques Varin, Mémoires d’Arcueil, Messidor/Temps Actuel, Paris, 1982. 46 Introduction

municipality and generally paints a sympathetic portrait of it. Similarly, another important published source was L.L. Veyssière’s history of Arcueil and Cachan. L.L. Veyssière was a leading SFIO politician in Arcueil during the interwar period. I have therefore had to recognise the potential for inherent bias in these sources and accordingly I have used them critically. A final comment is warranted on the stress I have given to an analysis of electoral politics and on the interwar period, and on the sources used for World War II and the Fourth Republic. In light of the patchy sources for the history of Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period, and in particular for the 1920s, and the political bias embedded in most of the sources, an in-depth analysis of election results for the interwar period gives the clearest indication of the progression of communist influence in Arcueil and Cachan during this period, while an analysis of party propaganda indicates the issue upon which the PCF campaigned, and by extension what drove electoral support for the party. However, I recognise the limits of this approach. For one thing it does not indicate the impact of the PCF on groups which could not vote, for example women during the interwar period. However, my analysis of the PCF’s role in shaping working-class culture in Arcueil, and to a lesser extent in Cachan makes up for the inherent deficiencies of relying on an electoral analysis. I have concentrated on the interwar period because it was during this time that the PCF laid the groundwork for its postwar hegemony in the Paris suburbs. In the case of World War II, I have relied on theses, the Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français and on Varin’s interviews because many archival sources are not open to researchers without a dérogation and the time constraints of my research did not permit me to seek one. The situation is similar with regard to postwar sources where my archival sources are weaker. Many such sources are closed to researchers without a special authorisation. For this period, I have therefore had to rely more heavily on party political newspapers and in particular on the newspapers of the PCF and SFIO. Again, when using my sources on World War II and the postwar period I have borne in mind the problems indicated above in relation to oral history and party political bias.

Chapter Outline

In Chapter 2 I will argue that the suburbanisation of Paris resulted in the enforced physical isolation of the working class from the bourgeois city, creating a receptive audience among suburban workers for the PCF and its brand of politics. In

47 Introduction

blue-collar suburbs a suburban working-class identity evolved which took pride in being a social outcast. This identity gradually became confounded with the PCF which, as evidenced by the recurrent persecution it faced from the authorities, also stood outside bourgeois society. By winning the allegiance of a significant portion of the French working class, the PCF prevented the latter from being integrated into a liberal French political culture. Chapter 2 will demonstrate how the creation of such a society was contingent upon the ability of the PCF to adapt and respond to local circumstances. It will argue that the local manifestations of the PCF are the key to understanding the nature of French communism. This argument will be pursued in my account of the political and social history of Arcueil and Cachan from 1919 to 1958. Thus, chapter 3 will demonstrate how rapid surburbanisation of Arcueil and Cachan brought about socio-economic changes and had deleterious impacts which created the pre-conditions for the rise of Communism, especially in Arcueil which was more industrialised and had a heritage of radical working-class politics. Chapter 4 will outline how in terms of the socio-professional status of the populations of Arcueil and Cachan, the pre-conditions for the rise of communism existed already in the early 1920s in Arcueil, and were (perhaps) apparent in Cachan by the outbreak of World War II. This chapter will also demonstrate how the PCF was overwhelmingly a party of the working class in both suburbs, while the reformist SFIO was more bourgeois in aspect, though to a lesser extent than the Radical-Socialist Party. Chapter 5 will chart the electoral implantation of the PCF, arguing that as the heir to the neo-Babouvist tradition, the PCF inherited the working- class electorate of the SFIO in both Arcueil and Cachan, an electorate which was larger in the former owing to its long-standing tradition of voting radically. The SFIO became a reformist, left of centre party, hence its success in the more moderate voting Cachan. Chapter 6 will detail the fundamental importance of the PCF putting down strong local roots in the creation and maintenance of party-political hegemony. It will indicate how with a greater local profile and on the back of stronger working-class traditions, the PCF was more successful in doing this in Arcueil, where under the Popular Front it satisfied the four criteria I outlined on pages 42 to 43 as essential to a Communist hegemony. In Cachan, the party made headway but lacking the same profile or support base could not attain pre-eminence. Chapter 7 argues that, consequently, the PCF rebounded from repression to spearhead the local Resistance in Arcueil during World War II, while in Cachan the party did not recover sufficiently to be a force, and moderates were the

48 Introduction

mainstay of local resistance. This gave the PCF in Arcueil a solid basis from which to consolidate a Communist communal identity that was emergent under the Popular Front, while in Cachan the PCF had to rely on the SFIO to gain control. The onset of the Cold War was consequently fatal to its PCF prospects for hegemony in Cachan where a more moderate political culture favoured the emergence of a Socialist communal identity in the 1950s.

Weakness in Strength: The Decline of Communist Hegemony

The apogee of the PCF coincided with its fundamental character as the party of the proletariat, in terms of its ideology, organisational structure, membership and electorate, which were dominated by the working class. Throughout the interwar period generally half or more party apparatchiks, delegates to party congresses and parliamentarians came from a working-class background while areas of working-class concentration, such as the Paris region, became increasingly preponderant in terms of party membership as the party progressively proletarianised in the lead-up to World War II. 185 In the wake of the party’s role in the resistance, the PCF became more rural, with its electoral support expanding geographically beyond its interwar strongholds to closely resemble the electoral geography of the SFIO in 1919.186 This expansion was concomitant with the deproletarianisation of party membership which became more peasant in aspect.187 Notwithstanding, in the 1950s and 1960s around half of party members, apparatchiks, and delegates to national congresses were blue-collar workers by background.188 While increased peasant support meant that the working-class share of the PCF’s vote dropped to around 40% under the Fourth Republic, it rose again in the 1960s to around half in the wake of a declining peasant population.189 Around half of the

185 Pudal, Prendre Parti, pp. 42, 47, 58, 69, 82; Phillipe Buton, “Les Effectifs du Parti communiste français”, Communisme, no. 7, 1985, pp. 9-11. 186 Salmon, “Quelques Remarques sur le Vote Communiste”, p. 172. The original regions of the party’s support were the Paris basin, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the Massif Central, Guyenne and Périgord, which extended in 1936, to Picardie, southwest Bourgogne, the Lyon region, the Rhône valley, and part of the Mediterranean littoral. After World War II the party surged in the west of Brittany, but receded in Alsace and Lorraine, Lazar, Maisons rouges, 1992, p. 29. 187 Buton has demonstrated how in 1946 the departments with the highest density of membership were overwhelmingly rural departments. In decreasing order the departments with more than 300 members per 10 000 people were: Corrèze, Basses-Alpes, Allier, Dordogne, Haute-Vienne, Corse, Drôme, Pas-de-Calais, Gard, Hautes-Alpes, Ariège and Lot, Buton, “Les Effectifs du Parti communiste français”, p. 14. 188 Roger Martelli, Le Rouge et Le Bleu, p. 270; Molinari, Les Ouvriers communistes, p. 353; Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 424, 425. 189 The working-class share of the PCF’s vote was: 1948 37%, 1952 38%, 1958 43%, 1962 and 1965 51%, 1967 49%, Martelli, Le rouge et le bleu, p. 268. 49 Introduction

French working class voted communist under the Fourth Republic, and in the 1960s this figure dropped by only 10%.190 However, this working-class support was heavily regionalised, with the Paris region standing out as a communist bastion par excellence - in the 1956 election, two-thirds of workers in the banlieue rouge voted for the PCF whose electorate in this region was 80% working class.191 Moreover, while the PCF was a working-class party it was not the party of the working class since many workers voted non-communist, and not just for the SFIO but also for the Gaullists who attracted significant working-class support during a period when the communist vote remained stable.192 After 1958, and especially since the 1980s, the story of the PCF is generally one of decline, although in the Paris suburbs this decline has been slower and less marked than in the PCF’s national vote. The progressive postwar decline in support for the PCF since its peak with 28.6% of the votes cast in the legislative elections of 10 November 1946 and in membership in December of that year of 814 285 has been especially pronounced since the beginning of the 1980s.193 Under the Fourth Republic support in legislative elections settled to around 25% of the votes cast, before falling to around 20% with the birth of the Fifth Republic and stabilising at that rate until the 1980s when PCF’s vote collapsed, falling to single figures in the legislative and presidential elections of 1986 where it has generally languished.194 After losing more than half of its membership in the six years between 1946 and 1952 inclusive, membership settled somewhere between 300 000 to 350 000 members, before increasing in the mid to late 1970s as the PCF moved to ally itself to the PS, then fell back in the 1980s to its pre- 1970s position, and to around 250 000 in the 1990s.195 Sales of the party’s newspaper, L’Humanité, more than halved between 1973 and 1982.196 The results of the 1978 legislative election when the PS’s vote, for the first time since 1936, surpassed that of

190 Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 194. Writing in the early 1970s, Thomas Greene claimed that only a third of the French working class had voted communist since the end of World War II, with the other two- thirds voting for non-communist parties, Thomas H. Greene, “The Electorates of Non-Ruling Communist Parties”, Comparative Communism, vol. 4, nos 3 & 4, July/October, 1971, pp. 80-81. 191 Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 212. 192 In the 1967 legislative elections the Gaullists received 2.3 million working-class votes, compared with the PCF’s 2.7 million, Greene, “The Electorates of Non-Ruling Communist Parties”, pp. 80-81. 193 Buton, “Les Effectifs du PCF (1920-1984)”, p. 8. 194 Martelli, Le rouge et le bleu, p. 267. 195 Buton, “Les Effectifs du PCF (1920-1984)”, p. 8; Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 398; Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, p. 408. 196 Buton, “Les Effectifs du PCF (1920-1984)”, p. 26. 50 Introduction

the PCF (22.6% against 20.6% of the votes cast), presaged the decline of the PCF.197 By 1988 the PCF was not only a marginal electoral force but, unlike in 1978198, it could no longer claim to be a party of the working class. With only 16% of workers voting for the PCF, this was the lowest proportion of all the major parties, and compared with 43% for the PS, 19% for the Front National and 21% for other parties of the right.199 By 1994 only 10% of blue-collar workers were voting communist and they made up only a quarter of the PCF’s electorate, in an almost equal proportion to white-collar workers.200 The trend toward gentrification is also evident in the socio-professional character of the PCF, which has undergone a clear de-proletarianisation since the 1970s, so that in 1994 less than a third of delegates to the PCF’s national congress were of working-class background.201 While the immediate cause of the PCF’s decline in the 1980s was its disavowal of an alliance with the Socialist Party, there were longer-term causes. In the post- industrial world where de-industrialisation has created a large, permanent pool of unemployed in the context of large, concentrated populations of immigrants, the PCF is no longer the main party of the alienated and marginalised. This position is now occupied by the Front National which shows many of the characteristics of the PCF in its heyday, namely a fiercely loyal electorate, the support of a marginalised segment of the working class, an estrangement from French contemporary society, isolation vis-à- vis all other major political parties, vigorous grassroots activism, and geographically concentrated support in areas of previous communist strength, such as the Paris region.202 Although the Front National has received some support from former PCF voters, its rise does not necessarily represent a direct transfer of votes from the PCF to the Front National but instead a general movement of the electorate to the right, coupled

197 André Donneur, L’Alliance fragile: socialistes et communistes français 1922-1983, Nouvelle optique, Montréal, 1984, p. 305. 198 More workers (37%) voted for the PCF in 1978 than the PS (27%). Michel Simon, “Classe ouvrière, courants idéologiques, choix politiques”, in Raymond Huard et al, La Classe ouvrière française et la politique (essais d’analyse historique et sociale), Éditions sociales, Paris, 1980, p. 201. 199 Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 194. 200 Martelli, Le rouge et le bleu, pp. 268, 269. 201 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp.424, 425; Martelli, Le rouge et le bleu, p. 270; Buton, “Les Effectifs du PCF (1920-1984)”, p. 20. 202 Pierre Bréchon and Subrata Kumar Mitra, “The National Front in France: The Emergence of an Extreme Right Protest Movement”, Comparative Politics, vol. 25, no. 1, October 1992, pp. 63-80; John Veugelers, “Social Cleavage and the Revival of Far Right Parties: The Case of France’s National Front”, Acta Sociologica, vol. 40, no. 1, 1997, pp. 31-47. Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, pp. 452, 467; H. Lebovics, True France, p. 194.; Phillipe Habert, “Les élections municipales de 1989: La revanche de l’électeur”, Commentaire, vol. 12, no. 47, 1989, pp. 530-531. 51 Introduction

with the Front National’s ability to mobilise former abstentionists.203 Notwithstanding, the rise in recent years of the Trotskyists as an electoral force suggests that there remains in France a significant leftwing electorate hostile to the bourgeois state but which no longer sees the PCF as the natural incarnation of this protest. This suggests that the reasons are broader than a decline in the PCF’s working- class base, though this is undoubtedly an important reason. In my view the PCF’s decline is the product of six factors which are pertinent to a study of the party during its apogee because they suggest that its initial strengths have been, in the long-run, its Achilles heel. Firstly, the PCF’s ambivalence toward the state which it rhetorically rejected in its bourgeois form yet at the same time sought to conquer. The PCF stood aloof from the republican state but did not question its authority and legitimacy as an institution since its ultimate aim was to wield it for the benefit of the party and its supporters.204 The party was therefore powerless to resist the deliberate attempts of the state to marginalise it and then to break its powerbase. Thus, under the Fourth and Fifth Republics the state manipulated electoral systems and boundaries in the Paris region, re- configured departmental administration in the Paris region in 1968 by abolishing the communist dominated Department of the Seine, and from the 1960s onwards set about de-industrialising the PCF’s strongholds by facilitating the decentralisation of industry from the inner suburbs of Paris to the provinces or outer suburbs, thereby undercutting the basis of the PCF’s support.205 Secondly, profound socio-economic change has undercut the PCF’s support base. The de-industrialisation of the PCF’s bastions only accelerated after the economic crisis of the 1970s, as the working class fell from 39.4% in 1975 of the active population to 29.5% in 1989.206 The disaggregation of working- class communities as a consequence of de-industrialisation, unemployment, working- class emigration, and the influx of migrants has eroded the dense social networks which were the backbone of PCF bastions, while the decline of the PCF working-class base has been without the compensation of more white-collar votes who have begun to gentrify the inner suburbs or from the new, largely immigrant, sub-proletariat which is little politicised or excluded from voting, and in any case has generally been ignored by

203 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 467; Veugelers, “Social Cleavage and the Revival of Far Right Parties”, pp. 36, 39-41, 43, 45; Habert, “Les élections municipales de 1989”, pp. 532-533. 204 Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 283, 294-295. 205 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, pp. 347, 396-401, 410, 519, 521, 525, 590. 206 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 519-521; Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 401. 52 Introduction

the PCF.207 Thirdly, a changing political landscape has led to the decline of the PCF, with the renewal of the Socialist Party as a significant electoral force, the arrival on the political scene of new protest groups such as the Front National and the Trotskyists, and a general disassociation of French voters from political parties. Fourthly, the decline of the PCF is a consequence of an institutional crisis within the PCF brought about by its inability to adapt internally or ideologically to a post-industrial society for whom its ouvriériste ethic and modernist model that are out of step with a post-industrial reality.208 Fifthly, there is the ideological basis of the PCF’s decline, namely the fall of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. This signalled the downfall of a fundamental canon from the communist belief system but has gone utterly unacknowledged by the PCF and has rendered its decline terminal, if it was not already.209 Sixthly, there is the cultural dimension.210 The PCF is irrevocably geared toward a collectivist and industrial society in an increasingly individualistic and post-industrial world. Whilst some workers and peasants look to the past with pride and affirm their identity and faith in communist ideas to the bitter end, others have been, with the aid of the uniformatising influences of the modern mass media, rapidly integrated into French society.211 In the context of the industrial expansion of the interwar period and the Fourth Republic which was especially prevalent in the Paris suburbs and of the concomitant survival of sizeably discontented peasantry the character of the PCF suited the times. The cultural mindset of the PCF was not only rooted in communism and the French revolutionary tradition but also was a product of the experiences of the interwar period, the Resistance and Liberation. Its ouvriérisme was characterised by a radical anti- bourgeois, anti-capitalist, oppositionist sentiment which worked well for the party up until the Fifth Republic, hence the directors of the PCF saw no reason to change. A growing but alienated working class formed a solid core of support buttressed by sections of the peasantry that viewed itself as similarly exploited workers and who, like the French working class, also had a history of confrontation with the state, such as the

207 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 530; Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 213. 208 George Ross, “Party Decline and Changing Party Systems: France and the French Communist Party”, Comparative Politics, vol. 25, no. 1, October, 1992, pp. 51-56; Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, p. 420; Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 333-334. 209 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, pp. 408-414; Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 323-325. 210 See Lazar, Maisons rouges, pp. 333-339. 211 Lazar, Maisons rouges, p. 337. 53 Introduction

peasants of rural Languedoc studied by Lem Winnie.212 The political immobilism of the interwar Third Republic and the Fourth Republic suited the PCF which was assured of a stable socio-economic base in its bastions which it was able to cultivate and reinforce via a rigid party structure which facilitated the transmission of communist value and by the esteem in which the USSR was held by a significant proportion of the French working class and peasantry. As I will demonstrate with regard to Arcueil and Cachan below, more than anything the PCF’s hegemony rested upon the communist subculture it created in its bastions of the Paris suburbs and beyond during the interwar period and the Fourth Republic. These communist counter-societies were at the core of the PCF’s resilience in the face of marginalisation and exclusion. However, the PCF strength is also its weakness. In his study of Red Vienna under the Austrian Social Democrats in the years between 1919 and 1934, Helmut Gruber argues that the attempt by the Social Democrats to create a closed proletarian counter-culture veiled their political weakness.213 The Social Democrats never received an electoral majority, and even if they had any attempt to radically alter Austria would have provoked civil war with a ruling elite that would not have permitted such a change. Ultimately the cultural program of the Social Democrats became a surrogate for political power. Similarly, the cultural hegemony the PCF exerted in its bastions may have enabled it to dominate regions of France such as the Paris suburbs but it masked the party’s inherent weakness. In its political and social isolation and firmly attached to a modernist mindset the PCF has been powerless to resist the gerrymandering of electoral districts, administrative and industrial decentralisation designed to weaken its power, the de-industrialisation brought about by economic crisis and the transformation into a post-industrial society, or the overwhelming integrational pull of the modern mass media and mass culture. These changes have ineluctably undermined the communist counter-society and reveal the fundamental weakness of the PCF’s dependency on its bastions in the context of being a social and political minority. Here the example of the PCP is instructive.214 When polling indicated that the PCP was unable to challenge the pre-eminence of the Portuguese Socialist Party, the PCP used its sizeable but highly concentrated support

212 Winnie, Cultivating Dissent, pp. 11, 81, 99, 211. 213 Gruber, Red Vienna, pp. 10-11, 13, 82, 109-111, 183. 214 See Tom Gallagher, “The Portuguese Communist Party”, Marxist Local Government, pp. 52- 55. 54 Introduction

among workers and the rural proletariat to stage a bold assault on power using classical Leninist precepts. Under the protection of the radical, leftist Armed Forces Movement which had swept away the Salazar regime on 25 April 1974, the PCP spearheaded the wholesale seizure of land and capital which was ratified by the government. However, when anti-communist violence broke out in areas where the party was weak, the attempt at revolution spluttered out as PCP retreated to its strongholds rather than provoke civil war by forcing a Marxist state on a hostile majority. Similarly, with the benefit of hindsight one can see that PCF’s strategy of conquering power via the expansion of its communist counter-societies was only ever a chimera. Instead, the communist counter- society is fast becoming a quaint relic of history. Nevertheless, the PCF has outlived the Soviet Union by a number of years now and it manages still, through its remaining local bastions, to maintain a toehold in France. Though its national vote continues to haemorrhage, the PCF retains a presence in parliament (21 deputies following the 2002 legislative elections215) in part because its dwindling support base remains highly concentrated, an indication of the importance of municipal communism to the survival of the PCF. The Paris suburbs remain a mainstay of support for the PCF, furnishing the party with many of the (dwindling) number of municipalities it continues to control. Nevertheless, in the face of demographic change and other upheavals, the banlieue rouge is steadily eroding. The strongest bastions for PCF are now, above all, those localities that are not only rural but also the most backward and least touched by changes.216 In this way, the recent history of the PCF underscores the importance of local identity and community in the evolution of French communism. The same can be said for the history of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan from its birth until 1958, a subject to which we will now turn.

215 Arnaud Miguet, “Election Report. The French Elections of 2002: After the Earthquake, the Deluge”, West European Politics, vol. 25, no. 4, October 2002, p. 215. 216 Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, p. 421.

2. The Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

For the working class, the growth of the Paris suburbs meant a forced estrangement and physical isolation from the bourgeois city. The ideological alienation of the French working class from bourgeois society became a concrete reality in the proletarian suburbs of Paris. In the Paris region, where the weight of the revolutionary tradition and a sense of class-consciousness were particularly strong, a suburban working-class identity subsequently evolved which took pride in being a social outcast. Consequently, the anti-integrationist and isolationist PCF found a receptive audience among suburban workers. Suburban working-class identity gradually became conjoined with the PCF which, as evidenced by the recurrent persecution it faced from the authorities, also stood outside bourgeois society. At the same time, the PCF’s extremist tactics and consequent loss of membership transformed it into a sect which mirrored the social isolation of the suburban working class whose miserable living conditions and poor municipal services contrasted with the comforts of the bourgeois city. This bond between the PCF and the workers of the Paris suburbs helps to explain the emergence and durability of municipal communism. The advent of the Popular Front was an unparalleled opportunity to expand this nucleus of communist support beyond the suburban working-class ghettoes. World War II once again proved the PCF’s outcast status but also, after the Hitler-Stalin Pact, re-affirmed its attachment to the revolutionary patriotism of the French working class. After its brief period of ‘acceptance’ between 1945 and 1947, the PCF was again banished to the ghetto, taking with it a substantial portion of the working class. Though the French state is highly centralised, French municipal authorities nevertheless have wide-ranging responsibilities spanning the fields of welfare, housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, service and utility provision, municipal police and social and cultural policy.217 In this context political groups or parties which gain control of municipal government have an important lever at their disposal with which to affect the socio-economic and politico-cultural characteristics of a locality. Communist, socialist or other politically-aligned municipalities used their governmental powers to

217 These responsibilities are set out succinctly in Brian Chapman, Introduction to French Local Government, Greenwood Press Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 1978, reprint of 1953 edition George Allen & Unwin, London, p. 145.

56 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

build schools and hospitals and to provide a social outlet for their populations, all the while interpreting the world beyond the municipal boundaries for their local residents. Acting in accordance with Leninist doctrine, the PCF was, during the period of this study, adept at using the authority and powers invested in municipal government to exploit local circumstances in the working-class suburbs of Paris. It drew on and then moulded suburban working-class resentments which were at the same time historical and contemporaneous, class-specific and locally-oriented, social and politico-cultural, and in doing so simultaneously defended the interests of suburban workers and asserted their class (and by extension) local pride. An incarnation not only of the neo-Babouvist tradition but also of an industrialised France, its influence peaked at a time when the industrial proletariat was at its peak and its decline in a post-industrial France has been unremitting. I have argued above that it is only by recourse to local or regional studies that the locational variability in political identification of the French working class can be fully understood. Such studies help us to understand, for example, why workers in the suburbs of Paris gave overwhelming support for the PCF but in parts of the Nord-Pas- de-Calais they supported the SFIO, or why the SFIO maintained control of some working-class suburbs to the west of Paris in face of the communist onslaught. I will to explain why the PCF established its hegemony in the working-class suburbs that made up the banlieue rouge by applying Hastings’ anthropological approach (outlined in the Introduction), an approach which emphasises the meeting of the PCF and its ideological project with its local environment, including the varied elements of local culture. According to this line of argument, it is necessary to examine the interaction between the party as an instrument of socialisation and a local milieu that has its own system of references that derive from its own heritages and traditions. In Hastings’ view, the PCF successfully implanted itself in the Paris suburbs and beyond because it had a local investment that was superior to that of other contemporaneous political parties. This was a corollary of a strategy implantation that involves the party’s immersion in the local culture. Such a strategy allowed the party to determine the social norms and human behaviour of the milieu it penetrated in a way that accorded with the milieu’s traditional values. Thus, Hastings’ approach entails the study of communism and the local environment where it is implanted in their totality. Firstly, I will establish a direct link between the rise of the banlieue rouge and my abovementioned argument that the PCF

57 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

had its roots in the cultural traditions of the French working class and the attitudes they engendered (which in turn were generated by bourgeois attitudes to workers). Secondly, I will examine the way in which the socio-economic structure and politico-cultural environment of individual communes of the Paris suburbs impeded or facilitated support for the PCF. Thirdly, I will explain how the PCF brought its communist project to fruition in the Paris suburbs by constructing a communist counter-society that represented the meeting of the communist project with the local environment in its totality. These three elements – the cultural traditions of the Parisian working class, the local milieu of the individual communes that made up the banlieue rouge, and the communist project - came together in the hegemony the PCF built and maintained in the Paris suburbs from its birth in 1921 until the end of the Fourth Republic, a hegemony which was also conditioned by events outside of the suburbs and by the Bolshevik- inspired teleological project of the PCF.

1. THE BANLIEUE ROUGE: THE POLITICO-CULTURAL CONTEXT

For longstanding historical reasons the urban development of the Paris metropolis has differed greatly from that of the major metropolitan centres of Anglo- Saxon countries.218 While the English and Americans fled as far away from cities as transportation would permit them, the French freed the city for the bourgeoisie by deindustrialising it and driving workers into the periphery. With a similar heritage of urbanisation to that of France, continental Europe more or less followed the French pattern. For example, the social segregation apparent in Paris was closely paralleled by Vienna where workers lived in industrial suburbs and the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the city.219

The Alienation of the Suburban Working Class of the Paris Region

The origin of the modern metropolis of Paris is often traced back to the Second Empire and its reconstruction under prefect Baron Haussman which led to the demolition of the old medieval quarters of the centre and their replacement with new bourgeois residences, offices or commercial enterprises, with workers and industry banished to the periphery of the city or to the suburbs. However, under the July

218 Charles Sowerwine, “Inscription de classe et espace urbain”, in Ouvriers en banlieue, pp. 23- 40. 219 John Merriman, “Banlieues comparées”, pp. 268-269.

58 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

Monarchy an impoverished working class was already being forced from the central districts of Paris to the faubourgs, and beyond to the banlieue.220 Here they became increasingly isolated from the bourgeois city. The decision to encircle Paris with fortifications, by means of walls and exterior forts built between 1841 and 1845, and the subsequent annexation on 26 May 1859 of the petit banlieue adjoining Paris led to a strong division between the city and the suburbs.221 The customs barriers, whose gates were closed at night during the Franco-Prussian War, acted to separate the city from the suburbs on its margins. As noted above, this was a corollary of longstanding elite and bourgeois attitudes. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the term faubourg had lost its neutrality as respectable dictionaries registered a transmogrification into a pejorative, indeed menacing term.222 This stigmatisation was a fate also shared by the term banlieue which became indicative of social and geographic marginalisation. Thus fear and scorn characterised bourgeois opinion of the banlieues and faubourgs well before the 1920s. In the first half of the nineteenth century the novels of bourgeois writers such as Victor Hugo gave expression to prevailing images of the inner suburbs as places of abject poverty, violence and crime.223 Under the July Monarchy one deputy warned that the faubourgs of the industrial cities were home to the barbarians who threatened society, and in a foretaste of the interwar fears of the Parisian bourgeoisie regarding the banlieue rouge, a functionary of Louis-Phillipe warned in 1831 that the industrialisation of the suburbs would strangle Paris by surrounding it.224 Restricted to, in the words of Louis Chevalier, the “furthest confines of the economy, of society and almost of existence itself” the working class was in turn banished to the edges of the city.225 There they remained in the minds of a Parisian bourgeoisie which saw their marginal status vis-à-vis the city as a danger and whose image of proletariat was that of savage brutes and barbarians.226 Increasingly absent from the quartiers, faubourgs and banlieues of the working class, the Parisian bourgeoisie viewed the latter

220 Florence Bourillon, “Rénovation ‘haussmannienne’ et ségrégation urbaine”, in Annie Fourcaut (ed), La ville divisée: les ségrégations urbaines en questions France XVIIIe-XXe siècles, Creaphis, Grâne, 1996, pp. 91-104; Louis Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Frank Jellinek, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1973, pp. 187- 189, 195-199, 320-355. 221 Fourcaut, “Banlieue rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, p. 14. 222 Merriman, “Banlieue comparées”, p. 268. 223 Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 65-66, 85-87 224 Merriman, “Banlieue comparées”, pp. 267-268. 225 Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 195-199, 258. 226 Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 361-393. 59 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

as constituting “on the edge of the city and its civilisation, a different, alien and hostile society.”227 In turn, the Parisian working class not only internalised bourgeois opinion of the proletariat but transformed it into a mark of pride. The mentality of the Parisian working class was permeated by a deep-seated social antagonism and was underpinned by recognition of the struggle between rich and poor in the city and a resentment of a bourgeoisie whose wealth contrasted with the grinding poverty of the working class. It is in this context that one can, as John Merriman does, interpret the Paris Commune as the revenge of those who were evicted from the capital by Haussman’s reconstruction, a revenge which also had the effect of reinforcing the prevailing bourgeois image of the suburbs.228 The assimilation in the minds of the Parisian bourgeoisie of the labouring and dangerous classes during the nineteenth century as documented by Chevalier was renewed in the interwar period. According to Annie Fourcaut, the theme of the banlieue rouge was born and gained currency with the end of World War I and the schism in SFIO which engendered the PCF, and was strongly tied to the growth and development of communism.229 The simmering fears of 1920-24 were crystallised into social fear of the banlieusard between 1924-1925 due to a number of seminal events, namely the transfer of Jaurès’ ashes into the Panthéon in November 1924, the December 1924 police raid on the Leninist school in Bobigny, the success of the PCF in the legislative elections of 1924 and municipal elections of 1925 (which resulted in the PCF controlling nine municipalities in Seine suburbs), and the political debate of 1925 to 1930 including discussions of the problems faced by residents of the defective lotissements which had arisen in the Paris suburbs during the interwar period. In a throwback to the nineteenth century, journalists, bourgeois novelists, writers, priests, and sociologists wrote of the dangers posed to the capital by presence on its doorstep of an excluded, barbarous population which existed outside of civilisation.230 As Fourcaut has written:

D’abord un mépris assez largement partagé pour la banlieue et ses habitants: espace laid, bâtard, sans grâce, sans culture, la banlieue est peuplé d’une humanité quelque peu inférieure par ses comportements, son habitat, ses

227 Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 258, 394-408. 228 Merriman, “Banlieue comparées”, p. 267. 229 Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 12-13. 230 Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 13-14, 64-68.

60 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

goûts. Même quand il n’est complètement confondu avec la sous- proléletariat, comme dans les romans de René Fallet, le banlieusard est toujours marginal, un exclu, qu’il soit ouvrier ou qu’il appartienne aux classes moyennes. Mépris des citadins pour les habitants de la périphérie et mépris de classe se confondent ici en un rejet global des populations de la banlieue.231

Thus, the word banlieusard took on a pejorative meaning in the bourgeois mind - indicating a potential delinquent, the excluded, and the marginal.232 This marginalisation of the suburban working class was made manifest in their literal exclusion from the city. Thus the great demonstrations of Parisian metallurgists held on 5 June 1919 were prevented from entering the city, with troops guarding the entrances through the city wall which acted as a barrier to entry into Paris.233 The demonstrations were only tolerated within the workers’ own territory, the suburbs. Forbidden during the 1920s from entering the city, the suburbs became the territory of the working class, a place where it could deploy its political forces and assert its identity.234 Then in the 1930s they increasingly became places of conflict where workers clashed with fascists and the police, a conflict which spilled over into Paris just prior to the Popular Front.235 The massive Popular Front demonstrations of the Left in Paris were symbolic of the suburban workers’ reconquest of Paris. For workers the suburbs were a place of choice, somewhere to escape overcrowded conditions of Paris for the open air, a house with a garden and a semi-rural atmosphere as well the expression of popular modes of life and a positive image of political conquest, of which communist municipalities were the most direct expression.236 Suburban workers identified with the PCF because it was a means by which to vigorously assert their class pride and suburban identity and to re-claim the revolutionary heritage of the Parisian working class. It was in these terms that Paul Vaillant-Couturier celebrated, in L’Humanité on 13 May 1924, the PCF’s triumph two days earlier in the legislative elections for the Seine suburbs. Vaillant-Couturier wrote:

231 Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 68. 232 Fourcaut, “Banlieue rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, p. 35. 233 Robert, “Ouvriers, Banlieue et Grande Guerre”, Ouvriers en banlieue, pp. 71-72. 234 Tartakowsky, “Les Croix de feu à Villepinte, octobre 1935”, p. 79. 235 Tartakowsky, “Les Croix de feu à Villepinte, octobre 1935”, pp. 68-75, 79. 236 Fourcaut, “Banlieue rouge, au-delà du mythe politique”, p. 35.

61 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

Paris est encerclé par le prolétariat révolutionnaire! La victoire révolutionnaire, par le point de vue stratégique, est incontestable. Paris, capitale du capitalisme, est encerclé par un prolétariat qui prend conscience de sa force. Paris a retrouvé ses faubourgs!237

Workers in the banlieue rouge supported the PCF because it too was marginal to and excluded from French society. They supported the PCF because it defended suburban workers and their territory, sometimes literally against incursions by hostile groups such as the police and rightwing leagues. According to Fourcaut:

Le mythe de la banlieue rouge, tel qu’il se constitue entre 1925 et 1935, a contribué à accroître le sentiment d’exclusion que ressentaient les banlieusards. Déjà exclus de la Ville et de sa civilisation, ils devenaient de plus l’incarnation de la Révolution. Le génie du Parti communiste est d’avoir su alors transformer ce phénomène de rejet en fierté de vivre dans des communes qui se voulaient exclusivement communistes et prolétariennes, enclaves révolutionnaires menaçant une capitale assiégée. La conscience de classe se trouvait renforcée d’une conscience locale, née du rejet ambiant comme du partage de la difficile condition banlieusarde.238

Just as the Paris Commune can be seen as the revenge of the banlieusard, so too can the rise of suburban communism in the interwar period.

French Socialist Tradition and the Rise of the Banlieue Rouge

Berlanstein argues that before 1914 in the emerging industrial suburbs around Paris, suburban factory workers held the same advanced opinions as Parisian artisans, and the same myths and slogans animated their political life as in the faubourgs, the foremost among them being associated with the Paris Commune.239 It was these fiercely anti-clerical workers who, after the Commune, elected the radical municipalities of the Paris region which defended the republic against the monarchists. Many of those who migrated to the Paris suburbs before World War I were skilled workers from the city who carried with them their radical traditions. Thus, in Alfortville, a suburb in the south-west of Paris, the high level of membership in the SFIO before 1914 was a legacy

237 Quoted in Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 30. 238 Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 196. 239 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, pp. 156-157.

62 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

of the migration in the previous century of skilled workers who were forced out of the city by high rents and flooding.240 Furthermore, by the eve of the war the socialists were able to recruit as easily from among suburban factory workers as from workers in Paris and the density of membership in the suburbs was as high as or higher than in the Parisian bastions of the Left such as Belleville.241 Labour leaders arose in the suburbs who were not simply displaced skilled workers from Paris but local manual workers from factories, while skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labourers working in small- scale craft industries and medium to large factories came together in strike action.242 Moreover, during the interwar period suburban workers were not necessarily cut off from the radical working-class milieu or traditions of Paris. In 1931, 29% of the working population living in the suburbs worked in Paris, while most provincial migrants went to Paris first before they moved onto the suburbs, and those who migrated from Paris to the suburbs maintained attachments to families in the faubourgs of the city.243 In dismissing the importance of the French socialist tradition as a generator of support for communism in the Paris suburbs, Gallie offers as evidence the fact that only three of the eight communist municipalities in 1925 were former SFIO municipalities.244 He therefore concludes that the PCF built up its support in Paris suburbs in areas where the SFIO had been weak. Similarly, based on the fact that only a minority of the SFIO’s pre-1914 municipalities became communist bastions in the interwar period, Girault concludes that where it was strong, socialist tradition acted as a brake to communist implantation in the Paris suburbs.245 However, in my view Maps 4 and 5 below indicate a much more complex picture. A comparison of these maps indicates clearly that the PCF polled well in the legislative elections of 11 May 1924 in the very suburbs where the SFIO had polled well in the 1919 legislative elections. Similarly, a comparison of Maps 4 and 6 below demonstrates that many the communes that voted SFIO in 1919

240 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, p. 167. 241 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, p. 163. 242 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, pp. 185-187. 243 Susanna Magri and Chrstian Topalov, “Pratiques ouvrières et changement structurels dans l’espace des grandes villes du premier XXe siècle. Quelques hypothèses de recherche”, in Magri and Topalov (eds), Villes Ouvrières 1900-1950, Éditions L’Harmattan, Paris, 1989, pp. 22, 32-33; Alain Faure, “Transfuges et Colons: Le Rôle des Parisiens dans le Peuplement des Banlieues (1880-1914)”, Immigration, vie politique et populisme en banlieue parisienne (fin XIXe-XXe siècles), pp. 42-44, 47-48. 244 Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism, p. 205. 245 Jacques Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste dans la région parisienne”, pp. 116-117; Jean-Paul Brunet, “Ouvriers et politique en banlieue parisienne”, p. 286. 63 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

elected communist municipalities in 1935. Of the eight communist municipalities listed by Fourcaut246 as issuing from the 1925 municipal elections, all but Ivry had, according to Map 4, had given the SFIO 30% or more support in the legislative elections of 1919, and Ivry was certainly a traditional area of socialist strength, having elected a Guesdist municipality in 1896, a rarity in the Paris region.247 Ivry passed over to the SFIO when a unified Socialist Party was born out of the unification of the various French socialist factions, including the Guesdists, remaining in the party’s hands until 1908 when it passed into Republican Socialist hands. The PCF had the capacity to inherit both the traditional socialist constituency of the Paris suburbs and those workers who were won over to the SFIO in 1919. Hence, the PCF became the dominant force after Tours in the Ivry-Port and Petit-Ivry electoral sections where the SFIO was victorious in 1919, the former having been a traditional, pre-war bastion of socialism, and the latter having been recently converted to socialism by war and the Russian Revolution.248 In my view, it is a mistake to only use the control of the mayoralty of a commune as a yardstick to measure whether or not the PCF benefited from the presence of a socialist tradition in a suburban commune since the situation is far more complex. Before 1914 many suburban workers had voted socialist in legislative elections but for Radicals or other candidates in municipal elections because they approved of the competency of local government provided by the Radicals or other groups or because they had had an unsatisfactory experience of socialist administration, as was the case in prewar Saint-Denis.249 Similarly, many workers voted Communist in legislative elections but Socialist, Radical or even anticommunist in municipal elections if they thought this would ensure effective and efficient municipal administration. Arcueil’s communists were defeated in the 1923 municipal elections in part because of their preoccupation with political symbolism rather than practical administration, while in Cachan an efficient but anti-Popular Front municipality was re-elected in 1935 one year before Cachan’s electors voted overwhelmingly for the PCF in the legislative elections. In fact, a converging high vote for the PCF in both municipal and legislative elections is an indicator of an emerging communist hegemony.

246 These were Saint-Denis, Bobigny, Villetaneuse and Clichy in the north and Ivry, Vitry, Villejuif and Malakoff in the south, Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 36-37, 42. 247 Bernard Chambaz,, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry pendant l’entre-deux- guerres”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris I, 1971, pp. 66-69. 248 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry ”, pp. 91-95. 249 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 45-90; 160-167. 64 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

MAPS 4 & 5 The PCF’s inheritance of the SFIO electorate in the banlieue rouge

SOURCE: Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, p. 84.

65 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

MAPS 5 & 6 The banlieue rouge at the time of the Popular Front

SOURCE: Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, p. 139.

66 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

Focusing only on the party-political affiliation of a commune’s mayor can obscure the picture of local politics. In Villejuif, Radical dominance of prewar municipal politics gave way directly to communist control in the interwar period, however it cannot therefore be concluded that this was a suburb without a socialist heritage - the SFIO polled 46.1% of the valid votes cast in the 1914 legislative elections, compared with 0.18% for the Radicals.250 In Bagneux, where almost the entire party went over to the PCF after Tours, strong support for the SFIO in prewar legislative elections belied the weakness of the socialists in the municipal sphere.251 The presence of a significant socialist minority on council could presage the rise of the PCF. In Bobigny, the SFIO’s victory in the 1919 municipal elections was presaged by the fact that before the war the party controlled ten out of 21 seats on council.252 The communist candidate in the 1924 legislative elections went on to capture almost all of the socialist electorate. Arguably, the resistance of many older socialist suburbs to communist implantation during the interwar period had more to do with the rise of popular notables in these suburbs than to the fact that socialist traditions acted as a brake on communist implantation.253 The allegiance of these notables to the PCF was tenuous at best and by virtue of their personal presence, administrative competence and concern for the interest of the proletariat they carried with them many working-class voters. Moreover, in the interwar period the socialists, and by extension the socialist-communists, were in general successful in suburbs where their proletarian support base, in terms of membership and candidates fielded, declined dramatically post-Tours and where political success was built on cross-class and cross-party alliances. The industrialised suburb of Montrouge, where the working class formed a significant minority, became an interwar fief of the socialist Emile Cresp because he was able to garner working-class support via a defence of their interests and the construction of public housing, while at the same time pursuing policies that were moderate enough not to alienate the middle

250 S. Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif pendant l’entre-deux- guerres”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris I, 1973, pp. 109-110, 152-154, 157-163. 251 Annie Fourcaut, “La Vie politique dans une commune de banlieue: Bagneux 1870-1936”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris I/Centre du Recherches d’Histoire des Mouvements Sociaux et Syndicalisme (CRHMSS), 1970, pp. 21-37, 44-50, 252 Stovall, Red Belt, p. 97-102; Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 82. 253 Brunet suggests that the victories of the SFIO in 1919 helped to curtail the rise of the PCF in the Paris suburbs by giving rise to, or confirming the emergence of, notables the Left in many of these suburbs, Brunet, “Ouvriers et politique en banlieue parisienne”, Ouvriers en banlieue, p. 286. 67 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

classes that remained a substantial component of Montrouge’s population.254 The pre- schism socialist electorate passed over to the PCF, with socialism becoming a kind of advanced Radicalism, devoid of any revolutionary content. As in Montrouge, Henri Sellier’s administration of the sociologically diverse commune of Suresnes was a triumph of moderation over extremism, an example of how reformist socialism could achieve piecemeal successes.255 By the end of the 1920s, both Cresp and Sellier were campaigning on the apolitical provision of service and infrastructure and including moderate, non-Socialist candidates on their lists for municipal elections. In Bagneux, Tissier was elected mayor in 1925 on a ticket that comprised Radicals, the SFIO and Independent Socialists.256 Similarly, the ‘independent socialist’ Laval maintained his fief of Aubervilliers by forging a broad electoral base that included the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and industrialists, and a political alliance that included disaffected members of the PCF and SFIO.257 For Sellier, Cresp and Laval, consensual politics was the key to warding off their main political opponent of the interwar period, the PCF.258 Thus, where the SFIO dominated in the face of a strong communist presence it often did so as a reformist and anti-communist force that displaced the Radicals as the party of the moderate Left. In its willingness to ally with the Radical-Socialists, the SFIO was too rightwing for most workers in Bobigny or Saint-Denis, and consequently the party was weak in both these suburbs with few socialist supporters voting communist in the second ballot, most instead opting to vote for the rightwing candidate rather than to reinforce communist hegemony.259 Arguably then, the proud socialist and revolutionary traditions of the Paris region were an important part of the suburban milieu from which a communist hegemony arose even if they do not entirely account for the rise of the PCF in the Paris suburbs.

254 Cresp was elected mayor in 1929 after having headed a victorious anticommunist ticket, only to defect to Deat’s neo-socialists in 1933, taking with him most of the local SFIO. He was re-admitted to the SFIO in October 1935, Elisabeth Coulouvrat, “La Vie politique à Montrouge 1900-1939”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris I/ CRHMSS, 1977-1978, pp. 52-65, 67-68, 72, 82-96, 102-105. 255 Christian Betron, “A la recherche d’un consensus: Henri Sellier et la Société Historique de Suresnes”, La Banlieue Oasis, pp. 197-200. 256 Fourcaut, “Bagneux 1870-1936”, pp. 59, 102-103. 257 Fred Kupferman, Laval, Éditions Balland, Paris, 1987, pp. 54-63; Alain Bessaha, “L’implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers entre les deux guerres, 1919-1939”, Université de Paris I/CRHMSS, Mémoire de maîtrise, 1992, pp. 81-85. 258 Christian Betron, “A la recherche d’un consensus”, pp. 197-200; Bessaha, “L’implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers”, pp. 81-85; Coulouvrat, “La vie politique à Montrouge”, pp. 88-91. 259 Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 80-88, 93; Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 257-260, 264-267, 280-281, 365, 391-393, 440-441. 68 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

2. THE FOUNDATIONS OF A COMMUNIST SUBURB

The early implantation of the PCF in the Paris suburbs during the interwar period was concomitant with a rapid population increase - between 1921 and 1931 the population of the Department of the Seine grew by 35%, from 1 505 000 to 2 043 000.260 While the prewar period had also been one of rapid growth, though at a level less than half that of the 1921-1931 rate, after the onset of the Depression population growth slowed significantly, then declined during World War II before resuming in the 1950s.261 In the interwar period half of these new arrivals to the suburbs originated from the provinces.262 This demographic growth of the Paris suburbs in the interwar period was preceded by and concomitant with an industrialisation of the inner suburbs and a de-industrialisation of Paris as the former became the home of heavy industry and the latter of specialised, consumer-oriented industries – artisanal manufacture, food and clothing - and the tertiary sector – in particular, banking and commerce.263 The presence of navigational waterways, the extension of railways, the availability of cheap land with the prospect of expansion, and the need to locate or re-locate polluting and dangerous industries away from the capital drove an increasing transfer of industry from Paris to the suburbs or the establishment of new industries in the same.264 The massive expansion that many large factories in the suburbs underwent during World War I was sustained until the Depression – Renault’s workforce at Boulogne increased from 3300 in 1910 to 22 000 in 1916 and by 1937 the factory employed 30 000 workers – while the location of foreign factories gave a further boost to this suburban concentration of

260 Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste dans la région parisienne”, p. 65. 261 From 1911 to 1921 the population of the Seine grew by an average of 36 000 persons per annum, from 1921 to 1931 by an average of 94 000 per annum (and by 19% in total) and from 1931 to 1936 by 15 000 per annum. This growth was concentrated in the suburbs as the population of Paris remained throughout this period at its 1901 level. See Françoise Cribier, “Le logement d’un génération de jeunes parisiens à l’époque du Front Populaire”, Villes Ouvrières 1900-1950, p. 113 and Jacques Girault, “Industrialisation et ouvriérisation de la banlieue parisienne”, p. 100. In round figures, by 1936 the population of the Seine suburbs had increased marginally to 2 133 000, however, as a consequence of World War II a decade later this figured had regressed by 83 000 (3%) to 2 050 000 in 1946, rising to 2 304 000 in 1954, an increase of 254 000 or 12%, François Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne: Cent cinquante ans de transformations, La documentation française, Paris, 1993, pp. 29, 31, 59. 262 Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 33. 263 Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 25-40. 264 Jacques Girault “Industrialisation et ouvriérisation en banlieue parisienne”, pp. 99-100; Claudine Fontanon, “L’Industrialisation de la banlieue parisienne (1860-1960)”, Chapter II in Un Siècle de banlieue parisienne, pp. 63-64. 69 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

heavy industry.265 In particular, during the interwar period the Paris suburbs increasingly housed chemical and metallurgical industries.266 In the aftermath of World War II industry was overwhelmingly concentrated in the inner suburbs – such as Saint-Denis, Ivry, and Vitry - and when in the 1950s the industrialisation process renewed it tended to reinforce the existing industrial characteristics of these suburbs. The Paris suburbs were the home of the industrial proletariat during the period of this study. The industrialisation and demographic growth of the Paris suburbs, and with it the birth of the industrial proletariat, were contingent upon the rise of mass transport which linked Paris and its suburbs. This growth in public transport was well underway even before World War I and only accelerated in the interwar period in the wake of extensions to and the electrification of railways and tramways and the increased frequency of their services, the extension of the Paris metro into the suburbs, and the progressive use of buses which began to displace tramways.267 Commuter trips in the Paris region increased by 80% between 1921 and 1931, before declining by 7% by 1936, with the overwhelming majority of journeys being via public transport.268 Although the state began to overcome its anti-dirigiste aversion to transport planning in the interwar period – hence the creation in 1920 of a single transport network for Paris, the Société des transports en commun de la région parisienne (STCRP) - it was not until the 1950s that the state began to institute a major restructure of public transport.269 The growth of public transport combined with industrialisation enabled workers to become suburban residents by moving either to suburbs where they both lived and worked or to the many working-class commuter suburbs which arose in the Department of the Seine.

265 Other large factories elsewhere in Boulogne, Saint-Denis, Ivry and Vitry underwent similar levels of expansion as Renault, see: Girault, “Industrialisation et ouvriérisation en banlieue parisienne”, p. 99 and Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, pp. 83-85; Fontanon, “L’Industrialisation de la banlieue parisienne”, pp. 66-68. 266 Robert, “Ouvriers, Banlieue et Grande Guerre”, Ouvriers en banlieue, p. 67; Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 85. 267 Stovall provides a good account of the prewar development of mass transit in Paris, see Red Belt, pp. 31-36, as does Dominique Larroque, “Economie et politique des transports urbains. 1855-1939”, Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, no. 23-24, 274, 1984, pp. 127-138. On the interwar period see Francis Beaucire, “Les Transports Collectifs Devant L’Extension des Banlieues et L’Essor de la Mobilité Citadine”, Chapter III in Un Siècle de banlieue parisienne, pp. 81-99 and Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, pp. 119-121. 268 Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 121. 269 Larroque, “Economie et politique des transports urbains. 1855-1939”, pp. 135-136; Jean-Paul Alduy, “L’aménagement de la région de Paris entre 1930 et 1975: de la planification à la politique urbaine”, Sociologie du Travail, no. 1, April-June, 1979, pp. 168-173; Alain Cottereau, “Les débuts de planification urbaine dans l’agglomération parisienne”, Sociologie du Travail, vol. XI, nos 4 & 5, October-December 1970, pp. 374-381; Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, pp. 121-126. 70 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

They were also encouraged to move by the housing crisis which afflicted Paris. Chevalier has demonstrated that in the nineteenth century the housing stock of Paris did not expand sufficiently enough to keep pace with the city’s rapid population growth, whilst the progressive gentrification of Paris, through the demolition of existing housing and rising rents, further depleted the housing stock accessible to workers.270 Thousands of workers and their families were crammed into fetid lodgings where they encountered exceedingly high mortality rates when compared to the bourgeoisie. World War I and its immediate aftermath only exacerbated this longstanding crisis, which now began to affect the inner suburbs where prewar housing conditions had in any case been poor and rents on the rise.271 To escape the tenements of Paris and its inner suburbs many workers were among the 700 000 people – 60% of the new arrivals to the Seine suburbs - who were housed on the 250 000 new lotissements that were carved out of former farmland by 1939.272 As we shall see below, many of the new arrivals soon found living conditions little better than in the tenements, and these mal-lotis became a backbone of support for the interwar PCF. On a much smaller scale around 20 000 Habitations à bon marché (HBM), essentially an early form of public housing, were built in the interwar period in 15 cités- jardins.273 The cités-jardins were inspired by and modelled on English social housing of the period which was meant to foster interclass harmony by housing the working and middle classes together on the same estate. Built by the Department of the Seine, they were planned and managed by the Office public d’habitations à bon marché du Département de la Seine (OPHBMS) whose social philosophy aimed at fostering among its tenants an autonomous sociability that traversed traditional social cleavages.274 To this end, the OPHBMS encouraged the formation of diverse associations, such as societies of mutual support. On a practical level, the aim of the cités-jardins was to

270 Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 187-214. 271 Stovall, Bobigny, pp. 37-38; Susanna Magri, “Le Logement et L’Habitat Populaires de la Fin du XIXe Siècle à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, Chapter IV in Un Siècle de banlieue parisienne, pp. 111- 112. 272 Magri, “Le Logement et L’Habitat Populaires de la Fin du XIXe Siècle à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, pp. 116-117; Girault, “Les Ouvriers et le logement en banlieue”, p. 184 ; Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 63. 273 Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 59-60. 274 Sébastien Kerleroux, “La Cité-jardin de Cachan dans l’entre-deux-guerres”, Mémoire de maîtrise d’histoire contemporaine, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne-UFR d’Histoire/CRHMSS, 1997, pp. 2-3; Henri Sellier, “Le Oeuvre des Offices d’habitations dans le Départements de la Seine”, La Vie Urbaine, 4th year, no. 14, 15 June 1922, p. 228. 71 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

provide adequate housing to large families and other groups in need.275 However, as we shall see in Chapter 3, this form of housing was not without its problems in spite of the fact that it aimed to counteract the deleterious affects of the rapid suburbanisation of the Paris region. The HBM housing of the interwar years presaged the massive Habitation à Loyer Modéré (HLM) housing projects that were built from the 1950s onwards in the Paris region, including both Arcueil and Cachan. The rapid, chaotic development of the Paris suburbs created the perfect milieu for the growth of communism. Working-class suburbs - industrial, commuter or a mixture of the two - arose whose characteristics predisposed them to communist influence. In my view there were three variables which combined to predispose a suburb to communist influence: socio-economic structure, material conditions and the local popular culture. When combined these variables helped to determine whether a suburb became communist, though the political affiliation of a suburb was still contingent on the way the PCF responded to these variables. i) Socio-Economic Structure

It is more or less a truism that the more a suburban commune’s population became homogeneously working-class the more it was pre-disposed to communist hegemony. North of Paris, Bobigny, the predominantly residential commune with a large population of mal-lotis, had one important factor in common with Saint-Denis, an industrial suburb dubbed the ‘French Manchester’276 - they both lacked any substantial bourgeois elite. Bobigny’s transition from radicalism, to socialism and then communism was concomitant with the rapid growth of an increasingly homogeneous working-class population.277 The vast majority of Saint-Denis’ population was working-class from the turn of the century, and this numerical preponderance and homogeneity in part explains the resilience of communism throughout the interwar years.278 Similarly, the population of Ivry, an industrialised bastion of communism south of Paris, was also

275 It was for this reason that the majority of HBM housing was reserved for families with four or more children under the age of 13 (fewer for widowers and widows receiving state aid), with the remainder distributed to families of less than four children, young couples, widows and war wounded. Exceptions were made for fonctionnaires called to reside in Seine Department who were unable to find housing and, sometimes, families in need of urgent housing owing to eviction, Kerleroux, “La Cité-jardin de Cachan dans l’entre-deux-guerres”, pp. 24-26, 64, 65, 103. 276 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 193. 277 Stovall, Red Belt, p. 76; Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 123. 278 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 27, 208. 72 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

overwhelmingly proletarian.279 Nevertheless, in the neighbouring Villejuif a large population of white-collar workers did not affect the PCF’s dominance owing to the presence of a large number of mal-lotis.280 Similarly, the presence of mal-lotis helped the PCF win control of Bagneux in 1935 at a time when white-collar workers formed a greater proportion of the population than blue-collar workers.281 As befitted a party of the proletariat, in terms of Party membership and candidates fielded, the PCF in Villejuif, Ivry, Bobigny and Saint-Denis was also overwhelmingly proletarian in aspect, as it was throughout the Paris region and in Arcueil and Cachan.282 By contrast the SFIO in Saint-Denis was sociologically heterogeneous, composed in the majority of employés and members of the middle class.283 Similarly, the most petty-bourgeois electoral section of Ivry, Ivry-Centre, became a bastion of socialist support once the PCF came on the scene after having been the SFIO’s area of weakest support before the congress of Tours.284 Chapter 4 will establish the proletarian character of the PCF and the gentrification of the post-schism SFIO in Arcueil and Cachan. The success of the PCF in the Paris region has also been tied to the rise of the metallurgist. Working overwhelmingly in large establishments and dominating industrial employment in the Paris region during the period of this study, the metal worker emerged in the interwar period as an emblematic communist figure of the banlieue rouge, a position which was confirmed at Liberation.285 Significant numbers of metal workers worked in Arcueil at this time and they undoubtedly played an important role in the rise of the PCF in this suburb, as they did in Saint-Denis.286 Another important context of the implantation of Communism in the interwar period was a huge and rapid increase in population in the prewar period and/or the

279 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry”, pp. 32, 33. 280 In 1936 blue-collar workers made up 37.4% of the male electorate, compared with 33% for white-collar workers, Roujeau, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, pp. 61, 63. 281 In 1936 white-collar workers made up 33.5% of the population in Bagneux compared with 29% for blue-collar workers, Fourcaut, “Bagneux 1870-1936”, pp. 41, 77. 282 See Roujeau, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, pp. 127-129; Chambaz, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry”, pp. 91-95, 126-127; Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 104, 144-145; Brunet, Saint-Denis, Chapters 10 and 11. 283 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 440-441. 284 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry”, pp. 91-95, 158. 285 In 1921 there were 330 000 metal workers working in the Department of the Seine against 300 000 clothing workers, see Jean-Louis Robert, “Ouvriers, Banlieue et Grande Guerre”, in Girault (ed), Ouvriers en banlieue, p. 67; Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 193; Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste dans la région parisienne”, p.116 and “Vers la banlieue rouge”, pp. 258-260. 286 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 238-241. 73 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

1920s. This was the case for of suburbs such as Saint-Denis and Bobigny north of Paris and Ivry and Villejuif south of Paris,287 and Table 3.1 (page 93 below) also indicates that Arcueil and Cachan experienced a rapid growth in population, especially in the 1920s. Hence, in the interwar period the PCF garnered support from a disparate grouping of provincial migrants and Parisian workers driven from the city by the housing crisis, using its control of municipal government to act as an inhibitor of their integration into the bourgeois nation-state by forging a communist local identity that was isolationist in its anti-bourgeois and pro-Soviet sentiment. ii) Material Conditions

The capacity of the PCF to mould the local identities of its suburban bastions owed much to the material conditions that met new arrivals to many suburbs, and the resentments which these engendered. During the interwar period when welfare laws were rudimentary, many of the white- and blue-collar workers who became new inhabitants of the Seine suburbs settled in communes where the provision of infrastructure lagged well behind population growth. As a consequence the housing and urban habitat of working-class suburbs was generally poor. Having constructed their own modest dwellings, generally of no more than three rooms, out of materials they bought, scavenged or salvaged, working-class families often found that their dreams of home ownership were bitterly disappointed as they faced housing conditions that were little better, if not worse, than those which they had attempted to escape.288 Often their new lodgings were overcrowded or insufficient and their lack of the most basic infrastructure – sewage services, tap water, gas and electricity, roads and footpaths – made for a miserable existence.289 Those suburbs retained by the socialists throughout the interwar years were notable for the weak presence of mal-lotis, while the PCF undoubtedly had its principal successes in suburbs affected by the crisis of the

287 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 24-25; Fourcaut, Bobigny, p. 121; Stovall, Red Belt, p. 43; Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, p. 22 ; Bernard Chambaz, “L’implantation du parti communiste français à Ivry”, Sur L’Implantation du parti communiste dans l’entre-deux-guerres, pp. 149-150. 288 Françoise Dubost, “Le rêve du pavillon”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 99-109. 289 For the well known example of Bobigny, see Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 49-54; Girault, “Les Ouvriers et le logement en banlieue”, p. 184; Magri, “Le Logement et L’Habitat Populaires de la Fin du XIXe Siècle à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, pp. 117-118. Soulignac, La Banlieue parisienne, p. 63. 74 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

lotissements, a fact that was bemoaned at the time by conservative commentators.290 The PCF quickly capitalised on the mal-lotis problem as the very groups they opposed were profiting from the misery of the mal-lotis.291 However, those suburbs which became communist varied greatly. Saint-Denis had few mal-lotis, but poverty was nonetheless widespread, with overcrowded and insufficient housing as well as miserable wages and living conditions the norm for workers.292 In this context the activism of communists within the tenants’ movement was effective in mobilising support for the party. “Dans plusieurs communes,” wrote the conservative Édouard Blanc in his La Ceinture Rouge, “les maisons à bon marché, édifiées par l’Office départemental, ont apporté du renfort aux partis de la révolution.”293 As Chapter 5 demonstrates, this was certainly the case in Arcueil where the cité-jardin became the nucleus for an electoral section that overwhelming supported the PCF. The tenants of the HBMs paid relatively high rents and expected a marked improvement in their housing in return. When residents felt these expectations had been disappointed, as was the case in Arcueil, they could become a large, captive audience for the PCF. Similarly, the PCF’s mobilisation of discontented HBM tenants in Bagneux was an important source of support for the party in this suburb and contributed to the PCF’s victory there in 1935.294 Thus, the material conditions endured by many suburban workers, and in particular the mal-lotis, left them marginalised and resentful, a sentiment that was successfully reinforced and mobilised by the PCF, a political party that had appropriated revolutionary and working-class traditions of Paris workers that were to a large degree indicative of violent resistance to social exclusion. iii) The Politico-Cultural Character of a Locality

As has been noted above in the Introduction, Berlanstein argues that in newly emerging industrial suburbs around Paris - Ivry, Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen, Puteaux -

290 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, pp. 198-199. See for example, Édouard Blanc, La Ceinture Rouge: Enquête sur la situation – politique, morale et sociale – de la banlieue de Paris, Éditions Spes, Paris, 1927, pp. 38-39 and Pierre Lhand, Le Christ dans La Banlieue: Enquête sur la vie religieuse dans les milieux ouvriers de la banlieue de Paris, Librairie Plon, Paris, 1927, pp. 7, 9-11. 291 Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste dans la région parisienne”, pp. 93-94. 292 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 20-24, 206, 350-351. 293 Blanc, La Ceinture Rouge, pp. 42-43. 294 Annie Fourcaut, “Loger la Classe Ouvrière en Banlieue Parisienne dans l’Entre-deux-guerres: L’Exemple de la Cité Pax à Bagneux”, La ville divisée, pp. 147-149 and “L’Implantation du parti communiste dans un groupe d’HBM: la cité du champ des oiseaux à Bagneux (1932-1935)”, Sur L’Implantation du Parti communiste français, pp. 191-203. 75 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

suburban factory workers held the same advanced opinions as Parisian artisans and the same myths and slogans animated political life as in the faubourgs, with the Paris Commune being of particular importance.295 The Paris Commune found support from Arcueil’s workers (see Chapter 5 below). Moreover, it has also been noted that many suburban working-class families maintained some contact with the remaining proletarian quartiers of Paris and that most provincial migrants spent considerable periods of time living in them before migrating to the suburbs. In Ivry, the Guesdists maintained a strong presence prior to the formation of the SFIO.296 My research on Arcueil and Cachan indicates that even after the PCF adopted the extremely sectarian tactical line of class-against-class, and well before the PCF’s patriotic re-birth under the Popular Front, the regional communist newspaper L’Aube sociale continued to use the French Revolutionary tradition to mobilise suburban workers. Thus, the PCF did not create the political culture of the banlieue rouge, rather it re-fashioned it in its own image. The PCF was also aided in this process by the lack of any ideological rivals as indicated by the almost total absence of the Catholic Church in the working-class suburbs of Paris, hence the aggressive missionary activity that Catholic evangelicals undertook in these suburbs during the interwar period.297 Where the PCF did face rivals with strong roots in the local cultural milieu, it struggled to attain hegemony. This was the case in Cachan where the rightwing Comité Radical des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan was instrumental in the commune’s creation298, in Suresnes where Sellier paid particular attention to local culture as a means of maintaining his interwar hegemony299, and in Aubervilliers where Laval not only promoted the social and cultural life of his

295 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, pp. 156-157. 296 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste Français à Ivry”, pp. 66-69. 297 Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 153-154. 298 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 14 ; AD94 35J181 Comité de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan Seine, Cachan, 1923, pp. 23, 25. 299 By emphasising the continuity between Suresnes’ past and present, Sellier used local history to fashion a communal identity that overrode divisions of class and quartier and was inextricably tied to his person, administration and reform program, the completion of which was deemed necessary to the historical development of Suresnes. Sellier’s vast educational and cultural program aimed to engender a local identity, unanimity, and the attachment of local residents to his administration. Reciprocating the strong support given to it by Sellier, the Historical Society of Suresnes, whose membership included radicals and rightwing nationalists, helped Sellier cultivate an image as the natural inheritor of their past, drawing links between him and great historical figures connected to Suresnes or whose image fitted his own. In this way Sellier’s administration used the past to control the festive life of Suresnes. Among socialists, Sellier stressed the heroic history and mythology of the French labour movement and the influence that socialists such as Vaillant and Jaurès had had on him. Prior to the Popular Front Sellier’s effort to construct a communal identity was based on a consensus that was inclusive of all but the communists, Betron, “A la recherche d’un consensus”, pp. 201-207. 76 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

commune but also of Auvergnats who had settled in the locality.300 Communist hegemony in the banlieue rouge was also contingent upon a dense social milieu which the party likewise did not create but instead exploited, moulded and controlled to its advantage. In the new dormitory or industrial suburbs the old homogeneity and sociability of the popular quartiers of Paris was recreated.301 As heterogeneous groups of workers mixed and united in common action they consolidated collective identities founded on a common condition. In the new working-class suburbs a system of mutual aid developed to assist working-class families in their daily survival, just as it had in the old popular quartiers. This system encompassed such things as the exchange of services between families, for example the minding of children and the sick, and the provision of aid to the unemployed, widows or families facing bills or the bailiff. Suburban communism was built upon this spontaneous social network, upon this local sociability that was divorced from professional status. Thus the spread of lotissements did not inhibit class identity, on the contrary in working-class lotissements social networks were re-constituted on the basis of a shared working-class sociability.302 Workers who built their own houses and confronted the same problems and the same adversaries banded together to form defence associations for tenants and lotis, re- formed traditional networks of working-class solidarity during strikes and times of unemployment and formed cultural and sporting associations.303 Municipalities of the Left, and in particular communist municipalities and the PCF itself, played key roles in initiating, germinating and directing these, thereby contributing to the formation of class identity. iv) The Local Milieu as a Determinant of Communist Hegemony

Thus, the conditions on the ground in each individual commune in the Department of the Seine played a key role in the capacity of the PCF to build a local hegemony. The socio-economic structure, material conditions and politico-cultural

300 Fred Kupferman, Laval, pp. 55-57; Bessaha, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers entre les deux guerres, 1919-1939”, pp. 134-135. 301 Magri and Topalov, “Pratiques ouvrières et changement structurels dans l’espace des grandes villes du premier XXe siècle”, pp. 35-36. 302 Magri, “Le Logement et L’Habitat Populaires de la Fin du XIXe Siècle à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, p. 121; Geneviève Chauveau, “Le Logement et Habitat Populaires de la Fin de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale aux Années Soixante”, Chapter IV-II in Un Siècle de banlieue parisienne, pp. 121, 147-148. 303 Magri, “Le Logement et L’Habitat Populaires de la Fin du XIXe Siècle à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale”, p. 121; Girault, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste dans la région parisienne”, pp. 94-95. 77 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

milieu all combined to either pre-dispose a commune to communism or to curb the influence of the party. Nevertheless, these factors alone cannot account for the local implantation of communism, as the case of the northern industrial suburb of Aubervilliers demonstrates. Aubervilliers remained an interwar fief of Pierre Laval, the socialist-cum-conservative politician and notorious collaborator with the Nazi occupation. This was despite the fact that it was around 80% working-class throughout the interwar period, had experienced a spectacular prewar and interwar growth and was a byword for misery because it was thoroughly polluted by various chemical and petroleum industries and its inhabitants endured dire living conditions and sanitation.304 Poverty and deprivation did not in itself guarantee Communist success. This is because there was another aspect to the way in which communism was implanted in the Paris suburbs, namely the way in which the PCF itself interacted with the local milieu it sought to control. Thus, prior to the Depression and the Popular Front, the PCF’s implantation in Aubervilliers was hampered by early defections, a weak presence at the workplace, a lack of any experienced, capable and dynamic communist personnel to field as local candidates and to combat Laval, and consequently by the party’s inability to organise the general population and to campaign forcefully on local issues, problems exacerbated by a hostile mayor who denied the party access to meeting halls and schools to conduct meetings.305

3. THE PCF AND THE COMMUNIST COUNTER-SOCIETY

The creation of a communist counter-society as dictated by the precepts of Leninism logically entailed that the party had to put down strong local roots. It follows therefore that it was the meeting of the various elements which characterise a locality with the PCF and its ideological project which determined whether a Communist communal identity was constructed and what shape it took. By responding to the needs of its constituents and successfully adapting itself to local conditions the party won the confidence of the local population and established the basis for a durable communal hegemony. This ability of the PCF to adapt to local conditions enabled the party to shape and determine the values and norms of the communes where it was implanted. In

304 Bessaha, “L’implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers entre les deux guerres, 1919- 1939”, pp. 22-23, 31 ; Albert Demangeon, Paris: la ville et sa banlieue, Éditions Bourrelier et Cie, Paris, 1934, p. 49 305 See Bessaha, “L’implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers”, pp. 90-172. 78 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

the Introduction I argued that there were four essential constituents to a durable hegemony: 1) the provision of dynamic leadership to the local working class; 2) the empowerment of disempowered workers through new forms of participatory democracy; 3) the appropriation of local popular culture and sociability with a view to reinforcing class-consciousness and forging a communist communal identity; 4) the provision of competent, efficient local government that benefited workers and acted as a demonstration that they could govern themselves. In its interaction with the suburban working class the PCF acted as a political tribune akin to that described by Tiersky.306 However, in its interaction with the workers of the Paris suburbs the PCF went beyond acting as the vehicle for protest as it actively forged a communist counter-society. i) Providing Dynamic Leadership of the Working-Class

For the PCF to gain significant support in a given locality an active and dynamic local leadership was essential. To this end, the passing of high profile local deputies, mayors, assistant mayors and councillors to the PCF after the schism of December 1920 facilitated the implantation of communism. Conversely, the decision of a popular mayor to remain with the SFIO curtailed the influence of communism, as did the many cases noted above of communist mayors in the 1920s who broke with the PCF. In Bobigny, mayor Clamamus’ activity on behalf of those residents of the suburban allotments, the mal-lotis, both as mayor and in parliament as deputy, was central to the implantation of communism in the suburb.307 In Saint-Denis, Doriot had great personal popularity which flowed from his role not only as one of the leaders of the Jeunesses Communistes, which spearheaded the anti-militarist and anti-colonial campaigns of the PCF in the 1920s, but also as a mayor who had expanded the municipality’s provision of welfare to its inhabitants.308 Doriot’s popularity enabled the PCF to maintain control of Saint- Denis’ municipal council at a time when the PCF was weakened, both locally and nationally, by dissidence, sectarianism and poor tactical decisions. In Arcueil the decision of the overwhelming majority of the SFIO, including veteran, prewar councillors and those newly elected to high office, such as the mayor and his assistants, to adhere to the newly formed PCF put the party in a commanding position vis-à-vis the post-schism SFIO. The change to single member constituencies in the 1928 legislative

306 Tiersky, French Communism, Chapter 10. 307 See Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 104, 182-183; Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 146-153. 308 Brunet, Saint-Denis, p. 340-342, 365, passim. 79 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

elections made such elections much more local and regional in character than their two predecessors. Personal popularity was also fundamental to the control non-communists wielded in a number of suburbs, arguably more so than in the case of the PCF, as is indicated by the examples of the SFIO’s Sellier in Suresnes309 and the independent Laval in Aubervilliers during the interwar period.310 However, personal popularity could be a double-edged sword, as was amply demonstrated by the PCF’s loss of its key bastion of Saint-Denis in 1934 when Doriot311 broke with the party and by its earlier losses of other suburbs to socialist-communist dissidents in the 1920s noted above. Leadership had to be complemented by grass-roots activity on the part of communist militants and sympathisers. Hence in Aubervilliers in the 1930s, Laval’s personal stature masked the fact that grassroots activity on the part of the PCF from the Depression onwards saw it make substantial headway in eroding his hegemony.312 In the wake of Laval’s execution as a Nazi collaborator Aubervilliers became a postwar bastion of the PCF. Strong local leadership, from popular mayors and councillors and from communist militants working at the grassroots level, enabled the party to maintain its support in the working-class suburbs of Paris in spite of the fact that in the late 1920s and early 1930s the overall party organisation in the Paris region was poorly adapted to the prevailing circumstances, and was often weak at a local level.313 ii) Empowering the Disempowered

In suburbs such as Saint-Denis, Bobigny, Bagneux, Ivry, Villejuif, Arcueil and Cachan the attainment of communist hegemony was contingent upon the grass roots work helping to germinate, guiding, forming and/or directing associations which defended and asserted the interests of local inhabitants.314 Such organisations ranged from associations of tenants or mal-lotis, and organisations formed to defend the interests of artisans and shopkeepers, to the promotion of the interests of retirees

309 Betron, “A la recherche d’un consensus”, pp. 201-207. 310 Laval fostered personal relationship with certain segments of his constituency which, along with his national role, was central to his dominance, Kupferman, Laval, p. 54. 311 On Doriot’s break with the PCF see Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 369-411. 312 Bessaha, “L’implantation du Parti communiste à Aubervilliers”, Chapters 6 to 9. 313 When the PCF was at its nadir in 1932, three Communist deputies – Clamamus, Doriot, and Capron – were elected for the Seine in the legislative elections of that year, having succeeded on the back of a strong local presence, Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 33-34. 314 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 346-352; Stovall, Red Belt, Chapter 6, pp. 175-176; Fourcaut, “Bagneux 1870-1936”, pp. 66-73; Chambaz, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry”, pp. 137-142; Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, pp. 182-190. For Arcueil and Cachan see in particular Chapter 5 below. 80 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

through the formation of an older workers’ group and of public transport users by grouping them together in a committee. Many of the PCF’s auxiliary organisations, such as the Association Républicaine des anciens combattants (ARAC), also promoted the interests of certain social groups. In Bobigny the PCF helped organise and give an ideological cast to the committees formed by mal-lotis in order to improve the urban infrastructure of their neighbourhood.315 These amicales provided a forum to discuss local concerns and decide collectively how to deal with them. Dominated by communist militants, they were an instrument of PCF hegemony. The work of the party, its militants and sympathisers empowered workers through new forms of participatory democracy, that is organisations formed to defend and promote working-class interests. These organisations were an essential plank of communist hegemony and helped to engender class and local identity. iii) Reinforcing Class and Forging Communal Identity

The PCF overcame the divisions of geographical origins and socio-professional status by promoting a collective solidarity and identity. The latter was generally proletarian in emphasis however it was also often essentially sans-culottide in derivation, as the PCF’s defence of the interests of the lower middle class in suburbs such as Arcueil, Bagneux and Ivry demonstrates.316 The amicales and the mal-lotis syndicats of Bobigny fostered a concrete sense of community through acts of mutual aid and collective solidarity.317 In the banlieue rouge, the party blamed the lotissement crisis or lack of infrastructure on bourgeois developers or the bourgeois state, while conflict between the PCF and the government was symbolic of the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the working class. In the absence of an indigenous bourgeoisie, communist propaganda played a significant role in nourishing a sense of class identity and class conflict. This was a central theme of the PCF demonstrations and processions and of its election battles which became symbolic of the class struggle itself. Communist municipalities supported the struggles of workers everywhere, whether in the Paris suburbs, provincial France or abroad. International proletarian solidarity was expressed via ostensibly humanitarian groups such as the SRI (Secours Rouge

315 See Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 160-163. 316 For Arcueil see Chapter 5 below; Chambaz, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Deleted: Ivry”, pp. 137-138, 142; Fourcaut, “Bagneux, 1870-1936”, pp. 105-108. Deleted: for Arcueil see 317 Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 159-160. Chapter 5 below. 81 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

International), whose objective was to aid the Soviet Union, and Secours Ouvrier International (SOI), whose objective was to aid the working masses.318 The promotion of class solidarity meant vigorous support for the Soviet Union, expressed in symbolic council resolutions and propaganda praising Bolsheviks and calling for the defence of Russian Revolution. In order to attain and maintain hegemony the PCF had to act not only as a locus for class and communal solidarity, but also to become a central repository and source of local popular culture. The scope of involvement of the PCF and its suburban municipalities in local culture was as broad as possible.319 They formed musical and theatre ensembles, sport and recreation groups, provided film nights for party members, sympathisers and the general population, staged celebrations of the French Revolution and the revolutionary episodes of the working class, commemorated heroes of the Left and held ostensibly apolitical fêtes and kermesses populaires. National or local activities were imbued by the communists with ideological significance, for example Armistice Day commemorations combined a traditional observance with a denunciation of war and militarism in terms of class conflict. Communist municipalities supported neighbourhood festivals which often had a political theme, such as the children’s festival held in the Maurice Bureau quartier of Bobigny in 1935 in honour of its namesake, a communist martyr killed in riots of 9 February 1934. Communists also re- appropriated the heritage of the French Left. They did so by firmly anchoring the PCF as the natural inheritor of the revolutionary and progressive traditions of the while at the same time bonding these traditions to the Russian Revolution and Soviet State. This was expressed symbolically in the renaming of streets after prominent figures in the French labour movement (such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Edouard Vaillant, Louise Michel, and Jean Jaurès), communists (Henri Barbusse and Paul Vaillant-Couturier), working- class martyrs (Sacco and Vanzetti, the two American anarchists executed for murder in 1927, were a popular choice) and names connected with the international proletarian revolution (Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, and l’Internationale). Given the general absence of cultural resources in the communes of the banlieue rouge, the sponsorship

318 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 346-348. 319 The analysis which follows draws on a broad reading of communism in the Paris suburbs, in particular: Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 151-156, 163-167; Hervé Guillmet, “La Gestion Municipale de Vitry- sur-Seine, 1925-1939”, Maîtrise d’histoire contemporaine, Université de Paris XII, 1988, pp. 85-96; Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste Français à Ivry”, p. 157, 159, 161-163; Fourcaut, “Bagneux ,1870-1936”, pp. 105-108. Also see chapter 5 below for the example of Arcueil and Cachan. Deleted: ; 82 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

given by communist municipalities and the local PCF to popular culture was an important element in the creation of a local communist identity. In the banlieue rouge it helped in the fusion of class-consciousness with local pride, both of which were enlisted in support of the local PCF. iv) Providing Competent Working-Class Government

This fusion was best achieved, and communist hegemony only consummated, when the PCF gained control of local government and had at its disposal the authority and resources that were invested in it. Only through its control of municipal government could the PCF cultivate one of the central concepts of its communist counter-society, the idea of the communist municipality as a citadel of the working class. This was more than an abstract idea, it was a practical reality the PCF strove to achieve. In order to transform a communist municipality into a citadel of the working class the PCF had to provide efficient and responsive administration that acted as a model Soviet and a demonstration that workers could govern themselves. Communist municipalities achieved this end by addressing the problems of workers living in the suburbs, and in particular the residents of the lotissements, making great strides in alleviating the poor living conditions that rapid population growth and governmental neglect had produced in the suburbs.320 The communists provided basic infrastructure and amenities that were in urgent need - street lighting, footpaths, surfaced roads, garbage collection, and the essential utilities such as sewerage, running water, gas, and electricity. They increased spending on social assistance and education, including the construction of new classrooms and new schools such as the Karl Marx School at Villejuif which, in its pioneering teaching techniques and design, indicated a profound concern to vastly improve the health and school experience of children.321 Communist municipalities also made it a priority to provide children with trips to holiday camps in the countryside to escape their poor urban living conditions and leisure activities outside school hours. They made real improvements to the health of local residents via the establishment of medical clinics. Communist municipalities also filled the cultural void of the suburbs by sponsoring fetes, balls, fairs and festivals, always with some politically inspired theme.

320 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, pp. 197-199; Fourcaut, Bobigny, pp. 26-40, 57-75, 136-142 and “Prologue” pp. 12-13, 22-26; Stovall, Red Belt, 125-132; Girault, “Vers la banlieue rouge”, pp. 256-262. 321 Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, pp. 193-196; Jean-Louis Cohen, “L’école Karl-Marx à Villejuif (1930-1933)”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 197-206. 83 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

The great strides communist municipalities made in housing their populations cheaply and healthily came essentially after World War II when they spearheaded the construction of the HLM apartment blocks which dot the suburban landscape today and which enabled the party to reinforce its postwar hegemony. By housing those social groups which tended to support the PCF, the party was able to encadrer a new generation of French workers in much the same way as it did before the war. The reputation the communists gained for competent and efficient municipal administration that benefited working people was central to the foothold it gained in the Seine suburbs in the 1920s and early 1930s, and helped it to consolidate this hold in the postwar years. However, the communists’ ability as administrators had an ideological benefit as well. Thus, in Ivry the communist municipality’s promotion of social progress through the provision of infrastructure, social and medical services reinforced the perception that the communists were defenders of local interests, thereby fostering a communist communal identity.322 In this way in the banlieue rouge the achievements of a communist municipality became those of the working class itself, demonstrating what it was capable of by its own efforts. Communism, class and communal identity thus became inextricably intertwined. v) Communal Identity and the Communist Counter-Society

Unquestionably, the efforts of the PCF to improve the lives of suburban residents were a key ingredient in the hegemony the party came to wield in the working- class suburbs of Paris. One could also argue that the PCF was more consistent in these efforts because the party’s centralised structure enabled it to be steadfast in its focus on improving the lives of local workers. With this in mind, Stovall suggests that the concentration of mal-lotis within communist municipalities may be the key to explaining the durable implantation of communism in the Paris suburbs.323 As a consequence of its centralised command, the PCF was better able to tactically respond to and exploit the mal-lotis’ problems and in doing so gain and retain their enduring support. However, in my view the competency of the PCF’s local administration and the tactical responsiveness of the party to the problems of suburbanisation are only a partial explanation of the PCF’s success in constructing a durable hegemony over the banlieue

322 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste Français à Ivry”, pp. 125-126, 137-142, 159, 161-163, 169-175, 178. 323 Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development”, pp. 453-454. 84 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

rouge. Socialists, Radicals and even conservatives were cognisant of the problems of the mal-lotis and just capable of attending to their needs. As mayor, the Radical Mounie made Antony his interwar fief via his work on behalf of mal-lotis which gained him their enduring support,324 while the councillors of the electoral section of Cachan drew support for their separatist campaign from the mal-lotis of the Coteau quarter who believed that their needs were being neglected by an Arcueil-centred Communist municipality. The interwar dominance that the socialist Sellier maintained in Suresnes was contingent upon the efforts that his administrations made to improve the lives of his working-class citizens via massive investments in education, the provision of social and medical services, infrastructure and innovative housing.325 The activity of communist administrations, though consistently impressive, was not unique. Similarly, most working-class electors who voted for the PCF did not do so simply because they liked the party’s leaders, they voted for the PCF as an affirmation of a marginalised class and local identity, and by extension because they supported the PCF’s worldview. Thus, Doriot’s rapid move to the far Right was concomitant with a swift loss of his working- class support in Saint-Denis and a gentrification of his PPF - once it was obvious that Doriot had abandoned his basic communist values and had joined the fascist Right whose ideology workers recognised as antithetical to their interests, the proletariat of Saint-Denis quickly abandoned Doriot.326 Once Doriot joined the enemy, workers quickly returned to the PCF, leaving Doriot to draw his support from more bourgeois quarters. What united workers in the Paris suburbs was a profound anti-bourgeois, anti- capitalist and pro-Soviet sentiment. In this context, the repression directed by the state at the PCF and its membership in localities such as Ivry prior to the Popular Front may have had disastrous effects upon local party membership but contributed to the electoral progression of the party locally and the increasing influence of communist ideas on local population by reinforcing the perception that the Communists were defenders of the local interests.327 For workers who inhabited communes dominated by the PCF, communist identification served as a means of defence and a positive affirmation of

324 Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development”, p. 453. 325 See Roger-Henri Guerrand, “Sellier and le Service social”, Banlieue Oasis, pp. 117-124 326 Gilbert D. Allardyce, “The Political Transition of Jacques Doriot”, Contemporary History, pp. 65, 67, 71; Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave 1933-1939, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995, pp. 204-205, 211-214; Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 369-420. 327 Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti Communiste Français à Ivry”, pp. 152-156. 85 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

identity against more powerful outsiders. The PCF’s ability to adapt its message to local conditions and to adapt local traditions and culture to its own needs enabled it to transmit and renew communist values among local inhabitants. Fundamentally, it was through a synthesis of local culture, working-class traditions and party politics that the PCF created durable communist communal identities in the Paris suburbs and beyond.

4. CONCLUSIONS

Suburban workers were the ideal base upon which to construct a communist hegemony. Their physical and cultural exclusion from the bourgeoisie of the city affirmed the central tenets of the revolutionary and socialist traditions of the Parisian working-class separation that they inherited, namely the irreconcilable opposition between the working class and bourgeois society. In immersing itself in local working- class communities such as Bobigny and Ivry, the PCF drew upon this reservoir of suburban alienation to forge communist communal identity which not only expressed resolute hostility to the bourgeois order but was also a means of defending the collective values of suburban workers against the threats that this order posed to them. This Communist communal identity was contingent upon and a positive affirmation of a strong proletarian class-consciousness, a consciousness that was itself affected by the practices of the local PCF. In this way, in the banlieue rouge, the PCF channelled a sense of alienation into a positive affirmation of communist identity. This identity was fundamentally different to the essentially integrationist socialist identity that was fostered by SFIO mayors such as Sellier in Suresnes between the wars328 or Jacques Carat in Cachan from the 1950s onwards. By contrast, in the banlieue rouge the PCF perpetuated an anti-integrationist mentality. Consequently, though its hold has weakened from the 1980s onwards, it remains best implanted in its oldest suburban

328 By constructing a local identity that was inclusive of both the working class and the bourgeoisie, Sellier hoped to point the way to a future that was characterised by a classless communal consensus and a belief in the validity of piecemeal reformism within the existing regime. Sellier went so far as to reverse the partisan name changes given by earlier socialist administrations to streets in the central districts of Suresnes, re-naming them to reflect the history of Suresnes and thereby appeasing local notables unhappy with the earlier name changes. His administration marked the sesquicentenary of the French Revolution with a celebration that avoided conflict by exalting the liberties won and the notables involved, Betron, “A la recherche d’un consensus”, pp. 201-207. On the contrast between the approach of PCF municipalities to cultural heritage when compared to socialists like Sellier, see Sylvie Rab, “Culture et loisirs, l’encadrement des prolétaires”, Banlieue Rouge, pp. 86-87. 86 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

bastions.329 The appeal of communism to the residents of the Seine suburbs has varied in accordance with their prevailing socio-economic structures, and their local cultures and traditions. A dense, homogeneous working-class population predisposed a suburb to communist implantation but did not guarantee success for the PCF. The miserable living conditions endured by inhabitants of working-class suburbs created an ideal breeding ground for communism, especially in a context where the response of the governing elites was generally inadequate, but did not dictate communist success. Historical tradition was on the side of the PCF in the Paris region where the legacy of the neo- Babouvist tradition which it had inherited was strong. Nonetheless, local political tradition could work against the PCF. In this context, the capacity of the PCF to address the needs of suburban workers was crucial to its success in the Paris suburbs in a context where bourgeois elites were, up until the postwar period, unable or unwilling to deal with the social question, or even downright hostile to it, and therefore little progress was made in the way of social reform at a time of massive social change, dislocation and economic hardship. Therefore, the PCF put down roots in the Paris suburbs during a period of intense alienation on the part of the suburban working class, while the apogee of communism was reached under the Fourth Republic during a period when the proportion of workers as a part of the active workforce rose and the worldwide communist movement benefited from the great prestige workers still attached to it. The terminal decline of the PCF has coincided not only with the economic and social decline of its working-class support base, but also with the demise of the PCF’s ideological legitimacy as a consequence of the decline of the communist world. During the period of this study, the PCF in the Paris suburbs was the party of the excluded, while the SFIO was the party of those who sought positive change through their influence on republican institutions and was therefore a force for integration. The recent success of the Socialist Party, and its capture of a sizeable working-class electorate in the suburbs of Paris, has, especially since the 1960s onwards, coincided with the development of the welfare state and the greater attention paid by French governments toward the integration of French workers into the nation state. Moreover, the Socialists, through governmental participation under the Fourth Republic, had shown the possibilities of wielding state

329 Henri Rey, “La Résistance du communisme Municipal en Seine-Saint-Denis en 1989”, Communisme, no.22/23, 1990; Ronai, “Comment Conserver une Municipalité communiste” and “Evolution de la Géographie des Municipalités Communistes des 1977-1995”, pp. 165-172. 87 Local Determinants of the Banlieue Rouge

power on behalf of workers. The social and political history of Arcueil and Cachan between 1919 and 1958 that follows will analyse the way in which the PCF attempted to build a Communist hegemony in the two suburbs. The stronger local presence of the PCF in Arcueil, when combined with the latter’s traditions of radicalism, gave Arcueil’s PCF a decisive advantage over its counterpart in Cachan. Arcueil’s Communists were in a stronger position to realise the four essential constituents of a local Communist hegemony. From the beginning they were better placed not only to provide dynamic leadership of the working-class, but also to empower workers through new forms of participatory democracy, and to use popular culture to reinforce class consciousness and forge a communist communal identity. But the greatest advantage Arcueil’s PCF had over its counterpart in Cachan was its conquest of municipal government in 1935 and its uninterrupted control of local government under the Fourth Republic. This not only enabled it to provide competent, efficient local government to the benefit of workers and as an example of workers governing themselves, but gave it much greater scope to realise the three other constituents of communist hegemony. The weight of local working-class tradition, socio-economic structure and local circumstances favoured the earlier election of a communist municipal government in Arcueil. The PCF in Arcueil laid the foundations for communist hegemony earlier and at a more historically advantageous time than its counterpart in Cachan. Arcueil’s communists then went on to consolidate their hegemony through their role in the Resistance and their uninterrupted control of the postwar municipal administration. They built a durable communist hegemony which combined a defence of local interests with a contemporary worldview moulded by the Soviet-directed international communist movement. Having never gained as strong a foothold, Cachan’s branch of the PCF had to rely on SFIO support to come to power in 1945, and once the communists were again banished to the ghetto, any chance of re-taking the municipality soon disappeared. Accustomed to the apolitical reformism of their interwar municipal administrations, the majority of Cachan’s inhabitants rejected the partisan politics of the communists. Consciously drawing on the moderate political traditions of Cachan, a socialist mayor, Jacques Carat, built a durable Socialist bastion that has lasted right up to this day.

3. The Origins of Communist Hegemony I: The Suburbanisation of Arcueil and Cachan

The changes wrought upon Arcueil and Cachan during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century are central to an understanding of the political evolution of the two communes because, as in other communes of the Paris region, they created the preconditions for the rise of popular communism. As I will now demonstrate, Arcueil-Cachan experienced rapid urbanisation in the nineteenth century, especially in the second half, as its population expanded concomitantly with industry and transport. By the beginning of the Second World War, the rural commune Arcueil- Cachan - essentially made up of two villages, Arcueil and Cachan, with the former being the larger - had been transformed into two independent communes that were fully integrated into the Paris agglomeration via the expansion of public transport and subsequent population growth and industrialisation. However, this suburbanisation of Arcueil and Cachan was not without its costs. Life for many newly arrived and longer- term inhabitants was difficult, with the miserable living conditions they endured being a far cry from the comfortable bourgeois quarters of Paris. Rapid demographic growth and, in the case of Arcueil, industrialisation had profoundly adverse affects on the living conditions of the two suburbs. In Arcueil and Cachan, rapid suburbanisation degraded the urban environment and exacerbated existing health and housing problems while creating new ones. Municipal governments in both communes struggled to keep pace with population growth which was often not matched by an adequate provision of urban infrastructure and essential services. The crisis of the mal-lotis that afflicted both communes is indicative of this situation. As indicated in Chapter 2, this crisis was a characteristic feature of many suburbs of Paris where the PCF arose during the interwar period as the dominant political force, with Tyler Stovall’s study of Bobigny demonstrating how important the ability of the communists to address the needs of the mal-lotis in Bobigny was to the continual re- election of a communist municipality in the interwar period.330 The interwar period saw a significant industrialisation of Arcueil and the rise of a metallurgy industry, which allows some comparison with industrial suburbs such as Saint-Denis where

330 Stovall, Red Belt.

89 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

metallurgists were prominent and the PCF predominant.331 Nevertheless, the effects of uncontrolled growth and industrialisation were not uniform over the various quarters of the two suburbs and these differences will be the subject of illustration and analysis. What emerges is that the situation in many parts of Arcueil and Cachan was ripe for exploitation by the PCF, and by the SFIO before it, especially where central authorities or, in the case of Arcueil, local government appeared uninterested or unable to remedy the desperate circumstances of many inhabitants. For many working people of Arcueil and Cachan, their living conditions and the seemingly inadequate attention often given to them by the authorities could only have reinforced the sense that they were second- class citizens. Their daily lives were indicative of their alienation from bourgeois society.

1. THE SUBURBANISATION OF ARCUEIL AND CACHAN

The Rapid Growth of Arcueil and Cachan

More than any other factor, the rapid growth of Arcueil and Cachan was predicated on the development of extensive and speedy public transport linking the two agglomerations to Paris and the Seine suburbs. The process of suburbanisation began with the opening of a railway line from Paris to Sceaux in 1846, with the first stop outside Paris being Arcueil.332 The arrival of the train line was almost certainly the cause of a rapid boost in population soon after - between 1851 and 1861 the population of Arcueil-Cachan grew by 38.9%.333 In 1893, tram-line number 88 between Antony, south of Arcueil-Cachan, and the Porte d’Orléans was established (in 1895 its route was extended to Odéon), with steam-powered locomotives, each with six carriages and 40 places, servicing Arcueil-Cachan via two stops, Vache-Noire and Croix d’Arcueil in the northwest of the commune. In 1894, rail services were expanded with the addition of a new train station at avenue Laplace (in Arcueil) and of the Paris-Arpajon train route. The addition of the latter facilitated the transit of workers to Paris from Arcueil-Cachan and led directly to the rise of the Lumières quarter in the northwest of Cachan at the turn

331 See Brunet, Saint-Denis, Chapters 10 & 11, pp. 238-241 332 Varin, Mémoires, p. 98. 333 Département de la Seine, Direction Des Affaires Départementales, État des Communes à la fin du XIXe siècle: Arcueil-Cachan, Notice Historique et Renseignements Administratifs, Conseil Général, Montévrain, 1901, p. 44. 90 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

of the century.334 By the turn of the century, frequent and quick train and electric tram services brought Arcueil-Cachan closer than ever to Paris, as did the addition in 1913 of the number 93 tram-line running from the Châtelet in Paris to Place Gambetta, Cachan (via Arcueil).335 Thus, on the eve of World War I Arcueil-Cachan had developed sufficient public transport links to make it an attractive commuter suburb to blue and white-collar workers wanting to escape the rising rents of Paris but whose employment remained in Paris or elsewhere in the suburban conurbation. During the interwar period, public transport in the recently separated communes of Arcueil and Cachan was further consolidated. Tram-line 88 expanded its services in Cachan, adding stops at Le Pont-Royal on the boundary between Cachan and Bagneux, and cité-jardin, Avenue Carnot and Grange-Ory in Cachan, with trams running every 15 minutes during the day.336 By 1930, tram-line 93 was servicing Arcueil and Cachan with trams every four to six minutes during peak hours and 13 to 15 minutes during off-peak hours.337 A bus service established in the same year, route EQ Malabry-L’Hay-Place- d’Italie which went via Cachan and Arcueil, presaged the replacement, on 20 April 1936, of the tram services line 88 and 93 with buses seating between 50 and 56 people.338 These were more or less the same bus routes that were in operation in 1955.339 Up until the mid 1930s, there was little change in the train service, with the Chemin de Fer D’Orléans providing over 30 trains per day along the Paris-Luxembourg to Sceaux/Robinson and Paris-Orsay to Limours lines. However, a direct service from

334 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, October 1921. 335 There were 33 train movements per day both ways from Paris to Robinson, with the first train leaving Arcueil-Cachan (as the train station was re-named) for Paris at 5.20am (and Laplace two minutes later) and the last train from Paris arrived at Laplace at 12.58am. Travelling times to Paris were only 15 minutes from Laplace and 18 minutes from Arcueil. The tram-line was electrified at the turn of the century, with 15 trams running in the winter and 23 in the summer between Paris and Antony. The travelling times between Odéon and the two tram stops in Arcueil, Vache-Noire and Croix-d’Arcueil, were 28 minutes and 30 minutes respectively. See Département de la Seine, Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 91-94; Varin, Mémoires, p. 98. On the addition of the number 13 tramline see Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 93; Le Vieil Arcueil: Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie d’Arcueil et de Cachan, 4th year, no. 10, June 1930, p. 103. 336 J. E. Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp.9-13; Comité de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, pp. 45, 47. 337 AD94 35J112, Public Transport in Arcueil Cachan – notes by Desguine; a letter from the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens dated 6 November 1967, addressed to Monsieur Pierre Desachy, Ecole des Travaux Publics. 338 35J112, Public Transport in Arcueil Cachan – notes by Desguine. 339 The autobus line 184 Porte-d’Italie-Place-Gambetta, Cachan, line 186 Porte d’Italie-L’Hay-les- Roses, line 187 Porte-d’Orléans-Antony and line 188 Porte D’Orléans-Fresnes were in operation in 1955. See Canton de Villejuif: Indicateur Bijou des Villes de Villejuif, Le Kremlin – Bicêtre, Arcueil, Gentilly, Cachan, L’Hay-les-Roses, Fresnes, Chevilly, Rungis, Indcateur-bijou, Paris, 1955, p. 115. 91 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

Paris-Denfert to Arcueil-Cachan took only seven minutes, while services from Paris- Luxembourg and Paris-Port-Royal took 21 minutes and 13 minutes respectively, with the journey to Laplace being three minutes shorter. In 1935, the Bagneux train station was established near the cité-jardin of Cachan, on its boundary with Bagneux.340 The train lines that serviced Arcueil and Cachan were incorporated into the Compagnie du Metropolitain’s network in 1932, but full incorporation into the Paris metro only occurred in June 1936 when the lines were electrified.341 By integrating Arcueil and Cachan into the suburban agglomeration of Paris, the extension of public transport generated a rapid growth in population in Arcueil and Cachan from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s, while driving the industrialisation of Arcueil and the development of Cachan as an educational centre. While the population of Arcueil-Cachan was already on the increase before the arrival of the train line, almost doubling between 1801 and 1851 from 1261 to 2493, it was the extension of public transport that significantly accelerated population growth, so that by 1896 the population of Arcueil-Cachan was 7064, an increase of 64.7% from the figure of 1851.342 This trend only slowed in Arcueil with the onset of the Depression in the 1930s and in Cachan with the outbreak of World War II. By 1921, the population of Arcueil-Cachan had grown by 22.9% compared with 1911. However, this growth was not evenly spread over the two agglomerations that made up the commune – during this period, Arcueil’s population grew by 26.3% and Cachan’s by 17.8%. Arcueil’s greater proximity to Paris, its better transport links and a pre-existing industry account for this growth differential which in turn engendered a greater and more rapid proletarianisation, which will be discussed in the next chapter. An early political ramification was the rise of communism which was the trigger for the partition of the commune. Nevertheless, Table 3.1 below indicates that Cachan’s population grew rapidly throughout the interwar period, in fact more rapidly than that of Arcueil. The onset of the Depression in the 1930s brought a general stabilisation in the suburban population of Paris. Growth slowed, though this was not an even process - some suburbs experienced a demographic decline, while a few maintained fairly rapid growth. Cachan

340 Jacques Carat, Cachan à 70 ans: Naissance et devenir d’une Ville, Cachan, 1993, p. 9. 341 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 94; Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 65-66. 342 État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, p. 44. 92 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

was one of the latter, its population growing by 13.9% between 1931 and 1936, while the increase for Arcueil was only 2.4%. Just as communism attained a foothold in Arcueil in the 1920s as Arcueil’s population swelled, consolidating its position in the 1930s, so in Cachan communism became a significant force during the Popular Front in a suburb whose population was still expanding. Section 2 of this chapter will demonstrate how the urban stresses caused by rapid growth helped create the breeding grounds for popular communism.

TABLE 3.1 – ARCUEIL & CACHAN: GROWTH IN POPULATION

Arcueil Cachan Year Total Population Growth Population Growth

1911* 6061 100 4590 100 10 651

1921 8221 135 5584 122 13 805

1923† 8556 141 6310 137 14 866

1926 12 518 207 9829 214 21 807

1931 16 200 267 12 790 279 28 990

1936 16 590 273 14 567 317 31 157

1946 16 340 270 15 156 330 31 496

1954 17 736 293 15 858 345 33 594

SOURCE: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier Séparation of Arcueil-Cachan 1920-1923, October 1921 ‘Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes’, p.6. Listes Nominatives du Recensement, Arcueil-Cachan 1911, 1921 as well as Arcueil and Cachan 1926-1936. For 1923, Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 13. For 1946 and 1954 INSEE, Dénombrement de la Population 1946, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1947 and Recensement Général de la Population de Mai 1954, Résultats Statistiques: Population- Ménages-Logements-Maisons, Département de la Seine, Imprimerie Nationale de Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.

* The separate figures I have given for Arcueil and Cachan are the estimates given in the “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes.” † The figure I chose to use for the population of Arcueil and Cachan after they became two separate communes is from Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune. A letter from the Seine prefecture dated 17 February 1923 gives a lower total population of 14 099, with Arcueil having 8391 and Cachan 5708 inhabitants, see AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier on the separation of Arcueil and Cachan 1920-1923. 93 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

Not surprisingly, World War II disrupted the interwar trend of population growth in Arcueil343 and Cachan, causing the wartime population of both communes to decline.344 However, while Arcueil’s 1946 population had declined compared with ten years earlier, in Cachan it had risen 3.9%, which was perhaps the result of the fact that some refugees had become stranded in the suburb during the war, coupled with those inhabitants who returned when hostilities ceased. With the post-war baby boom under way, by 1954 Arcueil’s population increased by 6.5% compared to 1936, and Cachan’s by 8.1%. Henceforth, Cachan’s population growth would outstrip that of Arcueil to such an extent that by the 1960s it became the more populous of the two communes. While Arcueil had a population of 20 334 in 1962, Cachan’s population rose to 26 283 in 1967.345 Cachan would take on the characteristics common to a number of post-war socialist suburbs in the Paris agglomeration, that is it experienced dynamic growth during the post-war boom. Arcueil by contrast stabilised in a manner characteristic of many communist suburbs, before experiencing the de-industrialisation that affected many of the industrial suburbs of the communist heartlands.

Arcueil: An Industrial and Dormitory Suburb

While abundant public transport to and from nearby Paris undoubtedly fuelled Arcueil’s dual development as a commuter and an industrial suburb, the presence before World War I of vast stretches of flat, vacant land, namely agricultural fields in the north of the commune and the former aristocratic estates located nearby the Bièvre river, was also a key factor.346 As shown in Map 8 overleaf, the result was that industry became concentrated in the northwest of the commune, where it was intermixed with small residential zones dominated by older blocks of apartments, with the exception of a brasserie and a blanchisserie located between the town hall and the cité-jardin.347 Some

343 According to Clusan, an historian and member of the Commission patrimoine of the Ville d’Arcueil 5% of Arcueil’s population was deported, shot or died on the fields of battle during Word War II, which would explain the decline of 1.5% in the population compared with 1936, Robert Clusan, “Un peu d’histoire”, in Jean-Michel Meigné, Robert Picher and François L’Yonnet (eds.), Arcueil Seine, Éditions Erpé-Actuapress, Gentilly, 1997, p. 111. 344 Significant numbers of people left Cachan during the war. In January 1941, it was estimated that the population was scarcely 12 000. This compares with 14 567 in 1936, AD94 36J11, “Rapport Sur l’Activité du Bureau de Bienfaisance Pendant Le Premier Semestre 1941”, Monsieur Appert, member of the Special Delegation, addressed to the Mayor. 345 Hillairet and Poisson, Évocation du Grand Paris, pp. 53, 85. 346 Eve-Laure Michelon, “Arcueil, étude physionomique”, Diplôme d’études supérieures de géographie, Université de Paris, 1966, p. 15. 347 This description is according to Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 35-37, 44-48. 94 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

MAP 8 Industry in Arcueil during the interwar period North North Industry Route d’Orléans

SOURCE: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D1, Dossier no. 3. “Plan d’aménagement et extension de la Commune d’Arcueil, Plan des Zones”, dated Paris, 27 March 1926.

95 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

artisanal industries or small industrial enterprises were also dispersed throughout the commune in what were essentially residential zones. The need to transport products of industry and the presence of the Bièvre contributed to this uneven industrial development. The heaviest concentration of industry was in the northwest of the commune, through which the major thoroughfare of the route d’Orléans passed, while the Bièvre River attracted to it those industries that needed water, such as laundries and tanneries.348 Arcueil’s industrialisation was part of a suburbanisation process familiar to many communes adjoining or close to Paris. For Arcueil, the first stage in this process was its transformation from a rural retreat and an essentially agricultural village to a major market garden centre that supplied the growing population of Paris.349 By the end of the nineteenth century Arcueil-Cachan had become one of the principal centres of market gardening on the Left Bank of the Seine350 as market gardens progressively displaced viticulture and took over the commune’s exhausted quarries.351 The quarry industry had existed in Arcueil since the end of the thirteenth century, where it was concentrated in its north.352 It grew in importance as a consequence of a seventeenth century building boom in Paris, the demand for stone created by the construction of city fortifications and the Haussmanisation of Paris. However, it went into a rapid decline in the second half of the nineteenth century, a corollary of the progressive and inevitable exhaustion of stone quarries.353 In Chapter 6, I will argue that the quarry industry and the market gardeners that succeeded it left an important legacy for Arcueil. The

348 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 16. 349 The existence of extensive estates right through until the early twentieth century was a legacy of the fact that it had once functioned as a place of aristocratic residences, Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 25. On Arcueil-Cachan’s transformation into a centre of market gardens see: État des Communes: Arcueil- Cachan, pp. 117-118; Varin, Mémoires, p. 78; AN F24214, Dossier: “Projet 23 Mai 1929”, Ministère de L’Intérieur, Commission Supérieure d’Aménagement, d’Embellissement et d’Extension des Villes, 4 October 1927. 350 Arcueil shared this position with Issy-les-Moulineaux, Malakoff, Montrouge and Bagneux, Gentilly, Ivry and Vitry, État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, p. 118. 351 By the turn of the century market gardens covered 30 hectares out of a total of 414 hectares devoted to agriculture in Arcueil-Cachan (only 1 hectare remained as viticulture, essentially in Cachan (falling 25 hectares in 1825 and 30 hectares in 1791) and exhausted quarries were being put to use providing Paris with at least half the mushrooms it consumed. See État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 117-118. 352 Varin, Mémoires, p. 75-78; État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, pp.117-118. 353 While in 1855 there were 24 quarry proprietors in Arcueil, by 1900 only sixteen remained, employing in total 91 workers, and this number fell further to three in 1926 and by 1945 only one proprietor remained and the industry was nearing its extinction. See Varin, Mémoires, p. 75, 78 and AN F24214, Dossier: Arcueil July 1956, folder no. 2930: Projet d’Aménagement Seine Arcueil, Ville d’Arcueil, “Le Plan d’aménagement d’Arcueil,” 15 December 1945/20 September 1947. 96 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

revolutionary heritage bequeathed to Arcueil by the quarrymen helped predispose the commune to the influence of communism, while the growing importance of market gardeners was concomitant with the rise of the Radical Party which was then succeeded by the SFIO and then the PCF as the party of Arcueil’s workers. In a pattern also consistent with that of the Paris region as whole, market gardeners were followed by the bourgeoisie, who in turn paved the way for the arrival of workers of all professions.354 A growing number of bourgeois came to reside in Arcueil to suburbanise and industrialise the commune through their entrepreneurial activity, which included small entrepreneurs arriving to exploit local resources such as the Bièvre River.355 A small-scale chemical and pharmaceutical industry arose in Arcueil out of the camphor-based inventions of the chemist François Vincent Raspail who lived in Arcueil-Cachan in the 1860s and 1870s.356 Raspail’s son, Emile, founded a pharmaceutical company, and other manufactures such as a camphor refinery, ammonia and glue factories and the production of bottle capsules and toiletries. Arcueil’s chemical industry endured during the interwar period through the manufacture of varnish, ink, oilcloth, glue and camphor.357 In the nineteenth century, the abundance of water owing to the presence of the Bièvre had led to the proliferation of dye workshops, tanneries and laundries, of which there were 30 in Arcueil in 1900.358 During the interwar period, dye workshops continued to be a speciality in Arcueil, significant numbers of tanneries remained and the laundry industry sustained a declining presence, falling from 20 establishments in 1912, to around 15 in the years between 1926 and 1931, and to only eight in 1937.359 These water-dependent industries inevitably

354 M. Bonnefond, ”Les colonies bicocques dans la région parisienne”, La Vie Urbaine, no. 25, 6th year, 15 April 1925, pp. 531-533. 355 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 25. 356 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 75, 104. 357 Demangeon, Paris, p. 55; Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, p. 235-236. One factory refined 200 000 kilograms of camphor in 1921. 358 AN F24214, Ministère de L’Intérieur report of 4 October 1927; Léon Louis Veyssière, Un Village et un Hameau du Hurepoix, deux Communes du Département de la Seine: Arcueil et Cachan, Essai de Monographie, Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie d’Arcueil et de Cachan, Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil, Cachan, 1947, pp. 138, 197; État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 119, 120; Varin, Mémoires, p. 75. 359 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, “Témoignages recueillis pour la publication ‘Mémoires d’Arcueil’ en 1982”, interview with Madame André, Foyer Monmousseau; Michel Winock, “Arcueil la Rouge”, L’Histoire, no. 195, January 1996, p. 88. The figures for the numbers of laundry establishments are from: for the years 1912 and 1937, Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 197; for 1926 to 1931 the numbers of blanchisseurs listed in Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 33-47; Arcueil et Cachan: Guide-Indicateur Banlieue, Indicateur Officiel 1927, pp. 19-30; Indicateur Bijou, 8th year, 1931, p. 44. 97 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

disappeared after the World War II as the gradual covering of the Bièvre made their demise ineluctable. Other industrial establishments which originated in the nineteenth century were a factory engaged in the dégraissage des vêtements, and the cleaning of curtains and tapestries, as well as a waste disposal plant, both of which were concentrated in the northwest of the commune.360 As I shall indicate below, these establishments continued to have deleterious impacts on local residents during the interwar period. The manufacture of foodstuffs and the beverage industry were two other industries that had their origins in the nineteenth century, with the establishment of a brewery, biscuit manufacture, chicory roasting, and the production of vinegar and mustard.361 By 1912 two breweries, the Brasserie de la Croix d’Arcueil and the Brasserie de la Vallée were in operation, and they were still in production in the aftermath of World War II having continued to produce during the interwar years. Biscuit manufacture and the production of liqueurs, chicory and coffee extracts remained a feature of the suburb during the interwar years and Arcueil’s biscuit factories continued production after the war. Another traditional manufacture, the production of books, also persisted during the interwar period via the printing, bookbinding and photoengraving industries. This meant that by the end of World War I there were many industries in Arcueil that had maintained, and would continue to maintain, a long-standing presence in the suburb. Nevertheless, the interwar period was marked also by the rise of new, modern industries. Between the wars, Arcueil was the home to an annex of the Galeries Lafayette that employed, on average, between 1200 and 1300 people, making it a significant employer in the Paris Region during this period, and the largest employer in Arcueil.362 The Germans closed the factory in 1940 when they occupied the building.

360 AN F24214, Ministère de L’Intérieur, report of 4 October 1927; Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 138; Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, p. 235. 361 Winock, “Arcueil la Rouge”, p. 88; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution and E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Les Hautes Bornes 1852-1935, see varied correspondence during the interwar years from residents living nearby, the municipal council, the Prefecture of Police and the companies concerned which indicate ongoing industrial activity from the Brasserie de la Vallée, Brasserie de la Croix d’Arcueil, and the David dye factory and the Guillot biscuit factory on rue Jean d’Arc. On the Brasserie de la Vallée see Le Vieil Arcueil, 4th year, no. 10, June 1930, p. 93. By 1930 it was producing 220 000 hectolitres a year. 362 For employment figures at the Galeries Lafayette in 1927 see AN F713527, Reports from the Prefecture of the Seine on the unemployment situation, “Situation dans les principaux établissements”, reports of 26 January, the whole of February and March, and as well as 27.” For staffing in 1940 (when the store was closed) see AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Madame André. 98 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

The rise in the interwar period of a metallurgical industry, and in particular workshops for the manufacture of gears and mechanical construction, was more enduring.363 This branch of industry was concentrated in the industrial northwest, in particular along the route d’Orléans, and flourished in the interwar and post-war periods.364 Companies established in the interwar period and still producing after the war included Camions Bernard365, a manufacturer of trucks and buses, Chez Barriquand et Marre366, a mechanical construction factory that made high precision measuring instruments, accounting machines and the like, the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques367 which produced telephone and telegraph components and Compagnie Clayton368 an industrial metalwork factory. By 1946, the mechanical industry was the largest employer in Arcueil, with approximately 1500 metallurgists working in the commune.369 By 1947, some 5000 workers in total were employed in local industrial establishments in Arcueil.370 The industrialisation of Arcueil brought numerous industrial workers to the commune. As noted above, industrial workers, and especially metallurgists, were particularly renowned for their support of the PCF. Their growing presence in Arcueil helped the PCF to establish a nascent hegemony at the time of the Popular Front, a hegemony that was then consolidated under the Fourth Republic. However, Arcueil’s level of industrialisation was not enough to absorb all the local manpower. Consequently, many local workers had to go outside the commune to work, and it is for this reason Arcueil was labelled by its communist administration in

363 Hillairet and Georges, Évocation du Grand Paris, p. 413; Indicateur Bijoux 1931, p.35. Léandre Vaillat, Seine, Chef-Lieux Paris, Arts et Métiers Graphiques, Paris, 1937, p. 265. 364 AN F24214, Dossier: Arcueil July 1956, “Le Plan d’aménagement d’Arcueil.” 365 Camions Bernard was located at 113 route d’Orléans. In the years 1931 to 1934, it employed between 100 and 230 workers. See AN, F713541, Dossier: Seine Chômage 1931. Report on unemployment in the Paris region dated 31 October 1931. This report indicates employment levels of between 100 and 140 workers; AN, F713562, Unemployment situation – 1934. Reports on the unemployment situation in the Seine covering the months February to October 1934 and a report dated 3 September 1935. These reports indicate a maximum number of employees of 230. Production continued well into the 1950s, see for example La Voie nouvelle, 9 October 1954. 366 Barriquand et Marre was established in 1933 at 79 route d’Orléans and employed 300 metallurgists in 1955, see La Vie nouvelle, 16 March 1946; La Voie nouvelle, 19 March 1955. Correspondence indicates that production continued into the 1950s, see AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 7F6. 367 The Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques was located close to Vache-Noire, in the extreme north-west of Arcueil. In 1946, it employed 300 workers, consisting of technicians, designers, a variety of skilled workers, mechanics, and electricians, La Vie nouvelle, 16 March 1946. 368 Compagnie Clayton was located at 1 rue Paul-Bert. See AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Usine Paul Bert. 369 La Vie nouvelle, 2 November 1946. 370 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p.22.

99 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

the 1950s as a “commune dortoir.”371 This being the case, the housing question becomes particularly important with regard to Arcueil. With the exception of concentrated pockets of industry and apartment blocks, individual housing dominated the suburb. In 1927, out of a surface area of 243 hectares, 104 hectares were occupied by private housing, 16 hectares by collective housing, 22 hectares by industry, 3.5 hectares by public services, 16 hectares by quarries, 22 hectares by the Fort of Montrouge, and there were 0.5 hectares of public space, a vast change from 1894 when only 50 hectares were given over to non-agricultural pursuits in Arcueil-Cachan.372 The dominance of individual housing was not challenged until the 1950s when large-scale HLM apartment blocks were constructed in Arcueil. With the importance of the housing question in mind, I will now turn to a detailed analysis of the situation in Arcueil during the period of this study. This analysis will be done in accordance with the three electoral sections into which Arcueil was divided after 1932, the boundaries of which are indicated on Map 9 overleaf.373 Between 1919 and 1932, there were two electoral sections in Arcueil, the Centre and Laplace, after which territory was excised from both the Centre and Laplace to form a new electoral section, the Cité-Aqueduc, which encompassed the cité-jardin and those districts to its immediate north and northeast. While I have been unable to ascertain the exact boundaries of the Centre and Laplace sections in the 1920s (before the creation of the Cité-Aqueduc section), in my view the most logical divide would have been roughly north-south (Laplace in the north, the Centre in the south).374

371 AN F24214, Dossier: Arcueil July 1956, “Le Plan d’aménagement d’Arcueil.” 372 AN F24214, Ministère de L’Intérieur report of 4 October 1927. 373 Much of the detail for the description is based on Eve-Laure Michelon’s 1966 geography thesis, “Arcueil, étude physionomique.” While this thesis was written in the 1960s as a study of postwar Arcueil, its descriptions of the physical layout, housing stock and social composition vary little from what I have gauged of interwar period, in particular via my analysis of the 1936 Listes nominatives d’Arcueil. 374 Therefore to arrive at a picture of the Laplace and Centre sections pre-1932, one should add the description I give below of the cité-jardin to that of the Centre, while most of the area north of the route de Villejuif probably formed part of Laplace. 100 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

MAP 9 Demarcation of Arcueil’s Electoral Sections North North ueduc q Cité-A Laplace Centre Centre

SOURCE: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 2I3.

101 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

The Centre (electoral section 1) encompassed Arcueil’s commercial heart, which before World War I had been focused around the town hall and the church but after the war began to progressively move toward avenue Laplace.375 This section encompassed some quite different residential areas, from the old, dilapidated housing of the town centre, to the bourgeois housing estates north and south of it, to the mixed zone of lotissements and apartment blocks west of the railway station. Michelon’s 1966 geography thesis on Arcueil, the only study of its kind on Arcueil, indicates that the old town centre was home to the poorest and most dilapidated housing of the suburb and was therefore its most unhealthy part. There were dozens of these unhealthy apartment blocks built at a time when speculation was not very profitable in the banlieue and for a working-class clientele that was poor and worked locally. They typically consisted of one or two room apartments that were more than a century old, generally with one common (often outside) toilet to an entire block. Few apartments had private toilets or central heating, and fewer still had showers or baths. A number of these apartment blocks on rue Montmort and rue Emile Raspail dated back to 1830, 1800, 1750 and even 1739. Rents were always low and consequently the area was overcrowded and in a large majority populated by the working class. However, the town centre also had a higher concentration of shopkeepers and a larger number of those aged 65 and over than the rest of the commune. Industry had a small presence east of the town centre. Juxtaposed with the slums of the town centre were some of the commune’s most comfortable housing, including the Parc Laplace lotissement which arose in 1912 in an area bounded by rues Cauchy/Emile Raspail and avenues Dr Durand and Francois Vincent Raspail as a purely residential quarter (commerce having been restricted to the outer limits of the estate).376 Unlike so many of its counterparts in Arcueil, this lotissement was never defective having always been well equipped with essential urban infrastructure such as sealed roads, water, sewage services and gas. The parcels of land that made up the estate were sold for a high price and the detached houses built there were large, well equipped and generally populated by the higher social categories of the commune. Bourgeois housing also extended south of the town centre to the Arcueil- Cachan railway station and the limit of Cachan, along the avenue des Aqueducs,

375 AN F24214, Dossier: Arcueil July 1956, “Le Plan d’aménagement d’Arcueil.” 376 This description of the Parc Laplace quarter is according to: Robert Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements, entre Cachan, Gentilly et lisière sud de Paris”, Clio 94, no. 15, 1997, p.55; Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 52-54. 102 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

boulevard J. Desbrosses and rue Chemin de Fer where individual residences were constructed between 1920 and 1930 on parcels of land that contained French gardens, as well ornamental ponds or statues.377 This housing included identical villas constructed in the image of neo-classical houses of the Ile-de-France, as well as more original designs. The proximity to shops and the train station in Arcueil-Cachan had attracted residents to this area, with some its housing dating from the beginning of the century with the release of earlier lotissements. West of the railway station the picture was more mixed. In the area bounded by route d’Orléans, the aqueduct, train line and rue Paul Bert there were several allotments, the oldest of which was the Victor Carmignac.378 Detached houses dominated but there were numerous apartment blocks, due to the presence of a major thoroughfare to Paris, the route d’Orléans, which was well-serviced by public transport. These apartment blocks were less mediocre and dilapidated than the ones in the Centre. Much of this area was covered by small non-contiguous industries and it was isolated and without any green space or collective facilities. Though predominantly working-class, this area also had a high proportion of employés. To its north there was the Croix-d’Arcueil district, one of the original areas of habitation in Arcueil. By 1921, it had, according to Eugène Ardouin-Dumazet, undergone profound changes, being populated by numerous employés who were attracted from Paris by its cheap, gloomy land, upon which they built small houses as market gardens quickly made way for lotissements, factories, warehouses and depots.379 The presence of comfortable, bourgeois enclaves in close proximity to the town centre and the mixed nature of its population helps to explain why the communist vote was generally weakest in the electoral section of the Centre in spite of it being home to some of the poorest housing and the most deprived residents of Arcueil. Parts of the Centre also had a high proportion of employés and shopkeepers, two groups generally less likely to vote communist than blue-collar workers, and its population tended to be more elderly, a group that has a greater tendency to vote conservative. Unlike the Centre, industry dominated the greater part of Laplace (electoral section 2). The bulk of the Laplace section lay to the west on the railway line, and it

377 For the description of the housing around the Aqueduct see Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 51-52; Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements”, p. 56. 378 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 56. 379 Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, p. 206. 103 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

encompassed Arcueil’s heavily industrialised northwest. Michelon’s study indicates that this was an area of small lotissements bricked in by factories and depots, and of grey, austere, apartment blocks, typically 3 floors and built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries along with large apartment blocks built along the major routes that traversed Laplace.380 Many of the lotissements created in Laplace after World War I lacked practicable roads, and in some cases sewage disposal, with the result being deplorable hygiene conditions and the creation of innumerable mal-lotis.381 Lacking in green space or collective equipment this area of Laplace was densely populated with a high proportion of workers. In the 1950s, the northwest of Laplace underwent some changes. In addition to some large, modern, higher-priced blocks of apartments that were constructed382, public housing made a firm imprint in the form of Chaperon Vert, a HLM housing complex that was a joint project of the communist municipalities of Arcueil and Gentilly.383 In the extreme southeast of the Laplace section, around avenue Laplace, there was a concentration of mediocre apartment blocks which tended to lack toilets, showers or baths but which were in the majority owner-occupied.384 In my view, the presence of mal-lotis in significant numbers, of gloomy apartment blocks, and of industry employing, among others, metalworkers, combined to make the Laplace electoral section a bastion of communist support from the 1920s onwards. The position of Laplace as the communist bastion in Arcueil was only eclipsed by the creation of the electoral section of the Cité-Aqueduc (electoral section 3) prior to the 1932 elections. For the purposes of analysis, this section can be divided into two. Looking at Map 9, the area north of the route de Villejuif and east of Chemin du Cherchefeuille was predominantly an area of detached housing, along with some industry along the route de Villejuif and substantial tracks of vacant land.385 Michelon’s study found this to be the poorest of all the areas of detached housing, with large numbers of people crammed into overcrowded lodgings. Land was cheaper the further one ventured from the train station, consequently this area had an important

380 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 57. 381 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 123-124. 382 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 57. 383 Construction on Chaperon Vert commenced in 1956 and was completed in 1964. It was a joint project of the Arcueil and Gentilly municipalities to house thousands of their residents in various blocks of modern, centrally heated flats. The complex formed a community of its own as it had attached to it schools in Arcueil and Gentilly, a crèche and an Intercommunal Centre of Maternal and Infant Protection, see Varin, Mémoires, pp. 154-155; La Voie nouvelle, 6 April 1957. 384 Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 53-54. 385 Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 51-52. 104 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

concentration of poor housing. Michelon’s study found that most houses in this area lacked baths or showers, central heating and interior toilets. Many lotissements were still defective after the war, with the provision of gas, town water sewage disposal, and garbage collection still not having been systematically or totally achieved.386 The southeastern limits of the Cité-Aqueduc section were isolated, being some distance from the train station and the town centre, and therefore poor. Michelon’s study indicates that the housing toward the north of the Cité-Aqueduc section tended to be a mixture of detached housing and apartments, with the majority of the former lacking toilets, bathrooms or central heating, and housing a population that was essentially working- class.387 The southwest of the Cité-Aqueduc section was home to the cité-jardin of Arcueil, the construction of which had commenced in 1920 on a ten-hectare site east of the town centre and adjacent to the aqueduct.388 One contemporary observer of the Paris region has described the result rather caustically:

Construit il y a quelques années par Aubertin, elle s’inspire des cités-jardins anglaises; elle imite les rues vermiculaires, les maisons individuelles et séparées de la rue par des lisses. Elle ne peut imiter les moeurs anglaises; comme ce sont des Français et non des Anglais qui l’habitent, ils en ont fait quelque chose de malpropre.389

Despite Vaillat’s view of such housing, the cité-jardin remained the dominant conception of social housing in France between the two world wars. Using analogous housing in Britain as a model, the cité-jardin of Arcueil was built, by the Department of the Seine under the direction of the OPHBMS, as a group of similar individual houses each of which was endowed with a garden.390 A sports ground and a 15-metre high embankment would ultimately separate the housing estate into a lower and upper part, while a dearth of commerce in close proximity left it somewhat isolated.391 In 1923, of the 760 inhabitants, there were 255 parents and 505 children, including 253 of school

386 See Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 48-52. 387 Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 44-48. 388 Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements”, pp. 56. 389 Vaillat, Seine, p. 265. 390 Winock, “Arcueil la Rouge”, p. 89. 391 Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements”, pp. 56, 57. 105 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

age, a figure that grew to 1203 inhabitants and 328 school age children by 1924.392 The youthful aspect of the cité-jardin’s population can be seen in the fact that in 1923 11.7% Arcueil’s population was of school age, whereas for the cité-jardin the figure was 25.4%.393 By 1930, the population had grown slightly to 1283 people, which represented one-tenth of the commune’s population but one-third of the total number of people given assistance by the municipality, owing to the presence of 288 working-class households.394 It appears that the original plan of the OPHBMS to build 787 residences was not realised.395 Initially 228 houses were built, and by 1924, a population of 1203 inhabited 209 dwellings.396 The population of Arcueil’s cité-jardin had stabilised at the beginning of 1930, by which time there were 288 working-class households out of a population of 1283 people.397 The cité-jardin construction program subsequently abated in the Seine Department in the face of its sheer cost during a period of economic crisis.398 The OPHBMS’ criteria for being housed in the cité-jardin meant that a significant portion of the cité-jardin population in Arcueil was young and poor, this in spite of the fact that, according to Bonnefond, rents were quite high for workers.399 The modest nature of much of the population of the cité-jardin is indicated by the municipal assistance figures for 1923. In that year 2.3% of the communal population received meals from the school canteen compared with 9.5% from the cité-jardin, 1.5% of the communal population received clothing and shoes from the Caisse des Écoles compared with 12.5% from the cité-jardin, and 0.4% of the communal population received assistance for large families (such as provisions of coal) compared with 4.5% in the

392 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1, Dossier: Habitations à bon marché-Cité-jardin Aqueduc 1920- 1937, “Cité Aqueducs: Dépenses Occasionnées à la Commune par ses Habitants Année 1923-1924.” In addition see an undated note in the same dossier. 393 E Dépôt 4Q1 Dossier: HBMs-Cité-jardin, “Demande de Subvention”, circa 1923. The dating this document is based on school enrolment figures for the cité which are the same as the “Dépenses Occasionnées” document cited above. 394 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1, Extract of a Municipal Council meeting dated 21 May 1930. 395 Henri Sellier, “Le Oeuvre des Offices d’habitations dans le Département de la Seine”, p. 228. 396 Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements”, pp. 56, 57; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1, Dossier: “Habitations à bon marché-Cité-jardin Aqueduc 1920-1937”, Cité Aqueducs: Dépenses Occasionnées 1923-1924”. 397 E Dépôt 4Q1 Dossier: HBMs-Cité-jardin, Extract of a Municipal Council meeting dated 21 May 1930. 398 M. Bonnefond, “Les colonies bicocques dans la région parisienne”, no. 26, 15 June 1925, p. 612. 399 Bonnefond, “Les colonies bicocques dans la région parisienne”, no. 26, p. 612. 106 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

cité-jardin.400 Similarly, in 1930 though the cité-jardin represented one-tenth of Arcueil’s communal population it accounted for one-third of the total number of people given assistance by the municipality, a consequence of the presence of large, working- class families and other groups on the margins, such as widows, living in the cité- jardin.401 Therefore, sociologically the cité-jardin could be said to be pre-disposed to communist influence. This predisposition was exacerbated by disappointed expectations on the part of cité-jardin inhabitants. As I will demonstrate below, unfortunately for the OPHBMS the failure (in the view of residents) of the municipality to provide them with the level of housing they expected meant that a project designed to create class harmony instead became an important generator of support for communism in Arcueil. The discontented residents of the cité-jardin combined with some of the poorest and the most isolated (and alienated) population in Arcueil, those residents living northeast of the cité-jardin, to produce an impregnable communist citadel.

Cachan: A Dormitory Suburb and an Educational Hub

In contrast to Arcueil, Cachan was, during the period of this study, almost entirely a dormitory suburb, its only significant industry in the first half of the twentieth century having been the blanchissage du linge. This industry peaked at the end of the nineteenth century when there were 120 establishments, then declined to 109 in the years between 1912 and 1926, before dropping rapidly to 94/95 in the years between 1927 and 1931, then to 75 in 1937 and 71 in 1939.402 Traditionally this industry was made up of small proprietors employing, on average, ten people each.403 However, the interwar period saw a marked industrialisation and concentration of the industry, hence the decline in the number of proprietors. Cachan emerged as a hub of large-scale laundering for the Paris region, with a near monopoly over the enormous quantities emanating from the barbers of Paris and a great part of the Seine suburbs, with three or

400 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBMs-Cité-jardin, “Demande de Subvention”, circa 1923. 401 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBMs-Cité-jardin, Extract of a Municipal Council Meeting 21 May 1930. 402 For the figures for 1900, 1912 and 1937 see Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 197; for 1926 see Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 63-72; for 1927-1931 see Guide-Indicateur Banlieue, 1927 pp.37-43, Indicateur Bijou 1931, pp. 68-69; for 1939 see Indicateur-Bijou 1939, pp. 80- 81. 403 État des Communes: Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 119-120; L. L. Veyssière, Blanchisseurs et Blanchisseries d’Arcueil-Cachan, Publications de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie d’Arcueil et de Cachan - Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil, Cachan, 1938, pp.15-16. 107 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

four establishments in Cachan specialising in this task.404 After World War II, those establishments that remained - only 23 of them in 1955 – were industrialised and large- scale operations.405 According to Veyssière, in the 1930s the spread among bourgeois households of baths and linen that was easy to clean as well as the introduction of the forty-hour week, which afforded housewives extra time to do the washing, sounded the deathnell for blanchisseurs who quickly came to be seen as too expensive and were only given what could not be washed at home.406 Blanchissage was concentrated on the rue Etienne-Dolet, rue Cousté, rue Dr. Hénouille, and to a lesser extent, rue Belle-Image and avenue Président-Wilson.407 Aside from the blanchisseries, the only other industrial sectors to maintain a notable presence in Cachan during the interwar period were tanneries (as in Arcueil a long established industry) and small artisanal industries.408 However, the absence of any significant industry did not mean that Cachan developed entirely into a dormitory suburb. In 1904, the future mayor of Cachan, Léon Eyrolles, re-located his École des Travaux Publics (ETP) at Cachan.409 The school had outgrown its location in the Latin Quarter of Paris and Eyrolles was attracted to Cachan by the availability of inexpensive land in proximity to the Arcueil-Cachan train station, thus allowing his students to travel between Cachan and the schools they attended in Paris. Initially the ETP in Cachan only had a School of Civil Engineering but by 1921 Eyrolles had added Schools of Mechanical, Electrical, and Architectural Engineering as

404 A. Desguine, Recherches sur la Bièvre à Cachan, Arcueil et Gentilly, Puyraimond, Paris, 1976, p. 309. 405 See Indicateur Bijou 1955, pp.206-207; Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 197. 406 L. L. Veyssière, Blanchisseurs et Blanchisseries d’Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 15-16. 407 See Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 63-72; Guide-Indicateur Banlieue 1927, pp. 37-43 408 AD94 36J10, Dossier on the Visit of the Prefect of the Seine to Cachan in 1943, See in particular “Principaux Travaux Exécutés Depuis 1929”, and a letter to the Prefect (it has no date but it refers to the aforementioned visit of the prefect).

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well as Topography. By 1931, the ETP occupied 7.5 hectares and included classrooms, libraries, workshops, laboratories and a ‘Maison de Famille’ where students from outside the Paris area were housed. The school continued to teach students right through the period of this study. After the Second World War it encompassed secondary technical and higher preparatory courses, and training for technicians. The industrial revolution ensured rapid success for the ETP by generating a need for more engineers than the large traditional schools could furnish. According to Le Moniteur thousands of men lived and studied at the school by 1929 but the German occupation reduced this number to around 900 during the Second World War.410 By 1949, numbers had again climbed to around 2000.411 Léon Eyrolles was director of the school right up until his death in 1945, at which time his son Marc, also an engineer, succeeded him. The ETP paved the way for other centres of tertiary education and vocational training in Cachan. In the 1950s, the Centre National de l’Enseignement Technique was set up in the suburb with the aim of training students for the aggregation in science, economics, technology and artistic disciplines, and including an Ecole Normale Supérieure.412 Though Cachan was largely a dormitory suburb, the presence of a significant number of, presumably, largely middle-class students in the suburb would have had a different impact on local politics than the presence of metallurgists had in Arcueil. Nevertheless, like Arcueil, Cachan experienced the spread of lotissements that in some districts gave rise to mal-lotis, a potential reservoir of support for communism. The earliest lotissements were in the Lumières district which, as I have noted above in

409 Eyrolles set up the ETP in 1898 in the Latin Quarter with the aim of forming technical cadres for public works, the idea for the school having arisen from his own experience. Eyrolles had been prevented from studying in his youth due to the poverty of his family circumstances and the need to support his mother. Employed in 1882 as a conducteur at the Ponts et Chaussées, Eyrolles eventually earned a grade of engineering foreman at the age of 21 after having spent all his spare time studying. In 1891, Eyrolles set out to assist students from ordinary backgrounds like his to succeed in schools of technical instruction which were, at that time, the preserve of a cultivated elite. In an apartment he rented in the Latin Quarter he initially tutored students in the morning and night in addition to his work as an engineer. A year later, as his student numbers expanded rapidly, he began also to teach by correspondence, but by 1898, with the demands of teaching and working as a foreman too great, he decided to concentrate on the teaching and therefore founded the ETP. On the ETP see in particular: Technical Education News, March 1949, pp. 11-13; Léon Eyrolles (1861-1945), anonymous 19 page booklet with no date printed after Eyrolles’ death (in 1945) with a preface by Raoul Dautry, Ministre de la Reconstruction et de l’Urbanisme, impr. G Dalex Montrouge, pp. 7-12 (AD94 35J243); Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 33. 410 Le Moniteur de Gentilly-Cachan-L’Hay, Hebdomadaire d’informations régionales, 6 April 1929; For the wartime enrolment at the school see AD94 35J62, Cachan during the war: Dossier no. 2, According to the written defence of Eyrolles after his arrest as a collaborator dated 28 August 1944. 411 Technical Education News, March 1949, p. 13. 412 Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, pp. 100-101. 109 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

my discussion of the expanding train services, arose at the turn of the century northwest of what would become Cachan’s town centre.413 It was followed after 1900 by the haphazard development of the Coteau along the northeastern boundary of the commune, with the population of this district becoming denser after World War I as increasing numbers of small, detached houses were built in the area.414 During the interwar period lotissements arose elsewhere in Cachan, namely in the Pont Royal district north of the cité-jardin (settled in 1926), la Plaine in the southeast of the commune and Grange-Ory in the far northwest of Cachan, where an established population of market gardeners was displaced by increasing numbers of employés attracted by cheap land upon which they built small houses.415 The Grange-Ory, Pont Royal and Coteau districts were all afflicted with defective lotissements or inadequate municipal services and infrastructure (the details of which will be discussed below). These areas were, therefore, potential bases of support for the PCF and the SFIO, and Chapters 5 and 6 indicate that the Coteau in particular was a focus of both of these parties during the interwar period. The town centre of Cachan was not unlike that of Arcueil. It was home to dilapidated and unhealthy housing, often in a perilous state, and artisanal enterprises located in a area poorly adapted to their activities, with the area around the terminus of the Châtelet-Cachan (Place Gambetta) tramway populated by launderers and their sombre workshops bordering the Bièvre.416 North of the town centre, Cachan’s wealthier inhabitants were housed in pleasant, detached houses located along Fief des Arces, between Foundation Cousin de Méricourt and Maison de retraite St. Joseph. This housing was located close to the commerce of Cachan which tended to be concentrated in the main streets around the town centre, that is Place Gambetta and the town hall, the streets to its immediate north, and in some major thoroughfares of Cachan’s districts to the north, such as the route d’Orléans.417 Cachan’s two (by 1930) cinemas were located

413 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 15; Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 7. 414 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale”, October 1921. 415 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 15; Jacques Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 7; Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, p. 206. 416 Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, pp. 10, 15, 17; Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, p. 232. 417 It was on the Place Gambetta, route d’Orléans, avenue Carnot, rue Camille-Desmoulins, route de l’Hay, rue Etienne-Dolet, rue Guichard, avenue Dumotel, rue de Provigny, and the boulevard de la Vanne that you would have found grocers, cafés and restaurants (39 in 1926 and 44 in 1927), mechanics (8 in 1926, concentrated on route d’Orléans), and hotels (6 in 1926 and 12 in 1927), see Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 63-72; Guide-Indicateur Banlieue 1927, pp. 37-43; Canton de Villejuif: Indicateur Bijou 1931, pp 68-69. 110 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

in or close to the town centre - Le Cinéma des Fouilles could be found at Place Gambetta and Cachan Palace to its north at rue Mirabeau, with both screening films Friday to Sunday night and Sunday afternoon.418 This meant that the area around the town centre of Cachan presented a mixed picture, with some poor housing but also some comfortable bourgeois housing, with both well serviced by commerce and communal facilities, a picture not dissimilar to the electoral section of the Centre in Arcueil where the PCF was weakest. Under the Third Republic, the urbanisation of Cachan was overwhelmingly concentrated in the centre and north of the commune, with the exception of the Pont- Royal and cité-jardin districts to its southeast. Hence, despite a territory that was larger by 57 hectares, Cachan’s population was lower than that of Arcueil during the interwar period. The south of Cachan was semi-rural as its boundary with Bourg-la-Reine and L’Hay-les-Roses was marked by extensive tracts of vacant land.419 Some of this land remained under cultivation well into the post-war period, with the last farm only ceasing production in 1952 in order to pave the way for the construction of the Centre national d’enseignement technique.420 In the quarters of Petit Robinson and the Plaine in the southwest of the commune, the only settlement consisted of some isolated houses. Without a significant presence of lotissements, the more sparsely populated southeastern expanses of Cachan presumably continued to vote conservative just as the agglomeration as a whole had done prior to its rapid urbanisation in the interwar period. However, the process of urbanisation began to encroach on the south of Cachan with the construction from the early 1920s onwards (concurrently with its counterpart in Arcueil) of the cité-jardin of Cachan.421 Large families were numerous in the cité-jardin and in 1925 20% of those families who lived in its 274 lodgings had six or more children.422 By 1931, 311 lodgings had been built over nine hectares with a population of 1701 persons.423 The cité-jardin’s share of the communal population declined from just over 17% according to the 1926 census (a figure 5% higher than its counterpart in Arcueil), to just over 13% in 1931. The Depression saw a small decline in lettings (from 306 in 1931 to 297 in 1936) and a much larger decline in the cité-jardin’s population,

418 AD94 1J585, the cinema in Cachan; Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 119. 419 3D3 Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale”, October 1921. 420 On the semi-rural nature of Cachan during the period of this study see: Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 13; Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, pp. 112, 113. 421 Sellier, “L’Oeuvre des Offices d’habitations dans le Départements de la Seine”, p. 228. 422 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 17, 31.

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which fell to 1447 residents in 1936, approximately 10% of a communal population which had continued to grow.424 The inference is that there was a marked decrease in the size of households, a reflection of the fact that in the Depression fewer of the large, poor families targeted by the OPHBMS could afford what was relatively comfortable and expensive housing by the contemporary standards of working-class housing. The population of the cité-jardin was young compared to France as a whole. In 1936, 46.8% of Cachan’s cité-jardin population was less than 20 years-old, 51.6% was 20 to 65 and only 1.6% over 65, which compared with 30%, 60% and 10% respectively for France as a whole.425 Kerleroux notes that many fathers of large families were reluctant to spend too large a proportion of their income on rent even when they could apparently afford it.426 Nevertheless, he claims that numerous families saw the advantages of more hygienic living and consequently demand for housing in the cité-jardin outstripped supply. The standard of housing was well above what most working-class families would have been accustomed to in Cachan or elsewhere in the Paris region. Each dwelling had a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a toilet, a shed, with the number of rooms varying depending on whether the dwelling was ground floor only or, like most, at least one storey in height.427 In its 1921 plan, the OPHBMS envisaged the provision of water, gas, electricity and sewage to all houses, and Kerleroux’s study of the cité- jardin does not indicate that there were any problems with regard to these. By 1939, schools (built by the municipality in the early 1930s - see Chapter 6), a community health clinic, a co-operative shop and a meeting hall had been built, but the planned public toilets and municipal baths/showers were yet to be built.428 Like their counterparts in Arcueil, the inhabitants of Cachan’s cité-jardin were of modest means, as can be seen by the fact that until the Depression they dominated the families in receipt of assistance from the municipality. In 1924 they made up 95.8% of the communal total, 1925 83.3%, in 1927, 1928 and 1931 100, and in 1937 this figure dropped to 50%.429 This reflected the concentration of large families and of workers in

423 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 12, 31. 424 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 31. 425 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 34, 35. 426 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 26-27. 427 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 17. 428 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 81; Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 33. 429 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 44. 112 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

the cité, with the working class making up 56.9% of the population in 1926, 56.2% in 1931 and 52.2% in 1936, with the fall in the proportion of workers indicating that some workers could not afford the higher rents during the Depression.430 The inhabitants in the centre of Cachan manifested a certain degree of hostility towards the inhabitants of the cité-jardin because of the impost they imposed on the communal budget, a corollary of their social composition.431 The residents of Cachan’s cité-jardin in turn felt isolated, in response to which the municipality installed a telephone box. The responsiveness to the needs of cité-jardin inhabitants by Cachan’s municipality goes some way to explaining why Cachan’s cité-jardin did not become the hotbed of communism that its neglected counterpart in Arcueil did.

Arcueil, Cachan and the Physiognomy of a Communist Suburb

The expansion of public transport before World War I encouraged the development of both Arcueil and Cachan as commuter suburbs within easy reach of Paris. Initially, it was the bourgeoisie who came to live in the suburbs where they built comfortable houses and set up businesses, while the earliest lotissements in the Lumières district of Cachan and south of the Croix d’Arcueil in Arcueil attracted significant numbers of employés. However, by the outbreak of World War I Arcueil- Cachan was increasingly attractive to workers, and their movement to the suburb, and especially to Arcueil, leading up to and immediately after the war was concomitant with rising support for socialism. Driven by the expansion of public transport and the exploitation of local resources, the industrialisation of Arcueil attracted workers to live and/or work in the commune, thereby reinforcing a radical working-class heritage with which the quarrymen had endowed the commune of Arcueil-Cachan. Then in the interwar period the metallurgical industry developed, bringing a type of worker to the suburb who would become renowned for their communist sympathies. The proliferation of lotissements in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period brought more and more working and lower middle-class inhabitants to the two suburbs where many, as I will indicate below, came to live in defective lotissements. Together with residents of older but equally poorly equipped housing, they provided a potential reservoir of discontent for the PCF to exploit. The cités-jardins of both communes also brought more workers to Arcueil and Cachan. While they were part of an integrationist project

430 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 45.

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which sought to avoid the potential pitfalls of poor housing, my analysis below indicates that the results were quite different in Arcueil and Cachan, with significant implications for the rise of the PCF in Arcueil. Furthermore, the above description of the electoral sections of Arcueil indicates that problems of urban habitat were not uniform. As I will indicate in Chapter 5, the degree of implantation of the PCF varied between the electoral sections of Arcueil. A clear picture emerges as to the factors that facilitated the implantation of communism when one examines the type of housing, the dominant socio-economic groups and the problems inhabitants in each of the electoral sections encountered. It is to the latter that I will now turn. 2. THE CONSEQUENCES OF RAPID SUBURBANISATION

Travelling through France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Eugène Ardouin-Dumazet recorded his impressions in his work Voyage en France. Among its innumerable volumes was one published in 1921 on the west and southwest of Paris that included a description of the Bièvre River and the commune of Arcueil- Cachan through which it passed. He wrote:

De tous les paysages parisiens celui de la Bièvre, aux abords de la ville, a sans doute subi les transformations les plus profondes. Cette vallée mollement dessinée se resserre, se replie entre pentes devenues plus raides…enveloppées de parcs ombreux. Aujourd’hui, les industries sont venus, de celles qui répandent de pénibles effluves s’exercent en des constructions moroses, des cheminées vomissent de flots de fumée, de voies faubouriennes ont remplacé jardins et bosquets, les carrières ont souillé les versants par leurs déblais. Si l’aqueduc de la Vanne ne mettait la hardiesse de ses arceaux…si les cloches d’églises ne conservaient un peu de pittoresque, les sites de la Bièvre, au-dessous des immenses et sombres constructions d’hospice de Bicêtre, seraient parfaitement lugubres. La petite rivière si riante dans sa conque du Joses est devenue une sentine roulant des eaux par matières infectes.432

Now rendered invisible by a progressive canalisation and covering which was only completed after World War II, the Bièvre flowed from Antony on the southern suburban fringe of the Department of the Seine, through Cachan and Arcueil, before continuing

431 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 64-65.

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onto Kremlin-Bicêtre, Gentilly and suburbs to its west, and eventually Paris, where it emptied into the Seine near the Pont d’Austerlitz.433 As far back as 1867, a senate inquiry had recognised the poor state of the Bièvre434, and the situation only worsened between the wars, by which time Demangeon gave the following description: “elle commence en humble ruisseau d’eau claire parmi les prairies; elle finit en égout dans Paris.”435 The Bièvre’s passage through the factories of the suburbs just south of the city meant that it became “un fosse souillé par les détruits de ces établissements insalubres.”436 The fate of the Bièvre is a metaphor for the fate of Arcueil, Cachan and other former villages close to Paris which were rapidly transformed into suburbs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to a former interwar resident of Arcueil, Madame André, before it was covered the Bièvre River was so polluted it was practically a sewer.437 The waste discharged into the river by the numerous tanneries that lined its banks in Gentilly, Arcueil and Cachan made the Bièvre, and the communes it passed through, smelt particularly bad. According to another interwar resident of Arcueil, Madame Guibert, this was because the river also acted as rubbish dump. She recalled:

La Bièvre, ça sentait mauvais là-dedans quand on passait là. Quand ils l’ont nettoyée, ils ont trouvé des os de bébés. Ceux qui perdaient un chien ou un chat allaient le jeter là-dedans.438

It is not surprising then that in 1935, the municipal government of Cachan saw the covering of the Bièvre as one of the two main health problems to be solved in the commune (the other being the presence of unhealthy housing).439 In 1937 a municipal councillor for Cachan, Charles Tayart, called for the total covering of Bièvre from Cachan to the limits of Paris, since “…les eaux de la Bièvre continuent à se charger de plus en plus de souillures de toutes sortes et deviennent chaque jour davantage un foyer

432 Ardouin-Dumazet, Voyage en France, vol. 66, Part III, pp. 225-226. 433 Demangeon, Paris, pp. 7-8; Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 49. 434 Desguine, Bièvre, p. 271. 435 Demangeon, Paris, pp. 7-8. 436 Demangeon, Paris, p. 55. 437 See in particular E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame André. 438 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame Guibert, 2 avenue des Aqueducs, HLM Raspail. 439 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 64. 115 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

malodorant et dangereux.”440 According to Tayart’s article in the local Radical newspaper La Voix républicaine, pulmonary sickness, and in particular tuberculosis, was more prevalent in the Bièvre valley of Arcueil and Cachan, two communes which already suffered from a more elevated percentage of such illnesses, than anywhere else in the Paris region. Tayart called on the Department of the Seine to rectify the matter as an urgent priority. A year later the La Voix républicaine re-iterated this call in its account of the discharge of particularly polluted water that “rendent le séjour des riverains vraiment intenable.”441 It complained that while they were still waiting for the Department of the Seine to act, the health of schoolchildren in the Bièvre valley was being affected. The Bièvre also posed other dangers - a child of the last market gardener to live along the river drowned on his way home from school,442 and in 1931 it flooded the laundries along its banks and the kitchens and living rooms of many of the surrounding houses, ruining furniture.443 Nevertheless, the canalisation and covering of the Bièvre in Arcueil, Cachan and beyond was a gradual process. Work was first undertaken between 1898 and 1902, then again from 1909 to 1911 and in 1936.444 Inhabitants then had to wait until the 1950s, when, in order to make way for a freeway, the river was completely covered in Arcueil and Cachan, as the river continued to pose a health hazard owing its use as a refuse dump, the fact that it bred mosquitoes, and the stink that arose from the enduring presence of tanneries alongside it.445 When the Department of the Seine finally commenced work on covering those parts of the Bièvre which remained in Arcueil and Cachan, the local communist newspaper, La Vie nouvelle, claimed credit on behalf of the PCF - it was the pressure placed on the department by the communist mayors of Arcueil and Gentilly, and the previous communist mayor of Cachan that had finally brought about this act.446 Nevertheless, this issue was also a major preoccupation not just of the local SFIO but also, during the interwar period, of regional newspapers such

440 La Voix républicaine de la banlieue sud, Organe républicaine Radical et Radical-socialiste de la circonscription de Villejuif, no. 3, April 1937. 441 La Voix républicaine de la banlieue sud, no. 15, July 1938. 442 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame André. 443 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 51. 444 Desguine, Bièvre, pp. 271-308. 445 Desguine, Bièvre, p. 271; E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame André; L’Avenir de la Banlieue de Paris, Hebdomadaire d’informations locales de édité par le parti socialiste SFIO, 18- 24 October 1951; La Vie nouvelle, 10 November 1951. 446 La Vie nouvelle, 10 November 1951. 116 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

as the rightwing Banlieue de Paris and the Radical-Socialist Voix républicaine,447 as well as local politicians (municipal councillors, the local Radical-Socialist deputy Gratien) who shared their ideological viewpoint. Thus, while PCF officeholders and activists worked tirelessly and campaigned strongly to improve the living conditions of Arcueil and Cachan’s inhabitants, their efforts were not unique but were a common preoccupation of local politicians throughout the suburbs whatever their political shade, with Cachan being a good example. The problems that beset both Arcueil and Cachan prior to the partition into two separate communes went well beyond the state of the Bièvre. In June 1921, the future communist mayor of Arcueil, Marius Sidobre, reported to the municipal council of Arcueil-Cachan that the situation in the commune was one of a minimum of comfort.448 The principal arteries of the commune, rue Bertholet, rue Cauchy, rue Etienne-Dolet, and rue de la Gare, as well as other important secondary routes, had been wilfully neglected, the system of sewerage works was insufficient, water still needed to be piped to all quarters, and municipal baths/showers and public toilets needed to be constructed. Moreover, the commune’s schools were in dire need of an upgrading that included urgent internal and/or external repairs and enlargement. Sidobre went on to add that Arcueil did not have a hospital or hospice or any free communal space, its sewers were embryonic, there was a rudimentary system of rubbish removal (part of the town’s rubbish was thrown in an old quarry “comme au moyen-âge”), and the regulation of constructions was archaic.449 Furthermore, prior to Sidobre’s report, tests of the municipal water supply taken by the Chemical Laboratory of the Prefecture of Police found that in the agglomerations of Arcueil and Cachan it did not measure up to the standards fixed by Superior Council of Hygiene of France.450 Hence, when Arcueil- Cachan was transformed into two separate communes in 1923, the two new suburbs suffered equally from the ill effects of a rapid and unplanned suburbanisation.

The Impact of Rapid Growth and Suburbanisation on Arcueil

In an article on Arcueil’s transformation into a communist bastion, Michel

447 Desguine, Bièvre, p. 271. 448 Délibérations du Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil-Cachan [DCMA-C], Meeting 29 June 1921 (AD94 1Mi 1107, pp. 97-112). 449 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 13; AN F24214, Ministère de l’Intérieur, report of 4 October 1927.

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Winock has succinctly summarised the results in the suburb of unplanned and rapid suburbanisation:

La laideur domine tout: bicocques des bois, palissades maculées, maisons délabrées, pavillons à 'chiens méchants’, tôles rouillées, débris en tous genres, cheminées laissant s’échapper la fumée noire, bric-à-brac généralisé, odeurs fétides, et le soir, en sortant du cinéma, les rats qu’on voit filer d’une poubelle à l’autre…Arcueil a grandi comme tant d’autres communes de banlieue dans une misère écologique dont on n’a guère idée aujourd’hui. C’est sur ce terreau que s’est édifiée la banlieue rouge.451

The rapid but haphazard growth of Arcueil before and during the interwar period created a situation where unhealthy industrial zones were intermixed with densely populated residential neighbourhoods and where municipal infrastructure had not kept pace with the growth in lotissements or the expectations of apartment dwellers for a better standard of housing. “Notre Commune souffre, comme toutes celles qui avoisinent les grandes villes, d’une terrible crise de croissance” the Arcueil branch of the SFIO wrote in Le Socialiste on 9 October 1930, “Les locaux municipaux sont de plus en plus insuffisants.”452 This was clearly evident in the deficiency of municipal infrastructure and services that were essential to ensuring that there was an adequate level of hygiene in the suburb. As an SFIO councillor, Léon Louis Veyssière complained in 1924 that health regulations were inadequately applied, particularly with regard to the discharge of sewage water from households and industry, the source of nauseating smells in many parts.453 According to Veyssière, this state of affairs was a corollary of the poor organisation of municipal services. Two years later, the Radical-Socialist municipality set about rectifying what it admitted was an unsatisfactory situation with regard to the hygiene of Arcueil’s new inhabitants. “Le réseau d’égouts de la Ville d’Arcueil est actuellement peu développé et ne permet pas aux divers lotissements qui se sont créés d’assurer l’assainissement des rues nouvelles et des immeubles construits en bordure de

450 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I7, Test numbers 3032, 3033 and 3034 undertaken in Arcueil-Cachan on 28 May 1918 by the Chemical Laboratory of Prefecture of Police for the municipal administration. 451 Winock, “Arcueil la Rouge”, p. 90. 452 Le Socialiste, Organe Socialiste SFIO de la Banlieue Sud, October 1930. 453 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1D27, Annexes to the municipal meetings, Copies of a series of letters from Veyssière dated 21 February 1924. 118 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

ces voies.”454 One such example is the Villa Moderne lotissement, located alongside the Route d’Orléans near the Vache-Noire area of Arcueil, which initially discharged its sewerage into former quarry located nearby.455 One interwar inhabitant of Arcueil, Madame André, vividly remembered the absence of sewers in Arcueil – slop buckets were thrown into the courtyards of apartments and when night soil workers removed sewerage the smell was appalling and permeated whole quarters.456 A sewerage system was not the only problem in a suburb where the municipal rubbish collection service was also inadequate. Le Socialiste called on the municipality, for the sake of hygiene and to eliminate the bad smell emanating from it, to remove rubbish that had been deposited up to a height of 40 centimetres on vacant land alongside the route d’Orléans in the Vache-Noire quarter.457 With sanitation in the commune in such a poor state, it is little wonder that in July 1926 the communist newspaper L’Aube sociale complained that epidemics of throat infections, scarlet fever, the measles and croup had struck Arcueil and the region around it, with large families being particularly affected.458 This was not a case of communist propaganda or hyperbole. In its 1927 report on Arcueil, the Ministry of the Interior remarked that Arcueil was a commune “dangereusement attaqué par la morbidité et la mortalité.”459 In support of this statement it cited the fact that in 1927 Arcueil had a mortality rate of 25.2 per 1000 and 5.52 per 1000 for tuberculosis, which indicates that this disease accounted for a fifth of Arcueil’s deaths in that year.460 In 1932, tuberculosis accounted for 15.78% of Arcueil’s deaths (excluding stillborns)461, while health statistics for December 1938 and July 1939 indicate that tuberculosis was the biggest killer in the

454 AD94 DO9/49, Report from the Mairie d’Arcueil, 20 May 1926 “Assainissement Général” construction of a sandstone canal at Route d’Orléans, rue Paul Bert and Avenue Doctor. 455 Touchet, “Arcueil et ses lotissements”, p. 57. 456 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Transcript of interview with Madame André. 457 Le Socialiste, October 1930. 458 L’Aube sociale, Hebdomadaire communiste d’information de la banlieue sud, no. 381, 10 July 1926. 459 AN F24214, Ministère de l’Intérieur report of 4 October 1927. 460 F24214, Ministère de l’Intérieur report of 4 October 1927. 461 Préfecture de la Seine, Direction de l’Hygiène, du Travail et de la Statistique Municipale, Annuaire Statistique de la Ville de Paris, Années 1932, 1933 et 1934, Paris, Imprimerie F. Deshayes, 1937, pp. 200-201, 214-215. 119 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

suburb.462 In 1938, Arcueil had the highest rate of tuberculosis among the Seine suburbs.463 Madame André testified that tuberculosis was a serious problem throughout the interwar period and especially after World War II.464 Another resident of Arcueil during the period of this study, Madame Choquet, was not surprised that tuberculosis was a problem given the fact that sanitary conditions were extremely poor, with rats and mice being a big problem.465 Another, Madame Guibert, lost her husband to the disease during World War II, leaving her to raise her son in desperate circumstances.466 Of all the different quarters of Arcueil, the health of cité-jardin inhabitants appears to have suffered particularly. This is what I conclude from a meeting of a delegation of cité-jardin inhabitants with the mayor in October 1927 to discuss the fact that their estate had been struck by epidemics of diseases such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, the measles and pulmonary flu, all too often with fatal consequences.467 The delegation cited the cause of these epidemics as threefold: 1) the overcrowding of school classes among young children (the majority of those affected by illness were aged three to nine); 2) the total absence of health and hygiene in the different streets of the cité-jardin (caused by blocked sewers and obstructed gutters and the like), and; 3) insufficient decontamination of those dwellings affected by the epidemics. The delegation proposed a short-term solution, namely the decontamination of disease- affected classrooms outside of their regular cleaning, and a long-term solution, namely the creation of a school at the cité-jardin to overcome overcrowding. In addition, they called for a health report to be added to children’s school report cards, the prioritisation of physical education to strengthen the children, improvements to municipal sanitation services which were too infrequent, the decontamination of those dwellings affected by disease, and for physicians to be compelled to report a child’s illness to the mayor to ensure their rapid removal from the contaminated site.

462 The statistics for the causes of death in December 1938 were (the highest cause of death is in bold): heart problems 1, cancer and tumours 2, haemorrhages 4, pulmonary tuberculosis 7, maladies of the liver 2, stomach and lung illnesses 1 each. The statistics for July 1939 were: illness of liver 1, uraemia 1, cancer 2, tuberculosis and pulmonary illnesses 3; heart disease 2, suicide 1, Front rouge, 11 February & 8 July 1939. 463 The percentage of deaths by tuberculosis in Arcueil in 1938 was 20%, compared with 10% for the Department of the Seine as a whole, Bulletin municipal d’Arcueil et Gentilly, special no., June 1949, p. 13. See also Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 23 464 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame André. 465 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame Choquet (82 years old). 466 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame Guibert. 467 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, Les délégués des habitants de la cité-jardin, letter to the Mayor dated 22 October 1927. 120 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

The following year, the Syndicat des Locataires de la cité-jardin d’Arcueil- Aqueduc wrote to the mayor of Arcueil asking what had been done during the course of 1927 to remedy the situation with regard to hygiene in schools.468 The Syndicat des Locataires indicated that epidemics of disease among small children had claimed numerous little lives and was particularly concerned about the spread of diphtheria. It claimed to have made numerous demands for effective cleaning and disinfection of schools and public places so as to prevent the spread of microbes carrying this disease, and called on the municipality to take urgent measures to tackle diphtheria, both at the school and the community health clinic in Arcueil, by providing free vaccinations, the sole remedy to prevent its spread. Overcrowding of school classes was also cited as a major contributor to the children’s poor health. The tone of the follow-up letter in 1928 suggests cité-jardin inhabitants were frustrated at what they perceived as the tardy progress made by the Radical municipality in addressing the cause of the epidemics of disease that afflicted their estate. (A similar frustration is evident in the discussion below of problems with the cité-jardin housing). The discontent with the Radical municipality that this situation engendered must have been a contributing factor to the strength of communism in the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section in the 1930s, especially since the PCF was acutely aware of the issue. Poor sanitation and disease were not the only problems for Arcueil’s inhabitants. Haphazard growth and industrialisation meant that many lived in close proximity to industry and suffered accordingly. They were often located near industrial establishments whose by-products were bound to have a deleterious affect on them. For example, inhabitants in the heavily industrialised northwest of the Laplace section were ‘poisoned’ by the “émanations malodorantes” that a waste disposal plant produced during the interwar period.469 These were not the only bad odours they had to deal with. Residents of this area petitioned against the nauseating fumes that emanated from the production of sulphate ammonia from the Hautes-Bornes factory of the Compagnie Fresnes.470 These petitioners were part of a campaign that had, over a long period of time, made unsuccessful appeals to have the Prefect rectify a situation which rendered life in their quarter extremely unpleasant. A little further south, the Para-France factory

468 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, letter dated 18 February 1928 from “Syndicat des Locataires de la cité-jardin d’Arcueil-Aqueduc” to the Mayor of Arcueil. 469 Vaillat, Seine, p. 265.

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on avenue Laplace was found in 1926 by the Prefecture of Police to be a source of fumes and noise and the site of an unsanitary rubbish dump, just as local residents had claimed.471 The operator assured the Prefecture that all defects in the factory’s operation would be rectified as directed. On the other side of the railway line but still in the Laplace section, Villa Baudran residents complained that the emission of noxious vapours from a factory on their street forced them to close windows.472 An inspection by the Prefecture vindicated their complaints by recommending an end to these emissions.473 Residents also signed a petition protesting the construction of a new factory, and recently elected communist councillors Sidobre and Rivière wrote to the municipality urging it to support their petition.474 Residents were concerned that the shaking of the ground occasioned during the construction would damage their properties, however, a subsequent report from the communal architect concluded that developers were within their rights and that if they caused any damage to the property of any residents they could seek legal damages.475 Doubtless, this was of little comfort to concerned residents. While Laplace was worst affected by industrial pollution, the two other electoral sections were not immune. In 1932, an inspection by the Prefecture of Police vindicated the complaints of nearby residents concerning night time work and the emission of bad odours from Compagnie Clayton, a metalwork factory located in the southwest of the electoral section of the Centre on rue Paul-Bert.476 The company undertook to address the Prefecture’s concerns regarding its dangerous and unhealthy activities. However, between 1946 and 1950, the factory was once again the target of complaints, this time centring on the intense shocks and hammering of factory machines which reverberated for over 300 metres, adversely affecting health of residents and forcing the aged and the

470 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Les Hautes Bornes 1852-1935. Notes dated 4 and 31 July 1932 and a petition from residents. 471 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution, Letter dated 8 June 1926 from the Prefect of Police to Mayor of Arcueil. 472 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Villa Baudran, Correspondence from Mayor to Syndic de la Villa Baudran dated 16 November 1932. 473 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3 Dossier: Villa Baudran, Letter from Prefect dated 23 January. 474 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Villa Baudran, petition dated 13 September 1933 and signed by residents of Villa; Letter from Sidobre & Rivière dated 13 September 1933. 475 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Villa Baudran, Report from communal architect Charles Carpentier dated 15 September 1933. 476 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Usine Paul Bert. Letter dated 21 October 1932 from Prefect of Police to Mayor of Arcueil. 122 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

sick to move away.477 L. Gibon, an architect living nearby, lamented that persistent complaints concerning the metal works had, to date, been in vain, and he questioned how such a factory was allowed to be built in a densely populated area, and without any sound insulation, a violation of regulations.478 Not far from where L. Gibon lived in 1928 residents living near the Brasserie de la Croix d’Arcueil, accused it of emitting noxious fumes.479 Almost twenty years later their complaints were echoed by a group of tenants living on rue de l’Avenir who complained that a daily emission of carbon dioxide and black fumes prevented them from opening their windows while sparks constantly blackened and obscured their windows.480 The tenants of rue de l’Avenir wrote angrily that they had had to make a second complaint after nothing had been done to address their first:

C’est intenable par instant. Les services publics ne fonctionnent-ils que pour les gens riches? et les enfants ont-ils le droit d’être empoisonné à petit feu?481

Such comments echoed the communist view of the French state as an instrument of the wealthy bourgeoisie, indifferent to the sufferings of the working class. By contrast, Arcueil’s communist municipality gave earnest attention to these complaints. The mayor met with a delegation of tenants, after which he instructed the municipal hygiene services to intervene directly with the factory’s director to rectify the situation and wrote to the Prefecture for a second time.482 Some residents living in the electoral sections of the Centre, and of the Cité- Aqueduc endured industrial pollution emanating from a brewery and a dye factory

477 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3 Dossier: Usine Paul Bert, see varied correspondence dating from 14 December 1948 to 27 January 1950, between the mayor and the prefect, residents and the municipality, the municipality and the Compagnie Clayton, and the municipality and Felix Gibbon, an architect from Arcueil; Letter dated 6 February 1949, from residents near to the factory, signed M. Frontière, 3 rue Victor Carmignac, Arcueil. 478 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: Usine Paul Bert, letter from Gibbon dated 7 September 1949. 479 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution, letter from Heimerdinger & Lurck, proprietors of Brasserie de la Croix d’Arcueil dated 25 November 1928. 480 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution, letter to M. Grenon, 82 Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, Paris, dated 12 March 1947, copy signed by tenants; other correspondence concerning pollution caused by the brewery; Copy of letter dated 27 August 1947 from the locataires 13 rue de l’Avenir at Arcueil. 481 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution, letter dated 27 August 1947 from the locataires 13 rue de l’Avenir at Arcueil

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which, during the period of this study, were located between the town centre and the eastern half of the cité-jardin. In 1921 and again in 1933 residents living nearby the Brasserie de la Vallée complained about fumes and/or vapours emitted by the brewery.483 However, an inspection by the Prefecture of Police in 1933 found that the vapours were not noxious and that the black fumes were infrequent and unavoidable, and consequently no action was considered necessary.484 By contrast, in 1924 an investigation of complaints regarding the David & Cie dye factory found that the latter was illegally discharging waste such as sulphur and acids into the sewer system.485 Nevertheless, pollution from the brewery and the dye factory remained a source of discontent after the war, as is indicated by correspondence dating from 1948 to 1950 inclusive and the deliberations of the municipal council.486 Nearby residents complained about the noise and emissions emanating from the two factories, while seventy-five residents signed a petition calling for something to be done about the dye factory.487 Once again, after inspections were made of both establishments towards the end of 1948 and then again in late 1949 or early 1950, the Prefect of Police indicated to the mayor that the operations of the brewery were acceptable (its emissions were for a brief period and insignificant), while those of the dye factory were found to be defective and it was

482 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4 Dossier: factory pollution, Correspondence indicates that the Mayor met with a delegation of three persons from the tenants on 6 September 1947 to discuss the issue, see correspondence from the Mayor relating to the brewery during this period and a letter from Mayor to Ms Leroy, a tenant. 483 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4 Dossier: factory pollution. See: letter dated 23 May 1921 from L. Cozic, Engineer of the Ponts & Chaussées, Department of the Seine; letter dated 24 May 1921 from the Brasserie de la Vallée, rue de Cauchy; letter dated 27 December 1933 from the Prefect of Police to the Mayor of Arcueil regarding complaints of fumes emanating from the Brasserie de la Vallée. 484 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, Dossier: factory pollution, letter dated 27 December 1933 from the Prefect of Police to Mayor of Arcueil. 485 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, Dossier: “rue de la Fontaine”, letter from Prefecture of Police dated 2 December 1924. 486 See AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4 Dossier: factory pollution. The Brasserie de la Vallée was renamed the ‘Brasserie de la Vanne’. Throughout 1948 and 1949 there is correspondence between Prefect and Mayor, and the Mayor and the two factories regarding the latter’s emissions. In particular, see: letter dated 16 November 1948 from Prefect of Police to Mayor regarding the Brasserie de la Vanne and Sté David & Cie; copy of a letter from the Mayor dated 31 March 1949 indicating the existence of a petition carrying 75 names which protested the emissions emanating from the David dye factory; extract from the register of proceedings of the municipal council, dated 25 August 1949; copies of letters dated 22 October and addressed by Mayor to directors of the Brasserie de la Vanne, 4 rue Cauchy and Sté David & Cie, 6 rue la Fontaine; a letter dated 21 March 1950 from Prefecture of Police to Mayor of Arcueil relating to proceedings of the council meeting of 25 August 1949; correspondence between Conseiller Générale Gérard and the Mayor with regard to the concerns of residents. 487 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4, letter of 31 March 1949 from the Mayor referring to a petition. 124 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

instructed to accord with regulations and kept under close surveillance.488 The problem had not been eliminated by 1955, at which point shopkeepers complained vigorously that their perishable goods would deteriorate due to the soot landing on their merchandise, while nearby buildings and on the entrance to the domestic markets were covered with ashes.489 Once again, Arcueil’s communist mayor embraced the concerns of his constituents by demanding that the Prefecture inspect immediately and guarantee the health of a large section of the population by applying severe prescriptions as quickly as possible. The mayor noted that he had asked several times for something to be done about the situation but to no effect. My survey of resident’s complaints regarding industrial pollution indicates a strong perception that the state, and during the interwar period of the Radical municipality, was indifferent to the discomforts endured by Arcueil’s inhabitants, while the communists were always keen to ameliorate them. Along with the lack of sanitation and attendant problems of disease, it also provided the PCF with a reservoir of discontent.

The Housing Crisis in Arcueil

Even more than the problems that I have outlined, the housing crisis in Arcueil fuelled discontent and alienation. The proximity of Arcueil to Paris and the presence of large estates in the commune gave rise to a proliferation of lotissements between 1900 and 1935, with a definitive end only coming with the outbreak of World War II.490 These lotissements were not unlike shantytowns, populated as they were by hovels or shacks built of wood and sheet metal or corrugated iron built along miserable, muddy streets of new districts that were often isolated from each other and from the town centre.491 In September 1921, 75 requests were made to build shacks or hovels in Arcueil, according to a contemporary observer, only the tip of the iceberg since authorisation was only sought for more substantial buildings, and most shacks or hovels were built without authorisation.492 The spread of lotissements was such that by 1949

488 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4 Dossier: factory pollution, letter dated 16 November 1948 from the Prefect of Police to the Mayor; letter dated 21 March 1950 from the Prefect of Police to the Mayor of Arcueil relating to deliberations of council dated 25 August 1949. 489 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I4 Dossier: factory pollution, letter dated 28 May 1955 from the Mayor of Arcueil to the Prefecture of Police, Service des Établissements dangereux, insalubres ou incommodes. 490 Hillairet and Poisson, Évocation du Grand Paris, p.412; Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp.16-18, 22-23. 491 Bonnefond, “Les colonies bicoques”, no. 25, p. 530. 492 Bonnefond, “Les colonies bicoques”, no. 25, p. 530. 125 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

70% of Arcueil’s inhabitants lived in individual houses.493 Most lotissements were small, averaging dozens of parcels of land, and generally had little in way of urban infrastructure, that is they had earthen paths and roads that lacked practicability, they were without sewage, gas and street lights, and sometimes municipal water supplies.494 For example, in 1922 36 lots totalling 11,900 square metres were sold southwest of rue Docteur-Gosselin and adjoining rue Emile-Raspail without any urban infrastructure, the entrepreneurs having reserved the right to add the provision of a sewerage system, tap water, gas and electricity if and when they pleased.495 Most lotissements created in Arcueil before 1924 were classed as defective under the provisions of a law passed in that year to redress the problems of the latter and prevent the further spread of deficient housing developments.496 According to the provisions of the law of 1924, the rectification of defective lotissements would be undertaken via the formation of syndicats of affected residents which would be aided by subsidies and guaranteed loans from the state but which would also have to contribute their own funds. This could prove quite a burden to mal-lotis. In Arcueil, rectification works were often costly due to the presence of underground and open-cut mines that had barely been filled in, and which therefore necessitated major subsoil works before, for example, water could be piped. Nonetheless, by 1939 most defective lotissements had been rectified with some 23 lotissements, totalling around 30 hectares, having been re-developed since 1924 through the provision of infrastructure such as municipal water and street lighting. The exceptions were a few cases where disputes held up work, or else, residents refused to form syndicats, or to pay subscriptions, or to allow works to proceed which would encroach on their properties. There were also numerous illegal lotissements built in Arcueil after 1924, some of which remained defective after World War II. Thus, the mal-lotis that I have indicated in Chapter 2 as being fundamental in the rise of the PCF in a number of Paris suburbs had a strong presence in interwar Arcueil. However, the housing crisis in Arcueil was not just limited to defective lotissements. Arcueil’s apartment blocks were generally small, especially in the older

493 Winock, “Arcueil la Rouge”, p. 92. 494 Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 18-19 495 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 123-124. 496 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p.18-19.

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districts, in poor condition and with few amenities,497 as Madame André, who moved to Arcueil in 1926, attested:

Arcueil était très très vieux. C’était très très sale, il n’y ait aucun confort. Les gens par exemple habitaient au quatrième ou au cinquième, il n’y avait pas de waters. Alors ils faisaient dans un seau et ils jetaient ça dans la cour.498

Another interwar resident of Arcueil, Madame Guibert lived in 1933 with her husband and their son for six months in a small ground floor apartment located at 14 rue Berthollet, sharing one room, a kitchen, and slop bucket, and with the toilet located in the stairs in the corridor. She recalled:

Il n’y avait pas d’électricité, pas d’eau, pas de gaz…On chercher l’eau dans la cour de la rue Berthollet, au 14. Et on allait au W.C. là. On s’éclairait avec des bougies et du pétrole quand on en avait.499

Basic amenities remained a problem even after Madame Guibert moved with her family to another small lodging at 42 rue Emile Raspail. Her family would make special trips on Sundays to the Fort de Montrouge with a snack to eat on the grass and would collect water from the leaking aqueduct, on the side of the metro, taking back four or five litres of water for the week. André Fréguin, recalled that in the Villa Mélanie in Arcueil, where he was once a resident, there was a complete absence of hygiene, with only one toilet on the fifth floor.500 With a single public fountain servicing 30 lodgings, there was one water point for 80 persons. Residents had to carry water up to their room and in the winter when the fountain iced over, go to neighbours or bistros in search of water.501 The absence of central heating in the Villa meant that in the winter of 1942 Fréguin experienced conditions of -17 degrees centigrade in his room. Arcueil’s tenements had been developed at low cost for a poor clientele and their proprietors were of a social category that was not very far above that of their working-class tenants and who therefore had neither the means to nor the interest in maintaining their properties. 502 The Ministry of Interior reported in 1927 as “intolérable” the situation in “la

497 Michelon, “Arcueil”, pp. 22, 23; AN F24214, Ministère de l’Intérieur, report of 4 October 1927. 498 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Madame André. 499 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame Guibert. 500 1S11-12, Interview with Monsieur André Fréguin. 501 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Monsieur André Fréguin; Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 23. 502 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 22. 127 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

région des maisons collectives” owing to “la mortalité excessive qui y sévit” and, in contravention of good urban planning, the maintenance of factories alongside this housing. “Il y aurait donc, à Arcueil”, the report concluded, “deux zones, celle insalubre et mortelle pour la population dense et celle des habitations résidentielles plus aérées.”503 The demolition of the Villa Mélanie in the 1950s and the re-housing of its residents in the HLM Paul Vaillant-Couturier504 by the Arcueil communist municipality reflected the PCF’s ultimate solution to the problem of tenement housing, which was to re-house its residents in (generally high-rise) public housing. However, before World War II, the PCF was well aware of the housing needs of working people (Arcueil’s first communist municipality created an HBM Office in 1921 presumably with the intention of constructing public housing), and tenement dwellers would have been another potential reservoir of support. Perhaps more surprising is the manifest discontent with the housing situation in the cité-jardin of Arcueil, with the Radical municipality being the target of residents’ anger. As early as 5 July 1923, a letter from the association amicale of the cité-jardin complained of bad odours caused by malfunctioning toilet flushes and indicated that residents were increasingly discontented at the deplorable state of their streets and the general dirtiness of the cité-jardin.505 Complaining that the children of the cité-jardin had to walk long distances to school, the letter called for the construction of schools, in particular an école maternelle, on site. A year later, the secretary of the Association wrote to the director of Departmental Affairs at the Seine Prefecture to complain that the municipality was not collecting its rubbish and cleaning its streets owing to its refusal to recognise the streets of the cité-jardin as public space.506 Vallier went on to say that there was insufficient provision of fire hydrants and that residents feared that this situation could lead to a catastrophe, while on a more mundane level some houses were deprived of water hydrants which could be used to clean roadside gutters. He left little doubt as to whom the association amicale held responsible for this situation. “Nous attirons votre attention Monsieur le Directeur sur la situation d’une population laborieuse délaissée par une Municipalité, et nous ne doutons pas que votre haute

503 AN F24214, Ministère de l’Intérieur report of 4 October 1927. 504 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Monsieur André Fréguin.

505 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, letter signed Vallier secretary for the Association Amicale (Cité-jardin, Arcueil-Aqueduc) dated 5 July 1923.

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intervention servira à améliorer notre situation.”507 When a delegation of cité-jardin inhabitants met the mayor four years later, they were still complaining that there was a total absence of health and hygiene on their streets.508 The gutters were not cleaned often enough, the sewers were blocked and thus far no street cleaning had been carried out by the municipality. According to the delegation, this situation had negative impacts on the health of the cité-jardin, especially its children. Doubtless, the delegation was little impressed by the mayor’s retort that because the cité-jardin consisted of private roads, the provision of cleaning services was not the responsibility of the municipality. According to the mayor, the municipality could only recognise the cité-jardin as public space when the streets were aligned, the council was provided with street maps, and the provision of town water was complete.509 They would have been even less impressed with the mayor’s assertion that the cité- jardin was already a great burden upon the commune and that it should not be treated as a special case. For its part, the OPHBMS claimed the municipality should have assured the regular functioning of the toilet flushes, which had never functioned properly with grave consequences for the health of inhabitants, and it had not maintained adequate sanitation, with the cleaning of the central route having never been effected.510 The municipality admitted that its cleaning services had not been adequate, but claimed that the odours emanated from the Bièvre, which was literally a sewer, and not from problems with the toilets.511 The municipality finally recognised the streets of the cité- jardin as part of the commune in 1929,512 but houses were numbered in a haphazard fashion, “un véritable casse-tête chinois pour visiteur à la recherche d’un numéro”, according to Le Socialiste. 513 The OPHBMS was not immune from criticism either. In 1926, L’Aube sociale attacked the OPHBMS for having not yet built a school and a community health clinic

506 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, letter dated 13 June 1924 from Vallier to ‘Monsieur le Directeur d E Dépôt Arcueil es Affaires Départementales, Préfecture de la Seine’. 507 Letter dated 13 June 1924. 508 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, Les délégués des habitants de la cité-jardin, letter to the Mayor dated 22 October 1927. 509 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, letter dated 2 July 1924 from the Commune of Arcueil to the Prefect of the Seine. 510 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1, Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, letter dated 27 July 1928 from Office Public d’Habitations à Bon Marché, Département de la Seine. 511 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, response from the Mayor of Arcueil dated 31 July 1928 addressed to “Monsieur l’Administrateur-Délégué de l’Office Public d’Habitations à Bon Marché du Département de la Seine”. 512 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1 Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, response from the Mayor dated 31 July 1928.

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as originally planned, adding that inhabitants had “perdu tout espoir de voir se réaliser jamais ces deux projets indispensables.”514 It concluded that the comfortably lodged men directing the OPHBMS “se soucient peu du genre d’existence que mènent les travailleurs dans les villages nègres que leur génie a conçus.”515 The OPHBMS also failed to properly stabilise some areas where houses were constructed, with a 1935 report from Arcueil’s communal architect finding that crevices had appeared in some houses, threatening the security of the occupants.516 An inspection of one house, 123/5 avenue François Trubert, indicated that soil movement, caused by the poor state of the land, threatened to cause the house to collapse. Consequently, the occupants, monsieur Phan, his wife and seven children, were urgently evacuated to temporary accommodation above the cooperative of the cité-jardin. Other houses had already been evacuated and, fearing a worsening of the situation, the commune had to bar traffic near the houses that were affected, while the Mines Service was commissioned to give a report on the stabilisation of the affected area. Thus, the integrationist ideals embodied in the cité-jardin appear to have turned sour in Arcueil, with the Radical municipality bearing the brunt of the anger of cité-jardin residents but with the central authorities, namely the OPHBMS, also subject to criticism. The cité-jardin would go on to form the nucleus of an electoral section which, in the 1930s, was an impregnable bastion of support for the PCF.

The Impact of Rapid Growth, Suburbanisation and Secession on Cachan

Like Arcueil, the rapid suburbanisation of Cachan generated a crisis in communal infrastructure, a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that following the partition of Arcueil-Cachan the only communal facilities inherited by Cachan were a school and a former cemetery.517 The new suburb had to share facilities with Arcueil and to make do with a temporary town hall and postal annex during the 1920s, with a permanent town hall, post office and new schools only completed in the 1930s. Moreover, Cachan had developed in a highly segregated manner. Circulation was

513 Le Socialiste, July 1931. 514 L’Aube sociale, no. 381,10 July 1926. 515 L’Aube sociale, no. 381,10 July 1926. 516 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 4Q1, Dossier: HBM-Cité-jardin, “Rapport de l’Architecte Communal sur les pavillons menaçant ruine dans la cité-jardin de l’Aqueduc” 2 January 1935. The details which follow concerning problems posed to houses by soil movement are derived from this report. 517 See Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 13, 71-74. 130 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

difficult and people from one district rarely socialised with those another owing to the fact that roads were lacking signage and were disconnected from one another, which meant that a trip from one end of the commune to the other could involve numerous detours.518 This situation gradually improved in the interwar period, however, Cachan’s long-serving post-war mayor, Carat, has claimed that it was only when his Socialist administration embarked on a project of road prolongation and widening in 1955 that the different districts of Cachan were properly integrated. As indicated above, like Arcueil, Cachan was also lacking in urban infrastructure at the time of partition. It was for this reason that after Cachan’s succession, its first municipal council immediately set itself the goals of organising communal services, such as street cleaning and rubbish disposal, developing the sewerage, water, gas, and electricity and public transport systems and constructing new schools and a town hall.519 The subsequent re-election of the incumbent municipality or candidates it supported in the four municipal elections that followed is testament to a degree of success in achieving these goals, but by the outbreak of the World War II many of problems associated with Cachan’s rapid and haphazard growth remained, leading to a relative decline in support for the incumbents to the benefit of the left. As in Arcueil, the health of Cachan’s inhabitants suffered in the wake of its rapid transformation into a suburb of Paris. Tuberculosis was also a problem, according to local councillor Tayart, owing to the presence of the uncovered Bièvre in the suburb.520 In fact, the statistics for 1932 indicate that Cachan, with 26, had only four fewer deaths from tuberculosis than Arcueil in spite of the latter’s higher population.521 In the cité- jardin of Cachan, health professionals working at the community health clinic attested to the poor the health of many children they treated and lamented the fact that their families often lacked any sense of hygiene, a product of their lower socio-economic status.522 Nevertheless, the OPHBM in the Seine was successful in lowering the infant mortality in the cité-jardin through the provision of an effective community health clinic service that was supported financially by the municipality of Cachan.523 As was the case with the installation of the telephone box, Cachan’s municipality went out of its

518 Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, pp. 15, 17. 519 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 14. 520 La Voix Républicaine de la Banlieue Sud, no. 5, June 1937. 521 Annuaire Statistique de la Ville de Paris, Années 1932, 1933 et 1934, pp. 214-215. 522 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 83, 85, 102. 523 Keleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, p. 102. 131 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

way to ensure that the interests of the residents of the cité-jardin were looked after, in contrast to Arcueil’s Radical municipality. In comparison to those of Arcueil, the inhabitants of Cachan benefited from the fact that industry was largely absent from their commune, although the presence of a battery factory and a significant imprint of laundries and tanneries ensured that it too was afflicted by industrial pollution.524 On one occasion, the latter even had deadly consequences. Complaints from avenue Carnot residents with regard to sulphuric smells emanating from an underground sewer led the Seine Prefecture to inspect the site on 20 September 1924, with two sewer workers descending into the sewer at 35 avenue Carnot to take samples.525 The two men were soon overcome by fumes and they died shortly after being rescued by firemen from the City of Paris (Cachan’s firemen were unable to render assistance because they did not have gas masks). Residents had suspected that the Sueur tannery, located on route d’Orléans at Cachan and directly connected to the sewer under avenue Carnot, was the source of the fumes, and their suspicions were vindicated by the Prefecture’s investigation of the deaths. It found that the Sueur tannery was discharging extremely high levels of untreated toxic substances into the sewer, most notably hydrogen sulphide. The presence of the latter at a high level caused the deaths of the workers. Nine years later, Front rouge complained that the Sueur tannery continued to discharge acids into the sewer despite the deaths and subsequent protests from residents.526 The deadly fumes continued to affect residents living on avenue Carnot and the municipality was yet to solve the problem. In true communist style, Front rouge called for inhabitants and shopkeepers to form an action committee to solve the problem, a pointer to the way in which the PCF increased its support in Cachan under the Popular Front by mobilising Cachan’s residents around local issues.

The Mal-lotis of Cachan

I have not painted as grim a picture of the urban habitat of Cachan as I have of Arcueil, a result that may in part be attributable to the extensive amount of material that

524 Le Socialiste de la banlieue sud: Organe mensuel des sections du canton de Villejuif, Nouvelle Série, no.1, December 1937; AD94 36J28, Parti Communiste Français, Section de Cachan, “La Population Cachanaise doit avoir la parole”, tract. The latter claimed that in Cachan the Saunier battery factory polluted the Lumières quarter, while the chimneys of the large laundries also belched pollution. 525 AN F713015, Dossier on 1924, reports and press clippings. “Rapport: Inspection Générale et s/Inspection Générale des Transports, Préfecture de la Seine,” 22 September 1924.

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Arcueil’s communal archives, held at the Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne, furnished me on interwar housing in Arcueil. Nevertheless, Cachan suffered as acutely as Arcueil from the mal-lotis problem. In Cachan on the eve of separation there were some areas of private housing and industry that were in good condition, something in the vicinity of 80 hectares, beyond which there were new lotissements in need of urgent works.527 The spread of lotissements dates from around 1900 when workers began to visit Cachan in the summer and, finding it agreeable, purchased their plot à bon marché and then gradually built their houses, maisonnettes and hovels.528 However, they had constructed their houses on unsuitable topography in lotissements that were without any proper roads and whose only means of access to the outside world was on dismal paths. When the winter rains arrived, these working-class homeowners soon found that they lived in the midst of a quagmire. To make matters worse, the walk to school for their children was long, there was no public lighting, they went without utilities such as gas and water, and the provision of garbage collection was difficult. This was the case with the Coteau, at one time probably the most deprived area of Cachan. The Coteau was, in general, settled via the purchase of individual plots sold before the law of 1924, and therefore exempt from the obligations it placed on developers, rather than as lotissements.529 According to Cachan’s moderate municipality this lead to “l’édification de maisons isolées construites selon la fantaisie de chacun, sans qu’aucun règlement n’ait pu intervenir.”530 From the turn of century modest houses, often without authorisation, multiplied along rue des Vignes, boulevard de la Vanne, and route de L’Hay in the Coteau, with footpaths only being added later.531 The result was an anarchical pattern of construction since inhabitants were allowed to construct, or anyway constructed without authorisation, housing which took no account of “des règles de l’hygiène et de l’urbanisme” and which lacked any overall plan.532 Walking to the centre of town necessitated long detours, while the narrow paths that

526 Front rouge, 29 July 1933. 527 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, of an unsigned and undated report which refers to “our comrades” of the “section d’Arcueil” who were rendering good direction to the municipality, presumably the Arcueil branch of the PCF since the mayor prior to partition was communist. 528 For the situation with regard to lotissements in Cachan see L’Avenir de Cachan, Organe de la section de Cachan du Parti Socialiste SFIO, 3rd year, new series no. 4 (no date); AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, page 9 of report “our comrades.” 529 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 72. 530 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 72. 531 Cercle du Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, pp. 76-82.

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connected the assorted constructions of the Coteau became muddy with the slightest rain.533 In the words of local historian and socialist politician Louis Léon Veyssière, residents of the Coteau inhabited a “quartier sans voies d’accès pratiques, sans viabilité et à peu près impraticable dans les saisons pluvieuses, en raison de la nature argileuse du sol.”534 By the 1930s, the Coteau was well populated but had expanded more rapidly than the commune’s resources, with the result that its needs could not always be immediately satisfied by the municipal budget.535 Just like its predecessor the commune of Arcueil-Cachan, the commune of Cachan was hamstrung in its efforts to ameliorate living conditions in the Coteau as a consequence of legal obstacles that prevented it from improving the condition of the boulevard de la Vanne, the main thoroughfare of the Coteau.536 Running alongside the boulevard was the underground aqueduct of the Vanne, and both the aqueduct and the boulevard were the property of the City of Paris. The latter prohibited the rectification of the boulevard on the pretext of protecting the aqueduct from the deterioration that would result should the boulevard be subject to greater use, as would inevitably be the case if it became a practicable thoroughfare. By obstruction and injunction, and in order to discourage more people from moving into the area, the City of Paris frustrated all efforts by successive municipal councils to improve the appalling living conditions of residents living near the aqueduct. The City even prohibited the movement of cars on Boulevard de la Vanne, fearing it would add to the deterioration of the aqueduct. The Coteau also presented a particular problem. Its steeply sloping terrain and ad hoc settlement patterns made it difficult to connect with the existing municipal water supply.537 Some of its thoroughfares were small roads or very narrow pathways for the most part with a strong incline, and this meant that for certain routes connection to town water remained impossible even in 1935. The problems of the Coteau persisted, therefore, well into the 1930s. Writing in 1934, Le Socialiste described the situation around the Coteau and rue des Vignes as deplorable, with a thick level of mud severely restricting movement throughout the area

532 La Voix Républicaine de la Banlieue Sud, no. 3 April 1937. 533 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, pp. 76-82. 534 Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 141. 535 Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, pp. 76-82. 536 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, Dossier: Projet de Séparation Arcueil-Cachan 1911-1914, Report to the municipal council on separation, pp. 3-4; La Voix républicaine de la banlieue sud, no. 3 April 1937; Cercle du Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, pp. 76-82. 537 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 72-73. 134 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

and making it dangerous for inhabitants to leave and enter their houses. It reported:

Leur situation est peu enviable…ce quartier est complètement délaissé, puisque inaccessible, par les fournisseurs, charbonnier, boulanger, etc…et chose plus grave en cas de sinistre ou d’accidents, docteurs et pompiers ne pouvaient y accéder qu’avec difficulté et une perte de temps regrettable.538

According to Le Socialiste, there remained many houses built from light and flammable material that posed great dangers to their occupants. One house burnt down when help from the fireman came too late, due in part to the fact that the mud impeded access.539 Local residents petitioned the mayor to improve this situation. L’Avenir de Cachan, the organ of the Cachan branch of the SFIO, asserted that, in view of its lack of any road surfacing, the Boulevard de la Vanne was referred to as the “boulevard de la terre glaise.”540 L’Avenir de Cachan derided the municipality which, deprived of the means to the fix situation by the City of Paris which continued to resist any improvements, contented itself with the paving of a pathway that was buried in clay soon after. “La situation des habitants de ce quartier manquait de charmes”, lamented L’Avenir de Cachan, “beaucoup d’entre eux étaient obligés, le matin, de changer de chaussures à la gare pour arriver propres sur le lieu de leur travail.”541 The Radical press also gave similar accounts of conditions in the Coteau during the 1930s. “La viabilité?” wrote Le Régional, “Á trois kilomètres de Paris le Coteau est plus déshérité à cet égard que les villages les moins fréquentés de l’Auvergne.”542 To make matters worse the absence of any school in the Coteau meant that children had to walk “des kilomètres par les temps les plus incléments, les pieds dans la boue pour ne pas être en marge de la loi sur l’instruction obligatoire.”543 However, by April 1937 the Radical-Socialist organ La Voix républicaine de la banlieue sud was sounding a more optimistic note, claiming that finally an appreciable amelioration was in sight for what had up to this point been the quarter in Cachan most deprived of infrastructure and services.544 As Chapters 5 and 6 indicate, in the meantime the Left had made inroads in Cachan by being attentive to the

538 Le Socialiste, January 1934. 539 Le Socialiste, January 1934. 540 L’Avenir de Cachan, 3rd year, new series no. 4 (no date). 541 L’Avenir de Cachan, 3rd year, new series no. 4 (no date). 542 Le Régional, Organe de rénovation républicaine pour la défense des intérêts généraux de Gentilly, Arcueil, Cachan, L’Hay, Fresnes, Chevilly, Rungis, bi-monthly, 1st year, no. 1, 15 March 1935. 543 Le Régional, no. 1, 15 March 1935. 544 La Voix Républicaine, no. 3 April 1937. 135 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

concerns of the inhabitants of the Coteau. Beyond the Coteau were the mal-lotis of Cachan’s defective lotissements. In 1935 they included residents of the lotissement Berry, encompassing the rue de la Somme, rue de Lorraine, rue des Lilas and part of avenue de Chateaubriand in the new quarter of the Pont Royal, without water or gas, amounting to around 900 metres which had been left for lotissement residents to connect.545 The growth of lotissements in the Grange-Ory quarter presented Cachan’s municipal government with similar problems. In 1929, Le Moniteur reported that about 80 homeowners had moved into villas that were being built in the Grange-Ory and which encroached upon market gardens, potentially bringing with them the same problems found elsewhere in the Paris region with regard to lotissements.546 According to Le Moniteur, houses were sinking into the mud and basements were being flooded with no way of remedying the situation, while pedestrians sank up to their ankles in mud and motor vehicles became bogged up to 20 centimetres deep. A retaining wall that separated the houses from the lower grounds had moved and was deteriorating due to the fact that there were no escape holes for the build-up of water during rains or to allow to gas escape, creating the potential for an explosion. Houses lacked a sewerage system, and instead had their own small cesspit which, having not been emptied for four years, had infiltrated into the soil and spread with rains, giving the surrounding land a nauseating odour. While furious homeowners had formed a syndicat in order to have the situation rectified, urgent repairs needed to the rue de la Grange-Ory were being delayed because ten out of the 80 homeowners refused to contribute to the cost of fixing the road. According to Le Moniteur547, the homeowners were people of modest means for whom the collapse or mandatory demolition of their houses would lead to economic ruin. Some of the worst affected faced a repair bill of 25 000 francs, far beyond their means. This situation had arisen despite the fact that the housing development at Grange-Ory had received all the necessary administrative authorisations and therefore should have been built in accordance with recent laws passed to ensure the provision of infrastructure. Le Moniteur therefore viewed the public authorities as having a role in this situation as they had failed to ensure that there was a strict application of the 1919

545 Le Socialiste, 13 April 1935. 546 See Le Moniteur, 6 April & 11 May 1929. 547 Le Moniteur, 6 April & 11 May 1929.

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and 1924 law regarding lotissements. For its part, at a public meeting in the Town Hall attended by affected residents the municipality pledged to pursue all legal means to rectify the situation, through the strict application of the laws of 1919 and 1924 on lotissements, and by pressuring the relevant public authorities to act. Auguste Gratien, the local Radical-Socialist deputy and one of the Conseil Général representing the canton of Villejuif also took up the issue. The willingness of conservative, anticommunist local and regional politicians to take up the concerns of the Grange-Ory mal-lotis may have helped to curb discontent that could easily have fed into support for the PCF.

137 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

Deprivation, Disappointment, and Discontent in Arcueil and Cachan: Communist Suburbs in the Making?

The deterioration of the Bièvre outlined in Section 2 of this chapter is a metaphor for how and why the dream of a rustic existence beyond the fetid, overcrowded tenements of Paris soon turned sour for blue and white-collar workers in Arcueil and Cachan. The rapid, unplanned and unregulated growth of both Arcueil and Cachan left the two suburbs struggling under the weight of the new arrivals. A situation developed where the local council struggled to provide many residents with the infrastructure necessary to ensure basic services such as the removal of waste water and rubbish, the provision of clean drinking water, gas, of practicable roads and footpaths, and of street lighting. The resulting discomfort was exacerbated by the prevalence of diseases such as tuberculosis that no doubt thrived in the extremely unsanitary conditions that prevailed throughout much of Arcueil and Cachan. The misery of local residents was compounded by the deleterious effects of industrial pollution, especially in the case of Arcueil where the population was often haphazardly intermingled with industry. An earlier and more intense industrialisation and a denser population mad these problems worse in Arcueil. In turn, the PCF was adept in its political exploitation of the ills of workers living in Arcueil and Cachan which could easily be depicted as springing from bourgeois and governmental neglect, indifference and contempt. Section 2 of this chapter paints a picture of suburban working-class misery, and consequently dissatisfaction, in Arcueil and Cachan. In doing so it echoes other local studies that have demonstrated that the plight of working-class in the Seine suburbs was fundamental to the rise of a communist banlieue rouge. A key aspect of working-class discontent in the suburbs was the housing crisis, and in particular the prevalence of mal- lotis. Veritable shantytowns were created by the unregulated spread of lotissements throughout Arcueil and Cachan and the anarchic multiplication of flimsily constructed houses in areas such as Cachan’s Coteau. With their bourgeois dreams of home ownership bitterly disappointed, mal-lotis found that even after the central government had come to their aid they still had to contribute funds of their own to the provision of what would be regarded by today’s suburban inhabitants as essential services. Chapters 5 and 6 single out the mal-lotis as a particular source of support for the PCF in both communes, with their presence felt in all three electoral sections of Arcueil. The tenements that were concentrated in the industrial areas and along the main roads of the

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Laplace, and in the town centre, were largely populated by workers and it is reasonable to conclude that many of them vented their discontent at their living conditions by voting communist. Section 2 of this chapter indicates that by constructing a cité-jardin in Arcueil with a majority working-class population the Department of the Seine created a fertile breeding ground for communism. It did this by concentrating a significant number of large, and therefore generally poor, families together in a situation where their expectations of dramatically improved living conditions, for which they paid relatively high rents, were gravely disappointed. Indifference to the concerns of cité- jardin inhabitants by the authorities, and in particular the Radical municipality, helped to drive them into the arms of a PCF that was ever mindful of their plight. In contrast to Arcueil, Kerleroux’s study of the cité-jardin of Cachan does not indicate any complaints from inhabitants as to the lack of municipal sanitation services, epidemics of disease or structural problems with the housing. This may explain why the PCF was unable to gain the same level of support in the cité-jardin of Cachan despite a social composition that was in the majority working-class and despite feelings of isolation.548 Whilst at least one family living in the cité-jardin was active in the PCF, the Syndicat de défense des chefs de familles nombreuses de la cité-jardin was administered by non-communists. The Syndicat was a resolute defender of tenant interests and other associations were formed under its guidance. Moreover, Cachan’s moderate municipality was assiduous in its attentions to the cité-jardin. It attempted to overcome the latter’s isolation by installing public telephones and protected the health of its residents by opening a community clinic in the cité. These actions were probably influenced by the fact that at least four municipal councillors from Cachan’s centre-right municipality were resident in the cité- jardin.549

3. CONCLUSIONS

Many of Arcueil and Cachan’s workers lived in close proximity to the city of Paris and many of them would have been employed in the city or travelled through it to reach their place of work. They therefore would have been reminded on a daily basis of the gap between their living conditions and the lives led by the bourgeoisie of Paris. Moreover, through their newspapers and electoral propaganda the PCF and the SFIO

548 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan”, pp. 94, 101. 549 Kerleroux, “Cité-jardin de Cachan,” p. 77.

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highlighted the poor living conditions of suburban workers but located their cause in terms of class analysis. Under such circumstances, it would not be difficult for workers to see their physical isolation from the city as indicative of their social isolation, and ultimately as a rejection on the part of bourgeois society and the state that represented it. Such a view could only have found support in the bureaucratic inertia or indifference toward the problems faced by working-class residents, a situation particularly evident with regard to Arcueil. This contrasted with a PCF, and in Arcueil a communist municipality, that was assiduous in its response to the complaints of the local working class regarding their appalling living conditions and the poor health outcomes they engendered. Ideological and social alienation coincided with a physical alienation of the working class in suburbs such as Arcueil and Cachan. Chapters 4 and 5 indicate that during the interwar years the PCF was a more significant political force in Arcueil than in Cachan. Arcueil had a strong heritage of working-class radicalism associated with its long-established quarry industry and it much more industrialised than Cachan. Industrialisation brought an ever-increasing number workers too Arcueil, among them metalworkers, a group of workers with well- documented communist sympathies. As was the case for many Seine suburbs, the interwar housing crisis and related problems in the provision of communal infrastructure created the preconditions for communist hegemony in Arcueil and Cachan. The defects in the urban habitat were generally worse in Arcueil where support for the PCF was strongest in the two electoral sections with the most acute problems of housing and urban habitat. Nevertheless, life was not easy for many residents of Cachan and there was a significant presence of mal-lotis, a common predictor of communist support, in districts such as the Grange-Ory and the Coteau. However, in Cachan problems with local housing and infrastructure initially played into the hands of the anti-Marxist separatists. Before World War I, many inhabitants of the Coteau in Cachan were attracted to the separatist arguments of the councillors from the Cachan electoral section in the belief that with their own municipality they would have more success persuading the City of Paris to attend to the problems of the Boulevarde de la Vanne.550 The separatist campaign was re-born after the war in part because many Coteau residents felt their interests were being neglected by an Arcueil-centred municipal

550 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, Dossier: Projet de Séparation Arcueil-Cachan 1911-1914, Report to the Council on Separation, pp. 3-4. 140 The Origins of Communist Hegemony I

administration.551 Furthermore, I argue in Chapter 6 that the advance of communism was initially constrained by the attention Cachan’s moderate municipality gave to the needs of the mal-lotis but that as the problems of the Coteau and of Cachan’s mal-lotis endured well into the 1930s, so support for the PCF grew. Tyler Stovall has demonstrated how PCF’s embrace of issues relating to the living conditions of suburban workers was fundamental to the rise of a communist Red Belt. Without this focus and without the efficient and effective administration that the PCF provided to the municipalities it administered, the PCF could never have built its hegemony in the Paris suburbs. Nevertheless, the PCF was not unique in its focus on improving the living conditions of workers in the Paris suburbs. Anticommunist regional newspapers such as the Banlieue de Paris and Le Moniteur were replete with accounts of the state of the Bièvre or problems of mal-lotis, and with criticisms of the central authorities for allowing these problems to arise or for being tardy in rectifying them. However, where the PCF’s opponents saw bureaucratic inefficiency or indifference, the communists saw a corollary of a state that was an instrument of the bourgeoisie and therefore cared little for the lives of workers. In addition to the physiognomy of Arcueil and Cachan and the material living conditions of its inhabitants, other socio-economic and politico-cultural factors created the pre- conditions for a communist bastion. The socio-professional structure of the populations of Arcueil and Cachan and the impact this had on local politics is one such factor, as is made clear by the next chapter.

551 Veyssière, Arcueil-Cachan, p.141.

141

4. The Origins of Communist Hegemony II: The Socio- Economic Substructure of Local Politics in Arcueil and Cachan

The discussion in Chapter 2 of the examples of Bobigny, a commuter suburb, Saint-Denis, with its weak presence of mal-lotis, and Aubervilliers, where the PCF failed to gain control of municipal government despite overwhelmingly miserable living conditions, indicated that a communist suburb need not be industrialised or dominated by mal-lotis and that misery alone did not guarantee dominance by the PCF. There is, however, one characteristic of communist suburbs that stands out and that is the overwhelming presence of wage-earners, and in particular of manual workers. In fact the demographic dominance by wage-earners, and more particularly by manual workers, can be regarded as a precondition for communist hegemony in the suburbs of Paris. With this in mind, in the chapter that follows analyses the socio-professional character of Arcueil and Cachan and the way which the PCF and its opponents adapted to and reflected this character. Arguably, a comparison of the socio-professional structure of the electorates of Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar and postwar period indicates that Arcueil was, in sociological terms, more predisposed toward support for the PCF but that by the mid- 1930s the social differences were not sufficient to disqualify Cachan as a potential communist bastion. This chapter demonstrates that, compared to their main opponents, the PCF in both Arcueil and Cachan was overwhelmingly a party of the working class, and more particularly of manual workers. As a consequence, the PCF rapidly emerged as an electoral force in both Arcueil and Cachan. However, my analysis also indicates that as the PCF solidified its roots in Arcueil it was more successful in expanding its appeal beyond its core support base of manual workers to other ‘exploited’ groups. By contrast, the PCF in Cachan retained a narrower proletarian support base in a suburb that remained a little more bourgeois than Arcueil, while the leadership and militant base of the party in Cachan was less stable. The end result was the greater success of the PCF in Arcueil during the interwar period, which in turn laid the foundations for a postwar communist counter-community. To begin with, Section 1 uses archival sources to depict Arcueil and Cachan as contemporaries (on both the Left and Right) saw them just before they became two 142 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

separate communes – Arcueil as a working-class suburb and Cachan as more petty- bourgeois. Section 2 analyses French male heads of households from the 1936 census of Arcueil and Cachan. My premise for analysing French male heads of households was to sample the equivalent of a least half of the enrolled voters in Arcueil and Cachan in 1936. In view of the fact that only adult male French citizens had the vote during the interwar period, I have assumed that male heads of households would have been on the voting rolls. I was unable to analyse the electoral rolls for Arcueil and Cachan during the 1930s because they are not microfilmed. I chose 1936 because it was at this point, during the Popular Front, that interwar support for the PCF peaked. For the postwar period, I have analysed the 1954 census, focusing on French heads of households in order to be consistent with my analysis of the 1936 data. I chose 1954 because this was the only year within the period of the Fourth Republic for there was a published analysis of a census of Arcueil and Cachan. Section 3 is an analysis of the occupations of candidates fielded by the PCF and its main rivals in municipal elections for Arcueil and Cachan during the critical interwar period. My analysis therefore comprehends both members and sympathisers alike, and as such gives a reasonable idea of what social groups joined, supported or sympathised with the different political parties and what socio-economic groups each political grouping attempted to enlist. In order to flesh out this analysis, I will also give brief biographies of the party leaders, mayors, assistant mayors and other major party figures from main political groupings in Arcueil and Cachan. These biographies help to underline the sociological differences between them while also providing an important background to the early implantation of communism as analysed in Chapters 5 and 6. Before moving on to a socio-economic analysis of Arcueil and Cachan and of the main interwar political groupings in these two communes I will outline the occupational categories I devised for my analysis of the 1936 census of Arcueil and Cachan and of the candidates fielded in the interwar municipal elections.

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1. SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL CATEGORIES

TABLE 4.1 - SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL CATEGORIES USED FOR ANALYSIS OF 1936 CENSUS & OF CANDIDATES IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

Category Description

A1 – Manual Workers Skilled, semi/unskilled manual occupations, including foremen, those employed in traditional artisanal industries, building industry, factory and railway workers.

A2 – Service Workers An amorphous category comprising service sector workers of varying skills, from domestics, to taxi drivers, deliverymen, gardeners, chauffeurs, council workers and waiters.

A3 – White Collar Workers White-collar occupations in retail, commerce, finance and public administration, including: employés, public servants (fonctionnaires), clerks, shop assistants, salesmen, PTT employees and the like.

B – Proprietors Industrialists, shopkeepers, merchants, wholesalers, master artisans with their own workshop/shop, landlords and other persons of private or independent means (rentiers).

C – Professions & Management Liberal professions, cadres, company directors, middle and upper level management.

D – Others The remaining few occupations not captured by categories A-D, including retirees whose former profession was not stated. It also includes occupations that were illegible or left blank.

The A group of categories (A1, A2 and A3) encompasses those men with occupations who were not self-employed or of independent means but instead were wage-earning employees in both the private and public sectors and were solely dependent on their employer for their wages. Workers in category A1 (Manual Workers) generally produced commodities or were part of a production process.552

552 In the section on the socio-professional analysis of candidates fielded in the municipal elections, I have included number of workers who are described rather vaguely as artisans syndiqués in the PCF candidate lists which suggests to me that such candidates worked as manual workers in an artisanal occupation (for example shoemaking) but were not self-employed master artisans. 144 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Category A2 includes workers in the burgeoning service sector which expanded concomitantly with the development of industry as growing incomes fuelled a greater demand for services. Category A3 includes archetypal white-collar occupations, office and desk-bound clerical jobs and occupations in the commercial sector that entailed working as a sales agent or assisting in the sale of products or services to customers/clients. This group was the essential motor of the tertiary sector and although it often performed fairly mundane tasks, its social status tended to be a little higher than that of manual and service workers. However, this was a very diverse group and within it the status of occupations varied enormously. There was little that separated lowly clerks or shop assistants from manual or service workers, while senior public servants would possibly have regarded themselves as in the same social class as professionals. While as a whole Category A3 could be regarded as less likely to vote communist, many white-collar workers felt as exploited as their blue-collar counterparts and for this and other reasons voted communist. The next three categories exclude wage-earning employees. They include occupations such as landlords, liberal professionals with their own business or salaried, and middle and upper managers working in private companies or public administration. Category B encompasses independent proprietors, that is people living off an independent source of income or who made an independent living from trade and commerce. This is a diverse group because it includes master artisans, small shopkeepers and businessmen, industrialists and rentiers, occupations whose interests were not always the same. The interest of a small shopkeeper or master artisan may not have accorded with that of a major industrialist who may have been their competitor or a rentier who may have been their landlord. Category C captures professional occupations that required a tertiary qualification or equivalent and those occupations with an equally highly regarded social status, such as senior executives of companies. While this category tended to be conservative, some professionals, such as teachers, had a reputation for radicalism. Category D is a catchall category that includes those occupations that could not easily be classified into the other categories, for example artistic professions, students and a small number engaged in primary industry, retirees who did not state their former occupation, and incidences where an occupation was left blank or was illegible.

145 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

2. A SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS OF ARCUEIL AND CACHAN

In the lead-up to the partition of Arcueil-Cachan into two separate communes both the Left, which opposed partition, and the Right, which supported it, were in agreement on one thing, that Arcueil and Cachan were quite different sociologically. Monsieur Andrigné, commissioned by the Prefect to report on partition, concluded that separation was natural not only on a geographical basis but also on a social basis:

Au-delà des usines [of Arcueil], une population flottante, médiocrement attachée au sol, d’en déça [in the territory of Cachan], un plus grand nombre des petits patrons, de propriétaires, d’ouvriers épargnants, acquéreurs de lopins de terre dont le prix a rapidement progressé.553

Andrigné’s report states that the essentially petit-bourgeois inhabitants of Cachan justly wanted to escape the influence of the itinerant, proletarian inhabitants of Arcueil whose embrace of ‘communism’ threatened to stifle their liberty.554 A report written in support of partition by Cachan’s councillors echoed Andrigné’s sentiments. It claimed that the absence of any factories within Cachan meant that its inhabitants were imbued with a particularist sentiment, unlike the essentially itinerant population of industrialised Arcueil:

En tout temps, CACHAN a eu une population très stable, très attachée à son sol. Les habitants ont toujours manifesté par leurs votes les idées d’ordre et de progrès nécessaires à la prospérité de leur petit pays… Il en résulte une différence de mentalité profonde entre les 2 sections. Cette différence, déjà très accentuée en 1914 lors de la première demande en séparation, n’a fait que s’exaspérer par la naissance du communisme sur le territoire de la 1e section d’Arcueil. 555

According to the Cachan councillors, the sociological differences between Arcueil and Cachan engendered different political behaviour in the two agglomerations, namely the support given by Arcueil to ‘communist’ ideas in contrast to Cachan’s conservatism.

553 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Separation 1920-1923. July 1921, Report of M. Andrigné on the separation of Arcueil-Cachan, p. 7. 554 Report of M. Andrigné on the separation of Arcueil-Cachan, p. 7. 555 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, “‘Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes’”, October 1921, pp. 3-4, 18. 146 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

L’Humanité reached essentially the same conclusion. “Ils voteraient des deux mains la séparation, car ils sont sûrs que la population essentiellement ouvrière d’Arcueil assurait l’élection constante d’un conseil municipal ouvrier – tandis que les petits bourgeois de Cachan ne voteront jamais pour eux!”556 However, L’Humanité was predicably more sympathetic to the “essentiellement ouvrière” population of Arcueil than the “petit bourgeois” who dominated Cachan.557 It concluded that the partition into two communes was a reaction of the “les bourgeois de Cachan” against “les prolétaires d’Arcueil” who had the audacity to elect a communist administration.558 A communist tract from 1922 interpreted the influx of new arrivals in Arcueil rather differently than supporters of partition. It noted that the recent war had brought about great upheavals in the commune and profound transformations, as it had done elsewhere.559 According to the tract “un grand nombre d’habitants nouveaux sont venus se fixer dans notre commune” and these new inhabitants were not concerned with the “vieilles querelles” and “histoires de clocher” of the prewar period which had animated Cachan’s drive for independence. The socialists echoed the analysis of the communists. In the SFIO newspaper L’Avenir de Cachan, Ch. Grand, an opponent of separation, also claimed that there was a sociological basis to the partition of Arcueil-Cachan.560 According to his account, Cachan developed slowly, with blanchisseurs, small shopkeepers and some Parisian employés forming the basis of the population, groups that had moderate opinions. Arcueil on the other hand experienced a more rapid industrial development and the working class formed a more important element in the population which consequently had more ‘advanced’ opinions. The above contemporaneous analyses of the social composition of Arcueil and Cachan have obvious inherent biases, with the more conservative sources attempting to prove Cachan’s respectability and socialist and communist sources to underscore Arcueil proletarian roots. Nevertheless, both camps essentially agree in their analysis of the social composition of Arcueil and Cachan at the time of partition. Support for their analysis can be found elsewhere, for example according to Michel Winock the most frequently represented professions in the Listes nominatives of the interwar period in

556 L’Humanité, 22 May 1921. 557 L’Humanité, 22 May 1921. 558 L’Humanité, 9 November 1922. 559 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, Parti Communiste – Section d’Arcueil-Cachan, “En face de la Séparation”, circa 1922. 560 L’Avenir de Cachan, 3rd year, new series no. 4 (no date). 147 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Arcueil were those professions of the mechanical and metallurgical industries such as fitters, turners, mechanics, sheet-metal workers, storemen, packers, machine operators and unskilled labourers.561 In addition, there were well-established manual occupations in the commune such as printers, bookbinders, brochure makers, brewery and biscuit factory workers, and laundry and dye workers. Notwithstanding the differences between Arcueil and Cachan at the moment of partition, both suburbs underwent a rapid growth in population during the interwar period. Moreover, by the mid-1920s the growth in Cachan’s population was more rapid than that of Arcueil and extended further into the 1930s. There was, therefore, plenty of scope for more workers to move to Cachan in the intervening period between partition and the outbreak of World War II. There is documentary evidence that Cachan underwent a proletarianisation as a consequence of its growth in population - by the early 1930s L’Illustration was describing Cachan as “…plus ouvrière qu’aisée et aux faibles moyens financiers.”562 It is in order to ascertain to what extent the sociological aspect of the two suburbs had changed that I will now turn to a comparative socio-economic analysis of the 1936 census data for Arcueil and Cachan.

A Socio-professional Analysis of the 1936 Census of Arcueil and Cachan

The socio-professional analysis that follows is based on a sample of male heads of households who are listed in the 1936 census of Arcueil and Cachan as French citizens and should therefore have been entitled to vote. The 2288 male heads of households sampled in Arcueil amount to 52.7% of enrolled voters in this commune for the 1936 legislative elections, while the 2008 sampled for Cachan amount to 54% of the voters enrolled in this commune in the 1936 legislative elections. In the case of Arcueil my random sample was of all streets listed from A to C, E to P and T to V in the Listes nominatives. In the case of Cachan I sampled all streets listed from A to C, under G and from T to V in the Listes nominatives. This enabled me to sample whole streets but to do so in a way that ensured all electoral sections in Arcueil and all districts of Cachan were equally sampled in a random fashion. The alternative of sampling every second French male household head would have been much more complex and I feel more prone to error. The data derived from the Listes nominatives was entered into a

561 Winock, “Arcueil la rouge”, p. 88. 562 Quoted in Cercle de Cartophilie, Cachan: Mon village, p. 23.

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Microsoft SPSS database that I created and I used this database to generate the percentages that follow for the socio-professional groups in Arcueil and Cachan.

TABLE 4.2 - HEADS OF HOUSEHOLDS 1936: SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL BREAKDOWN OF ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Male Heads of Households 1936 Sample Totals: Arcueil 2288 - Cachan 2008

Arcueil Cachan

A1 – Manual Workers 46.0% 41.6%

A2 – Service Sector Workers 13.9% 12.3%

A3 – White-Collar Workers 12.4% 17.7%

Total A – Wage-earners 72.3% 71.6%

B – Proprietors 8.9% 10.6%

C – Professionals 5.1% 6.2%

D – Other 13.7% 11.6%

Of which:

Occupation left blank 8% 1.1%

Sans-profession 2.4% 5.1%

Census entry illegible 0.9% 0.6%

SOURCE: Listes nominatives d’Arcueil 1936 & Listes nominatives de Cachan 1936.

The census analysis of Arcueil and Cachan in Table 4.2 above suggests that Cachan underwent a degree of proletarianisation after the partition of Arcueil-Cachan into two communes. With manual workers making up 41.6% of the male heads of households, and together with service workers accounting for 53.9%, Cachan can be considered a working-class suburb in a way that it was not at the time of separation. However, with 5.1% more manual workers among its heads of households and with this group and service workers making up 59.9%, Arcueil remained the more proletarian suburb. Cachan retained its petty-bourgeois aspect vis-à-vis Arcueil with 5.3% more white-collar workers and almost 2% more proprietors, those of independent means, largely owing to the fact that 2.1% of Cachan’s sample were patrons blanchisseurs compared with 0.3% in Arcueil. Cachan also had slightly more professionals. Two of the most frequently occurring occupations have been associated with support for 149 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

communism, namely factory operatives who made up 6.2% of the sample in Arcueil and 3.9% in Cachan, and mechanics (mécaniciens) at 4.8% and 3.9% respectively. Chauffeurs were the most significant occupation among service workers in both communes and again were higher in Arcueil (5.5%) than Cachan (4.0%). At 8.6% in Arcueil and 8.2% in Cachan, employés were not only the most frequently occurring white-collar occupation but also the most frequently occurring occupation overall. In so far as Category D is concerned, a significant number of entries in Arcueil’s 1936 census were left blank. Often they were inhabitants of Arcueil’s tenements and many had their birthplace recorded as Algeria. It may be that many of these were marginally employed or temporarily unemployed workers. Similarly, many of those listed as sans-profession may have been unemployed workers. This means that the figures for manual and service workers, and for wage earners in general, may have been higher both suburbs, and in particular for Arcueil. In any case, at 72.3% the total number of Category A wage-earners in Arcueil was only 0.7% higher than Cachan. In terms of their socio-economic structure, both suburbs can be seen as potential communist bastions, however Arcueil, exhibited a greater predisposition toward communism owing to the greater presence of manual and, to a lesser extent, service workers in the suburb. When we move on to the postwar period, we will find that by 1954 the differences narrowed yet again but Arcueil maintained its more proletarian aspect. With the exception of four male heads of households563, the sample used for the socio-professional analysis of Arcueil’s electoral section is the same as that used for Arcueil as a whole that I have outlined above. The size of the samples used for all three electoral sections were almost exactly in proportion to their share of Arcueil’s 1936 electorate as indicated in Table 5.3 in Chapter 5. In the case of the Centre the sample used amounted to 35.8% of the total sample for Arcueil (compared with the Centre’s share of Arcueil’s enrolled voters which stood at 36.2% in 1936), in the case of Laplace it amounted to 37.4% (compared with Laplace’s 36.9% share of the enrolled voters in 1936) and the Cité-Aqueduc it amounted to 26.8% (compared with the Cité-Aqueduc’s 26.9% share of the enrolled voters in 1936).

563 At 2284 in total, the sample used to analyse Arcueil’s electoral sections was four fewer than that used for Arcueil as a whole. This is because in my analysis of Arcueil as a whole four heads of households were sampled from impasse Marie Louise and I could not ascertain in which section this street was located. 150 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

TABLE 4.3 - HEADS OF HOUSEHOLDS 1936: SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL BREAKDOWN OF ARCUEIL’S ELECTORAL SECTIONS

Male Heads of Households 1936 Arcueil Electoral Sections Sample Totals: Centre 818 – Laplace 854 - Cité-Aqueduc 612

Centre Laplace Cité-Aqueduc

A1 – Manual Workers 41.6% 49.3% 47.2%

A2 – Service Sector Workers 14.8% 12.6% 14.4%

A3 – White-Collar Workers 13.7% 12.1% 11.1%

Total A – Wage-earners 70.1% 74.0% 72.7%

B – Proprietors 8.8% 9.7% 8.0%

C – Professionals 6.8% 3.5% 5.1%

D – Other 14.3% 12.6% 14.2%

SOURCE: Listes nominatives d’Arcueil 1936.

If we compare the socio-professional analysis of the different electoral sections outlined in Table 4.3 we find that all sections are composed overwhelming of wage- earners, with Laplace and Cité-Aqueduc above the overall Arcueil total and the Centre slightly below. The Centre, which Chapter 5 demonstrates was the most conservative voting electoral section during the interwar period, also had a notably lower population of manual workers when compared to the Laplace and Cité-Aqueduc sections. While the Centre had the highest population of service workers, it also had the highest population of proprietors and professionals. However, if occupational status was the main determinant of voting one would expect Laplace to be the most ‘red’ electoral section, since not only did it have the highest proportion of wage-earners, it was also home to the greatest number of manual workers and by far the lowest proportion of professionals. Chapter 5 indicates that before the creation of the Cité-Aqueduc section in 1932, Laplace was indeed a bastion of support for the PCF. While it remained that way after 1932, the Cité-Aqueduc section emerged as by far the strongest for the PCF. Though Laplace had a slighter larger population of manual workers, there were more service workers in the Cité-Aqueduc, and these two groups added together that made up over 61% of the sample in both sections. While there was a higher white-collar population in Laplace, there was a larger professional population in the Cité-Aqueduc.

151 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Therefore while socio-economic structure was an important determinant in the creation and maintenance of communist hegemony, it was not the sole or central determinant. As we have seen in Chapter 3 discontent abounded in the Cité-Aqueduc during the interwar period. Chapter 5 demonstrates how this translated into electoral success for the communists, while Chapter 6 indicates how the PCF successfully exploited and channelled the discontent not only of the cité-jardin residents in Arcueil but also of other disaffected groups who inhabited the suburb.

A Socio-professional Analysis of the 1954 Census of Arcueil and Cachan

TABLE 4.4 - HEADS OF HOUSEHOLDS 1954: SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL BREAKDOWN OF ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Male Heads of Households 1954 Totals: Arcueil 6183 – Cachan 5340

Arcueil Cachan

Agricultural sector 0.2% 0.2%

Patrons – Industry & Commerce 8.7% 9.8%

of which: Petits Patrons 7.7% 8.3%

Liberal Professions/Cadres Supérieurs 3.3% 4.1%

Cadres Moyens 7.0% 9.2%

Employés 11.0% 12.3%

Foremen/Skilled Workers 26.5% 25.0%

Specialist Workers/Operatives/Other Workers 17.9% 14.9%

Service Personnel 3.9% 3.7%

Other Categories 4.0% 2.5%

of which: Army/Police 2.7% 2.1%

Working 82.5% 81.3%

No Occupation 17.5% 18.7%

SOURCE: INSEE, Recensement Générale de la Population de Mai 1954, Département de la Seine, pp. 134-135, 137-138.

152 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

The analysis above in Table 4.4 of heads of households in Arcueil and Cachan in 1954 is sourced from L’Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) publication and is therefore set out in accordance with the socio-professional categories used by INSEE.564 Table 4.4 indicates that by 1954 the sociological differences between the two suburbs were slight. Cachan had marginally more patrons than Arcueil, at 9.8% this figure was 1.1% more than Arcueil, with industrialists making up a greater proportion in Cachan (1.5%) than in Arcueil (1%). There were also slightly more members of the liberal professions and cadres supérieurs living in Cachan, a greater proportion of cadres moyens (2.2% more than Arcueil) and employés, the largest non-proletarian category at Cachan at 12.3%, 1.3% more than in Arcueil. Therefore, in terms of the socio-professional status of its heads of households, Cachan was a little more middle-class than Arcueil. In the former, 35.4% of household heads were what can be broadly defined as part of the middle classes (lower and upper), compared with 30% in Arcueil. The latter was more proletarian in aspect, though the disparity was not huge. With just over a quarter of its heads of households being foremen or skilled workers, Arcueil had slightly more of this group often associated with support for the PCF, 26.5% compared with 25% for Cachan, with the differential being more significant when it came to semi-skilled workers and factory operatives, of whom there were 3% more in Arcueil (17.9%). Nevertheless, both these groups were the largest and second largest categories in both suburbs. In total, 44.4% of Arcueil’s household heads worked in archetypal proletarian occupations, a figure 4.5% more than Cachan. There was little difference in the agricultural sector, services and other categories, although slightly more members of the police and army were household heads in Arcueil. The only other notable difference was the fact that at 18.7%, slightly more (1.2%) household heads in Cachan did not have any occupation compared to Arcueil. In the main these would be retirees who tend to be more likely to vote non-communist. As was the case with 1936, an analysis of heads of households in 1954 indicates that in terms of socio-economic structure, both Arcueil and Cachan had the potential to be a communist bastion however

564 For the INSEE’s analysis of chef de ménage these are: 0 farmers; 1 agricultural wage earners; 2 patrons of industry and commerce, of which 22, 23, and 27 denote petit patrons; 3 – liberal professions and cadres supérieurs ; 4 cadres moyens ; 5 employés ; 60, 61, 62, 67 – foremen and skilled workers (tradesmen) ; 63, 64, 65, 66, 68 specialised workers, operatives and other workers ; 7 service personnel, including domestic servants (70 and 71) ; 8 other categories, of which 82 denotes the army and police. The socio-professional analysis of Table 4.2 is an analysis of ménages ordinaires and therefore excludes resident foreigners, nursing home residents (127 in Cachan only) and the population comptée à part.

153 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Arcueil can be characterised at this time as the more proletarian suburb and therefore it was inherently more predisposed toward support for the PCF.

Arcueil, Cachan and the Socio-Economic Substructure of a Communist Bastion

Anecdotal evidence dating from the time of Arcueil-Cachan’s partition indicated that in the early 1920s industrialised Arcueil was a much more proletarian suburb than semi-rural Cachan, much of which was inhabited by the petty bourgeoisie, including recently arrived employés. This evidence suggests that the socio-economic disparities are one explanation for the relative weakness of the Left in Cachan until the mid-1920s, in contrast to Arcueil where the PCF emerged immediately as a significant electoral force, taking up where the SFIO had left off after World War I. However, my analysis of the male heads of households in 1936 indicates that the differences between the two suburbs had narrowed in the 14 years since the two communes were separated. While Arcueil remained the more proletarian commune both Arcueil and Cachan were suburbs of wage-earners and it was this group which dominated their electorates. Nevertheless, the more proletarian nature of Arcueil’s male head of households (and by deduction its electorate) in the interwar period would have facilitated an earlier, and therefore more durable, implantation of communism. Similarly, moving on to the postwar period, an analysis of the 1954 census data indicates no fundamental, overwhelming difference in the socio-economic structure of Arcueil and Cachan; indeed there had been little change since 1936. However, the greater prevalence of manual workers and in particular of semi/unskilled labour within the working population of Arcueil and the higher proportion of metal workers tended once again to reinforce Arcueil’s tendency to vote communist. Similarly, in Arcueil the two strongest electoral sections for the PCF, Laplace and Cité-Aqueduc, were also somewhat more proletarian than the Centre. Nevertheless, the fact that the Cité- Aqueduc was a little less working-class in character than Laplace but was a notably stronger electoral bastion for the PCF from 1932 onwards indicates occupational status alone cannot account for the success of communism in Arcueil. Material deprivation and discontent it generated played an equally important role. Cachan lacked the critical mass of having over 50% of the working population in manual occupations because a greater proportion of white-collar and public sector employees lived in the commune, two groups which often voted socialist. As an industrialised, working-class suburb Arcueil was an archetypal communist bastion of

154 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

the banlieue rouge, and remained that way under the Fourth Republic. Cachan was foremost a commuter suburb with a significant working-class population. As we shall see in section 3 of this Chapter and in Chapters 5 and 6, the benefits that proletarianisation brought to the local branch of the PCF in Arcueil were not as pronounced in Cachan were the party was less successful at capitalising on changing demographics. In the 1950s Cachan’s pre-existing function as a centre for education and training expanded, as did its population, and this dynamic helped to propel it away from communism.

3. A SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS OF LOCAL POLITICS565

In Section 2 above I have analysed socio-professional character those eligible to vote in Arcueil and Cachan, a key ingredient in the socio-economic structure of these two localities. Chapter 2 suggested that in addition to the socio-economic structure of a locality, the local politico-cultural environment also comprised one of the three variables affecting the implantation of communism at a local level. By undertaking a comparative analysis of the occupations of candidates fielded in Arcueil and Cachan in municipal elections between 1919 and 1935, Section 3 of this chapter will in part address these two variables. It will also partially address the way in which the PCF and its ideological project met with its local environment in Arcueil and Cachan, and how this affected the ability of the party to build a counter-community at a local level. To this end, I have compared the PCF with its main rivals, the SFIO in both Arcueil and Cachan, and the Radical Socialist Party in Arcueil and the Comité d’Union

155 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan (CURSDIGC) in Cachan. I left the 1932 partial municipal election in Arcueil out of my analysis because there were only two candidates fielded by each political group in this election and so it does not provide a broad based sample as do the other elections I have analysed for Arcueil. In the case of Cachan, I was unable to ascertain the occupational status of the PCF and SFIO candidates in the 1925 municipal elections or of the SFIO candidates in the 1928 partial municipal election. It needs to be said that this is far from being an exact science since I have had to rely on sources which are not always consistent in their designation of a candidate’s occupation and are at times extremely difficult to interpret. The analysis below is therefore only an approximation of the situation as it was in the interwar period since classifying professions into these categories is at times difficult and by necessity somewhat arbitrary.

1) The PCF in Arcueil

565 The analysis of candidates is based on: AD94, E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal for the municipal elections commune of Arcueil 1919-1935; DM3/45 Listes d’Élus Municipaux 1919-1923 Commune d’Arcueil-Cachan (AD94 1Mi 2427) and DM3/46 (AD94 1Mi2426) Listes d’Élus Municipaux 1925-1945, Commune d’Arcueil and Commune de Cachan; AD94 D2M2/97 and D2M2/100, procès- verbal for the municipal elections 1923 and 1929 commune of Cachan; AD94 35J458, “Parti Communiste (SFIC) Région Parisienne 4e Rayon sous-rayon de Cachan Elections Municipales du 16 Septembre 1928 Classe contre Classe” and “Ville de Cachan Élections Municipales complémentaires du 23 Septembre 1928 Scrutin de Ballottage Comité d’Union Républicaine et Social de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan”; Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français [DBMOF] le Maitron/Cd-rom, Claude Pennetier (ed), Les Éditions de l'Atelier, Paris, 1997, entries on Eugène Frédéric Givort, Paul Poënsin, Marius Armand Sidobre and Louis Léon Veyssière; AD94 36J27, “Liste de Concentration Républicaine et d’Action Municipale pour la défense des intérêts communaux” (Radical-Socialists), “Ville d’Arcueil – Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Communiste SFIC Liste du Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan”, and Ville d’Arcueil Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Liste d’Emancipation Municipale et Sociale Parti Socialiste SFIO Parti Radical-Socialiste Camille-Pelletan”; AD94 36J26, “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan. Citoyens!”, “Ville de Cachan, Élections municipales du 5 Mai 1935, Parti Socialiste (SFIO), Liste des Candidats” and “Ville de Cachan, Elections législatives du 5 Mai 1935, Parti Communiste (SFIC) Liste du Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan.” 156 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.1 - PCF candidates in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1923- 1935 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% 1923 1925 1929 1935 D 0000 C 1201

Socio-professional breakdown of candidates fielded B 1220 A3 0103 A2 2444 A1 18 14 21 19

157 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.2 - Summary of PCF candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1923-1935 A3 B C D 4% 5% 4% 0%

A2 A1 14% 73%

The analysis indicates that in Arcueil the PCF was overwhelmingly a party of and for working class, with category A1 (manual workers) making up over 80% of the party’s candidates in the first election it contested in 1923. This category maintained a consistently high proportion, never dropping below 60% (the low point it reached in 1925). Service workers also featured consistently among the PCF’s candidates. The Popular Front election saw the party broaden its candidate base with the inclusion of a number of white-collar workers, Category A3 having previously had little representation in the party’s campaigns. Up until 1935, communist campaigns always featured some representation from Category B, in the form of small shopkeepers and the like, while few professionals ran as communist candidates in Arcueil. When we compare the PCF candidates fielded in 1935 with my analysis of the male heads of households in 1936, manual workers (Category A1) were greatly over-represented (by more than 20%) in the PCF list, while service workers were slightly over-represented and white-collar workers (Category A3) slightly over-represented. Both proprietors (no candidates in 1935) and professionals were under-represented in the PCF. The PCF in Arcueil was overwhelmingly a party of wage-earners with Category A in general making up 91% of the candidates it fielded during the interwar period. Overall manual workers (Category A1) made up almost three-quarters of PCF candidates during the interwar period, with service workers (Category A2) the next biggest group at 14%. On the whole, during the interwar period few white-collar workers (Category A3), proprietors (Category B) and professionals (Category C) ran as

158 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

PCF candidates. The PCF in Arcueil during the interwar period was first and foremost a party of the working class and the support of this group was therefore critical to its success in the suburb. The proletarian character of the PCF in Arcueil is underlined when one examines biographies of significant local figures in the communist movement. The most significant figure for the PCF during the period of this study was Marius Sidobre566, a candidate in every municipal election campaign after World War I and mayor of Arcueil from 1935, a position to which he was restored at Liberation and maintained throughout most of the Fourth Republic. Born in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) in 1882, Sidobre came to live in Arcueil-Cachan in 1905, joining the Metal Union of the CGT the same year as a highly skilled fitter-tooler, having originally trained as a telegraph worker and then as an apprentice locksmith. Sidobre is exemplar of the crucial role played by metal workers in the rise of the banlieue rouge, since Chapters 5 to 7 inclusive will demonstrate the essential role that Sidobre played in the implantation of the PCF and the consolidation of communist hegemony in Arcueil. A combatant during the war of 1914-1918, Sidobre was a founding member of the Arcueil-Cachan section of ARAC. He joined the SFIO in 1908 and, after the Congress of Tours, he followed the majority of this party into the new Communist Party, serving on the executive commission of the Seine in 1921. He was deported to Algeria during World War II. More symbolically important to the PCF was Paul Poënsin.567 Born in the 20th arrondissement of Paris and a watchmaker by trade, Poënsin proved his revolutionary credentials at an early age, having been imprisoned in May 1871 for being a Communard combatant at the age of 19. First elected to council in 1896, by the time of the elections in 1923, the 71 year old Poënsin had served more than 22 years as a municipal councillor, including over 7 years as the second assistant mayor, both before and after the First World War, and a stint in the special delegation prior to separation. In 1920 he was elected second assistant mayor in what would become the Arcueil’s first communist administration. He was elected again to council in 1935, once again serving as assistant mayor. He died during World War II. Where Sidobre was representative of the newer generation of working-class militants, Poënsin was the PCF’s link with the

566 DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Marius Armand Sidobre; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D5, Biographies: Dossier no. 21, Marius Sidobre Ancien Maire. 567 DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Paul Poënsin; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D5, Biographies, Dossier no. 19, Paul Poënsin Combattant de la Commune de Paris (1870-71) Ancien Maire-Adjoint. 159 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

revolutionary past of the Parisian working class, a past which was celebrated in the 1930s with an annual banquet held in honour of Poënsin and as a commemoration of the Paris Commune of 1871. Poënsin’s adhesion to the PCF was symbolic of the Party’s inheritance of the revolutionary traditions of the French (and Parisian) working class. Other notable figures included Victor Roure and Paul Rivière. Roure, a barber by trade from the Vaucluse department, was Arcueil’s first communist mayor, a position he held between 1920 and 1922 after having been elected to council on an SFIO ticket for the first time in December 1919.568 Rivière, a mechanic/coachman by trade from the Ardèche, was elected to council in the partial municipal elections of 1932, along with Sidobre.569 Thus, the most significant figures of the PCF in Arcueil were generally skilled, manual workers from Category A1. While militants who were more representative of the new generation of industrial workers such as Sidobre and Rivière directed the party, older militants from traditional trades and occupation, such as Poënsin, indicated the party’s links with the revolutionary and radical past of Arcueil’s workers.

2) The SFIO in Arcueil Figure 4.3 - SFIO candidates in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1919-1935 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Of which 1919 1920 1923 1925 1929 1935 SFIO D 1100010 C 0012432 B 1022563 A3 3224462 Socio-professional breakdown of candidates fielded A2 0322210 A1 117 151312109

568 DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Victor Roure. 569 AN F714803, Reports on individual communists N-Z, report dated March 1927 on Paul Rivière. 160 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.4 - Summary of SFIO candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1919-1935 C D 8% 2% B 11%

A3 15%

A2 A1 8% 56%

Figure 4.3 indicates that at first the schism at Tours did not result in a fall in the representation of manual workers (Category A1) among SFIO candidates. In fact, they increased as a proportion of the party’s candidates in the 1923 election, the last local election in Arcueil at which the SFIO was a competitor to the PCF. Nevertheless, even before the schism the SFIO never attained the level of manual worker (Category A1) representation that was apparent in the PCF from the beginning. This was due to the consistent presence at every election of a significant number of white-collar workers (Category A3), and to a lesser extent service workers (Category A2), as candidates. From 1925 onwards, the SFIO underwent a significant de-proletarianisation as the number of wage earning employees declined from over 80% of the party’s candidates to less than 70%, with more proprietors (Category B) and professionals (Category C) running as SFIO candidates. At around 56%, manual workers (Category A1) were over- represented in the SFIO list of 1935 when compared with my analysis of the male heads of households, though not to the same extent as the PCF. There were no service workers (Category A2) in 1935 while the representation of white-collar workers (Category A3) was more or less equivalent to the census data, and that of proprietors (Category B) and professionals (Category C) more than double. In overall terms, the representation of manual workers (Category A1), though over 50%, was significantly lower in the SFIO than in the PCF and the representation of service workers was also much lower. By contrast, the representation of white-collar workers (Category A3), proprietors (Category B) and professionals (Category C) was

161 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

double or more than that of the PCF. Undoubtedly, post 1923 the PCF rapidly displaced the SFIO as the party of the working class in Arcueil. The SFIO was pushed into a position where it was essentially a left-of-centre social-democratic party that represented the views of reformist (manual, white-collar and service) workers and the progressive bourgeoisie. This change is reflected in the transformation of the SFIO’s leadership in the mid-1920s, as the biographies of the two most significant local Socialists of the interwar period indicate. Born 14 March 1858 in the department of the Yonne, Frédéric Givort570 was a shoemaker by trade. He established himself as a militant in the working-class 13th arrondissement of Paris where, as a good orator, he campaigned against Boulangists, and was also an active in the co-operative movement. Givort was a Guesdist candidate in the legislative elections of 1898 and 1902 and an active participant in Socialist Party congresses. He settled in Arcueil-Cachan in 1902 and was elected to council in 1912, becoming assistant mayor, a position he held throughout World War I. In 1920, he was defeated in the ballots for mayor and assistant mayor by supporters of the Third International. After the schism he remained as a leading figure in the local SFIO, heading its lists in local elections until his death on 24 July 1926. He was succeeded by Léon Louis Veyssière.571 Born in Arcueil 1875, L.L. Veyssière was originally a house painter, however in the interwar period he described himself as merchant. Veyssière joined Arcueil’s socialist group in 1903 and from 1905 until the 1930s was one of the leading activists and office holders of the SFIO in Arcueil, heading the SFIO’s lists in municipal elections after the death of Givort. A founding member (circa 1911-1912) of the local historical association, Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil, and its secretary from this time until after World War II, Veyssière was closely connected with the old bourgeois social networks of Arcueil from which PCF militants remained aloof. The transition of the SFIO leadership from the artisanal worker Givort to the merchant Veyssière is symbolic of the SFIO’s transition in Arcueil after the birth of the PCF to a less radical, less proletarian and essentially reformist social-democratic party

570 The biographical details which follow are according to: DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Frédéric Eugène Givort; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D5, Biographies, Dossier no. 14 Frédéric Givort – Ancien Conseiller Général Ancien Maire-Adjoint, Voix des Communes, press clipping, no date. 571 Le Vieil Arcueil, 1st year, no. 3, August 1927, 6th year, no. 16 August 1932, no.17, November 1932, & 19th year, no. 28, April 1946; Le Socialiste, 27 April 1935; DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Léon Louis Veyssière. 162 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

whose support base shrunk as it was squeezed between the proletarian PCF which attracted the support of workers, and the Radical-Socialist Party which, as I shall now demonstrate, was the party of the bourgeoisie.

3) The Radical-Socialist Party in Arcueil

Figure 4.5 - RSP candidates in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1919- 1935 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

Socio-professional breakdown of candidatesfielded 0% 1919 1920 1923 1925 1929 1935 D 000111 C 655436 B 524776 A3 229663 A2 101021 A1 2444810

163 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.6 - Summary of RSP candidates' socio-professional character in Arcueil's municipal elections, 1919-1935 A1 C D 25% 23% 2%

A2 4% B 24%

A3 22%

On the back of Arcueil’s rapid industrialisation, a corollary of which was proletarianisation, the success of the SFIO immediately after the war is not surprising, especially when one considers the weak representation of manual workers on Arcueil’s Radical-Socialist list for the 1919 municipal election. In fact as a group the wage- earning employees that make up Category A are under-represented in the Radical- Socialist lists. They were below 50% in half the interwar elections and never rose above 60%. The proportion of manual workers (Category A1) among Radical candidates is generally half that of the SFIO, and even lower when compared with the proletarian PCF. The threat posed by the PCF saw an increase in the representation of manual workers in 1929 and especially 1935 when a handful of service workers were also presented, a group neglected by the Radicals. However, one group of wage earners always maintained a significant presence in Radical lists: Category A3, white-collar workers. This was the most prevalent group in the 1920s, just ahead of Categories A1 and B. Their importance only diminished in 1935 when the Popular Front saw a significant proletarianisation of the Radical list in the face of an impending electoral defeat by the PCF. The number of proprietors (Category B) and professionals (Category C) was also consistently high throughout the interwar period, with the proportion of the former increasing after 1925. Compared with my analysis of the 1936 census, the Radical-Socialist list of 1935 had 10% fewer manual workers (Category A1), less than a third as many service workers (Category A2), slightly fewer white-collar workers

164 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

(Category A3), more than twice as many proprietors (Category B) and more than three times as many professionals (Category C). During the interwar period, the Radical-Socialist Party in Arcueil was split roughly equally between the first four socio-professional groups, with manual workers only marginally ahead of liberal professions. Overall, although Category A1 was the most prevalent group among Radical candidates, which is not surprising given the suburb’s working-class aspect. At a quarter, this category was only marginally ahead of Category B, with its petits commerçants and small businessmen, and Category C, with its liberal professionals and managers, and Category A3, with its white-collar workers and public servants. The candidates presented by the Radicals were split roughly equally between these four groups. This made the Radical-Socialist Party by far the most bourgeois party of the three main parties that contested local elections in Arcueil during the interwar period. This reflected the fact that after World War I, the Radical- Socialist Party of Arcueil in effect functioned as a rightwing opposition, representing the views of conservative workers and those middle-class social groups that were generally associated with opposition to Marxist politics. This is reflected in the biographies of the two main actors in the party during the interwar period. Pierre Templier572 was a municipal councillor from May 1912 to December 1919, and mayor from May 1923 until 20 May 1932, the day on which he died. An architect, Templier was born in Arcueil on 4 June 1867 and was active in local societies, as president of the local branch of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and of the local historical society Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil. He was succeeded as mayor by Albert Legrand who originated from the north of France.573 Legrand claimed to be a child of workers and to have been a militant in the CGT who was once hospitalised as a consequence of injuries sustained at the hands of the police in the strikes of 1906. Having subsequently ceased union activity, he was a combatant in World War I and after the war he set up his own garage in Arceuil. In 1929 he accepted an offer from the Comité local radical-socialiste to run in the municipal elections and was elected to council. In 1932 he was president of Arcueil’s Radical committee, and vice-president of

572 AD94 E Dépot Arcueil 3D5, Dossier no. 16, P-A. Templier Ancien Maire; Arcueil et Cachan: Guide-Indicateur Banlieue, Indicateur Officiel 1927, pp. 59-63; Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 15-17; Le Vieil Arcueil, 1st year no. 3, August 1927. 573 AD94 36J21, E. Legrand, Tout Mon Passé Tout Mon Action, booklet issued by the Parti Populaire Français at the time of the by-election of 12 December 1937, 8th electoral district of Sceaux; Le Socialiste, July 1932; Le Régional, no. 1, 15 March 1935. 165 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

federations representing his local canton and electoral district. He was, however, disliked by many Radicals, as is evidenced by the splits that developed among local Radicals during the period of the Popular Front. Legrand left the Radical-Socialist Party for Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français after the 1935 election because he believed the former was not sufficiently anticommunist. In Arcueil, the Radical-Socialist Party was successively led by an architect and a garage owner, an indication of smaller role wage-earning employees played in this party compared with the SFIO and especially the PCF. The Radicals were led by members of the bourgeoisie because the party was essentially a party of and for the middle classes.

4) The PCF in Cachan

Figure 4.7 - PCF candidates in Cachan's municipal elections, 1923- 1935 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% 1923 1928 1929 1935 D 0000 C 0000 Socio-professional breakdown of candidates fielded B 1000 A3 2222 A2 0174 A1 431321

166 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.8 - Summary of PCF candidates' socio-professional character in Cachan's municipal elections, 1923-1935 C D A3 B 0% 13% 2% 0%

A2 19%

A1 66%

Although the absence of any sources indicating the socio-professional status of PCF candidates in 1925 makes my survey of its candidates in Cachan less comprehensive than that of Arcueil, this is to some extent rectified by examining the partial election in 1928 when six councillors were elected. The first thing to notice is that, even more than in Arcueil, the PCF in Cachan was a party of wage-earning employees. In the four elections surveyed, the PCF fielded a single proprietor (Category B) in the first election it contested, and in none of the elections did it field a member of the professions. Until the end of the 1920s, manual workers (Category A1) were not as dominant in Cachan as in Arcueil, and a higher proportion of white-collar workers (Category A3) appeared on PCF lists. The small number of candidates fielded in the first two elections surveyed makes it difficult to draw conclusions. By 1929, the PCF candidate list in Cachan was markedly working-class in character, being overwhelming dominated by manual and service workers (Categories A1 and A2). The Popular Front saw a notable proletarianisation of the candidates fielded by the PCF, with manual workers (Category A1) making up almost 80% of the candidates fielded, a significant increase from between 50% and 60% in the previous elections. This is perhaps an indication that the growth that Cachan experienced throughout the 1930s brought with it a degree of proletarianisation. When compared to their share of the male heads of households outlined in the analysis of Cachan’s 1936 census, manual workers (Category A1) were over-represented among on the PCF’s candidates for 1935 in Cachan by a

167 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

ratio of approaching 2 to 1. Service workers (Category A2) were also over-represented in 1935 when compared to the 1936 census, while white-collar workers were significantly under-represented. The inability of the PCF to field any more than seven candidates in the 1923 municipal elections in Cachan and the lack of any sources indicating the professions for the 1925 municipal election in Cachan has probably had the effect of lowering the overall representation of manual workers (Category A1) among the candidates fielded in this suburb by the PCF in the interwar period. Overall, manual workers made up two- thirds of the communist candidates fielded in the elections surveyed for Cachan, compared with over three-quarters in the case of Arcueil. There were three times as many candidates from Category A3 fielded by the PCF in Cachan as in Arcueil, a reflection perhaps of the fact that Cachan was a little more petty bourgeois in aspect, or else of the fact that in Cachan the PCF was led by a white-collar worker during the early years when it had to put down roots virtually from scratch. The absence of candidates from Categories B and C is perhaps an indication of the PCF’s isolation in Cachan where the radical and revolutionary traditions of Arcueil were lacking, and it suggests a more narrow support base than in Arcueil. In contrast to its socialist counterpart, the PCF in Cachan was overwhelming a party of wage earners who made up 98% of the PCF’s candidates in the elections surveyed. The leadership of Cachan’s PCF indicates that manual workers did not wield the same level of dominance as in Arcueil, as the biographies of the two leading party figures of the interwar period indicate. Bernard Sestacq574 was born in 1894 in the Department of the Loiret, moving to Cachan with his wife and three children in 1924. A police report dated December 1928 describes him as an accountant, however in the PCF’s candidate lists Sestacq describes his profession as simply that of a communal employé. Sestacq worked for the communist municipality of Villejuif and was the general treasurer of the Syndicat Unitaire des Employés et Ouvriers des Communes de la Seine. In Cachan in 1928 and 1929, Sestacq headed the PCF’s lists for the municipal elections. He was succeeded in the 1930s by Cellier575, also an employé. Cellier was a veteran of World War I and a former inhabitant of Lyon who had left the city after he

574 DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Bernard Ernest Sestacq; AN F714803, reports on individual communists, N-Z. 575 Front rouge, special edition, no date, circa 12 May 1935, prior to the second ballot in the 1935 municipal elections. 168 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

was sacked from the PLM railway company in 1924 for his union activity as secretary of the CGTU in the Lyon region. By 1935, when he headed the PCF’s list, he had been active for several years in Cachan and was at the forefront of the antifascist movement. During World War II, Cellier died as a result of his resistance activity. The biographies above indicate that the PCF had a more tenuous hold in Cachan. In Arcueil the PCF had the stability of being led throughout most of the interwar period by the same manual worker, Sidobre, who was supported by veteran militants such as the former Communard Poënsin and Arcueil’s first communist mayor, Roure. This was not the case in Cachan where neither Sestacq nor Cellier had the same level of local presence or experience as the PCF’s leadership in Arcueil.

5) The SFIO in Cachan

Figure 4.9 - SFIO candidates in Cachan's municipal elections, 1919- 1935 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% 1919 1929 1935 D 110 Socio-professional breakdown of candidates fielded of candidates breakdown Socio-professional C 037 B 036 A3 336 A2 021 A1 7117

169 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.10 - Summary of SFIO candidates' socio-professional character in Cachan's municipal elections, 1919-1935

C D 16% 3%

A1 41%

B 15%

A3 A2 20% 5%

The survey of SFIO candidates fielded in Cachan’s municipal elections is more limited due to the fact that the party did not field any candidates in 1923 and the fact that I have been unable to ascertain the occupational status of SFIO candidates in 1925 and 1928. However, the fact that the SFIO failed to field a list in 1923 and fielded a combined list with the Radical-Socialist Party in both ballots in 1925 should be borne in mind as an indication of the party’s fundamental weakness in the immediate aftermath of the schism of Tours and the partition of Arcueil-Cachan. The post-schism SFIO only emerged as an electoral force in the late 1920s, and when it did so it was a fundamentally different party, much more gentrified than the PCF or even the pre- schism Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO. Prior to the schism, the SFIO was very much a party of wage-earners who comprised 90% of the candidates it fielded in Cachan in the 1919 elections. Manual workers (Category A1) dominated, making up over half of the candidates, with white-collar workers (Category A3) also well represented. By 1929, there had been a decline in manual worker representation among the SFIO’s candidates, and white-collar representation had also halved as the SFIO broadened its candidate base to include candidates from all categories, with proprietors (Category B) now, along with white-collar workers (Category A3), second in importance to manual workers (Category A1). The de-proletarianisation of the SFIO that was apparent in 1929 only accelerated under the Popular Front. While manual worker (Category A1) representation among PCF candidates fielded increased markedly

170 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

in Cachan’s 1935 municipal elections, for the SFIO there was a significant decline. While wage-earners made up 100% of the PCF list in 1935, almost half of the SFIO list was made up of non-wage earners from Categories B and C, those of independent means and professionals. In fact, the SFIO list in Cachan resembled that of the CURSDIGC (see below) more than the PCF, especially in terms of the representation of middle-class professionals (Category C). When compared to my analysis of the male heads of households from the 1936 census of Cachan, manual workers (Category A1) and service workers (Category A2) are significantly under-represented among the candidates fielded by the SFIO in the 1935 municipal election, while white-collar workers (Category A3) were significantly over-represented, though not to the extent of proprietors (Category B) who were twice as prevalent and professionals (Category C) who were four times more prevalent on the SFIO’s list than in the socio-professional analysis of Cachan undertaken above. In overall terms when compared with the PCF the SFIO in Cachan was more diverse in its representation. In terms of all the elections surveyed, wage earners made up two-thirds of the SFIO’s candidates, in contrast to their overwhelming dominance of the PCF. The SFIO in Cachan was less proletarian in nature than the PCF, with less than half of the candidates it fielded having come from Category A1, compared with two- thirds for the PCF. Whereas Category A2 made up a significant proportion of the PCF candidates, this was not the case with the SFIO. Instead, Categories A3, C and B had a significant and roughly equal importance among the candidates the SFIO fielded. This perhaps reflects the fact that by the late 1920s the party was led by an architect, Antoine Marcilloux, who, according to police reports, garnered significant support from local shopkeepers. Marcilloux576 was born into a working-class family in the Department of the Creuse on 14 November 1882, learning his architectural profession through night courses while working as an apprentice draughtsman. He served as a member of the infantry in World War I and was wounded. In 1919, he came to live in Cachan where he became an active member of the local SFIO, becoming, according to Le Socialiste, the secretary of the Cachan section of the SFIO when it was finally separated from Arcueil in 1927.577 The other significant local socialist was

576 Le Socialiste, 4th year, 24 April 1932; DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Antoine Marcilloux. 577 Previously there had been a single Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO despite the separation of the two communes. The DBMOF gives a different year, 1934, for the foundation of the separate branch. 171 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

another professional, André Lemoine.578 The 35 year-old engineer was elected in 1935, along with Marcilloux, to Cachan’s municipal council. Prior to Marcilloux’s emergence as leader of a separate branch of the SFIO in Cachan, the party had a weak presence in the suburb. The resurgence of the SFIO was concomitant with its transformation into a party more akin, in view of its dominance by professionals, to the CURSDIGC than the PCF. In spite of the fact that the population of manual workers was somewhat lower in Cachan and that of white-collar workers, proprietors and professionals was higher, the PCF in Cachan had a very narrow militant and sympathiser base, more so than its counterpart in Arcueil. Under these circumstances, in the late 1920s the SFIO in Cachan broadened its base and successfully found a niche between the professional-dominated, Centre-Right CURSDIGC and the leftwing extremist and ouvriériste PCF.

6) The CURSDIGC in Cachan

Figure 4.11 - CURSDIGC candidates in Cachan's municipal elections, 1919-1935 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% 1919 1923 1925 1928 1929 1935 D 112111 Socio-professional breakdown of candidates fielded C 376279 B 114174 A3 365035 A2 000100 A1 386158

578 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Lemoine, André Auguste; AD94 36J26, “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Socialiste (SFIO) Liste des Candidats.” 172 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

Figure 4.12 - Summary of CURSDIGC candidates' socio-professional character in Cachan's municipal elections, 1919-1935

D A1 6% 27%

C 31% A2 1%

B A3 16% 19%

The CURSDIGC dominated local government in interwar Cachan. It had its origins in the Comité Radical des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan which dominated the Cachan electoral section of Arcueil-Cachan prior to the creation of two separate communes and which became in 1923 the Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale [de Défense] des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, the words in brackets being a later addition. CURSDIGC was unaffiliated to any party and claimed to be apolitical, concerned solely with local affairs and good administration of all the districts of Cachan, open to all ‘sincere’ republicans and to represent “les opinions les plus diverses existant dans le commune” (Banlieue de Paris, 14 September 1928). Nevertheless, the CURSDIGC was in effect a centre-right grouping of the anticommunists. The role of the committee was to choose candidates at the time of municipal elections and to present them to the voters under the CURSDIGC banner. The CURSDIGC generally formed a common list with conservative Radicals who formed the local Comité Radical et Radical Socialiste (Fédération de la Seine). Figures 4.11 and 4.12 demonstrate a consistently high proportion of professionals and cadres (Category C) among CURSDIGC municipal candidates throughout the interwar period, along with the relatively low proportion, between a quarter and a third, of manual workers (Category A1) when compared with the PCF and, to a lesser extent, the SFIO. There is a notable gentrification of the CURSDIGC after 1923, coinciding with the emergence first of the PCF and then the SFIO as 173 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

electoral threats. The proportion of wage-earners halves from around 60% in 1923 to around a third in 1928/1929, before increasing a little in 1935 to around 40%, the same year in which there was also an increase in the proportion of manual workers (Category A1), probably in response to the threat posed by the Popular Front alliance of the PCF and SFIO. In the first three elections (1919, 1923 and 1925), white-collar workers (Category C) were prominent, after which proprietors (Category B) began to displace them in importance. The rise in importance of Category B coincides with its growing importance in the SFIO, which suggests that both political groupings were competing for the votes of small shopkeepers, merchants and the like. By 1935, the socio- professional outlook of the SFIO and CURSDIGC lists was very similar, with the former having slightly fewer professionals, manual and white-collar workers and more proprietors. When compared with my analysis of the heads of households from the 1936 census in Cachan, the representation of manual workers (Category A1) among CURSDIGC candidates in the 1935 municipal election was significantly lower than in the general population, as was the case with service workers (Category A2). The representation of white-collar workers (Category A3) in the CURSDIGC list of 1935 was marginally higher than in my census sample from 1936, while the prevalence of proprietors (Category B) was significantly higher. This was in contrast to the overwhelmingly proletarian aspect of the PCF’s 1935 list. The representation of professionals (Category C) on the CURSDIGC list in 1935 was at a rate almost six times greater than the representation of this group in the sample of male heads of households in 1936. In Cachan, the professional nature of the CURSDIGC lists was in stark contrast to the proletarian lists of the PCF. At 47% overall, wage earners made up less than half of the candidates fielded by the CURSDIGC in the elections surveyed. This was in part a consequence of the dominance of professionals in the CURSDIGC. At almost a third, Category C is the most dominant group, its representation being 4% higher than that of Category A1, by far the most prevalent category for the PCF and SFIO. This high level of professionals and managers among candidates also marks the CURSDIGC as different from Arcueil’s Radical-Socialists and probably reflects the presence of the School of Public Works in Cachan and the fact that its director and the mayor of the commune, Léon Eyrolles, brought engineers and other professionals into the council with him. Like many of the residents of his suburb, Eyrolles was from humble origins and these origins undoubtedly helped him to maintain his hold on the mayoralty from 1929

174 The Origins of Communist Hegemony II

onwards. Prevented from studying in his youth because he had to work to support his mother, he spent his spare time studying while employed at the Ponts et Chaussées and at the age of 21 Eyrolles earned the grade of engineering foreman. In 1898, he founded the École des Travaux Publics (ETP) to help students from humble origins succeed in schools of technical instruction which were at that time the preserve of a cultivated elite. In 1904 he moved the ETP from its original home in the Latin Quarter to Cachan and in 1905 was elected to Arcueil-Cachan’s council as a representative for Cachan. He was continuously re-elected to council, first for Arcueil-Cachan and then for Cachan. On 17 May 1929 he was elected mayor, a position he held until the end of World War II. Accused of collaboration, on 21 August 1944 Eyrolles was incarcerated by the Liberation Committee of Cachan. Released soon after on the orders of the provisional government, Eyrolles died in 1945. His contribution to Cachan was recognised in 1957 when the socialist mayor of Cachan, Jacques Carat, inaugurated the avenue Léon Eyrolles. 579

The PCF: A Party of the Working Class.

In both Arcueil and Cachan, the PCF emerged in 1923 as the working-class party. This was especially the case in Arcueil where manual labourers dominated the party, both terms of the candidates it fielded and the party leadership. The fact that Arcueil was more industrial and working-class in character, was home to a significant number of metallurgists, and had a history of working-class radicalism tended to reinforce their dominance. In the essentially commuter suburb of Cachan, manual workers were also predominant among the candidates fielded but the party was led by white-collar workers. A stronger initial presence in Arcueil meant that the leadership of the party was much more constant, when compared to Cachan where the initial foothold of the PCF was much weaker (hence only seven candidates were fielded in 1923). While retaining its overwhelmingly working-class aspect, in time the PCF broadened its representation of the Arcueil’s socio-professional groups, as evidenced by an analysis of

579 Léon Eyrolles (1861-1945), anonymous booklet, pp. 7-12; Auvergnats et Limousins de Paris, 2nd year, no. 53, 15 February 1947, front page article more or less repeats verbatim the details of the aforementioned booklet; AD94 35J59 Dossier 3, Technical Education News, March 1949, pp. 11-13; Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 33 ; DM3/46 Listes d’Élus Municipal 1925-1945 Commune de Cachan ; Délibérations du Conseil Municipal de Cachan [DCMC], Meetings of 20 July 1940 (AD94 1Mi 1261 p. 55) & 22 March 1942 (pp. 260-262); AD94 35J62 Cachan during the war, Dossier 2: Statement at time of arrest of Eyrolles by the Liberation committee of Cachan, on 21 August 1944; Journal de Cachan, no. 221, December 1957.

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the candidates it fielded in 1935. By contrast, the trend of the PCF in Cachan from 1929 onwards was toward proletarianisation and a narrowing of the party’s base of militants and sympathisers. In Cachan especially the PCF was a party of the working-class ghetto, a consequence of, when compared to Arcueil, a relatively weak radical leftwing tradition, a lower manual worker population and a higher population of white-collar workers and those of independent means. This meant that in Cachan there was considerable room for a broadly based SFIO to occupy the middle ground between the CURSDIGC, a group somewhat more conservative than Arcueil’s Radicals in constitution and outlook, and the extremist PCF. The architect Marcilloux rebuilt the SFIO in the late 1920s into an electoral force that attracted the support of shopkeepers and mal-lotis (who could be blue or white-collar workers) and this was reflected in the candidates the SFIO fielded. In Arcueil, however, the SFIO rapidly de-proletarianised after L. L. Veyssière, a merchant, assumed leadership of the local branch. In proletarian Arcueil the gentrification of the SFIO was less of an asset and, as Chapter 5 below demonstrates, in an increasingly polarised electorate, the SFIO was squeezed between the communists on the Left and the Radical- Socialists on the Right. In both Arcueil and Cachan, the SFIO was pushed toward the centre/centre-left and this could be seen in the candidates it fielded in both Arcueil and Cachan and in the nature of its leadership. The two main non-Marxist groups, the Radical-Socialist Party in Arcueil and the CURSDIGC and its Radical allies in Cachan were essentially middle-class. While professionals, those engaged in commerce or of independent means and white-collar workers played particularly important roles the Radical-Socialist Party of Arcueil, the growing threat of the PCF forced the Radicals to proletarianise their candidate lists after 1925. The CURSDIGC, a group hitherto composed largely of non-wage-earners, also underwent proletarianisation in reaction to the growing threat posed by the PCF, although the abiding dominance of professionals persisted.

4. CONCLUSIONS

At the time that Arcueil and Cachan became separate communes, contemporary opinion indicated that Arcueil was a classically proletarian Paris suburb while Cachan was more bourgeois, and in particular petty-bourgeois, in aspect, and these social differences helped to drive separation. However, with the rapid population growth experienced by Cachan up until at least 1936 came proletarianisation. By 1936 the

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difference between Cachan and Arcueil in terms of occupational status was not marked and little had changed by 1954. Socio-economic structure played an important role in the creation and maintenance of communist hegemony. From the outset, a larger working-class population made Arcueil more characteristic of a communist suburb than Cachan. The most working-class electoral districts of Arcueil, Laplace and Cité-Aqueduc, were also the two most important strongholds of communism. The rising electoral support for the PCF in Cachan in the 1930s, which is demonstrated in Chapter 5, was concomitant with the proletarianisation of Cachan’s population and hence of its electorate. Moreover, in working-class Arcueil, the PCF emerged immediately with strong electoral support, having essentially inherited the SFIO’s pre-schism electorate. As is indicated by the analysis above of candidates it fielded in municipal elections, in both Arcueil and Cachan the PCF was the party of the working-class, and in particular of manual workers. This was in contrast to the SFIO, which underwent a significant de- proletarianisation concomitant with the rise of the PCF, and with the Radical-Socialists and CURSDIGC, both of which were perennially dominated by non-wage earners, and in particular by professionals. In Arcueil and Cachan, the PCF had a ready-made audience through its inheritance of the neo-Babouvist tradition, an expression of the age-old alienation of the French worker-class from the bourgeois state and society. A corollary of this inheritance was the overwhelming working-class nature of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan. Nevertheless, Chapter 5 indicates that the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section was by far the strongest communist bastion in Arcueil despite the fact that Laplace was slightly more proletarian in aspect. Chapter 3 has suggested that poor living conditions and the poor health they generated, problems with housing and infrastructure in the cité-jardin and the feeling that the municipal and state authorities were indifferent contributed to the high level of support given to the PCF in the Cité-Aqueduc. Cachan was also a suburb that was predominantly inhabited by working people and nothing in its socio- economic structure suggests that it did not have the potential to be a communist bastion. Therefore, we must also look to the meeting of the PCF with its local environment. In the case of Cachan, the chapters that follow will argue that the PCF was crucially handicapped in its early years by the weakness of leftwing tradition and by a smaller working-class population. This meant that from the outset the PCF in Cachan did not have as solid a foundation from which to build a communist counter-society as its

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counterpart in Arcueil, hence the lack of stability in the PCF leadership in Cachan vis-à- vis Arcueil. Chapters 5 and 6 will demonstrate how during the interwar period the PCF in Arcueil was to lay secure foundations for a postwar communist counter-community in a way that its counterpart in Cachan was unable to do.

178

5. Toward Hegemony I: The Electoral Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan Between the Wars.

In the Introduction to this thesis I argued that a significant section of the French working class was alienated from bourgeois society, and the long-established working- class tradition of voting for the extreme left was one way in which this alienation was expressed. This alienation was the foundation upon which a mass communist party was built in France. Thus, in essence, the emergence and progression of the PCF as an electoral force in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period was a function of the alienation on the part of a significant section of the working class in the two communes. In Arcueil and Cachan, the PCF not only inherited the mantle as the most leftist political party, but also most of the working-class electorate that the SFIO had acquired in the two suburbs before and immediately after World War I. Nevertheless, working-class alienation is not a sufficient explanation for the rise of the PCF. I argued in the Introduction that a second factor affected the implantation of French communism; the local milieu in its totality. In the chapters that followed I have suggested that the local milieu in Arcueil was more conducive to the progression of the PCF. In Arcueil, socio-economic structure, the first of three variables I outlined in Chapter 2 as affecting communist implantation at a local level, was more conducive to the electoral rise of communism. Hence, in the 1920s the PCF met with greater and earlier success in Arcueil, a suburb that, as Chapters 3 and 4 have demonstrated, was industrialised and generally working-class. Moreover, within Arcueil there was a strong correlation between the socio-economic character of an electoral section and support for the PCF – the party was weakest in the more bourgeois electoral section of the Centre. The rise of the PCF in Cachan in the 1930s followed in the wake of the growing proletarianisation of the suburb as its population continued to expand until World War II. The core of the communist electorate that was acquired immediately after the PCF’s formation remained remarkably stable, with the party retaining significant support in the face of sectarian tactics inimical to its electoral success. The second variable that had a bearing on the predisposition a suburb toward communism - the material living conditions of local inhabitants - was also a factor in Arcueil and Cachan. The historical alienation of the French proletariat was compounded by the poor living standards endured by suburban workers. Thus, the mal-lotis of

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Arcueil and Cachan, the disenchanted inhabitants of Arcueil’s cité-jardin, and the inhabitants of tenements, particularly in Arcueil, provided the PCF with a potentially growing electorate. Where industry and defective and unsanitary housing were more prevalent support for the PCF tended to be higher. The third variable affecting the support for communism - the politico-cultural character of a suburb - also predisposed Arcueil more toward support for communism than Cachan. The revolutionary and radical heritage of Arcueil (to be outlined in Chapter 6) helped to ensure that this commune emerged as a much stronger bastion of communism than the hitherto conservative Cachan. An analysis of party propaganda also confirms the ideological content of support for communism. In both local and legislative elections, the issues addressed by all parties were substantially the same, as were many of the practical proposals for improving the lives of local residents. Only the communists posited the revolutionary transformation of bourgeois state and society and its replacement with one modelled on the Soviet Union as the ultimate solution to local and national problems. What was unique about the communists was their rhetorical rejection of bourgeois society and their stated desire to transform it. Extrinsic factors outlined in the Introduction certainly had some effect on the electoral implantation of communism during the interwar period. Class against class tactics undoubtedly had a deleterious impact on the PCF at a local level in Arcueil and Cachan, in particular by hindering the election of communists to council. The PCF broadened its electorate under the Popular Front via its emphasis on the unity of the Left. The surge in support for the PCF under the Popular Front was most significant in Cachan where a history of political moderation meant that sectarian tactics were an electoral albatross. Nevertheless, local factors were equally important in the election of two communists to council in Arcueil in 1932 and in the rise in support for the PCF in Cachan during the Popular Front period. Voting for the PCF was a way for the workers of Arcueil and Cachan to defend their interests and to assert their class identity. The workers of Arcueil and Cachan were not only part of a class which, in France, had a long historical experience of alienation from the bourgeois state, but they also felt isolated and excluded in their everyday lives. Forced to live in miserable working-class ghettoes well beyond the bourgeois quartiers of Paris, many had their dreams of home ownership shattered by the inadequate infrastructure provision made by the speculators who sold them their lotissements. These speculators hailed from the bourgeoisie, as the communists readily reminded the

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mal-lotis. Powerless in the workplace and with the bourgeoisie dominating the political sphere, a growing number of workers in Arcueil and Cachan responded by asserting a communist class identity at the ballot box.

1. THE ELECTIONS OF 1919-1937 IN CONTEXT

This chapter will chart and analyse the electoral implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan via an analysis of the two most important elections of the interwar period, the legislative and municipal elections. The periodisation of this chapter, 1919 to 1937, is a function of the fact that the first of these elections was held in 1919 and the last, a legislative by-election, in 1937.580 In Arcueil, the commune was divided into electoral sections and I refine my analysis further by analysing individually and comparatively the results of voting in each election in light of the character of these sections as outlined in Chapters 3 and 4. This chapter forms the background to Chapter 6 which analyses the social and political foundations of the rise of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan. Before moving onto a detailed analysis of the PCF’s progression in municipal and legislative elections in Arcueil and Cachan they need to be put into context via explanations of the modus operandi of interwar elections, the sources for the elections results I analyse, and the PCF’s opponents in the elections.

The Modus Operandi of Elections

The first point to make is that universal male suffrage operated in all elections during this period. The municipal elections of the interwar period operated on the basis of a two-ballot system in accordance with a law passed by the National Assembly in 1884.581 Electors generally voted for lists that were presented by various political parties

580 I have eliminated cantonal elections (held to elect a Conseiller-Général to the Department of the Seine) because their pattern of voting more or less confirms that of the municipal and legislative elections and the very high abstention rates (with, on average, around a third or more of the electorate abstaining even in the Popular Front election of 1935) indicates that these elections were regarded as much less important than municipal or legislative elections. Moreover, I was unable to obtain the cantonal election results in Cachan for the 1919 and 1925 elections. The abstention rates in the Conseil d’Arrondissement elections (held in 1919 and 1923 and suppressed thereafter) were so high they do not warrant analysis, with well over 50% of voters abstaining in the first ballot in 1919 and 1923 and 75% or more in the second ballot in 1919. For results, see AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1K44 and 1K46. 581 Alistair Cole and Peter Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections since 1789, Gower, Aldershot, Hants & Brookfield, Vermont, 1989, p. 187. Individual candidates on a list (not the list itself as indicated by Alistair and Campbell) had to obtain an absolute majority in the first ballot and a simple majority in the second to be elected to council. In practice this meant that members of opposing lists could be elected in the first or second ballots if voters split their vote between lists.

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or groups, however, any individual on the list who obtained an absolute majority of valid votes and the support of at least a quarter of the voters enrolled in the first ballot was duly elected. A second ballot was held for those council seats that remained. In the second ballot new lists could be added, lists from the first ballot could combine and a simple majority was all that was needed to be elected to council. Voters could practice panachage, the right to vote for candidates from different lists or for candidates not on any list, and had as many votes as there were council seats but were not required to cast all these votes. There were two systems of voting in operation for interwar legislative elections. In the 1919 and 1924 elections, the system used was a hybrid of proportional representation and the majority principle, with the latter prevailing.582 In general a single ballot was held to elect deputies to multimember constituencies, with 14 seats allocated to the Seine suburbs in 1919 and 19 seats in 1924. (A second ballot was held only if less than half of the registered voters in a constituency voted or if no list obtained a quotient which was obtained by dividing the number of valid votes cast by the total number of seats in a constituency).583 Electors had as many votes as there were seats in their constituency but could cast as few votes as they wanted and incomplete candidate lists (that is a list with fewer candidates than seats being contested) and panachage were permitted. In the first instance, any candidate with an absolute majority won a seat. Any remaining seats were then allocated in two ways. Each list was allocated as many seats as the number of times the constituency quotient could be divided into the average vote of the list (obtained by dividing the total number of votes a list received by the number of candidates on that list).584 For example if the quotient was 15 000 and the average vote of the list was 30 000 the list was allocated two seats.585 Then any seats remaining were distributed in accordance with the highest average. By favouring parties that could unite before an election and penalising those unable to agree to joint lists, this system produced erratic results, with big swings to the Right in 1919 (with the victory of the

582 The explanation which follows of the electoral systems in use in 1919 and 1924 is according to Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 63-64 and Marie Thérèse and Alain Lancelot, Atlas des circonscriptions électorales en France depuis 1875, Cahiers de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1970, pp. 9-12. 583 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, p. 64. 584 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, p. 64. 585 For an example of how the system worked see Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 64-65. 182 Toward Hegemony I

Bloc National) and the Left in 1924 (with the victory of the Bloc des Gauches).586 In 1927 the electoral law was changed, with elections more or less reverting to the prewar single-member constituency system, though boundaries were now more inequitable and there was only one week between the two ballots.587 The constituencies of the Seine suburbs were based on the cantons into which they were divided for administrative and electoral purposes.588 Arcueil and Cachan were part of the Canton of Villejuif, along with Gentilly and Le Kremlin-Bicêtre to their north, Villejuif to their east, L’Hay-les-Roses, Chevilly, Fresnes, and Rungis to their south. The return of single-member constituencies in 1928 meant that local factors increased in importance in legislative elections. Candidates were usually local or regional notables with strong local support bases and local/regional issues generally formed an important part of their campaigns. Thus, in 1928 the Radical-Socialist Gratien was elected deputy for the canton of Villejuif after having been first elected as mayor of Gentilly in 1919 and in 1925 as the representative for Arcueil, Cachan, Gentilly and Kremlin-Bicêtre on the Conseil Général of the Department of the Seine. Similarly, the communist Vaillant- Couturier displaced Gratien in 1936 after having been mayor of Villejuif since 1929 (and a candidate in the previous two elections). Prior to the Popular Front, the PCF tended to poll lower in municipal elections compared to legislative elections. This is because when it came to municipal affairs, working-class voters generally wanted practical improvements to their daily lives in the suburbs and they therefore looked for proven administrative skills. Thus, Brunet and Berlanstein argue respectively that a preoccupation with political symbolism brought the demise of the first socialist municipalities of Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen, with voters opting for Conservatives or Radicals in municipal elections while nevertheless voting socialist in legislative elections.589 By contrast, the pragmatic Guesdists of Ivry- sur-Seine controlled the municipality for 14 years before the outbreak of the First World War.590 The gap between voting in municipal and legislative elections was always less in Arcueil than Cachan, and under the Popular Front of the two votes converged in Arcueil

586 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 66-67. 587 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems, pp. 67-68; Thérèse and Lancelot, Atlas des circonscriptions électorales, pp. 9-12. 588 For an illustration of the Seine Constituencies see Thérèse and Lancelot, Atlas des circonscriptions électorales en France depuis 1875, pp. 50-55. 589 Brunet, Saint-Denis, pp. 45-94, 160-167; Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, pp. 160-161. 590 Berlanstein, Working People of Paris, p. 162.

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(the PCF’s result in the legislative election of December 1937 is not much above its first ballot result in the municipal elections of 1935), a sign that this commune was emerging as a communist bastion. The two-ballot system in operation for all municipal elections and legislative elections, except 1919 and 1924 in the case of the latter, provides a unique way of measuring the support base of a political group or candidate. The first ballot indicated the core support base of a party or candidate because it gave them the opportunity to contest the election without running the risk that they would split the vote and give their opponents the seat, thus allowing electors to vote positively for their first choice. The second ballot indicated the level of wider support a candidate could muster from supporters of competing but broadly aligned groups as electors tended to vote negatively, aiming to elect the candidate that was most likely to defeat their opponent. For the Left, traditionally this meant practising ‘republican discipline’ whereby less successful candidates withdrew and their supporters rallied to the candidate(s) best placed to bar the forces of reaction. Up until the advent of the Popular Front, the communists generally refused to practice ‘republican discipline’ in the belief that no quarter should be given to bourgeois parties, which included the SFIO. In its most extreme version, these tactics took the form of the ‘class against class’ line which the Comintern imposed on the PCF for those elections from 1928 until the Popular Front came into being. This line branded the SFIO as ‘social fascist’ and directed as much hostility toward the party, and also the Radical-Socialist Party, as toward parties of the Right, a clear violation of traditional republican discipline. Thus, the fact that in both Arcueil and Cachan the majority of communist voters remained loyal to the party in the second ballot whatever the outcome of the first ballot is an indication of a stable core for the PCF in both suburbs.

Sources

Where possible I have drawn on primary sources to calculate the percentage of the valid votes cast received by each party and the rate of abstentions. The most important primary source for elections is the procès-verbal which indicates for each election, and in the case of Arcueil by electoral section, the number of voters enrolled, the total number of votes cast, the number of invalid votes and valid votes cast, and the number of votes received by each individual candidate. Where candidates are part of a list (such as in all municipal elections and the 1919 and 1924 legislative elections) a

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truly accurate picture of a political group’s support can only be gained by adding all the votes received by its candidates together and then dividing this figure by the number of candidates it fielded. The figure arrived at is generally called the average vote. Where necessary I then used this average vote to calculate the percentage of the valid votes cast that each group received. This is done by dividing the figure for the average vote by the number of valid votes cast. Where, as in the case of legislative elections from 1928 onwards, there were single member constituencies, I have been able to simply divide the number of votes cast for a candidate by the total number of valid votes cast. To arrive at the abstention rate I have subtracted the total number of votes cast (including invalid votes) from the number of voters enrolled, and then divided the resulting figure by the total number of voters enrolled. In the case of the municipal elections in Arcueil-Cachan, the party affiliation of each candidate was not indicated so I had to work this out by reference to printed party lists, party propaganda, newspapers and by the way the results of candidates were grouped together over a series of elections. In the elections of 1919-1923, and especially for Arcueil, this often meant disentangling the overall results of parties from a long list of votes received by each candidate arranged in descending order with no indication given of what party the candidate belonged to and without candidates of the different parties being grouped together in a sequential order. I chose not to use the highest polling candidate of each list because this does not give an accurate indication of support for a group owing to the fact that many electors were willing to split their votes among groups, thus giving popular candidates votes that were well above the vote generally received by other candidates from their list. In the case of Cachan, I was only able to obtain the procès-verbal for the municipal elections of 1919, 1923 and 1929 (first ballot only), and the legislative election of 1919. Where possible I have used archival sources in place of the procès- verbal. In the case of municipal elections these were DM3/46 Listes d’Élus Municipales 1925-1945 (mainly used to obtain figures for the voters enrolled and votes cast at municipal elections since, apart from these, only the results of victors are given), the average results given in an Archives nationales police report on the 1929 elections (F713017 Dossier no. 5), and the results given in Fonds Eyrolles (in the case of 1935 I had to arrive at the average figures myself from results given by candidates in descending order). The gaps remaining were filled by the results published in Banlieue de Paris, either in the form of average votes or in a list of the votes received by each

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candidate. In terms of legislative elections, the Banlieue de Paris furnished the results, by average vote, of the 1924 elections, and the second ballot in 1928; the Fonds Eyrolles for the 1932 and 1937 elections; while the results calculated for the first ballot in 1928 and for the 1932 and 1936 elections came from the results published in George Lachapelle’s works on the results of these three elections. By using these sources, I have aimed to provide the most comprehensive and accurate picture of the results of elections in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period. On some occasions, the results I give vary with results published in the DBMOF and elsewhere and where this is the case, I will explain the discrepancy.

The Interwar Elections in Their Local Context

The political evolution of Arcueil followed a pattern common to many bastions of communism, particularly in the suburbs of Paris. That is, it followed in the wake of the rise of the SFIO immediately before and after World War I, which in turn often followed in the wake of the local tendency toward radical politics. In 1912, the last municipal election held before World War I saw seven members of the SFIO and one Republican Socialist elected among the 16 councillors who represented the electoral section of Arcueil.591 The SFIO socialist Frédéric Givort was subsequently elected as second assistant mayor (with 26 out of 27 cast), remaining in this position throughout the war. This was confirmation of rising support for the SFIO in Arcueil since the turn

591 AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1K47 Dossier: 1912 Municipal Elections, procès-verbal municipal elections 5 & 12 May 1912 for the commune of Arcueil-Cachan; AD94 DM3/45 Conseillers Municipaux Renouvellement 1912. 186 Toward Hegemony I

of the twentieth century, which followed a tradition of electing radical mayors.592 In the 1914 legislative elections, Longuet from the SFIO had been elected as the local deputy after having received 43.1% and 35.7% valid votes cast in the second ballot for Arcueil and Cachan respectively (an increase from 23% and 16.0% in the first ballot).593 In the electoral section of Cachan, neither the SFIO nor the Republican Socialists were able to challenge the prewar stranglehold that the Comité Radical des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan maintained over this electoral section. During the interwar years, municipal elections in Arcueil were contested ostensibly by parties of the Left, but as we move into the 1930s the nature of Arcueil’s Radical-Socialists changed. The Radical-Socialist mayor between 1923 and 1929, Templier, maintained amicable relations with the local SFIO, was president of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, supported protests against the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti and refused to ally with nationalists when approached to so.594 Templier was succeeded by Legrand who was regarded by the local SFIO as a reactionary595 and whose conservatism596 generated splits among Arcueil’s Radicals, a number of whom were critical of his close alignment with the local parliamentary deputy Gratien, a supporter

592 As far back as 1896, at least five socialists had been elected to Arcueil-Cachan’s council, with this number remaining constant over the next two elections (held in 1900 and 1904). In June 1907, four members of the newly formed SFIO were among six socialists elected to council to represent the recently created electoral section of Arcueil. SFIO member Paul Poënsin was also elected assistant mayor in May 1904. The baker and republican socialist Louis Grégoire Veyssière served as mayor between 1900 and 1907 when he resigned. Between 1896 and 1912 he was elected to council on the first ballot in seven elections. His successor as mayor (from 1908 until 1919) was François Trubert, an accountant and Radical-Socialist. Trubert followed in a long line of Radicals who had dominated municipal government since the Paris Commune. Alfred Duvillard, a market gardener and founding director of the local organ of the Radical-Socialist Party, L’Avenir d’Arcueil-Cachan (1908), was mayor during the years 1887-1888, 1892-1900, and 1907-1908, having been preceded by Emile Raspail a chemical engineer who shared the radical opinions of his father, the chemist and Radical politician François-Vincent Raspail, and who was mayor from 1878 to 1887. See: AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1K47; AD94 DM3/44, Commune d’Arcueil- Cachan, Maires-Adjoints/Conseillers Municipaux, Renouvellement 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908; DM3/45 Commune d’Arcueil-Cachan Maires Adjoints; DBMOF Cd-rom, biographies on Dulmo, Joseph Eugène Fournière, Paul Poënsin, Pierre Malaurant and Vincent Tragit; Varin, Mémoires, pp. 105-106; Gérard Blanc-Césan, Les Maires du Val-de-Marne, 983 Élus et Délégués de 1800 à Nos Jours, Paris, 1988, La Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France Paris et Ile-de-France – Mémoires, vol. 38, no.2, 1987, pp. 21, 23-27. 593 AN C7136, procès-verbaux legislative elections of 26 April and 10 May 1914. L. G. Veyssière received 36.0% in Arcueil and 28.7% in Cachan. 594 L’Aube sociale, no. 29, 24 September 1927. 595 Le Socialiste, November 1934. The SFIO complained that it was systematically refused the use of municipal buildings for its meetings, Le Socialiste, April 1932. 596 This was evident in his decision not join with other Radical administrations in the Paris region in closing down the municipal administration on 12 February 1934 to protest the riots six days previously. Instead, he threatened workers who did not turn up to work with dismissal, Le Socialiste, March 1934. 187 Toward Hegemony I

of Poincaré and Laval.597 Legrand’s adhesion to the Parti populaire français (PPF) after his defeat in the 1935 municipal elections confirmed the Left’s suspicions about his reactionary politics. An electoral force in the 1919 and 1920 municipal elections, the Republican Socialists went into rapid decline once the PCF came on the scene in 1923, and they no longer contested elections after 1925. In Cachan, only the CURSDIGC and the PCF contested all interwar ballots for municipal elections. The SFIO fielded a combined list with members of the Radical-Socialist Party in both ballots in 1925 and fielded its own list in both ballots in the 1928 partial municipal election. In 1929, the SFIO combined with a Radical-Socialist Party list and the list of the Comité Républicaine d’Action Sociale and in 1935 it combined with the PCF in the second ballot. A Radical-Socialist Party list contested the first ballots in 1928 and 1929, running in opposition to those Radical-Socialists allied with the CURSDIGC. As far as the legislative elections are concerned, the situation varied. In 1919, there were two lists only, that of the Bloc National and the SFIO. However, in 1924 there was a myriad of lists, the main ones being those of the PCF, the Bloc des Gauches (comprising of the SFIO and Radical-Socialists), and the conservative Cartel d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de la Banlieue. The 1928, 1932 and 1936 elections were basically fought between the communist Vaillant-Couturier and Gratien, with the latter metamorphosing from a Radical-Socialist Party candidate in 1928-32 into an Independent Radical-Socialist in 1936 and 1937. The SFIO contested the first ballot in 1928 and 1932 and the single ballots required in 1936 and 1937. A socialist-communist candidate contested the first ballot in 1928 and a number of right-wing candidates in the first ballots in 1932 and 1936. In 1937, Guyot was victorious for the PCF in an election that included candidates representing the Radical-Socialist Party and the PSF and PPF on the extreme right.

The Evolution of Voting

Apart from the size of the two electorates, Tables 5.1 and 5.2 below indicate little difference between Arcueil and Cachan in terms of the participation of the electorate. Both suburbs experienced a rapid growth in the number of voters enrolled and a substantial drop off in abstentions from the mid-1920s onwards as compared the years immediately after World War I. The drop in abstentions might have been the

597 La Régional, 1st year, no. 3, 2 May 1935; Le Moniteur, 18 October 1935. 188 Toward Hegemony I

result of a growing polarisation of the electorate from the mid-1920s onward which drove more electors to vote, or perhaps the new electors who moved to the two communes in the interwar period were more engaged in the political process. In any case, the electoral implantation of the PCF was concomitant with a growing electorate and increased participation in the electoral process. The importance of legislative elections in determining the national government at a time of intense social conflict and recurrent international crises is a likely explanation for the fact that legislative elections always recorded the lowest abstention rates. However, by the mid-1930s there was a convergence in abstention rates for legislative and municipal elections with the latter only slightly above the former. Arguably a growing polarisation of the local electorate, in the face of the onset of economic crisis and the formation of the Popular Front, drove up electoral participation and increasingly made even local elections a platform for making a political statement. TABLE 5.1 – INTERWAR MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN: VOTERS ENROLLED & ABSTENTIONS

Arcueil Cachan

Voters Abstention rate Voters Abstention rate Year Enrolled 1st Ballot 2nd Ballot Enrolled 1st Ballot 2nd Ballot

1919 2151/2145 31.9% 40.1% 1522 32.7% N/A

1923 1952 28.4% 31.6% 1358 28.0% N/A

1925 2715 16.7% 23.8% 1980 14.3% 21.8%

1929 3337/3341 18.6% 23.9% 2565 19.1% 22.5%

1935 4157 17.2% 17.7% 3465 16.2% 16.1%

SOURCE: DM3/45 Listes d’Élus Municipaux 1908-1924 & DM3/46 Listes d’Élus Municipaux 1925- 1945.

TABLE 5.2 - INTERWAR LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN: VOTERS ENROLLED & ABSTENTIONS

Arcueil Cachan Voters Abstention rate Voters Abstention rate Year Enrolled 1st Ballot 2nd Ballot Enrolled 1st Ballot 2nd Ballot

1919 2153 22.4% N/A 1527 24.9% N/A

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1924 2524 11.4% N/A 1900 No figures N/A

1928 3295 14.2% 17.2% 2397 13.8%* 14.9%*

1932 3925 14.2% 15.9% 3153 13.7% 16.1%

1936 4345 12.1% N/A 3719 12.1% N/A

SOURCE: Arcueil: E Dépôt Arcueil 1K45, procès-verbal legislative elections of 1919, 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1936, commune of Arcueil. Cachan: Banlieue de Paris 4 & 26 May, 1924, 27 April 1928; AD94 36J19, 1932 legislative election, results in Cachan; George Lachapelle, Elections Législatives 22-29 Avril 1928: Résultats Officiels, Librairie Georges Roustan, Paris, 1928, p. 273, Elections Législatives 1932, Résultats Officiels, p. 284 and Élections Législatives 26 Avril et 3 Mai 1936: Résultats Officiels, pp. 265- 266, Le Temps, Paris, 1932/1936; Front rouge, 1 September 1937; AD94 36J21, “Elections parlementaires 12 et 19 Décembre 1937”, tally of votes in Cachan. NOTE : * Estimates only. Abstention rates are calculated using the difference between total number of enrolled voters and the total number of voters who cast their ballot (both valid and invalid). The 1928 abstention rates for Cachan are in all likelihood an overestimate of the real abstention rate because they were calculated using only the valid votes cast owing to the fact that I did not have the figures for total number of ballots cast (both valid and invalid). The figure given incorporates of the informal vote which at each election generally ran at between 1% and 2%. 2. ELECTIONS IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN 1919-1937: AN OVERVIEW a) Arcueil all electoral sections

190 Toward Hegemony I

Figure 5.1 - Arcueil: voting in municipal elections, 1919-1935 60.0

55.0

50.0

45.0

40.0

35.0

30.0

25.0

20.0

Percentage of valid votes cast 15.0

10.0

5.0

0.0 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1919 1919 1920 1920 1923 1923 1925 1925 1929 1929 1932 1932 1935 1935 Ballot

Figure 5.2 - Arcueil: voting in legislative elections, 1919-1937 60.0 55.0 50.0

45.0 40.0 35.0

30.0 25.0 20.0

15.0 Percentage of valid votes cast votes valid of Percentage 10.0 5.0

0.0 single 1919 single 1924 1st 1928 2nd 1928 1st 1932 2nd 1932 single 1936 single 1937 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

191 Toward Hegemony I

Arguably, Figures 5.1 and 5.2 demonstrate that from the outset the PCF captured the support of leftwing, working-class voters who had previously voted socialist. In the first municipal election it contested in 1923, the PCF captured a quarter of the valid votes cast, about two-thirds the vote that the SFIO had received in the 1920 partial elections and only about five percent less than the SFIO’s 1919 first ballot vote. The PCF’s first ballot vote climbed steadily between the mid to late 1920s, with class against class tactics merely stalling this growth before it was renewed under the Popular Front. The 1923 municipal election, when the PCF’s vote was maintained in the second ballot, indicates that there was a stable, core communist electorate. The decline in the once significant Republican Socialist vote (see Tables 5.4, 5.5 and 5.7, pages 201, 206 and 215 respectively) appears to have held up the SFIO vote until the mid 1920s, after which it went into a freefall concomitant with a steep rise in support for the Radical- Socialist Party. The SFIO in Arcueil followed a pattern familiar to the working-class suburbs of Paris whereby it was squeezed between PCF on the left and the Radical- Socialist Party (or other parties on the right) in an increasingly polarised electorate. With the Radical-Socialist Party supported by rightwing and centre-right voters, the SFIO essentially became a centrist party with many of their voters preferring to support the Radical-Socialists in the second ballot rather than the PCF. In the 1920s, the sectarian tactics undoubtedly prevented the latter from achieving a majority in the second ballot, however, this was no longer the case by 1932 as the local Radicals moved further to the Right, prompting more socialist voters to support the PCF in the second ballot. The Popular Front emphatically confirmed this trend. Nevertheless, the sectarian tactics of the PCF did impact negatively, as is demonstrated by Figure 5.2’s exposition of voting in interwar legislative elections. Nowhere is the PCF’s capture of the SFIO’s electorate more apparent than in the legislative elections. The PCF’s result in 1924 was only around 5% less than the SFIO’s vote in 1919. By contrast, without benefit of an electoral alliance with the Radicals (as in 1924), the SFIO collapsed in 1928 to around 10% of the valid votes cast at the same time as support rose significantly for the PCF and the Radical-Socialist Party. The SFIO benefited when the sectarian tactics caused the PCF to lose some support in the first ballot in 1932, although socialist voters overwhelmingly, and to a greater degree than in 1928, supported the communists in the second ballot. A popular candidate helped the PCF to achieve a huge 20% increase in its first ballot vote in 1936, before the vote fell

192 Toward Hegemony I

back to just under 50% in 1937. The consistently high vote for the PCF in legislative elections was converging with the Party’s vote in municipal elections, thus marking Arcueil out as a communist bastion. While the spectacular decline of Radical-Socialist Party in Arcueil led to a recovery in the SFIO’s electoral stocks in 1937, with the party doubling its vote compared to 1936, it also pushed rightwing voters to support two fascist parties which together received 20% of the vote. The PCF went into World War II as the dominant political force in Arcueil after having progressively built on an electoral base that was rooted in the pre-schism electorate of the SFIO. The PCF quickly emerged as the party of the working class, a conclusion that is reinforced by the fact the inverse relationship between the SFIO and Radical-Socialist as the former was pushed to the centre and the latter further to the right. b) Arcueil electoral section 1 – Centre

Figure 5.3 - Centre: voting in municipal elections, 1919-1935 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1919 1919 1920 1920 1923 923 1925 1925 1929 1929 1932 1932 1935 1935 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

193 Toward Hegemony I

Figure 5.4 - Centre: voting in legislative elections, 1919-1937 55.0

50.0

45.0

40.0

35.0

30.0

25.0

20.0

15.0 percentage of valid votes cast 10.0

5.0

0.0 single single 1st 1928 2nd 1928 1st 1932 2nd 1932 single single 1919 1924 1936 1937 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

The results of voting in the Centre lend weight to the argument advanced with regard to the origins of the communist electorate in Arcueil. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 indicate that the PCF emerged after 1923 with around two-thirds of the SFIO’s 1919 electorate, and from this solid base progressively increased the share of the valid votes cast in the first ballot until it suffered a reverse in both the 1932 municipal and legislative elections, at the same time as the SFIO recorded big gains. The PCF only partially recovered in 1935 since its result in the first ballot of this election was below that of 1929. Crucial to the PCF’s victories in the Centre in the 1930s were the big gains it made in the second ballot in the wake of the rightward turn of the Radical administration. As Figure 5.3 indicates, the Centre was a Radical-Socialist stronghold in the 1920s, however, the Radicals suffered a big decline in support in the 1930s, with the communists surpassing them for the first time in municipal elections in 1932. The most likely explanation for this setback is that voters were passing judgement on the incumbent Radical-Socialist municipality rather than the Radical-Socialist Party in general, a conclusion which is supported by the fact that in the Centre the Radical- Socialist candidate easily out-polled his communist rival in the 1932 legislative elections.

194 Toward Hegemony I

Up until the mid-1920s in both municipal and legislative elections the SFIO consistently attracted more support in the Centre than Laplace, including a significant, though declining, share of the number of votes cast in the first ballot of the next three municipal elections – more than a third of the valid votes cast, then around a quarter, then just over a fifth – with a significant reporting of votes in the second ballot. The latter most probably came from the Republican Socialists whose stronghold was the Centre. However, the SFIO’s share of the vote fell dramatically in both municipal and legislative elections after 1925, at the same time as the Republican Socialists disappeared as an electoral force. The huge increase in support for the Radical-Socialist Party in both types of election after 1925, much greater than the PCF, suggests that it was the main beneficiary of the decline of the two socialist groups. c) Arcueil Electoral Section 2 – Laplace

Figure 5.5- Laplace: voting in municipal elections, 1919-1935 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1919 1919 1920 1920 1923 923 1925 1925 1929 1929 1932 1932 1935 1935 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

195 Toward Hegemony I

Figure 5.6- Laplace: voting in legislative elections 1919-1937 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0

Percentage of valid votes cast 10.0 5.0 0.0 single 1919 single 1924 1st 1928 2nd 1928 1st 1932 2nd 1932 single 1936 single 1937 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

In the first two elections that the PCF contested (the 1923 municipal and 1924 legislative elections) it polled at almost the same level as the SFIO had in 1919, although this was significantly lower than the SFIO’s result in the 1920 municipal elections which suggests that some of the SFIO voters from this election stayed with the party. In municipal elections of the 1920s the PCF was neck and neck with the Radical- Socialists at the first ballot but failed to attract a sufficient number of socialist voters to give it victory in the second ballot. However, in 1932 the PCF defeated the Radical- Socialists in both ballots, and this victory became a rout in 1935 when the party triumphed by more than 15% in both rounds. Once again, the importance of local factors can be seen in the fact that in Laplace the PCF outpolled the Radical-Socialist Party in every interwar legislative election that it fought except the second ballot in 1932. The overwhelming victories of the PCF in Laplace in the 1936 and 1937 legislative elections confirmed this section’s place as a bastion of support for communism. In Laplace, the emergence of a larger communist electorate in 1923 came in the wake of a fall in support for the post-schism SFIO that was much greater than in the Centre. Support for the SFIO fell away after 1925, though less dramatically than in the Centre, to settle around 20% of the valid votes cast, though this share fell somewhat in 1935. Once again, after 1925 there is an inverse relationship between the Radical-

196 Toward Hegemony I

Socialist and SFIO vote, especially in the case of the legislative elections when the SFIO’s polling between 1928 and 1936 inclusive was weak. d) Arcueil Electoral Section 3 – Cité-Aqueduc Figure 5.7 - Cité-Aqueduc: voting in municipal elections, 1932/1935 70.0 65.0 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 1st 1932 2nd 1932 1st 1935 2nd 1935 Ballot

Figure 5.8 - Cité-Acqueduc: voting in legislative elections, 1932-1937 70.0 65.0 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 10.0 5.0 0.0 1st 1932 2nd 1932 single 1936 single 1937 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

197 Toward Hegemony I

In the Cité-Aqueduc section in both the municipal and legislative elections of 1932, the first since the section was created, the PCF emerged with a clear majority over its Radical-Socialist rival. The influence of local factors in the form of the unpopularity of the incumbent Radical-Socialist municipality can be seen in the fact that the PCF increased its lead in the second ballot of the 1932 municipal elections, whereas in the legislative elections of the same year the lead remained static. In the 1935 municipal election and the 1936 legislative election the SFIO went backwards slightly compared to 1932 as the Cité-Aqueduc remained its weakest section in Arcueil in the face of a huge increase in the communist vote, especially in legislative elections. The marked drop in Radical-Socialist support in the first ballot of the 1935 municipal election was only partly the result of the appearance of a fourth political grouping as electors who previously voted Radical defected either directly to the PCF or else to the SFIO with many of the latter’s voters moving to support the communists. In the 1936 legislative election the outgoing deputy Gratien, running as an Independent Radical-Socialist, lost about three-quarters of his 1932 vote in the face of a massive surge in support for the PCF and a plethora of candidates contesting the election. In the face of an unravelling Popular Front the legislative election of December 1937 saw the PCF vote drop, though at more than 50% it remained higher than during the class against class period. The SFIO doubled its vote in the face of a collapse in support for the Radicals, while it is notable that in this election the two extreme right candidates were much weaker in this section than in the Centre or Laplace. Thus, from the time it was created the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section was by far the most radical section in Arcueil, voting overwhelming for the PCF even during the period of class against class tactics, and becoming a veritable communist citadel under the Popular Front. The inhabitants of the cité-jardin and the poor, isolated areas to its northeast chose to vote for the PCF in numbers unmatched by the voters of the Laplace or Centre sections. Nevertheless, relatively speaking Laplace also remained an area of strong support for the PCF, its voters tending to vote communist in greater numbers than those of the Centre. An area which was home to some lotissements and to tenement inhabitants, Laplace had provided a bulwark of support to the PCF (and before it the SFIO) ever since the party was formed. By contrast, the communists did not triumph in the Centre until the second ballot in the 1932 partial municipal elections and in the Popular Front elections that followed. The presence of bourgeois housing and of petty- bourgeois groups in this electoral section tended to hold down the communist vote.

198 Toward Hegemony I

e) Cachan

Figure 5.9 - Cachan: voting in municipal elections, 1919-1935 80.0 75.0 70.0 65.0 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0

Percentage of valid votes cast 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 single single 1st 1925 2nd 1st 1928 2nd 1st 1929 2nd 1st 1935 2nd 1919 1923 1925 1928 1929 1935 Ballot CURSDIGC/Rad-Socs SFIO PCF Rep Soc (1919)/RSP (1925-29)

Figure 5.10 - Cachan: voting in legislative elections, 1919-1937 70.0 65.0 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 single 1919 single 1924 1st 1928 2nd 1928 1st 1932 2nd 1932 single 1936 single 1937 Ballot RSP SFIO PCF Various

199 Toward Hegemony I

Figures 5.9 and 5.10 present a fundamentally different picture in Cachan than Arcueil. Figure 5.9 demonstrates the early conservatism of Cachan. The is indicated by the fact that the CURSDIGC only needed a single ballot to secure victory in 1919 and 1923 and came close to an absolute majority in the first ballot in 1925. The early weakness of the SFIO in Cachan vis-à-vis Arcueil is apparent in the fact that the party polled well behind the second-placed Republican Socialists in 1919. It is also clear in Cachan that the PCF inherited the electorate of the pre-schism SFIO as not only did the latter fail to field any candidates in 1923, but the PCF also received a vote slightly higher than the SFIO had in 1919. Support for the PCF continued to rise as the weakness of the SFIO forced the socialists to combine with local radicals in the first ballot. Despite receiving significant support in the second ballot in 1925 from first ballot voters for this combined list, the PCF was no match for the CURSDIGC which also attracted the support of first ballot Radical-Socialist Party and SFIO voters. From 1925 onwards the PCF developed a core electorate which amounted to around a quarter of the valid votes cast, its solidity being apparent in the very small loss of support it experienced when it contested the second ballot in 1928 (when it polled behind the SFIO) and 1929. In fact the 1935 election merely served to return the PCF to a first ballot position marginally above its peak of 1928 which had been gradually eroded as the PCF embraced the sectarian class against class tactics. The remarkable re-emergence of the SFIO as an electoral force in its own right from 1928 onwards has to be seen the context of a steep decline in support for the CURSDIGC, which at the end of the 1920s was showing signs of fragmenting. It is also testament to its moderation. Its willingness to ally with other left-wing groups enabled it to surpass the sectarian PCF in the second ballot in 1928 and 1929. The SFIO also developed a core electorate from 1928 onwards, amounting to just over 20% of the valid votes cast, while the Radical-Socialist Party quickly declined after 1925. As I will demonstrate in the next chapter, the local presence of the SFIO was a key to this success. In this more moderate voting commune where a competent incumbent administration was coming off a strong base and where local politics was fragmented, the only chance for the PCF was in alliance with the SFIO. In 1935, the PCF almost pulled off a victory with the SFIO as it heeded the lessons of the 1928 and 1929 elections when a combined left-wing list might have been victorious. The Popular Front presaged the emergence of the PCF in Cachan as the pre-eminent political grouping in

200 Toward Hegemony I

municipal politics in 1945. In the legislative elections, the first vote that the PCF contested in 1924 saw the party achieve a result almost exactly on a par with the SFIO’s result in 1919. The steep decline in the SFIO’s vote in 1928 when compared to 1919 also suggests that the PCF inherited the bulk of the SFIO’s pre-schism working-class electorate. Between 1924 and 1932 the PCF consistently captured more than a quarter of the valid votes cast in the first ballot. However, compared with Arcueil, Figure 5.10 shows that in Cachan sectarian tactics brought a much more significant reversal of support for the PCF in 1932 as compared to the high of the previous election. In 1936, after having been easily defeated in Cachan by the conservative Radical-Socialist Auguste Gratien, the communist candidate, Vaillant-Couturier, used the Popular Front as a springboard to victory as he massively increased the PCF’s first ballot vote. Nevertheless, Gratien maintained greater support in Cachan than Arcueil, a legacy of his earlier commanding victories on the back of strong support from the incumbent municipal administration. Though the vote of the PCF’s candidate fell in 1937, to approximately the same level of the second ballot in 1932, it remained well above that of all other candidates. Thus, the PCF’s legislative vote during the Popular Front period was a precursor to the Fourth Republic when in Cachan PCF candidates out-polled their competitors in legislative elections. With a sharp fall in support for the Radical-Socialist Party, the SFIO doubled its vote in 1937 to around the level it achieved in the municipal elections two years prior. The SFIO’s vote was equal to that of the two fascist candidates from the PPF and PSF, who polled more votes in Cachan than Arcueil. Undoubtedly the cessation of internecine tactics by the communists with the advent of the Popular Front was fundamental to the growth in support for the PCF in Seine suburbs such as Cachan, where anticommunist sentiment had been very strong in the preceding years.

3. THE RISE OF THE SFIO: THE ELECTIONS OF 1919-1920

The legislative and municipal elections of November 1919 were held against a background of acute labour unrest and a threatened general strike, with the voting system adopted for the legislative elections favouring coalitions of the Centre and the Right.598 Parties to the Right of the Radical-Socialist Party formed the Bloc national, a coalition of nationalists (excepting the extremist Action Française) and centrist parties

598 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 123. 201 Toward Hegemony I

such as the Alliance Démocratique and Fédération Républicaine, but also including some Radicals. The Bloc national campaigned as defenders of the nation, a counter to the threat of Bolshevism posed by the Left whose working-class support base had widely welcomed the Russian Revolution. Running alone after having rejected an alliance with the bourgeois Radicals, the SFIO suffered a demoralising defeat as their representation fell from 102 to 68 seats despite their vote having increased from 1.38 to 1.7 million.599 The Radicals fared little better. With 319 out of 620 seats, the Bloc national triumphed, delivering France the most conservative chamber since 1871.600 To make matters worse, the conservatives won all fourteen of the parliamentary seats that were contested in the Seine-suburbs, receiving 54.0% of the valid votes cast, compared with the socialists 40.5%.601 Defeated were all five outgoing socialist deputies for the Seine-suburbs, among them Jean Longuet and Pierre Laval,602 while the victors included Claude Nectoux, elected in 1909 and 1910 as a SFIO deputy representing the electoral district that encompassed Arcueil-Cachan and in 1914 for an adjoining district,603 but having quit the SFIO “…indigné de l’attitude antipatriotique et bolchevique de la majorité.”604 Notwithstanding their electoral defeat, the SFIO won the mayoralties of 23 communes in the Department of the Seine, as well as a number of General Councillors. A key element in this success was the important role that socialist councillors played during World War I in softening the impact of the war on the suburban population at a time when municipalities took on the important role of provisioning and aiding their local populations.605 As I will indicate in the next chapter, Arcueil-Cachan was one such suburb. Building upon rising support in the prewar era, the SFIO gained control of the municipality in 1920, and in doing so paved the way for the PCF’s conquest of local

599 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 123. 600 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 123. 601 Calculated from the results for the electoral district published in Banlieue de Paris, 22 November, 1919. 602 AD94 35J458, “Elections Législatives du 16 Novembre 1919 (4e circonscription de la Seine BANLIEUE), Liste des Candidats du Parti Socialiste.” 603 Hubert Rouger, La France Socialiste, Vol. III, Adéodat Constant Adolphe Compère-Morel (ed), Encyclopédie Socialiste, Syndicale et Coopérative de l’Internationale Ouvrière, Paris, 1921, pp. 19- 150, 153, 157. 604 AD94 35J458, Dossier 2: 1919 Elections, booklet entitled: “Élections Législatives du 16 Novembre 1919, Liste d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de la Banlieue de Paris”. 605 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 197. Examples included Arcueil-Cachan and Bobigny, Patrizia Dogliani, “Un laboratoire de socialisme municipal: France 1880-1920”, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris VIII- Vincennes à Saint-Denis/CRHMSS, 1991, p. 111; Stovall, Red Belt, p. 98.

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government soon after. Ultimately, the rise to power of the communists in Arcueil- Cachan sparked the succession of the more conservative-voting electoral section of Cachan.

The Legislative Election 17 November 1919

The political differences that drove the partition of Arcueil-Cachan in 1922 are apparent in the differing results of voting in the 1919 legislative elections. Table 5.3 below indicates that while the Bloc national managed just over 50% of the valid votes cast in the electoral section of Arcueil, in the section of Cachan it captured almost two- thirds of the valid votes cast. Underscoring Cachan’s relative conservatism is the fact that the SFIO’s vote was 14% higher in Arcueil than Cachan. Notwithstanding its defeat, the electoral stocks of the SFIO were on the rise as the party increased in its share of the valid votes cast by 15% in Arcueil and almost 10% in Cachan as compared to its result in the first ballot of 1914 (the SFIO was victorious in the second ballot in both sections). While the differences in voting between the sections of Arcueil and Cachan were a portent of the political conflict which would see these sections go their separate ways, within Arcueil itself there was little difference in voting at this stage between the Centre and Laplace, with both the Bloc national and the SFIO polling better in the former.

TABLE 5.3 - 1919 LEGISLATIVE ELECTION:

VOTING IN ARCUEIL-CACHAN Percentage received of valid votes cast plus abstention rate (Arcueil electoral bureaus/Cachan electoral section) Arcueil Cachan Centre Laplace Total

Bloc National 50.2 52.7 51.3 65.7

SFIO 45.6 41.8 43.8 29.8

Various 0.8 1.0 0.9 1.0

Abstentions 22.4% 22.6% 22.5% 24.9%

SOURCE: AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1K45, procès-verbal legislative election 17 November 1919.

203 Toward Hegemony I

The Municipal Elections in Arcueil 1919 and 1920 and the Rise of the SFIO

TABLE 5.4 - 1919 & 1920 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL

Percentage received of valid votes cast by electoral section/in total plus abstention rate

Centre Laplace Total

1919 1920 1919 1920 1919 1920

1st 34.5 31.9 34.8 32.5 34.6 32.1 RSP 2nd 36.9 35.5 39.9 33.0 38.2 34.4

Republican 1st 32.3 28.2 31.0 21.8 31.7 25.6 Socialists 2nd 59.7 21.2 56.6 15.8 58.4 18.9

1st 30.1 36.9 31.6 43.8 30.8 39.8 SFIO 2nd 59.7 40.3 56.6 49.8 58.4 44.3

1st 29.4% 36.9% 35% 47.7% 31.9% 41.9% Abstentions 2nd 36.7% 33.1% 44.1% 43.2% 40.1% 37.8%

SOURCE: AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1K47, procès-verbal municipal elections 1 & 7 December 1919, commune of Arcueil-Cachan and for the partial municipal elections 3 & 10 October 1920, the electoral section of Arcueil, commune of Arcueil-Cachan.

The municipal elections of 1 and 7 December 1919 saw 16 council seats up for election in the section of Arcueil, and were notable for the fact the composer Erik Satie was an SFIO candidate in the first ballot. According to Table 5.4 above in the first ballot a three-way tussle between the SFIO, the Republican Socialists, headed by the popular former mayor L. G. Veyssière, and the Radical-Socialist Party, headed by the outgoing mayor, saw the SFIO receive a lower vote than in the legislative elections, with all three groups receiving roughly equivalent support in both sections of Arcueil. In the second ballot, the two socialist groups fielded an equally-proportioned common list of sixteen candidates that triumphed overwhelmingly with 56.6% of the valid votes cast.606 However, high abstention rates, particularly in the second ballot, took some shine off the socialist victory. The differences between the Centre and Laplace were not significant, with the SFIO polling higher in the former. The following year, Mayor L.G.

606 See Banlieue de Paris, 13 December 1919.

204 Toward Hegemony I

Veyssière’s resignation after having been censured by the municipal council for giving aid to striking workers without council approval, and the resignation in solidarity of four Republican Socialists and all eight SFIO councillors, prompted a partial municipal election for thirteen council seats. This election is significant because it marks the peak of electoral support for the pre-schism SFIO. Seven out of eight SFIO councillors re- contested their positions with Givort heading their list, L.G. Veyssière (not to be confused with L. L. Veyssière of the SFIO, his cousin) heading a Republican Socialist list that included all five Republican Socialist councillors who had resigned, while the Radicals were now headed by a local doctor Victor Daubret and fielded nine candidates who had been defeated in 1919. Relations must have declined between the Republican and SFIO socialists as the two political groupings ran separate lists in both ballots. Both the Republican Socialists and Radical-Socialist Party lost ground in the first ballot in 1920 when compared with 1919, the SFIO emerging as the front-runner owing to a 9% increase in its share of the valid votes cast, including a 12.2% increase in Laplace which now emerged as the bastion of the Left. All thirteen SFIO candidates were elected to council in the second ballot as support for the third placed Republican Socialists fell, as also did abstentions. The high abstention rates were typical in the interwar period of partial elections and probably helped the SFIO in this election.607 However, it was chiefly the splitting of the vote three ways in the second ballot which gave the SFIO victory in spite of the fact it polled under half of the valid votes cast, less in the Centre (where it polled 40.3%) and more in Laplace (with 49.8%). The SFIO now had the support of a quarter of the electorate, and Laplace was an emergent stronghold. The bastion of support for the Radical-Socialists and the Republican Socialists was in the Centre.

The 1919 Municipal Election in Cachan: Electoral Conservatism Re-Confirmed

The conservatism of Cachan’s electors vis-à-vis their counterparts in Arcueil was no more apparent than in the December 1919 election of 11 councillors to represent the section of Cachan. The advances made by the SFIO in legislative elections were not matched at a municipal level where, in the first ballot, the party garnered only 18.2% of the valid votes, placing it third behind the Republican Socialists with 23.9% and the list

607 The SFIO only gained the support of 2.6% more of the enrolled voters as compared with 1919, including a 3.3% increase in Laplace and a 1.8% increase in the Centre. 205 Toward Hegemony I

of the CURSDIGC which, with 55.7%, was entirely elected.608 With 32.7% of the electorate abstaining, the SFIO was unable to mobilise a significant section of the electorate to vote. With the candidates of the CURSDIGC being supporters of the Bloc national that won such a comprehensive victory in Cachan in the legislative elections some months earlier, a clear difference had opened up in the politics of the two electoral sections of Arcueil-Cachan.

Presaging the Electoral Rise of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan

The zenith for the SFIO in municipal politics was in reality a portent of the future domination of the Left by the communists, particularly in Arcueil. The mayoral election that followed the partial municipal election of October 1920 came down to a choice between two members of the SFIO, Givort and André Roure, the former an opponent and the latter a supporter of adhesion to the Third International. Roure triumphed by thirteen votes to eleven in the third ballot of voting, after both candidates had received thirteen votes each in the first ballot. The vast majority of the local SFIO were partisans of the Third International and would have supported Roure, which means that Republican Socialists and non-socialists must have supported Givort.609 The positions of first and second assistant mayor then went to partisans of the Third International, Alfred Puech and Paul Poënsin, both of whom defeated Givort in being elected to their positions. With the SFIO’s schism in December 1920, the Third Internationalist group on council became part of the local branch of the PCF, ushering in a period of political turmoil that ultimately led to separation. My analysis of the origins of the partition of Arcueil-Cachan which follows in Chapter 6 indicates that the brief emergence of the Third Internationalists-cum-communists as the dominant force in council helped to re-energise a separatist movement in Cachan that had prewar origins but which had been checked by the war. This movement ultimately succeeded in dividing Arcueil-Cachan into two separate municipalities, thus transforming municipal politics in the two newly created communes. In Arcueil the SFIO emerged from World War I strengthened, whereas in the

608 Details of candidate lists are according to: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, electoral lists/procès- verbal for the 1919 municipal elections; DM3/44 Commune d’Arcueil Cachan, Renouvellement de 1912; Banlieue de Paris, 29 November 1919. 609 On the voting for mayor and deputies see: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal, election of Mayor/Assistant Mayors 18 October 1920; DBMOF Cd-rom, entries on Givort, Poënsin and Roure. 206 Toward Hegemony I

electoral section of Cachan it remained relatively weak. In Arcueil, the party increased its vote in the elections of 1919 and 1920 compared with its prewar performance, polling over 40% of the valid votes cast in legislative elections, and increased its share of the vote to a similar level in the 1920 partial municipal elections.610 At a local level, by 1920 the SFIO was clearly eroding the support base of the Republican Socialists, while confirming its position as the main local rival of the Radical-Socialist Party. However, in the more conservative Cachan, support for non-socialists was much stronger and consequently the SFIO was clearly the third force, managing at a municipal level to capture less than 20% of the valid votes cast (which equated to a little over one- tenth in municipal elections).

4. DISUNITY & DEFEAT OF THE LEFT: THE ELECTIONS OF 1923-1932 The elections held between 1923 and 1932 are important because they witnessed the emergence of the PCF as a political force in the recently partitioned communes of Arcueil and Cachan. Except for the election of two councillors in Arcueil in 1932, the period between 1923 and 1932 is generally characterised by defeat for the Marxist Left in both municipal and legislative elections. The situation was worse in Cachan where the Left was handicapped by the historical conservatism of its voters and lacked a solid implantation. Nevertheless, the analysis that follows of municipal and legislative elections in both Arcueil and Cachan will demonstrate that the PCF inherited a stable core of support from the pre-schism SFIO, a function of the fact that it was the latest incarnation of a neo-Babouvist tradition that was strong in the Paris region where significant numbers of alienated workers resided. The elections of 1923 to 1929 need to be viewed within the context of the sectarian tactics of the PCF. Prior to 1928, when communist tactics took a more extreme turn, the United Front tactical line pursued by the PCF, in accordance with the directions of the Comintern, did not theoretically preclude alliances with the SFIO.611 However, the audacity and inflexibility of the communist proposals for electoral alliance ensured they were duly rejected by a SFIO which would have been well aware of the PCF’s aim to win over the rank-and-file membership of the SFIO via simultaneous alliances with the SFIO’s leadership and its rank-and-file. Moreover,

610 However, the gain was less significant in terms of the party’s share of the enrolled voters, which ranged from a low of 20% in the first ballot of 1919 to a high of a third in the legislative elections some months earlier.

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socialists did not readily forget the invective constantly hurled at them, while the PCF’s willingness to embrace illegality and clandestinity was an anathema to the SFIO. As a result, alliances were rare. Then in 1928, the Comintern imposed upon the PCF a more extreme version of United Front tactics. Class-against-class tactics were characterised by an implacable hostility toward social democracy and the assertion that the PCF must unite the working class under its sole leadership.612 No alliances were now possible with the ‘bourgeois’ SFIO that was branded as ‘social fascist’ and was to be opposed as equally as those parties to its right. Only alliances with rank-and-file socialists were deemed acceptable. While these tactics led to a 30% decline nationally in support for the PCF at legislative elections, and were disastrous for the party’s levels of parliamentary representation and membership, nevertheless the PCF vote remained relatively stable in the Seine suburbs, dropping only 2% in 1932 as compared with its results in 1924.613 This indicates that in the period between the Party’s formation and the Popular Front, the PCF emerged in the working-class suburbs of Paris with a significant, stable core of support to build upon. Similarly, at the time of its formation, the PCF controlled 16 municipalities, and though this number quickly declined the party still controlled eight municipalities after the 1925 municipal elections, and increased this number to ten in 1929, in spite of its adherence to class against class tactics.614 Undoubtedly, as the analysis that follows indicates, the latter helped keep the PCF and the Left in general from power in Arcueil and Cachan. Nevertheless, sectarianism did not prevent the PCF from gaining and maintaining a solid and significant support base in both suburbs.

611 Tiersky, French Communism, pp. 35-46. 612 Tiersky, French Communism, pp. 46-53. 613 Stovall, Red Belt, p. 170. 614 Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 102, 171. 208 Toward Hegemony I

Arcueil’s Municipal Elections 1923-1932: From Radical-Socialist Dominance to Communist Triumph

TABLE 5.5 - 1923 & 1925 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL

Percentage of valid votes cast by electoral sections/in total plus abstention rate Centre Laplace Total

1923 1925 1923 1925 1923 1925

1st 27.1 39.7 29.9 35.0 26.4 37.6 RSP 2nd 37.7 58.3 33.5 52.2 35.1 55.4

Rep Soc 1st 20.0 6.3 15.4 4.7 18.0 5.6

1st 27.0 21.7 25.3 22.9 26.2 22.2 *SFIO 2nd 35.7 withdrew 31.7 withdrew 33.2 withdrew

1st 23.0 30.6 29.9 34.6 26.0 32.4 *PCF 2nd 22.5 39.1 31.9 45.0 26.0 41.9

1st 25.0% 15.1% 32.2% 18.5% 28.4% 16.7% Abstentions 2nd 27.2% 19.6% 36.6% 23.3% 31.6% 23.8%

SOURCE: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal municipal elections 18 & 25 February 1923 and 3 & 10 May 1925 commune of Arcueil. *NOTE: Results for lists minus the candidature of André Marty. On 18 and 25 February 1923, Arcueil’s inhabitants went to the polls to elect the 23 councillors who would make up the first municipal council of Arcueil since the electoral section of Cachan was excised and decreed an independent commune. This election was also the first contested by the PCF in Arcueil. Then, two years later, on 3 and 10 May 1925, France as a whole went to the polls to vote in municipal elections. Both these elections are important as indicators of the early electoral implantation of the PCF. The PCF entered the 1923 election in a strong position, with eight candidates who were outgoing councillors, including the mayor and his two deputies, and eight out of the sixteen candidates presented by the SFIO in the 1919 municipal elections. By 1925, the communist position was somewhat weaker with the party having had no candidates elected in 1923, although the presentation of nine out of the 23 communist candidates

209 Toward Hegemony I

presented in this election maintained some continuity.615 The election of 1925 saw a changing of the guard, with Marius Sidobre, the future communist mayor of Arcueil, heading the PCF list, as he would do for all subsequent elections of the interwar period. The SFIO list for the 1923 election was headed by Frédéric Givort and included two outgoing councillors and four SFIO candidates from the first ballot of 1919 - the loss of the majority of the party’s membership in the Tours split meant that their list was almost completely renewed. In 1925, the situation for the SFIO stabilised as it presented 15 candidates from the previous election in a list headed by the outgoing first assistant mayor and including the three other outgoing socialist councillors. The Radicals presented nine candidates for the 1923 elections who had appeared either in 1919 or 1920 or both, and in 1925, 15 of their candidates who had been presented in the preceding election were on a list that was headed by the mayor Pierre Templier, and which included numerous outgoing councillors. In both 1923 and 1925, the Republican Socialists were headed by the once popular former mayor L.G. Veyssière. As part of an amnesty campaign for the gaoled Black Sea mutineers that was widely supported by the French Left, both the lists of the SFIO and the PCF had André Marty as their titular head, with the result being his election to council in the first ballot.616 Table 5.5 above indicates that in the four-way contest for the first ballot in 1923, the PCF emerged with a remarkably solid core of support. The PCF’s support declined only fractionally in the second ballot of 1923, despite the party’s violation of traditional republican discipline by refusing to withdraw for the better-placed SFIO. Arguably, the PCF’s electorate was composed of the bulk of the SFIO’s pre-schism vote. At just over a quarter of valid votes cast, the PCF’s vote amounted to about two-thirds of the SFIO share of the first ballot in 1920 and only 5% less than it had captured in the first ballot

615 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, comparison of procès-verbal for the February 1923 and May 1925 municipal elections; DM3/46 Listes des Élus Municipal, Renouvellement de 1925; DBMOF Cd- rom, entries on Victor Roure, Paul Rivière and Marius Sidobre. 616 Marty was arrested in April 1919 for plotting a mutiny on a torpedo boat which in turn provoked mutinies among sailors in the Black Sea Fleet. From October 1920 Marty supported adherence of the SFIO to the Third International but did not join the PCF until September 1923. The campaign for his amnesty, and that of other Black Sea mutineers, was spearheaded by the PCF but widely supported by the socialists, unionists, freemasons, the Ligue des droits de l’homme and Radical-Socialists. In addition to Arcueil, Marty was elected as a municipal councillor for Paris (Charonne and Santé quarters), Vienne, Izeaux, Onnaing, Aubervilliers, Issy-les-Moulineux, and Graulhet. Other Black Sea mutineers were also elected to office. Between October 1921 and July 1923, Marty was elected a total of 42 times to various offices with most elections subsequently invalidated, DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on André Pierre Marty. 210 Toward Hegemony I

of 1919.617 By 1925, the PCF had gained ground, capturing a third of the valid votes cast in the first ballot and emerging clearly as the second most popular party in Arcueil. The second ballot of 1925 demonstrates the electoral pitfall of pursuing a narrow sectarian line and the Radical-Socialist Party increased its vote by almost twice as much as the PCF. Many, if not most, of the SFIO’s voters to refused to vote communist in the second ballot, choosing instead to abstain (abstentions rose to 23.8%) or vote Radical- Socialist. Just as Laplace had emerged in 1920 as a SFIO stronghold, so in the first ballot in 1923 and 1925, the PCF polled 4-6% more of the valid votes cast in Laplace than in the Centre, with the gap increasing in the second ballot. While the PCF had, in the first two municipal elections it contested, inherited the mantle of the SFIO as the leftwing party of the working class, it had nonetheless lost control of the municipality. “Grâce au vote de la séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en deux communes distinctes”, wrote the anti-communist Banlieue de Paris, “Arcueil a pu enfin secouer le joug du parti communiste implanté à l’Hôtel-de-Ville par surprise.”618 Arguably, many of Arcueil’s electors blamed the communists for a partition that had disastrous consequences for Arcueil’s communal budget. The aggressively ideological approach to municipal administration had driven the moderates of Cachan to successfully petition for independence, while at the same time little had been done to ameliorate the living conditions of local inhabitants. By the time communists had returned to power Arcueil in 1935 a commitment to efficient and effective municipal administration focused on improving the lives of local inhabitants had become a given. The SFIO came increasingly to occupy the political centre, especially from 1925 onwards. In spite of having three councillors elected in 1923 after the withdrawal of the Republican Socialists had helped the party out-poll the PCF in the second ballot, the growing polarisation of the electorate saw support for the SFIO ebb away in the 1925 elections. This was only a prelude to steeper declines, though at least the SFIO continued to contest elections, unlike the Republican Socialists. Benefiting from divisions within the French labour movement and the withdrawal of the Republican Socialists prior to the second ballot, in the 1923 municipal elections the Radical- Socialist Party captured all but three of the council seats despite having received fewer votes than in the 1919 and 1920 municipal elections. By 1925, support for the Radical-

617 The differences were even less in terms of the PCF’s share of the enrolled vote, under 2% for 1920 and approximately 4% for 1919. 618 Banlieue de Paris, 3 March 1923. 211 Toward Hegemony I

Socialist Party was increasing at a rate inversely proportional to the decline in support for the SFIO and the Republican Socialists. The decision of these two groups to withdraw in the second ballot of 1925 gave the Radical-Socialist Party the absolute majority that it had been some way off achieving in 1923. It is difficult to discern any pattern in support for the non-communists in the two electoral sections, other than the fact that before their disappearance the stronghold of the Republican Socialists was in the Centre and it was here that, between 1923 and 1925, the Radical-Socialists made the greatest gain and the SFIO the greatest losses. The second ballot of the 1925 elections presaged the polarisation of municipal politics between the PCF on the Left and the Radical-Socialist Party to its right. Some months prior to the 1929 municipal elections, the Central Committee of the PCF issued instructions for the creation of Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan (BOP) groups, in the absence of which a purely PCF list would be presented.619 Based in localities and enterprises, BOP groups were to be composed of party members, unaligned workers and socialists who accepted the communist program and would form a BOP committee to direct the election campaign and nominate sympathisers to run in the first ballot. As in the legislative elections, BOP or PCF lists would be presented in both ballots against all parties, with few exceptions to this rule - withdrawal for the SFIO would only occur where a local front unique had been formed. ‘Classe contre classe’ became the clarion call of L’Aube sociale, the communist fortnightly for the banlieue sud. “Lutte contre le Gouvernement d’Union Nationale”, L’Aube sociale asserted, “C’est-à-dire contre toutes les formes de la politique guerrière, réactionnaire, anti-ouvrière, que mène la grande bourgeoisie française avec le concours de tous les partis bourgeois, y compris le Parti Socialiste.”620 Along with the Radical-Socialist Party, the SFIO was in alliance with the imperialist bourgeoisie and aligned with the Union Nationale that was supported by powerful capital, the oppressor of the working class. According to L’Aube sociale, winning control of municipal government would bring the latter’s important resources to the support of the proletariat in its ongoing class struggle. The communist program for the 1929 election called on workers to defend the eight-hour day, battle for increased salaries, struggle against rationalisation, oppose compulsory arbitration and form enterprise committees that brought together workers regardless of race, sex, age, or

619 AN F713264 Untitled Dossier, a report dated 13 March 1929 and entitled “Élections municipales de mai 1929: Tactique des Partis.” 620 L’Aube sociale, no. 112, 4 May, 1929. 212 Toward Hegemony I

nationality.621 In spite of the apparent electoral disadvantage of the PCF’s isolationism vis-à- vis other parties of the French Left, a police report on the political situation in the suburb prior to the first ballot noted: “Le danger communiste est sérieux dans cette commune à cause de la question des lotissements qui provoque des mécontents contre la municipalité.”622 When, in accordance with party policy, the Radical-Socialist mayor Templier rejected a proposal presented by Arcueil’s nationalists to form a single list, the latter chose nevertheless to support Templier “devant le péril communiste, très réel à Arcueil.”623 However, a police report written prior to the second ballot predicted that class against class tactics would ensure the defeat of the PCF: “La liste Socialiste S.F.I.O. se retire purement et simplement, mais il est à peu près certain que la majorité des voix socialistes iront à la liste Radicale Socialiste du maire sortant qui paraît devoir être réélu.”624 The PCF’s sectarianism had its impact on the communist list which underwent substantial renewal in 1929 with 21 new candidates out of a total of 27 seats contested, although the party retained the experienced Sidobre at the head of a list that included a former mayor, a former assistant mayor and former councillors. In 1929, the socialists also underwent a major renewal, although the Party’s list still included a number of former councillors. Only six candidates from the 1925 elections were present on a party list that had a new head, the veteran local SFIO activist, Léon Louis Veyssière. He thereafter led all the SFIO’s interwar municipal election campaigns. Locally, the SFIO had experienced a big decline in membership and defections, with two of its candidates from 1925 standing as Radical-Socialists in 1929, one of them having abandoned the SFIO in 1926 after his failure to be elected to council.625

621 L’Aube sociale, no. 112, 4 May, 1929. 622 AN F713264 Dossier: Elections Municipales générales Seine 6 et 13 May 1929, “Rapports sur la situation politique en mars 29 par arrondissement à Paris et par cantons en Banlieue.” 623 Banlieue de Paris, 26 April 1929. 624 AN F713264 Dossier: Elections Municipales Générales Mai 1929, notes and results for Arcueil. 625 AD94: E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, electoral lists and procès-verbal for the 1925 and 1929 municipal elections and 1D27, Letter from L. L. Veyssière, 22 June 1929; Le Socialiste, no. 25 February 1932.

213 Toward Hegemony I

TABLE 5.6 – 1929 & 1932 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL

Percentage of valid votes cast by electoral section/in total plus abstention rate

Cité- Centre Laplace Total Aqueduc 1929 1932 1929 1932 1932 1929 1932

1st 47.1 37.5 40.5 36.0 36.3 44.7 36.6 RSP 2nd 55.1 47.5 50.0 47.5 43.2 53.3 45.3

SFIO 1st 12.6 23.0 19.1 22.1 15.4 14.9 20.5

1st 38.3 34.8 38.7 38.4 44.8 38.4 38.6 PCF 2nd 43.0 52.0 47.4 52.6 56.6 44.6 52.1

1st 18.7% 44.0% 18.3% 46.3% 45.1% 18.6% 45.1% Abstentions 2nd 23.7% 43.9% 24.4% 46.2% 45.6% 23.9% 45.1%

SOURCE: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal municipal elections of 5 & 12 May 1929 and 12 & 19 June 1932, commune of Arcueil.

Table 5.6 above indicates that once again, it was a combination of the strength of the Radical-Socialist vote in the Centre and the failure of the majority of SFIO voters to support the PCF in the second ballot that prevented the latter from gaining control of the municipality in 1929. In overall terms, with 38.4% of the valid votes cast the PCF increased its first ballot vote by 6% when compared with 1925, which amounts to just over half of the vote that the SFIO lost. The latter’s loss of votes and the demise of the Republican Socialists appears to have equally benefited the two main protagonists, with the Radical-Socialists increasing their first ballot vote share of the valid votes cast by 7.1%, marginally more than the communists, while abstentions increased by just under 2%. In the Centre, an increase in the PCF’s first ballot vote that was nearly twice that of Laplace, 7.7% compared with 4.1%, meant support for the communists was almost level in the two sections. Nevertheless, with the Radical-Socialists capturing 47.1% of the valid votes cast in the Centre, 6.6% more than in Laplace, the former remained more conservative than the latter. This rise of the Radical-Socialists in the Centre was concomitant with a fall (of 9.1%) in the SFIO’s vote that was three-times as large as that which occurred in Laplace. This confirmed the Centre, where the party had won every

214 Toward Hegemony I

ballot since partition, as the stronghold of the Radical-Socialist Party. As had been the case in 1925, in 1929 a significant proportion of first ballot SFIO electors voted Radical-Socialist in the second ballot, with the result being that the Radical-Socialist Party increased its first ballot lead of 6.3% over the PCF to a victory by 8.7% in the second ballot. The Radical-Socialist Party had increased its vote from the first to the second ballot by 8.6%, the PCF’s increased by only 6.2%. In the two electoral sections, a clear difference opened up. In the Centre the Radical-Socialist Party out-polled the PCF by more than 12%, while in Laplace the result was much closer, a margin of 2.4%. In the Centre, the Radical-Socialists had increased their vote in the second ballot by around 7%, and the PCF by only 5%, while in Laplace the reverse was the case. The decision of significant numbers of SFIO voters in the first ballot to either abstain (abstentions increased 5.3% to 23.9%) or vote Radical-Socialist cost the PCF any chance of victory despite the steady growth in its electoral support.626 Nevertheless, in 1929 the PCF had narrowed the second ballot gap between itself and the Radical- Socialist Party to 8.7% (down from 13.5% in 1925), which is indicative of the fact that while class against class tactics were not inimical to electoral progression they hindered the attainment of an electoral majority. By 1932, this situation began to change, notwithstanding the fact that the communist tactics were unchanged. The death of the mayor Templier and of another councillor prompted a partial municipal election, held on 12 and 19 June 1932. This election is important because it proved to be a precursor for the sweep into power of the communists in 1935 and the beginning of the end of the Radicals as a force in Arcueil’s communal politics. The decline of the PCF’s vote and the defeat of its candidate in the legislative elections only weeks earlier suggests that the onset of the Depression was not responsible for the victory of the two communist candidates in the municipal elections of 1932. My view is that the most likely explanation is local. With the more conservative Legrand as mayor, the Arcueil’s Radical-Socialist Party moved further to the Right and relations with the local SFIO became increasingly hostile. As a result fewer SFIO voters were willing to vote Radical-Socialist in the second ballot, while

626 In terms of the numbers of voters enrolled, the PCF’s vote increased by 3.5% overall, including only 2% in the Centre and around 5% in Laplace. Thus, when you consider the fact that the SFIO polled 11.8% of the enrolled voters in Arcueil as a whole, 10% in the Centre and 15.1% in Laplace, it is conceivable that only a quarter of the SFIO’s voters voted communist in the second ballot in Arcueil as a whole, including a third from Laplace and a fifth from the Centre.

215 Toward Hegemony I

voting for the PCF became less objectionable. Moreover, in the wake of Legrand’s election as mayor, relations among Arcueil’s Radical-Socialist councillors deteriorated while he presided over a municipality which had manifestly failed to make any significant improvement to the material conditions of local residents who were now feeling the effects of the Depression. Under such circumstances, an increased number of voters turned to the communists. The campaign was as acrimonious as ever, with Sidobre heading the communist list in his sixth municipal campaign, along with Paul Rivière, appearing in his third.627 Between the first and second ballots the socialist section of Arcueil approached the Comité Radical-Socialiste d’Arcueil with a request to replace the second candidate on their list with L. L. Veyssière and therefore to run a combined ticket.628 However, the Radical-Socialists unanimously rejected the socialist overture because their candidate had polled far better than Veyssière and had been subjected to slander by socialists. This did not stop the two Radical-Socialist candidates from making a direct appeal to socialist voters prior to the second ballot vote.629 The two candidates reminded voters of the ‘bitter’ memories of the preceding communist administration (1920-1922) and warned that the administration of a French commune should not be in the hands of “représentants d’un gouvernement étranger.”630 They stated that the socialists had developed their goals of humanity and international peace without recourse to the lessons of the Soviet republics, and reminded voters that in the legislative elections held only a week ago the Radicals had campaigned for socialist candidates wherever possible whereas the PCF had often ensured their defeat. They ended their appeal with a call for Radical-Socialists, SFIO socialists and Republicans to unite in the second ballot and ensure the victory of democratic and social progress. Le Moniteur pointed out to its readers that in recent legislative elections the SFIO helped elect all but one of the communist deputies by withdrawing in their favour while the communists everywhere had maintained their candidacy in the second ballot and in many cases favoured the

627 For details see: Le Socialiste, June & July 1932; Le Moniteur, 23 July 1932. Délibérations du Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil [DCMA], Meeting of 24 June 1932 (AD94 1Mi1377, pp. 92-96), letter read out to council entitled “La Fraction communiste au Conseil municipal d’Arcueil, Déclaration du 2 Élus communistes au Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil,”; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, Dossier dated 12, 19 & 24 June 1932, partial elections. 628 Le Moniteur, 23 July 1932. 629 Le Moniteur, 18 June 1932. 630 Le Moniteur, 18 June 1932. 216 Toward Hegemony I

adversaries of the SFIO.631 Le Moniteur contended that socialists should not vote for a political party that besmirched their reputation via labels such as ‘social traitors’, ‘agents of the bourgeoisie’ and the like, but should instead vote for the republican candidates of the Radical-Socialists. Le Moniteur appealed to Arcueil’s socialist voters to follow the lead of the recent elections where Socialists and Radicals had generally supported each other in the second ballot. However, these calls were not heeded as socialist voters helped the PCF to have two councillors elected, although the PCF was also assisted by the high abstention rates (45.1% for both rounds) typical of partial elections. While the PCF’s first ballot vote as a percentage of valid votes cast was almost unchanged in comparison to 1929, the Radical-Socialist vote was down by 8.1% to 36.6%, giving the communists a 2% lead going into the second ballot. With the SFIO’s share of the valid votes cast growing, concomitantly with the decline of the Radicals, by 5% compared with 1929, the result of the second ballot depended on where the SFIO’s first ballot electors re-positioned their vote. In spite of its class against class tactics, the PCF won an absolute majority in the second ballot after it increased its share of the valid votes cast by 13.5%, compared with only 8.7% for the Radical-Socialists. For the first time, the majority of SFIO voters in the first ballot voted for the PCF in the second ballot. While Le Moniteur blamed abstentionists for the communist victory,632 the socialists claimed credit owing to their decision to withdraw in the second ballot.633 It is possible that the high rate of abstentions adversely affected the vote for the Radicals, however, the important factor was the increase in the SFIO’s vote and the greater degree to which, when compared to preceding elections, it flowed to the PCF in the second ballot. The newly created electoral section of the Cité-Aqueduc emerged as a communist bastion in 1932 with the PCF capturing 44.8% of the valid votes cast in the first ballot, and an absolute majority of 56.6% in the second. The PCF received an absolute majority in all three electoral sections, though the gap between it and its Radical opponent was much more significant in the Cité-Aqueduc. In the midst of a depression and with their housing problems yet to be satisfactorily addressed, fewer inhabitants of the cité-jardin and the lotissements to its north were willing to vote for an increasingly conservative Radical-Socialist administration, helping instead to elect two

631 Le Moniteur, 18 June 1932. 632 Le Moniteur, 25 June 1932. 633 Le Socialiste, 4th year, July 1932. 217 Toward Hegemony I

communists to council, the first since the partition and a precursor to the sweeping victory of the PCF in 1935.

Cachan’s Municipal Elections 1923-1929: A Conservative Hegemony Maintained

TABLE 5.7 - 1923 & 1925 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes cast in total plus abstention rate

1923 1925

1st Ballot 1st Ballot 2nd Ballot

CURSDIGC 77.1 49.7 62.7

SFIO-RSP No Candidates 23.9 Withdrew

PCF 18.9 25.7 37.3

Abstentions 28.0% 14.3% 21.8%

SOURCE: AD94 D2M2/97, procès-verbal municipal election of 18 February 1923, commune of Cachan; DM3/46 Listes d’Élus Municipaux 1925-1945, Commune de Cachan, Conseiller Municipaux Renouvellement 1925; Banlieue de Paris, 9 & 16 May 1925.

In Cachan, the internecine conflicts of the French Left were even more of a handicap to the PCF than in Arcueil. The secession of Cachan revealed the Left to be much weaker than in Arcueil, as evidenced by the fact that the PCF only fielded seven candidates in the first municipal elections for the newly created commune of Cachan, while the socialists were unable to field any. No doubt this contributed to the massive victory of the CURSDIGC that is evident in Table 5.7 above. With ten of the eleven outgoing Cachan councillors on its list, the CURSDIGC secured more than three- quarters of the valid votes cast in the first ballot, compared with only 18.9% for the PCF. With 28% of the electorate abstaining, more than half of the enrolled voters voted for the more conservative candidates, and less than 15% for the PCF. The apparent lack of support for the latter is consistent with the general weakness of the Left in Cachan prior to partition. However, by 1925, with the rapid population growth of Cachan exacerbating the problems of the lotissements and the generally substandard state of municipal infrastructure and services, especially in the Coteau, the position of the PCF had improved. In municipal elections of that year, the party was able to field a full complement of 23 candidates, a reflection of the fact that the communists had been

218 Toward Hegemony I

active in Cachan in the lead-up to the elections and that their support had grown, as the Banlieue de Paris attested:

Les communistes ont beaucoup travaillé dans notre commune et leurs réunions ont été nombreuses et très suivies par les adhésions du Parti. Ceux- ci obéissent au mot d’ordre de Moscou, c’est-à-dire former la ceinture rouge autour de Paris. Par suite du reflux la capitale vers la Banlieue, ils sont quatre cents environ. Ce nombre n’augmentera ni ne diminuera au moment du vote, car les principes qui réagissent ce parti, c’est-à-dire la Dictature et l’exonération de la propriété, petite et grande, sont à la base du programme.634

By contrast, the Banlieue de Paris claimed that the SFIO had few members in Cachan, and the fact that, in the first ballot the party was part of a ‘Cartel de Gauche’ list in conjunction with members of the local Radical-Socialist Party, rather than a list of their own, lent weight to this claim.635 The Banlieue de Paris asserted that some members of the SFIO were running on the CURSDIGC list, concluding that, despite their dishonest portrayal of the Union as a grouping of reactionaries, the ‘Cartelist’ list had no chance against the CURSDIGC.636 Notwithstanding, the assessment of the Banlieue de Paris, Table 5.7 indicates that the main impact of the presentation of a SFIO/Radical-Socialist Party ticket in the first ballot of 1925 was that it drew support away from the CURSDIGC. With the abstention rate halving, probably as a result of a greater choice at the ballot box than had been the case in 1923, the CURSDIGC’s share of the valid votes cast fell to just below half, its fall of 27.4% being a little more than the 23.9% garnered by the Radical/SFIO list. The CURSDIGC list nevertheless managed to have eight councillors elected in the first ballot.637 With the PCF polling a quarter of the valid votes cast after having increased its support compared to 1923 by 6.8%, its position as the foremost party of the Left and the main opposition to the incumbent administration was confirmed.

634 Banlieue de Paris, 25 April 1925. 635 Banlieue de Paris, 18 April 1925. 636 Banlieue de Paris, 18 & 25 April 1925. One member of the Union’s list, Edmond Lambert, appears to be the same Edmond Lambert elected in 1935 to council on a SFIO ticket. 637 AD94 D2M2/97, See electoral lists for Union Républicaine de Défense des Intérêts de Cachan. According to Banlieue de Paris (25 April 1925), at the time of the 1925 elections the outgoing mayor, Picard, was vice-president of the Comité Radicaux et Socialistes Indépendants de la Seine. 219 Toward Hegemony I

However, in the second ballot the PCF’s isolation vis-à-vis other parties of the Left meant that it was only able to attract perhaps a quarter of the Radical/SFIO’s first ballot voters, with the remainder abstaining (abstentions increased by 7.5% to 21.8%) or, in smaller numbers, voting for the CURSDIGC.638 The result was that an 11.6% increase in the PCF second ballot vote was not near enough in the face of a 13% increase for the CURSDIGC which resoundingly secured an absolute majority. Disunity ensured that the dominance of the CURSDIGC was maintained as the sectarian nature of the PCF dissuaded left of centre non-communist voters from voting for it. The 1928 and 1929 elections were waged just after the PCF had launched its new hard-line class against class tactics. These tactics were reflected in the communist propaganda for the partial election of 1928, and in the issue of L’Aube sociale published prior to the 1929 election and analysed in my discussion of Arcueil’s municipal election for that year. A communist electoral tract from 1928 labelled Cachan’s municipality as reactionary, and condemned local socialists for refusing to form a Front Unique against the bourgeoisie, “torpillant ainsi une fois de plus les Intérêts de classe des masses travailleurs”.639 Workers were exhorted to struggle against the rationalisation of industry, to oppose the militarism, imperialism, repression and poverty-inducing currency stabilisation policies of the national government, to defend the USSR, and to campaign for a general political amnesty. However, the communists did not neglect the need to make material improvements to the lives of local residents, presenting a minimum local program. This program pledged greater solidarity between the municipality and the working class by increasing representation of organisations from the latter in the municipal administration thereby democratising it. The communists also pledged to improve hygiene and infrastructure via better medical and sanitation services, a more rigorous application of hygiene laws, especially with regard to polluting factories, and better roads and footpaths, particularly in the Coteau. The communists promised greater social assistance through the creation of an ambulance service, and crèches, the provision of fire hydrants and free legal advice, better education through improvements to school buildings, the establishment of school

638 This conclusion is reached by an analysis of each party’s share of the enrolled vote. The Radical-Socialist Party/SFIO list received 20.1% in the first ballot. After this list withdrew abstentions increased by 7.5%, the communist share of the enrolled vote by 5.6% and the CURSDIGC’s share by 3.9%. 639 AD94 35J458, “Parti Communiste (SFIC) Région Parisienne 4e Rayon, Sous-Rayon de Cachan, Élections Municipales Complémentaires du 16 Septembre 1928. CLASSE Contre CLASSE”. 220 Toward Hegemony I

libraries, canteens, municipal youth clubs and vacation camps, through special assistance for large families and through greater encouragement of sport. The PCF also pledged to replace consumption taxes with taxes that would strike the rich and the application of a single statute and level of salaries for municipal employees. In summary, the PCF’s propaganda was a combination of a call to arms in the class struggle then unfolding, alongside a pledge to materially improve the lives of local residents. In its focus on the latter, the PCF was not unique. In its campaign for the 1928 and 1929 municipal elections, the CURSDIGC highlighted the improvements it had made since coming to power in Cachan in 1923.640 Its long list of improvements included the construction of new roads and paths, and the paving, repairing and classification of existing ones, the provision of tap water, fire hydrants, communal lighting, water points for washing clothes, gas, electricity and sewage services to more homes, and an ongoing effort to rectify the situation with regard to deprived quarters such as the Grange-Ory and the area around the Boulevard de la Vanne. Its propaganda also highlighted as its achievements the amelioration of public transport and improvements to cleaning services, a stricter application of laws with regard to defective allotments, the provision of school canteens and camps, the granting of assistance to large families, the old and workers, and support and encouragement given to local sports and societies. The CURSDIGC outlined future projects that included the construction of a new Town Hall, the renovation of the post office, the expansion of the cemetery, the construction of a sports ground, and the formation of municipal commissions where delegates from different quarters could express to the municipality the legitimate needs of their quarter. Electoral tracts claimed that the incumbent administration had, in consultation with local inhabitants, worked methodically to improve living conditions while remaining fiscally responsible. In its concern, efforts and proposals to materially improve the lives of Cachan’s inhabitants and to give them a voice in local government, there is little difference between the CURSDIGC and the PCF. In fact, this focus on improvements in the lives

640 AD94 36J25, “Elections Municipales complémentaires du 23 Septembre 1928 Scrutin de Ballottage Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan ” and “Ville de Cachan – Élections Municipales du 12 Mai 1929 Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan et Comité Radicale et Radicale Socialiste (Fédération de la Seine) Réunis Liste de Concentration Républicaine”; Banlieue de Paris, 14 September 1928; Le Moniteur, 4 May 1929 & 11 May 1929.

221 Toward Hegemony I

of local inhabitants was fundamental to the hegemony maintained by the CURSDIGC. Where the latter differed from the PCF was in its professed support for social progress and for order (as opposed to revolution). The CURSDIGC claimed that it had no connection with any political party, in stark contrast with the elements of disorder that preached revolution and ‘arrivistes’ motivated by personal ambition (former members of the CURSDIGC who were now on other lists). This suggests that, prior to the Popular Front, when residents of Cachan voted communist they were expressing support for the revolutionary outlook and approach to local government espoused by the PCF, rather than simply voting for a party that was best placed to materially improve their lives. Bernard Sestacq, a communal accountant, headed the communist lists in the 1928 and 1929 municipal elections in a renewal of the local leadership of the party. In 1928, for the first time in a municipal election for Cachan the SFIO ran an all-socialist list at the first ballot, with the architect Antoine Marcilloux at its head. In the second ballot in 1928, the SFIO (with 15 candidates) combined with the Comité d’Action Républicaine et Sociale des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan (six candidates), and the Radical-Socialist Party (two candidates) to form a single list. The Liste de Concentration Républicaine included thirteen candidates from the CURSDIGC, nine of whom were outgoing councillors, and ten candidates of the Comité Radical et Radical Socialiste, including an outgoing assistant mayor. “L’opinion Générale est que le manque d’entente entre la gauche facilitera la liste de Municipalité qui pourrait ainsi l’emporter de justesse sur celle du Parti S.F.I.O”, a police report concluded of the situation prior to the second ballot in 1928.641 According to this report the SFIO attempted to persuade the local Radical-Socialist Party to withdraw in their favour, however, the latter refused and chose instead to retire purely and simply, leaving their supporters to vote as they wished.642 Under the heading “Une odieuse coalition contre la liste du B.O.P. assure à Cachan le succès de réactionnaires”, L’Humanité blamed the subsequent victory of the ‘reactionary’ CURSDIGC in 1928 on the SFIO which, it claimed, formed a coalition of left and right elements to oppose the PCF.643 In reality, it was the sectarian tactics of the communists who deprived the Left of a real opportunity to break the stranglehold of the CURSDIGC, as the analysis that follows demonstrates.

641 AN F713017 Dossier no. 5 entitled “1928”, Report dated 22 September 1928. 642 AN F713017 Report dated 22 September 1928. 643 L’Humanité, 24 September 1928. 222 Toward Hegemony I

TABLE 5.8 - 1928 & 1929 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes cast plus abstention rate 1928 1929

1st 2nd* 1st 2nd

Nationalists ______6.4 3.0

CURSDIGC 29.9 43.6 32.2 41.6

Comité d’Action Républicaine et Sociale ______10.7 31.8 combined RSP 16.6 withdrew 5.5 list

SFIO 27.2 31.0 22.2

PCF 26.1 25.4 23.6 22.8

Abstained 44.9% 44.9% 19.1% 22.5%

SOURCE: September 1928 and 17 & 19 May 1929; AD94 D2M2/100, procès-verbal municipal election of 5 May 1929 (first ballot), commune of Cachan; AD94 36J26 (Fonds Eyrolles), results of the municipal elections of 5 & 12 May 1929.

Table 5.8 above indicates that the first ballot in the 1928 election demonstrated the stability of the communist electorate, with support for the PCF rising, when compared to 1925, by a fractional 0.4% to 26.1% of the valid votes cast. The solidity of this electorate was demonstrated in the second ballot when the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast declined by less than 1%, to 25.4%, in spite of the fact that the party acted in opposition to traditional republican discipline by running against the better-placed SFIO. Thus, the rise, in 1928, of the SFIO as an electoral force in its own right was not at the expense of the PCF. Instead, building upon the support gained in 1925 for the combined Radical-Socialist/SFIO list, the SFIO drew some support away from the CURSDIGC whose share of the valid votes cast fell by almost 20%, as almost half (44.9%) of the electorate abstained from voting in both ballots. However, in the second ballot the SFIO was only able to attract the votes of perhaps a fifth of the Radical- Socialist Party’s electorate, which had amounted to 16.6% of the valid votes cast in the first ballot, as most Radical electors voted for the CURSDIGC, which increased its vote by 13.7%. While the repositioning of the entire Radical-Socialist Party in the second ballot would have given the SFIO victory over the CURSDIGC, it was the decision of the PCF to run in the second ballot, and thus split the leftwing vote, which did the most

223 Toward Hegemony I

to deprive the SFIO of a real opportunity to have six councillors elected and to inflict the first defeat on the CURSDIGC since partition. A similar set of circumstances was repeated in 1929. In the lead-up to this election L’Aube sociale claimed that the program presented by Sestacq for the PCF responded to local needs and was warmly greeted at a number of meetings.644 However, the PCF remained an isolated group among the broad spectrum of political groupings that contested the 1929 municipal elections, and the party’s tactics kept the left from power, as a Prefecture report compiled just prior to the elections indicated. “Une élection partielle en septembre dernière a montré que la municipalité ne peut se maintenir que grâce à l’appoint des voix radicales socialistes et à la division des communistes et des socialistes.”645 Whilst a report from the Prefecture prior to the second ballot predicted a close tussle between the list of the mayor Choplin and the one headed by the SFIO’s Marcilloux, once again the vote of the Left was split in the second ballot thereby enabling the Concentration Républicaine list to be entirely elected.646 Predictably, the PCF condemned the SFIO for having made a common alliance with the parties of the bourgeoisie, this despite the fact that the comfortable victory achieved by the ‘reactionary’ incumbents was only made possible by its sectarian tactics.647 With the entire council up for re-election in a field of six lists, Table 5.8 indicates that the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast fell by 2.5%, which suggests that class against class tactics were beginning to have some impact on the PCF electoral support. Nevertheless, once again the communist electorate proved to be rock solid as the PCF’s vote in the second ballot was down less than 1% from the first. The solidity of this electorate had the effect of splitting the vote on the Left in the second ballot, thereby keeping the SFIO and its allies from council and maintaining the electoral hegemony of the CURSDIGC. An analysis of the election results for both ballots which I found in the Fonds Eyrolles gives an interesting insight into how divisions within the Left kept the coalition of the CURSDIGC and the Comité Radical-Socialiste in power.648 In the first ballot, the forces of the Right are listed as the Concentration Républicaine, the Union Nationale et

644 L’Aube sociale, no. 112, 4 May, 1929. 645 AN F713264 Dossier : Elections municipales générales Seine 6 et 13 May 1929, “Rapports sur la situation politique en Mars 29 par arrondissement à Paris et par cantons en Banlieue.” 646 AN F713264 : “Rapports sur la situation politique en Mars 29 par arrondissement à Paris et par cantons en Banlieue”; Dossier: Élections municipales générales Mai 1929, notes and results for Arcueil; Banlieue de Paris, 24 May 1929. 647 L’Aube sociale, no. 112, 4 May, 1929. 648 See AD94 36J26, 1929 election results. 224 Toward Hegemony I

Sociale and the Radical-Socialist Party, whose combined vote I calculated at 20 565. On the Left there were the lists presented by the communists, the SFIO and the Comité d’Action Républicaine which received a total of 22 217 votes, giving the combined Left a potential majority of 1652 votes. In the second ballot, those members of the Radical- Socialist Party who combined with the SFIO are listed on the Left, underscoring the politically fluid nature of the local Radicals in Cachan, giving the Left a total of 23 937 votes, compared with the Right’s 19 341. This meant the Left outpolled the Right by 4596 votes in the second ballot, the increased majority in part attributable to the addition of the Radical-Socialists. This analysis merely reinforces the fact that under the electoral system in operation for interwar municipal elections, division on the Left meant defeat, especially in Cachan where the voting history of the local population was more moderate than in Arcueil.

The Legislative Elections of 1924-1932 in Arcueil and Cachan: The Emergence of the PCF as an Electoral Force

The first legislative election after the partition of Arcueil-Cachan was held on 11 May 1924. Against a background of financial and political crisis, namely the value of the Franc rapidly falling and French forces occupying the Ruhr in Germany, the SFIO and the Radical-Socialist Party formed an electoral coalition, the Cartel des Gauches, which went on to win 353 out of 610 seats, defeating the ruling conservative coalition led by Poincaré.649 There was no question of the PCF participating in an alliance that included the bourgeois Radicals. In the Seine suburbs, 19 seats were up for election and the communists succeeding in having nine deputies elected, five with absolute majorities and a further four by the highest average. The SFIO had five deputies elected at quotient, as did the conservative list, the Union Nationale et Sociale. Thus, in the first elections since the split, the newly formed PCF had clearly triumphed over the SFIO in the working-class suburbs of Paris.650

649 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 134. 650 Results according to Banlieue de Paris, 26 April 1924. 225 Toward Hegemony I

TABLE 5.9 - 1924 LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS:

VOTING IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes cast plus abstention rate Arcueil (by electoral section/ in total) and Cachan

Arcueil

Centre Laplace Total Cachan

Union Nationale révisionniste et 2.8 1.9 2.4 4.8 d’Action française

Cartel d’Union Républicaine et 21.6 22.7 22.1 32.6 Sociale de la Banlieue

Cartel du Travail 4.0 3.5 3.8 3.7

Union Socialiste 3.2 4.5 3.8 3.8

Cartel des Gauches 31.1 24.1 27.8 26.0

PCF 35.9 43.1 39.3 29.2

Abstentions 9.6% 13.3% 11.4% 22.4*

SOURCE: Arcueil: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K45, procès-verbal legislative elections 11 May 1924 commune of Arcueil. Cachan: Banlieue de Paris, 26 May 1924 . NOTE: *Estimate only. See Table 5.2 (page 187) for full explanation.

The victory of the PCF in the Seine suburbs was repeated in Arcueil but not in Cachan where the party polled second, behind the conservative CURSDIGC list. As has been indicated, abstention rates were low when compared with municipal elections, a function of the greater importance of legislative elections in the highly centralised French state. Table 5.9 above indicates that at almost 40%, in Arcueil the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast was 14% higher than the party had received in the municipal election a year before. In Cachan, the margin was less, with the 30% of the valid votes captured by the PCF being just over 10% more than in 1923. In Arcueil the electorate of the second-placed Cartel des Gauches was slightly larger than that of the SFIO in 1923 but well behind the PCF which it trailed by 11.5%. At this point in time, the voters of Cachan maintained their conservatism vis-à-vis their counterparts in Arcueil. The conservatives topped the poll in Cachan with almost a third of the valid votes cast, 10% more than in Arcueil, while in Cachan the PCF only polled 3.2% more than the Cartel

226 Toward Hegemony I

des Gauches. The conservatism of Cachan evident in municipal elections was confirmed in the legislative elections. Once again arguably the PCF captured the bulk of the SFIO’s pre-schism electorate. When compared to the SFIO’s vote in the 1919 legislative election, the PCF’s vote was about 4.5% lower in Arcueil, and only fractionally (0.6%) so in Cachan, while the conservative vote was down by half or more in the two communes, with much of this loss in support being transferred to the Cartel des Gauches. While giving significant support to the PCF, the Centre voted more moderately than the emerging communist bastion of Laplace. In the more leftist Laplace the PCF captured a greater share of the SFIO’s pre-schism electorate. As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, the reversion in 1928 to the prewar system of single-member constituency infused legislative elections with a degree of localism that was absent in 1919 and 1924. The elections of 1928 and 1932 were also conducted at a time when the PCF’s sectarianism was at its height, and these elections are therefore a good indication of the resilience of the communist electorate, while at the same time demonstrating how sectarian tactics had a negative impact on the potential of the party to increase its electoral support. The 1928 elections were conducted in the wake of the demise of the Cartel des Gauches, which after having sparked the rise of various fascist groups (the Légion, Jeunesses Patriotes and the Faisceau) was soon defunct. The Radicals’ inability to deal with France’s economic ills led to the election of a prime minister from the right, Poincaré, by an ostensibly leftwing parliamentary majority.651 Working-class disappointment at this turn of events increased the communist vote in the Paris suburbs in 1928. Meanwhile, in 1932 the onset of the Depression worked against the conservative government, and a revamped leftwing block was once again victorious. Various Socialists and Radicals won a combined 334 seats.652 With 1 964 384 votes the SFIO increased its number of deputies from 112 to 129 and with 1 836 991 votes the Radical-Socialist Party went from 109 to 157 deputies, while the Radical-Socialist Herriot became prime minister.653 With the return of the double ballot and single-member constituency, class against class tactics became an electoral liability for the PCF. With 796 630 votes, the party was reduced to a paltry

651 Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The First Wave, in particular chapters 2-4, 9; Sowerwine, France since 1870, pp. 134-137. 652 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 141 653 Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 141; Georges Lachapelle, Élections Législatives 1932, Résultats Officiel, Paris, Le Temps, 1932, pp. XII, 351. 227 Toward Hegemony I

12 parliamentarians, only two more than before the election.654 Nonetheless, the PCF remained the dominant political party in the Seine suburbs where its 214 843 votes easily outnumbered other parties such as the SFIO with 157 966, the Radicals with 88 511 and the socialist-communists with 29 418.655 The legislative elections of 1928 and 1932 pitted the high profile communist Paul Vaillant-Couturier against the founder of Le Moniteur, Auguste Gratien. In 1928 Vaillant-Couturier campaigned as an outsider to the canton of Villejuif but by 1929 a communist victory in the municipal elections saw him elected mayor of Villejuif.656 Vaillant-Couturier’s bourgeois, liberal protestant origins made the 32 year-old barrister from Paris an atypical communist. First-hand experience of experience of the horrors of World War I had driven him to join the pacifist wing of the SFIO late in 1916 and to become a founding member of ARAC, a pacifist war veterans’ organisation. Vaillant- Couturier emerged after World War I as one of the leading proponents in the SFIO of adhesion to the Third International. On the Left of the PCF and therefore often isolated during the Bolshevisation process, he was nonetheless a leading figure in its anti- colonial and anti-militarist campaigns. His prominence translated into popularity – in the 1924 legislative elections he received 107 400 votes in the Seine suburbs, the best result of any of the lists and 2000 votes ahead of Jacques Doriot, the second-best placed communist.657 Vaillant-Couturier’s Radical-Socialist opponent, Gratien, had a stronger profile in the canton of Villejuif, having been mayor of Gentilly since 1919 and Conseiller- Général representing the first district of the canton (Arcueil, Cachan, Gentilly and Kremlin-Bicêtre) since 1925.658 An expert to a Justice of Peace, Gratien was a conservative Radical-Socialist whose nationalism drove him further to the Right in the mid-1930s. The former briquetier was condemned by socialists and communists as having betrayed his working-class origins. In 1928, the SFIO presented Hippolyte

654 Sowerwine, France since 1870, pp. 141; Lachapelle, Élections Législatives 1932, pp. XII, 351. 655 Lachapelle, Élections Législatives 1932, p. 351. 656 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Paul Vaillant-Couturier. In practice he did not exert his functions as mayor until February1932. 657 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Paul Vaillant-Couturier. 658 For biographical details of Gratien see: AD94 1J612 Electoral Tract: “Élections Législatives de 1928, 8e circonscription de Sceaux, Canton de Villejuif, Auguste Gratien”; AD94 35J458, Dossier no. 5, booklet produced by the Comités Radicaux et Radicaux-Socialistes et Concentration Républicaine et Sociale for the legislative elections of 1 May 1932; S. Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif pendant l’entre-deux-guerres”, pp. 146-147. 228 Toward Hegemony I

Baudinet659, 59-year-old co-operative employé and a member of the SFIO’s Gentilly branch since 1920. In 1932, the party presented Marcilloux. In 1928, the field of candidates also included Gérard660, mayor of Kremlin-Bicêtre. Excluded from the PCF early in 1923, he had been subsequently re-elected in 1923 and 1925 at the head of a victorious socialist-communist list. A plethora of anticommunist candidates contested the 1932 election, thereby splitting Gratien’s first ballot vote. Before moving onto an analysis of voting in 1928 and 1932 as outlined above in Table 5.10 (page 233 below), I will analyse the electoral propaganda of this period that I have had access to, namely communist and socialist electoral propaganda from 1932 and that of Gratien from 1928 and 1932. I will argue that while they are rhetorically vastly different, their suggestions for practical reforms are similar. Thus, the electorates of Arcueil and Cachan were voting for broadly similar proposals for practical improvements to their daily lives whether they voted Communist, Socialist or Radical. The big difference was the language in which these reforms were couched and the agenda that they advanced. The communists promised nothing less than the revolutionary transformation of French society via the assumption of power by the social group which was most alienated from it, the proletariat, whereas the SFIO essentially promised that the latter would be emancipated via an amelioration of their situation, though in a manner more comprehensive than the piecemeal improvements promised by Gratien. Thus, a nationwide agenda which involved varying degrees of societal change, on a sliding scale as you moved from the revolutionary PCF to the Radical-Socialist Party where change was much more incremental, was combined with a specifically local policy platform. In stridently anti-capitalist, antimilitarist and anti-imperialist tones, communist propaganda evoked a world on the brink of catastrophe.661 Economic depression had shaken the capitalist economy to its foundations and brought misery to the proletariat forced by the bourgeoisie to bear its impact, while the threat of war was ever present, as

659 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Hippolyte Adolphe Baudinet. 660 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Georges Théodore Gérard. 661 Except where a source is specifically indicated, the following analysis of communist electoral propaganda is a synthesis of the electoral tracts located in AD94 36J19: “Parti Communiste (S.F.I.C.) – Département de la Seine, Un programme d’Action communiste”, supplement published by L’Humanité (1932); “Parti Communiste, Aux Travailleurs, Elections Législatives de 1932, Département de la Seine, 8e Circonscription de Sceaux”; “Le Parti Communiste: Son programme CONTRE LA POLITIQUE de Misère, de Réaction et de Guerre.”

229 Toward Hegemony I

evidenced by Japanese aggression in China and the stationing of French troops in the colonies and Alsace-Lorraine. Moreover, the USSR, the only true workers’ state where the triumph of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat meant an absence of the economic crisis and mass unemployment which afflicted the failed capitalist system, was threatened with destruction at the hands of an imperialist coalition headed by France. In response, the PCF would lead the proletariat in a defence of the USSR and a general counter-offensive against capitalism. It appealed to the revolutionary traditions of Parisian workers, calling on “les ouvriers parisiens, héritiers des héroïques Communards” to struggle with the party against the bourgeois dictatorship and to thereby prepare “la Nouvelle Commune Victorieuse.”662 The communist campaign was also revolutionary in the content of its proposals. These included the unilateral abolition of military service, an end to all reparations and a repeal of all treaties, support for revolution in colonies such as Indochina, the right to demonstrate and an end to police intervention in the factories of Paris and the Seine suburbs, the expulsion of fascists and counter-revolutionaries from the same and a ban on their demonstrations, a general amnesty for political prisoners, the equality of French and foreign workers, and equality for women, including equal political and industrial rights and the right to abortion. Communist propaganda asserted that the struggle against the capitalists included the SFIO since “les partis bourgeois ont trouvé partout l’aide directe ou la complicité des organisations réformistes et socialistes, de la C.G.T. et du parti socialiste.”663 “LE PARTI SOCIALISTE, PRINCIPAL SOUTIEN SOCIAL DE LA BOURGEOISIE”, communist propaganda bawled, citing as proof the SFIO’s role in the preparation for war against the USSR, its lack of opposition to repression in the colonies and the parliamentary support it gave to reactionary laws.664 The Radical-Socialist Party was no better since it voted for the budgets of a government it rhetorically opposed. One communist tract outlined the situation in these terms:

À côté de lui [Vaillant-Couturier] vous trouverez sans doute d’autres candidats appartenant à d’autres fractions de la bourgeoisie. Mais, en dépit des apparences dans les compétitions électorales qui, seules, les mettent aux

662 36J19: tract entitled: “Parti Communiste (S.F.I.C.) – Département de la Seine, “Un programme d’Action communiste”, supplement published by L’Humanité (1932). 663 36J19: “Parti Communiste, Aux Travailleurs, Elections Législatives de 1932, Département de la Seine, 8e Circonscription de Sceaux”. 664 36J19, “Le Parti Communiste: Son programme (1932).” 230 Toward Hegemony I

prises, les candidats des divers partis bourgeois, socialistes compris, représentent tous les mêmes intérêts de classe, celui de la classe de vos exploiteurs.665

Notwithstanding the fact that the SFIO was “le meilleur soutien de la bourgeoisie”666, the PCF called on socialist workers to unite around the program of the PCF in a Front Unique. In the Canton of Villejuif, the PCF exhorted workers, artisans, functionaries, retirees, employés and small shopkeepers to form a block of the oppressed behind Vaillant-Couturier: “Au bloc des hobereaux, au bloc des riches, opposez le bloc des exploités: Class contre classe.”667 More measured in tone, socialist propaganda called for the reorganisation of production, the reform of the financial and tax systems, and the commencement of a program of great capital works.668 The socialists gave workers the choice between the Bloc National, which had brought financial disaster and the threat of war, or a renewed and larger version of the Cartel des Gauches of 1924. While there is no mention of the SFIO preparing workers for a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie and its militaristic and imperialist state, the socialists do assert that employers had exacerbated the deleterious effects of the Depression by exploiting their workers and that capitalist governments were preparing for war while talking of peace. Marcilloux highlighted the fact the SFIO had acted constructively in the parliament in the years 1924-1928, and stated that it would do so again.669 In a tract addressed to communist workers, the SFIO asserted that it was instrumental in the 1924 recognition of the USSR by France and claimed that it was now doing everything in its power to prevent its collapse.670 Although the possibility of the latter is seen as a grave blow for the working class in view of the central role of Russian workers in the antifascist struggle and the construction of a socialist Europe, the USSR is not referred to by SFIO propaganda as

665 36J19, “Parti Communiste, Aux Travailleurs.” 666 36J19, “Parti Communiste (S.F.I.C.) – Département de la Seine, Un programme d’action communiste”, supplement published by L’Humanité (1932). 667 36J19, “Parti Communiste (S.F.I.C.), Aux Travailleurs” 668 Except where a source is specifically indicated, the following analysis of the SFIO electoral propaganda in the 1932 legislative elections for the Canton of Villejuif is a synthesis of: Marcilloux’s electoral program published in Le Socialiste, 24 April 1932; AD94 36J19: “Élections Législatives du Premier Mai 1932 8e Circonscription de Sceaux Canton de Villejuif Parti Socialiste (S.F.I.O.), Aux Électeurs”, two tracts, one with and one without a picture of Marcilloux on the front page; “Parti Socialiste (S.F.I.O) Élections législatives de 1932, Aux Travailleurs Communistes.” 669 36J19, “Parti socialiste (S.F.I.O.), Aux Électeurs” (no picture). 670 36J19, “Aux Travailleurs Communistes.” 231 Toward Hegemony I

the workers’ state. Despite the invective levelled at it, strident criticisms of the PCF were generally absent from the SFIO propaganda I analysed. Instead, the SFIO expressed regret at the PCF’s decision to maintain candidates in the second ballot, a fratricidal tactic that had lasted long enough, having, for the past ten years, served only to reinforce reaction and contribute to the success of capitalism.671 In appealing for communist workers to ally with them, the socialists cited Marx’s celebrated call to unite and argued that success in the anti-capitalist struggle was contingent upon unity. The socialists of the Villejuif canton directed most of their criticism at Gratien. In spite of labelling himself a Radical- Socialist Gratien supported the reactionary policies of the current government, with the result, it was claimed, that he had to justify his actions several times before the Radical Party.672 Marcilloux’s campaign sought support from similar social groups to the communists - blue and white-collar workers, intellectuals, artisans and shopkeepers. As would be expected, Gratien’s campaigns in both 1928 and 1932 were virulently anticommunist.673 In the 1928 election, he produced a booklet that pledged a “lutte sans merci contre les doctrines bolchevisantes qui ne sauraient aboutir qu’à l’anéantissement du pays.”674 Gratien viewed the results of the Russian Revolution as permanent civil war, the decimation of the Russian population and the physical and moral corruption of its children, the suppression of liberty and freedom of thought, and a regime of terror and working-class servitude which matched the erstwhile Tsarist regimes. In his 1932 campaign booklet, Gratien used the examples of England and Australia as countries where the recent experience of a socialist regime (that is, government by social democratic Labour Parties) had ended in ruin.675 Gratien’s conclusion that overproduction had caused the Depression, and his policy prescriptions to overcome it, namely the maintenance of balanced budgets and a rejection of dirigisme, reflected the conservative economic orthodoxy of the time. Gratien also supported the maintenance and development of colonies as a way of enriching the

671 “Aux Travailleurs Communistes.” 672 Le Socialiste, 24 April 1932. 673 My general analysis of Gratien’s ideological standpoint and the issues on which he campaigned in 1928/1932 are derived from: AD94 1J612, election booklet entitled “Élections Législatives de 1928, 8e circonscription de Sceaux, Canton de Villejuif, Auguste Gratien” and AD94 35J458, Dossier no. 5, election booklet dated 1 May 1932 and produced by the Comités Radicaux et Radicaux-Socialistes and the Concentration Républicaine et Sociale at the time of the 1932 legislative elections. 674 AD94 1J612 “Élections Législatives 8e circonscription de Sceaux, Canton de Villejuif, Auguste Gratien”, p.7. 675 AD94 35J458, Gratien’s election booklet dated 1 May 1932. 232 Toward Hegemony I

French people and opposed any unilateral disarmament or reduction in military service. This formed part of his pledge to “…faire triompher le programme de ce grand parti qu’est le parti Radical et Radical-Socialiste, dont l’histoire, on peut le dire, s’identifie étroitement avec celle de la 3e République.”676 Consistent with the contrasting rhetorical approaches of the three candidates, their campaign biographies have different emphases.677 In Vaillant-Couturier’s case, his actions as a militant since the end of the First World War, as founder of ARAC and editor-in-chief of L’Humanité, were highlighted, as were his numerous convictions and imprisonments as a result of his political activity, particularly his indictment in 1929 for plotting against the state. Vaillant-Couturier’s election material also indicated to voters that he had been elected as assistant in 1919 and 1924 and that he was mayor of Villejuif. The SFIO highlighted the fact that Marcilloux had been born into a working- class family in the Department of the Creuse and that his father was a socialist militant. Its propaganda noted his work in Cachan on behalf of mal-lotis, in local unions, and in the Caisse des Ecoles and Patronage Laïque.678 By 1932, Gratien’s campaign also emphasised (more so than in 1928) the proletarian roots of its candidate who had experienced the hardships of life as a member of a working-class family of five children headed by a father who struggled on meagre wages to improve their circumstances.679 In both campaigns Gratien was praised for working hard in the interests of the populace of the banlieue sud and, in particular, the canton of Villejuif, proof that he would be a good representative of the latter. This sentiment was expressed in 1928 by the mayor of Arcueil, Pierre Templier,680 who listed Gratien’s achievements as mayor of Gentilly: directing the wartime provisioning of the local population, the post-World War I amelioration of living conditions via improved garbage collection, better hygiene, public lighting, social assistance, education and the promulgation of a plan for the embellishment of the commune; and as general councillor: the extension of bus, tram and train services in the Canton, and improvements to roads in Arcueil, Cachan and L’Hay. In 1932, the municipal administration of Cachan called on local residents to vote for Gratien in view of the multiple services he rendered in the commune, particularly in

676 AD94 1J612, “Élections Législatives de 1928, 8e circonscription de Sceaux, Canton de Villejuif, Auguste Gratien”, p. 8. 677 See propaganda sources indicated above. 678 See electoral tracts cited above from 36J19 and Le Socialiste, 24 April 1932. 679 1J612, Gratien’s election booklet dated 1 May 1932. 680 1J612, Gratien’s election booklet dated 1 May 1932, pp. 3-6. 233 Toward Hegemony I

the domain of communal works.681 The municipality of Cachan “conseille de voter pour le citoyen GRATIEN contre la coalition communiste et révolutionnaire qui causerait la ruine de nos institutions Républicaines.”682 In spite of their differences, the three candidates addressed broadly similar issues, albeit the communist proposals for reform were always the most radical.683 The communists and socialists pledged support for a 40-hour week without a wage reduction, paid holidays, unemployment insurance, opposition to Depression-induced salary reductions, and greater protection and assistance to artisans and small shopkeepers (the communists proposed giving them the right to renew their lease and freeing them from heavy taxation). Gratien made a typically Radical pledge to protect artisans and shopkeepers and promote modest social reform, expressing support for credit funds and tax relief aimed at small businesses, and, with workers in mind, higher salaries, lower taxes, respect for the eight-hour law, improved social insurance laws, and compulsory workplace accident insurance. Both Gratien and Marcilloux’s programs expressed support for secular education (free in the latter’s case). Communist proposals for easier registration for unemployment benefits and free public transport for the unemployed were not echoed in Marcilloux’s election material, let alone Gratien’s, nor were the PCF’s revolutionary proposals for the equality of French and foreign workers and for the equality of women, including equal political and industrial rights and the right to abortion. All three candidates made proposals to improve local housing and infrastructure. While Marcilloux called for assistance to tenants facing high rents, and Gratien for a solution to the rental crisis, the communists proposed the right of requisition of vacant housing, the removal of slums and re-housing of their occupants. With regard to the problem of the defective lotissements, the PCF called for their rectification via the provision of gas, lighting, water, sewage, fire hydrants, transport, and rubbish collection at the cost of developers and the state. The party also called for assistance to those affected by floods and opposed the seizure of property as a result of non-payment. Gratien simply called for the urgent constitution of associations so as to safeguard the

681 AD94 35J259, Conseil Municipal de Cachan, poster supporting candidacy of Gratien, 1932 legislative elections. 682 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, poster supporting candidacy of Gratien. 683 This summary is according to the electoral material cited above for Vaillant-Couturier, Marcilloux and Gratien.

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interests of mal-lotis, and Marcilloux stated that he was a relentless defender of their interests. Addressing the important issues of transport and health, the SFIO called for a reduction in tariffs, the prolongation of the metro to large agglomerations, an extension to the electrification of the train network, more funding for suburban hospitals along with a decrease in the costs of the services they provided and an increase in their staffing. Gratien supported the adoption of legislation that would render the banlieue more habitable and prosperous, and vouched that he would effect general improvements in the lives of inhabitants of the Villejuif canton. This would be achieved by: combating tuberculosis, cancer and the presence of slums; giving assistance to war veterans; regulating lotissements properly; allowing cité-jardin residents to purchase their rental properties; and improving local infrastructure, services, housing, and public transport. When it came to local and regional issues, as an experienced local mayor and Conseiller-Général Gratien had a clear advantage over his rivals. Notwithstanding the PCF tactics, Table 5.10 overleaf indicates that in Arcueil in 1928 the party’s share of the valid votes cast increased by 3.9% to 42.9% as compared with 1924, while in Cachan it grew by 5.2% to 34.4%. The PCF’s electorate that emerged in 1924 in the two suburbs was thus consolidated. Once again, the conservatism of Cachan’s voters vis-à-vis their counterparts in Arcueil is evident in the fact that Gratien obtained an absolute majority in the first ballot in Cachan, but polled second in Arcueil behind Vaillant-Couturier. This difference was maintained in the second ballot when an increase of almost 10% in Vaillant-Couturier’s share of the valid votes cast gave him an absolute majority in Arcueil and a victory over Gratien by almost 5%. Despite a 7.2% increase in the second ballot, in Cachan Vaillant-Couturier trailed Gratien (with 58.2%) by 16.6%. The SFIO was equally weak in both suburbs where, in the first ballot, it polled just over 10% of the valid votes cast, with the socialist-communist candidate receiving a little more than half this level of support in Arcueil and a little less than half in Cachan. While it is difficult to know exactly where the second ballot votes of these two groups of voters went, it is clear that many of them, a greater number in Cachan, refused to support the PCF in the second ballot, choosing instead to abstain (abstentions rose by 3% in Arcueil to 17.2% and by 1.1% in Cachan to 14.9%) or to vote for Gratien. In an extremely close election, this cost him victory.

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TABLE 5.10 – 1928 & 1932 LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes casts rate plus abstention rate in Arcueil (by electoral section/in total) and Cachan

Arcueil Cachan Centre Laplace Cité-Aqueduc Total

1928 1932 1928 1932 1932 1928 1932 1928 1932

1st 41.4 37.1 39.3 33.6 36.2 40.3 35.7 50.6 36.9 RSP 2nd 49.9 54.8 45.5 50.5 47.9 47.6 51.5 58.2 58.1

SFIO 1st 12.0 14.6 9.9 15.2 12.3 10.9 14.2 10.8 17.8

1st 41.1 32.2 44.6 36.9 42.4 42.9 36.5 34.4 28.0 PCF 2nd 50.0 45.1 54.5 49.5 52.1 52.3 48.5 41.6 41.8

Various 1st 5.3 16.1 6.3 14.3 9.1 5.8 13.6 4.2 17.2

1st 15.6% 14.8% 12.8% 13.8% 13.6% 14.2%* 14.2% 13.8%* 13.7% Abstentions 2nd 18.4% 16.5% 16.0% 15.1% 16.3% 17.2%* 15.9% 14.9%* 16.1%

SOURCE: Arcueil: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K45, procès-verbal legislative elections 22 & 29 April 1928 and 1 & 8 May 1932, commune of Arcueil. Cachan: AD94 36J19, 1932 legislative election, results for Cachan ; Banlieue de Paris, 4 May 1928 ; Georges Lachapelle, Elections Législatives 1932, Résultats Officiels, Paris, Le Temps, 1932, p. 284 and Elections Législatives 22-29 Avril 1928: Résultats Officiels, Librairie Georges Roustan, Paris, 1928, p. 273.

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NOTE: * Estimates only. See Table 5.2 (page 187) for a full explanation of how they were calculated.

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For the first time since their inception, in 1932 the PCF’s class against class tactics began to have a noticeably negative effect on the PCF’s core vote, though again the latter remained large and the reverses only marginally eroded the gains made in 1928. The PCF’s first ballot share of the valid votes cast fell by 6.4% in both Arcueil (36.5%) and Cachan (28%), with the SFIO benefiting as its first ballot vote increased by 3.3% in Arcueil and by 7% in Cachan where the party had the advantage of having fielded a local candidate, Marcilloux. The PCF’s first ballot decline appears to have been a protest against its sectarian tactics as the party went on to have its biggest increase to date in the second ballot vote as compared with the first, 12% in Arcueil and 13.8% in Cachan, which suggests that most of those voters who had switched to the SFIO in the first ballot went over to the PCF in the second. Nevertheless, some of the SFIO’s voters remained unwilling to support the PCF in the second ballot, preferring to abstain (abstentions rose by 1.5% in Arcueil to 15.9% and by 2.4% in Cachan to 16.1%) or vote for Gratien. The creation of the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section in 1932 adds a new dynamic to the analysis of elections. The excision from the electoral sections of the Centre and Laplace of zones where the communist vote was strongest reduced the PCF’s vote in both these sections. The result was the emergence of the Cité-Aqueduc as a communist bastion par excellence with a strong first ballot vote of 42.4% of the valid votes cast becoming an absolute majority in the second ballot. While Vaillant-Couturier won comfortably in the Cité-Aqueduc, he was narrowly defeated in Laplace and Gratien triumphed easily in the Centre. At one end of the spectrum we have mal-lotis and cité- jardin tenants turning the Cité-Aqueduc into a communist citadel, while at the other end of the spectrum the zone of commerce and bourgeois housing at the core of the Centre meant that the Radical-Socialist and conservative vote was strongest in this electoral section and the communist vote weakest. The heavily industrialised Laplace with its mixture of small lotissements and poor apartment blocks lay somewhere in the middle.

The Precocious Electoral Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan

Section 4 of this Chapter has demonstrated that in the years 1923/24, competing in its first elections in Arcueil and Cachan, the fledgling PCF captured an overwhelming majority of the SFIO’s pre-schism electorate. The PCF displaced the SFIO as the natural party of working-class voters who cast their vote as far to the left as was practicably possible. This communist electorate was remarkably resilient – in both

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Arcueil and Cachan the overwhelming majority of the PCF’s first ballot voters chose to vote communist in the second ballot even when it meant flouting traditional republican discipline. In the face of the PCF’s sectarian isolation, the communist electorate of Arcueil and Cachan remained substantial, and it either grew or remained relatively stable in the 1920s. From 1923 onwards, the PCF’s first ballot vote grew steadily in Arcueil’s municipal elections, steadily rising to just below 40% where it remained static despite class against class tactics. The PCF’s second ballot vote also increased substantially in 1925 and again, in spite the party’s sectarian tactics, in 1932. At around 40% of the valid votes cast, the PCF’s legislative vote in Arcueil was large but relatively stable in the 1920s. In Cachan, in municipal elections from 1925 onwards the PCF consistently captured around a quarter of the valid votes cast even when it flouted republican discipline in the second ballot. In legislative elections, support for the PCF in Cachan was three to 10 percent higher in the first ballot (and averaged around 30.7%), and much higher in the second ballots of 1928 and 1932 where it remained stable at just over 40%. The differential in support received by the PCF in legislative and municipal elections is a function of local factors. In Arcueil in 1932, the PCF lost support in legislative elections around the same time that two communists were elected to council on the back of disenchantment with the ineffective and divided Radical-Socialist municipality whose drift to the Right encouraged more SFIO voters to vote communist in the second ballot. Similarly, in Cachan the communist vote in municipal elections was diminished by competition from an incumbent administration with a strong track record of local achievements as well as a high profile, re-invigorated local SFIO. Police reports indicate that the mal-lotis were an important source of support for the PCF in Arcueil. So too was the stability of the PCF’s leadership in this suburb and its mixture of experienced activists and new recruits that made up its ranks. This stability and experience was lacking in Cachan where historically the Left had been weak. The PCF suffered a serious handicap in Cachan when compared to Arcueil, a situation that was exacerbated by the party’s sectarianism. Thus, local factors explain why the PCF was much stronger in Arcueil than Cachan in the years between 1923 and 1932, though by 1932 there were signs that this difference was becoming less pronounced. Nonetheless, to explain the early emergence (in 1923/24) and resilience of the PCF’s electorate in both Arcueil and Cachan we must look beyond local circumstances. Arguably, the alienation of the French working class found expression in

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a vote for the political party that workers saw as the repository of the revolutionary traditions of French labour. Marginalised from the bourgeois state and society, periodically repressed and banished to the suburbs of Paris, workers in Arcueil and Cachan responded as other workers did before them, by supporting a movement firmly rooted in neo-Babouvist traditions. Hence, although during the interwar period the fratricidal tactics of the PCF helped to keep the Radical-Socialists in power in Arcueil and the CURSDIGC in power in Cachan, still the PCF established solid foundations for an electoral hegemony that emerged in an embryonic form under the Popular Front. Perhaps, by proving the revolutionary zeal of the newly emerged party, the extremist tactics of the PCF even helped the party to rapidly cement the support of a significant segment of radicalised workers in the two suburbs. An analysis of electoral propaganda between 1923 and 1932 supports the alienation hypothesis. The PCF, the SFIO and their more conservative opponents all had a similar focus on ameliorating the living conditions of local inhabitants. They often presented similar proposals for practical improvements at a local or regional level, and each group addressed the problems of mal-lotis and the need to improve municipal infrastructure. The difference was that the PCF integrated these into a platform that called for the revolutionary transformation of society. In the period between the partition and the Popular Front, those who voted for the PCF did so not just because the communists were good administrators but also to support a revolutionary program that sought to transform a bourgeois society from which they were alienated. Such analysis is supported by the early emergence of a significant, resilient communist electorate. It is also supported by the initial emergence of the Laplace electoral section as a communist bastion, an electoral section that was heavily industrialised and populated by mal-lotis. The bitter disappointment that was suffered by the mal-lotis as their bourgeois dreams of home ownership turned into nightmare was mirrored in the experience of the tenants of Arcueil’s cité-jardin where the ideal of class collaboration foundered in the face of intractable housing and hygiene problems. Poorly-housed, working-class Arcueil tended to vote communist, and overwhelmingly so in the Cité-Aqueduc. The presence of comfortable, bourgeois housing and of a commercial centre meant that in general the Centre electoral section gave greater support to those parties to the right of the PCF than the Laplace and Cité-Aqueduc electoral sections. With few members, weakened by defections and with an increasingly de- proletarianised membership, in the second half of the 1920s the SFIO in Arcueil

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experienced a steep decline in electoral support as the electorate became polarised between the PCF and Radical-Socialists and the local SFIO became essentially a centrist party whose voters did not necessarily vote to the left in the second ballot.684 In traditionally moderate, conservative-voting Cachan, the SFIO was almost indistinguishable from the left of centre allies it often found among the Radical- Socialists and other groups. In the second half of the 1920s the SFIO found an electoral base between the communists on the extreme Left and Cachan’s Centre-Right municipality via the capacity of its leader Marcilloux to attract the support of local shopkeepers and mal-lotis alike.685 The consolidation of the PCF’s electorate in the 1920s was concomitant with the emergence of the Radical-Socialist Party as the rightwing opposition and the declining influence of the SFIO in Arcueil and with an erosion of the electoral base of Cachan’s centre-right municipality. Yet sectarian tactics ensured that Arcueil remained under the control of the Radical-Socialists until 1935 and in Cachan in the late 1920s they obviated a real chance for the Left to break the hegemony of the CURSDIGC in the wake of splits within the latter. Hence the importance to the rise of communism in Arcueil and Cachan of the unity achieved between the SFIO and the PCF under the Popular Front.

5. THE PCF IN THE ASCENDANT: THE ELECTIONS OF 1935-37

On 6 February 1934, various rightwing demonstrators gathered at the Place de la Concorde in Paris to protest against the newly formed Radical government of Edouard Daladier, or to express opposition to the parliamentary regime itself.686 Among the demonstrators were many members of extra-parliamentary, and in some cases paramilitary, rightwing leagues such as the Action française, Solidarité française,

684 Two socialist candidates in the 1925 municipal elections quit the party and were later elected as Radical councillors, AD94: E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, a comparison of electoral lists and procès-verbaux for 1925 and 1929 municipal elections and 1D27, Letter from L. L. Veyssière, 22 June 1929; Le Socialiste, February 1932. The Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO had 30 members in 1925, falling to 10 in 1928, eight in 1930/31, rising to 13 in 1932, and falling again to 11 in 1933, DBMOF Cd-rom, entries on Eugène Fournière and Antoine Marcilloux. 685 AN F713264, Dossier: Elections Municipales générales Seine 6 and 13 May 1929, “Rapports sur la situation politique en Mars 29 par arrondissement à Paris et par cantons en Banlieue”; Le Socialiste, 3rd year no. 18 July 1931? (date uncertain). 686 Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934-1938, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1988, pp. 1-2; Sowerwine, France since 1870, pp. 144-145. 241 Toward Hegemony I

Jeunesses Patriotes, Croix de Feu, and the Francistes.687 Economic crisis had fuelled anti-parliamentary feeling, a situation which was inflamed by revelations of a financial scandal involving the swindler Alexandre Stavisky who had been protected by leading politicians and the sacking of the Prefect of Police, Jean Chiappe, known for his sympathetic treatment of rightwing demonstrators (in contrast with his harsh repression of leftwing demonstrations).688 The communists were also present at the demonstration in a protest against the government. When demonstrators tried to cross the bridge which led to the Chamber of Deputies they clashed violently with police and in the riot that ensued 15 people were killed. In the aftermath of the demonstration, Daladier resigned. In reality, 6 February was a spontaneous eruption of violence and not an attempted fascist coup on the part of the leagues.689 However, the French Left viewed the events through the prism not only of the fascist seizures of power in Italy and Germany but also as further proof that the Right did not accept the existence of the Republic with 6 February being one of a number of assaults that had been made by the Right on the Republic since its foundation in 1871.690 In the past, such threats had generated a defensive reflex that unified republicans, as had been the case with the Dreyfus Affair, but this was not possible while the communists persisted with their class against class line. The initial response from the Left was spontaneous and uncoordinated.691 The CGTU and PCF held a demonstration against the fascists and Daladier on 9 February, and the resulting clashes with police left six dead. The CGT called a general strike for 12 February, and the SFIO decided to hold a series of demonstrations on the same day. The PCF only decided at the last minute to heed the CGT’s call for a day of action. The 12 February was a great success throughout France - in Paris, the socialist and communist demonstrations converged on the Place de la Nation as separate columns where the rank-and-file led a spontaneous merging. While 12 February did not cause the PCF’s leadership to change its sectarian tactics, the formation of a Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes kept the ideal of unity alive, while other antifascist

687 Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave 1933-1939, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995, p.30. 688 Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 1-2, 21-22; Sowerwine, France since 1870, pp. 144-145. Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp. 30-32. 689 Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, p. 31. 690 Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 2-3. 691 The account that follows is according to Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 6-7, 30-31.

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committees sprang up throughout France, often encompassing communists in spite of the party leadership. According to Jackson, the situation in France, the Comintern’s apprehension of the sorry state of international communism, and a re-orientation of Soviet foreign policy toward finding allies in the west combined in the first half of 1934 to soften the Comintern’s tactical line.692 The latter prodded a hesitant PCF leadership into a change in tactics. On 25 June, the PCF leadership proposed a Unity Pact to its SFIO counterpart, and, after some negotiation, it was signed on 27 July. The pact provided for joint demonstrations, a cessation of attacks on each other and withdrawals in the second ballot for whoever was the best placed candidate.693 In the municipal elections of June 1935, cooperation between the PCF and SFIO saw the two parties make electoral gains at the expense of the Radicals. The Radical-Socialist Party had rallied to the rightwing Union Nationale government in the wake of the riots. Nevertheless, agitation for some sort of leftwing alliance increased. When the Radical-Socialists joined with the PCF and SFIO on 14 July 1935 in a hugely successful anti-fascist (and anti-government) demonstration, the Popular Front was in effect born. The communists had been keen to extend the Unity Pact that they had signed with the SFIO into a wider Popular Front that included the Radicals, and on 11 January the three parties signed a Popular Front program. The latter was not a blueprint for government but a symbolic statement of agreement on principles and issues of the day. Popular Front committees were formed as centres of liaison between autonomous organisations. The desire for unity among workers and rank-and- file party members had been a driving force in bringing the PCF, SFIO and Radical- Socialist Party together in an electoral alliance for the first time.694 The Popular Front heralded the second birth of the PCF and the rise of the Red Belt by transforming the PCF from a sect into a mass party that dominated the working- class suburbs of the Department of the Seine where it won control of 27 municipalities in 1935 (compared with nine for the socialist Party) and out-polled all other parties in subsequent cantonal and legislative elections.695 The Red Belt that emerged under the

692 Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 32-35. 693 Jackson, Popular Front, p. 6. 694 Jackson, Popular Front, p. 6-7, 46-48. 695 The extent of communist success in the Department of the Seine is amply illustrated, with the aid of maps, in L’Humanité 14 May, 1935. In the Seine, the PCF won 25 out of 50 seats in elections for the Conseil Général in 1935 and 42.6% of the valid votes cast in the 1936 legislative elections, see Jacques Girault, “Vers La Banlieue Rouge: Du Social au Politique”, pp. 256, 258.

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Popular Front would be re-forged following Liberation, becoming a stable feature of the Fourth Republic.696 With 800 000 more votes than in 1932, the PCF doubled its first ballot vote to 12.45%, and in the second ballot its electoral alliances increased its parliamentary representation from 10 to 72 deputies.697 Despite a small decline in its first ballot vote (from 17.63% to 16.92%), the SFIO emerged after the second ballot as the largest party in parliament with 147 deputies, 41 more than the Radicals for whom a greater decline in their vote (from 15.88% to 11.88%) resulted in a significant loss of seats.698 Bearing in mind a potential leftwing majority had already existed in 1932, the swing to the Left in 1936 was small, with its 45.94% of the first ballot vote (10% more than the Right) being a 2.4% increase, which translated in the second ballot into a gain of 37 seats and a majority of 156.699 The election demonstrated that the PCF was putting the SFIO under pressure in industrial areas, while the shift in the SFIO’s vote from urban to rural France was confirmed, at the expense of the Radicals.700 The centre was being squeezed in an increasingly polarised French electorate. Unlike the communist campaign in which it was central, the Popular Front was not a prominent feature of the Radical campaign. Many in the Radical-Socialist Party remained hostile to the Popular Front, and in the aftermath of the 1936 election the party was divided between anti- Popular Front candidates elected by votes from the right and those elected through their support of the Popular Front. The communists were the main beneficiaries of the electoral alliance, not only in France as a whole but also in Arcueil and Cachan where the Popular Front brought about an electoral resurgence of the Left. The PCF took control of the municipality of Arcueil after the 1935 municipal elections, while three socialists were elected to Cachan’s council as the Left was narrowly defeated by the incumbent administration. In the legislative elections of 1936 and 1937, the communist candidate easily outpolled all other candidates not only in Arcueil but also in Cachan, thereby signalling the PCF emergence as the pre-eminent political party on the eve the outbreak of World War II.

696 Pennetier and Viet-Depaule, “Les Municipalités et L’Évolution Politique et Sociale des Communes de Banlieue”, p. 200. 697 Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 8, 50. 698 Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 8, 50. 699 Sowerwine, France since 1870, pp.149-150; Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 8, 50. 700 Jackson, Popular Front, p.51. 244 Toward Hegemony I

The 1935 Municipal Election in Arcueil: Victory at Last for the PCF

The strength of the communists in Arcueil prior to the municipal elections of 5 and 12 May 1935 was such that Le Régional, a local Radical newspaper, saw the victory of the communists as a foregone conclusion:

Les habitants d’Arcueil, ouvriers, employés, commerçants et industriels qui se contentent de déposer leur bulletin dans l’urne tous les six ans, répètent avec conviction et ‘des sanglots dans la voix’ qu’ils auront bientôt une municipalité communiste. Ils attendent leur extermination et l’attribuent à la fatalité.701

The newspaper laid the blame for this situation on the Radical mayor of Arcueil whose indifference to intensive communist propaganda and subversion in the commune leading up to the 1935 municipal election had left it in danger of “une invasion, une domination communiste.”702 According to Le Régional “M. Legrand a créé la discorde et le mécontentement général”703 in a municipal administration that was troubled by intrigues, personal ambitions and rivalries, internecine conflicts, mutual recriminations and sterile partisan quarrels. Legrand was compared with Gratien, the now disgraced mayor of Gentilly who had been defeated by the communists in municipal elections held in December 1933 and February 1934 after members of the municipal council had resigned in protest at his alleged misappropriation of council funds.704 Le Régional saw that the only means of defeating the communists was to form an apolitical union whose the sole function of which was to promote the general interests of Arcueil and which would unite all anti-communist forces, Republicans, Socialists and Radicals, except those in the Legrand camp. Consequently, Le Régional supported the newly formed Comité de défense des Intérêts généraux d’Arcueil (CDIGA), an alliance of anti-communist republicans modelled on the hitherto successful CURSDIGC.705 This meant that anticommunist Radicals were split into two groups,706 those who supported the CDIGA, including one

701 Le Régional, no. 1, 15 March 1935. 702 Le Régional, 15 March 1935. 703Le Régional, no. 3, 2 May 1935. 704 Le Régional, 2 May 1935; DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Georges Beaugrand. 705 Le Régional, no. 1, 15 March & no. 3, 2 May, 1935. 706 See: AD94 36J27 “Liste de Concentration Républicaine et d’Action Municipale pour la défense des intérêts communaux” and “Ville d’Arcueil Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Comité Républicaine de Défense des Intérêts Généraux d’Arcueil”; Le Régional, no. 3, 2 May 1935. 245 Toward Hegemony I

former councillor, and another group around the outgoing mayor Legrand, who led a ticket which included nine outgoing councillors and all four assistant mayors, and which, according to Front rouge707 was endorsed by the various fascist leagues. The splits among local Radical-Socialists in Arcueil did not end here. Following the congress of the Radical-Socialist Party held in Clermont-Ferrand on 2 June 1934, a Comité Radical-Socialiste ‘Camille Pelletan’ was formed in Arcueil.708 Its formation resulted from a minor schism at the conference when dissident leftwing members of the Radical Party broke off to form a splinter party in protest at the continued support given by the Radical-Socialist Party to the government in the wake of the Stavisky scandal and the events of 6 February.709 Among Arcueil’s Pelletanists were one recently resigned and two current Radical municipal councillors, including the secretary and the treasurer of the Comité Radical et Radical Socialiste d’Arcueil in 1931.710 Unfortunately for Le Régional, the Popular Front brought the Pelletanists into a leftwing electoral alliance with the communists and socialists for the 1935 municipal elections. Nonetheless, much to the disappointment of the socialists, the communists refused to run a common list or program with their Popular Front allies in the first ballot, instead restricting their electoral agreement to the complete withdrawal in favour of the best placed antifascist list (certain to be the communists).711 As a result, the socialists and Radical-Socialist Party ‘Camille-Pelletan’ ran a single list (comprising of sixteen SFIO candidates and eleven Pelletanists) in the first ballot, headed by the veteran L. L. Veyssière.712 In-between the 1929 and 1935 elections, the socialists had lost a number of their older militants, including Givort, and it appears that only four of the 16 SFIO candidates had run in 1929, two of whom were former socialist councillors

707 Front rouge, 21 April 1934. 708 Front rouge, 30 June 1934. 709 The “Parti Radical-Socialiste Camille Pelletan”, as the new party was called, harked back to the paragon of leftwing Radicals, Camille Pelletan, who played a significant role in the creation of the Radical-Socialist Party in 1901. At the core of Pelletan’s philosophy and political activity were the maintenance of universal suffrage and the Republic. His catch cry was “no enemies on the Left” (provided they were not anti-patriotic) and his policy platform was classically Radical, encapsulating anti-clericalism, the regulation of large capital and social reform that recognised the inviolability of property. See Peter J. Larmour, The French Radical Party in the 1930s, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1964, pp. 96, 151-154, 180 and Judith F. Stone, “Political Culture in the Third Republic: The Case of Camille Pelletan”, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, vol. 13, 1986, pp. 217-226. 710 Front rouge, 29 December 1934; Le Socialiste, June 1934. 711 Le Socialiste, 16 & 28 March 1935; Front rouge, special edition circa 12 May 1935. 712 AD94 36J27, “Ville d’Arcueil Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935, Liste d’Emancipation Municipale et Sociale, Parti Socialiste SFIO-Parti Radical-Socialiste Camille-Pelletan.” 246 Toward Hegemony I

and long-time local militants. Le Socialiste’s pitch to the voters was that the focus of the SFIO would be on rectifying the wasteful, haphazard and uncoordinated provision of infrastructure by the municipality.713 Only seven of the 27 candidates for the PCF in the 1935 municipal elections had run in the elections of 1929, but the substantial renewal of this list was balanced by the presence yet again of Sidobre, now an outgoing councillor, heading a list that also included fellow outgoing councillor Rivière, and the veteran former assistant mayor Poënsin.714 Front rouge published a program that pledged improvements to local services and infrastructure, such as the establishment of a community clinic, the construction of a sports ground, infrastructure and road construction in quarters and municipal showers/baths, and building as broad an alliance as possible encompassing workers, employés, shopkeepers and small rentiers in the antifascist struggle.715 In order to spread the communist message in the lead-up to the elections, Sidobre and Rivière held meetings in all neighbourhoods to render account of their mandates, and the party staged ‘artistic nights’.716

TABLE 5.11 - 1935 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL

Percentage of valid votes cast plus abstention rate Arcueil (by electoral section/ in total) and Cachan Centre Laplace Cité-Aqueduc Total

1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd

PCF 40.6 54.1 43.5 58.4 53.4 66.9 45.2 59.2

SFIO/ Pelletanists 17.5 ____ 17.5 ____ 14.3 ____ 16.6 ____

RSP 29.4 44.3 26.3 40.0 24.2 31.4 26.8 39.2

CRIGA 11.3 ____ 10.2 ____ 5.6 ____ 9.3 ____

Abstentions 17.4% 17.5% 17.5% 17.3% 16.1% 18.5% 17.2% 17.7%

SOURCE: Archives communal Ville d’Arcueil, procès-verbal municipal elections 5 & 12 May 1935 commune of Arcueil.

713 Le Socialiste, 12 January 1935. 714 AD94 36J27, “Ville d’Arcueil Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Liste du Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan.” 715 Front rouge, 9 March, 7 April & special edition circa 12 May 1935. 716 Front rouge, 7 April 1935.

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Table 5.11 above indicates that in the vote that followed, the PCF won control of Arcueil’s municipality. In the first ballot the party increased its share of the valid votes cast by 6.6% (to 45.2%), while the reversal that the Radical-Socialist Party had suffered in its vote in 1932 was re-confirmed, with support for the party falling a further 9.8% (to 26.8%), with the CRIGA (at 9.3% of the valid votes cast) drawing support away from it. In combination with the Pelletanists, the SFIO increased its vote marginally (by 1.7% to 16.6%), probably at the expense of the Radicals. The communists went into the second ballot with a massive 18.4% lead over the Radicals. The long-term decline in abstentions at full elections was confirmed with the lowest rate yet (17.2%) for a municipal election. The Cité-Aqueduc confirmed its emergence in 1932 as the communist bastion, with the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast increasing, when compared to 1932, by 8.6% to an absolute majority in the first ballot. The PCF’s support also rose in the other two sections, though at a lower rate - in the Centre by 5.8% (to 40.6) and Laplace by 5.1% (to 43.5%). The Radical-Socialist decline was universal, and followed the pattern as in 1932, with the decline being smallest where the communists were the weakest. In the Centre, it fell 8.1%, followed by a decline of 9.7% in Laplace and 12.1% in the Cité-Aqueduc. In the Cité-Aqueduc, the PCF led the first ballot by 29.2%, which was more than double the 11.2% lead in Centre and well in excess of the 17.2% lead in Laplace. In the second ballot, the PCF increased its share of the valid votes cast vote by 14.3%. This gave the party an absolute majority (59.2%) of the valid votes cast, and a comprehensive victory as it extended its first ballot lead over the Radical-Socialists to a triumph by 20%. A residual reluctance to vote communist on the part of some centre- left voters was not enough to deny the PCF victory as it increased its second ballot vote by 7.1% when compared to 1932. While the election of two communist councillors in 1932 had paved the way for the victory in 1935, it was the Popular Front alliance that ensured that when the victory came, it was a comprehensive one.

The 1935 Municipal Election in Cachan: The Narrow Defeat of the Left

In the lead-up to the 1935 municipal elections the situation in Cachan was somewhat different to Arcueil. The anti-Popular Front forces had a firmer grip on power and were more united – local Radical-Socialists had not fragmented into various groups as in Arcueil and instead remained allied with the CURSDIGC. As in Arcueil, the SFIO and the PCF ran separate lists in the first ballot. The PCF list underwent a substantial

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renewal, with a new head, Cellier, and with at the least four, and possibly six (I am uncertain because I only have the surnames for 1929), of the 27 candidates having run in 1929.717 The SFIO list was headed by Marcilloux and included former councillors Lemoine and Lambert, as well as a former communist, Puech, with six of its candidates having appeared in the 1929 election.718 In the second ballot 15 communists and 12 socialists combined in a Liste d’Unité d’Action Antifasciste headed by Cellier (who had polled the highest number of votes in the first ballot of any candidate on the list).719 The incumbent CURSDIGC administration once again sought its fifth election victory since the creation of the commune of Cachan, presenting a list that included the outgoing mayor and two of his deputies, in total fourteen outgoing councillors and thirteen new candidates.720 The electoral programs distributed by the CURSDIGC, the SFIO and the PCF prior to the votes of 5 and 12 May had one common thread, namely quite specific proposals designed to enhance the living conditions of local residents, particularly those living in the Lumières and Coteau districts.721 There were proposals for the construction of new roads and for repairs to existing ones, the provision of piped water, gas, sewage and electric lighting to residential areas where they were lacking, the establishment of municipal showers/baths, the construction of a new school in the Coteau and improvements to existing schools, the extension of public transport, the development of the community clinic and the covering of the Bièvre (not mentioned by the SFIO). General commitments were also made to enhance municipal services and improve sanitation, to provide greater assistance to those social groups in need, to defend the

717 AD94 : D2M2/100, procès-verbal, commune of Cachan, municipal election 5 May 1929; 36J26 “Ville de Cachan, Elections législatives du 5 Mai 1935, Parti Communiste (SFIC) Liste du Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan.” 718 D2M2/100, procès-verbal, municipal election 5 May 1929, commune of Cachan; 36J26, “Ville de Cachan, Élections municipales du 5 Mai 1935, Parti Socialiste (SFIO), Liste des Candidats.” 719 AD94 : 36J26: Élections du 5 Mai 1935 (typed results of voting); “Ville de Cachan, Élections Municipales du 12 Mai 1935 (Scrutin de Ballottage) Liste d’Unité d’Action Antifasciste, Parti Communiste Parti Socialiste.” 720 36J26 “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan. Citoyens!” 721 The following is a synthesis of the electoral material of the CURSDIGC, the SFIO and the PCF: AD94 36J26 - “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935, Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan. Citoyens!”, “Élections Municipales – Scrutin de ballottage du 12 Mai 1935 Cachanais” (CURSDIGC), “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Socialiste (SFIO) Programme”, “Commune de Cachan Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Communiste Battre la Réaction”, “Élections Municipales du 12 Mai 1935 Liste d’Unité d’Action Parti Communiste-Parti Socialiste”; Front rouge, 21 April 1935 & special edition circa 12 May 1935; Le Socialiste, no. 60, 27 April 1935. 249 Toward Hegemony I

interests of local artisans and shopkeepers. The socialists and communists also proposed the construction of sport and leisure facilities, the establishment of school canteens, holiday camps and a municipal youth club, the provision of wash houses and fire hydrants in those areas that lacked them, greater support from the municipality for the unemployed, concessionary priced utilities to those in need, consultations for pregnant and nursing women at the community clinic, and the recognition of private roads. The PCF also pledged support for a number of inter-communal and regional realisations such as a hospital, swimming pool, and a superior primary school for girls and boys. Le Socialiste highlighted Marcilloux’s unceasing activity for the past 12 years in Cachan, both in public life and in the party, on behalf of mal-lotis, veterans and victims of injustice, and it claimed that his administrative knowledge, socialist faith and oratory talent had increased the socialist vote. 722 Thus, an analysis of the substance of the various electoral programs indicates a similar emphasis on improving the lives of Cachan’s residents from the CURSDIGC, the SFO and the PCF. The fundamental difference between the communists and socialists on one side and the CURSDIGC on the other was the antifascist thrust of the former, an issue that was totally ignored by the latter in favour of anticommunism. Front rouge claimed that Eyrolles was a fascist chief by virtue of his directorship of the School of Public Works where bands of fascists trained, and went on to list four of Eyrolles’ candidates as members of the fascist leagues (including Solidarité Française, Jeunesses Patriotes and Croix de Feu).723 In a tract entitled “Battre la Réaction”, the communists accused the Eyrolles municipality of supporting the rightwing Flandin government that had attacked the salaries and conditions of the labouring populations, veterans and small shopkeepers, and of protecting Solidarité Française in 1934 by allowing the police to invade and occupy the commune while it took place (the significance of this demonstration is discussed in the next chapter).724 Le Socialiste labelled the Eyrolles list as an “immonde coalition où fraternisent des radicaux-socialistes et des Croix de feu, des soi-disant laïques avec des adversaires de l’instituteur, des adversaires du fascisme avec des séides du colonel la Rocque.”725 This theme was repeated in the Unity list’s propaganda prior to the second ballot. Cachan was described as a “Municipalité

722 Le Socialiste, 27 April 1935. 723 Front rouge, 21 April 1935; special edition circa 12 May 1935. 724 AD94 36J26, PCF electoral tract “Battre la Réaction.” 725 Le Socialiste, 27 April 1935. 250 Toward Hegemony I

fasciste” which grouped together “soi-disant radicaux” with noted reactionaries and members of fascist leagues such as Solidarité Française and the Croix de Feu,726 while the electorate was exhorted to halt fascism and reaction, to bring down the affairistes, and to vote for the antifascist Popular Front and for bread, peace and liberty. During the election campaign, the communists highlighted their unity with socialists and Pelletanists in the face of the fascist threat.727 The Left’s allegations of the municipality’s fascist nature were undoubtedly overstated but not entirely baseless. Members of the PSF were elected on the CURSDIGC list in 1935,728 while the anticommunist Right avidly sought the support of Eyrolles whom they regarded as like- minded.729 Furthermore, in the 1932 legislative election the Eyrolles administration officially endorsed the candidacy of Gratien, a Laval sympathiser, and Laval had been present at the opening of Cachan’s new town hall in March 1935.730 Nevertheless, Eyrolles and his affiliates were supported by local Radicals and by Le Régional, which confined its criticisms to one allegedly ambitious Radical member of the council.731 Beyond the issue of fascism, in the midst of the Depression the Eyrolles administration was accused of wasting millions of francs on the construction of a new town hall and other buildings when priority should have given to rectifying the problems of the mal-lotis.732 Front rouge stated that a communist administration would put right the failure of the municipality to accord priority to rectifying the substandard state of Boulevard de la Vanne and the footpaths of the Coteau, and would also strictly regulate the large blanchisseurs who polluted the commune with impunity because of Eyrolles’ unwillingness to act against them.733 The communists and socialists accused

726 AD94 36J26, “Liste d’Unité d’Action”; Front rouge, special edition circa 12 May 1935. 727 Front rouge, special edition circa 12 May 1935. 728 See Front rouge, 28 November 1936; the PSF letter read out to council by Eyrolles, DCMC, Meeting 20 November 1936 (pp. 447-451). 729 See discussion above on Eyrolles’ relations with the Centre de Propagande des Républicains Nationaux, directed by Henri de Kerillis. See in particular AD94 36J19, a letter from Eyrolles addressed to “Mon cher collègue” and the anticommunist, antisocialist and antiradical tracts sent by the Centre de Propagande des Républicains Nationaux to Eyrolles at the time of the 1932 legislative elections. 730 See AD94 35J259, Conseil Municipal de Cachan, poster supporting the candidacy of Gratien, 1932 legislative elections, discussed above. Gratien’s Le Moniteur newspaper was highly nationalistic and a firm supporter of Laval. Though a supporter of Eyrolles, the local Radical newspaper Le Régional was less than impressed by this visit. In issue no. 2, 1 April 1935, it described the visit in a report entitled “CACHAN EN ÉTAT DE SIÈGE.” 731 Le Régional, no. 1 , 15 March 1935; no. 3, 2 May 1935. 732 Le Socialiste, 13 April 1935 & 27 April 1935; AD36J26: SFIO “Programme” and PCF “Battre la Réaction”; Front rouge, 21 April 1934. 733 Front rouge, 21 April 1934.

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the Eyrolles municipality of being tardy in fulfilling or failing to fulfil their previous promises, while leaving the commune heavily taxed and indebted.734 The CURSDIGC stood on its record of considerably improving the lives of residents by means of enhanced infrastructure and municipal services.735 CURSDIGC propaganda claimed that since the creation of the commune of Cachan the CURSDIGC had united men of varied political opinions to work on behalf of Cachan, had the right combination of experience and youth, and was representative of a broad cross-section of social groups and districts in Cachan. Prior to the second ballot, the CURSDIGC presented a detailed rebuttal of socialist and communist accusations of delays and incompetence in the provision of communal infrastructure and of financial mismanagement, dismissing them as communist propaganda.736 Its propaganda in the second ballot was largely directed against the PCF. “C’est la plus honteuse tromperie”, a CURSDIGC tract beseeched those workers who might consider voting communist in order to eliminate misery, ameliorate their lives and prevent war.737 It claimed that because of its denial of individual freedom, “le Communisme ne doit même se placer à la gauche du socialisme, il se développe et évolue sur un plan différent”, one which sought the abolition of the fundamentals of society such as the family.738 The CURSDIGC even sent out a letter to first ballot abstentionists, calling on them to vote against the PCF in the second ballot lest Cachan would fall under the yoke of a party that was traitorous in its support for an external enemy and was the voice of “des découragés, des défeatistes, des éternels dénigreurs.”739 The enthusiasm generated by the Popular Front and the real danger posed by the Left to the incumbent administration produced the lowest rate of abstention to date for a municipal election (see Table 5.12 overleaf). The PCF’s embrace of unity meant that it was the main beneficiary as the party increased its share of the valid votes cast by 4.3% to 28.3% compared with 1932, its best result since the creation of the commune of

734 See especially AD94 36J26 SFIO/PCF “Liste d’Unité d’Action” and Front rouge, special edition circa 12 May 1935. 735 36J26, CURSDIGC electoral tracts: “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935”, “Élections Municipales - Scrutin de ballottage du 12 Mai 1935. Cachanais” and “Élections Municipales du 12 Mai 1935 Commune de Cachan Réponse de la Municipalité de Cachan au Tract de la Liste d’Unité d’Action.” 736 36J26, “Réponse de la Municipalité de Cachan au Tract de la Liste d’Unité d’Action.” 737 36J26, “Scrutin de ballottage du 12 Mai 1935 - Cachanais.” 738 Scrutin de ballottage du 12 Mai 1935 - Cachanais.” 739 36J26, “Comité d’Union Républicaine et Sociale de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan Monsieur et Cher Concitoyen Voter c’est un devoir!”, electoral tract.

252 Toward Hegemony I

Cachan. The absence of any competition from lists of the Centre and Right produced the best result for the CURSDIGC since 1925 (though at 45.5% of the valid votes cast this result was still 4.2% less than the result of that year. At 22.5%, an increase since 1929 of only 0.3%, only the SFIO’s first ballot share of the valid votes cast remained almost unchanged, as the increase in support for the Left went to the PCF. With a combined average total of 1415 votes, compared with 1269 for Eyrolles’ list, amounting to an absolute majority for the first ballot, the SFIO and the PCF were confident of victory in what they regarded as an important suburb to win.

TABLE 5.12 - 1935 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: VOTING IN CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes cast plus abstention rate

First Ballot Second Ballot

CURSDIGC 45.5 49.3

SFIO 22.5 48.2 PCF 28.3

Abstentions 16.2% 16.1%

SOURCE: Front rouge, special edition, prior to second ballot 12 May 1935; Cachan - 36J26 (Fonds Eyrolles) “Élections du 5 Mai 1935/Election 12 Mai 1935, Scrutin du Ballottage.”AD94 36J28, results of voting in 1935 municipal elections, commune of Cachan; DM3/46 Communes de Cachan, Renouvellement de 1935.

This was reflected in the intensity of the campaign prior to the second ballot. Front rouge devoted almost an entire page to the election in Cachan, including four separate articles and a listing of the results of the first ballot and the candidates for the second ballot, while Le Socialiste presented a centrefold devoted entirely to the same.740 However, as Table 5.12 indicates, the communists and socialists were to be bitterly disappointed, especially the former. In the second ballot, the mayor Eyrolles and all but three of his list got over the line as the Popular Front list received 48.2% and the incumbents 49.3% of the valid votes cast. Although the unity list fell only 1.1% behind the CURSDIGC in terms of its share of the valid votes cast, the first-past-the-post system of voting meant that only three SFIO candidates were elected to council (one of whom was ultimately disqualified in favour of a CURSDIGC candidate). The combined

253 Toward Hegemony I

PCF/SFIO share of the valid votes cast fell 1.5% in the second ballot, while that of the CURSDIGC increased 3.8%. It appears that a small but ultimately, in the context of a close vote, significant portion of those electors who voted for the SFIO in the first ballot was not prepared to do so in the second when the party combined with the PCF. Wariness of the PCF’s extremism and its links to Soviet Communism, memories of its recent sectarianism and recognition of the achievements of the incumbent administration most probably account for this behaviour. A number of voters were prepared to practice panachage, voting largely for the CURSDIGC but also for high profile socialist candidates. Marcilloux, Lemoine and Lambert all out-polled PCF candidates in the second ballot, probably a consequence activism on behalf of mal-lotis in the case of the first two and a previous stint as a councillor in the case of the latter.741 While in Arcueil the PCF celebrated victory on 5 and 6 June 1934 with two days of festivities that included an artistic fete and sports day, Front rouge resorted to bitter accusations that Eyrolles and the bourgeoisie had committed electoral fraud in Cachan in order to deprive the commune of its proletarian administration.742

The 1936 and 1937 Legislative Elections: The Overwhelming Victories of the PCF

On 26 April 1936 and in a highly charged atmosphere, legislative elections were held for the 8th district of Sceaux encompassing the entire Canton of Villejuif. Once again, Vaillant-Couturier was running against Gratien, who, running as a conservative Radical-Socialist, had defeated him in the two preceding elections. However, with the popular urge for unity behind him, Vaillant-Couturier was poised for victory over an archrival who had suffered, after his downfall as mayor of Gentilly in 1933, successive defeats at the hands of the communists in municipal elections and cantonal elections.743 As a leading proponent of unified action, Vaillant-Couturier had been instrumental up to this point in developing the PCF’s cultural approaches to the politics of unity, leading its re-appropriation of republican memory and tradition and national culture via his role as secretary of the Association des artistes et écrivains révolutionnaires (1934-1935)

740 Front rouge, special edition circa 12 May 1935; Le Socialiste, 27 April 1935. 741 Edmond Lambert was elected to council in 1923 and 1925 and Lemoine was President of the Association Propriétaires Sinistrés de la rue des Vignes Coteau: AD94 DM 3/46 1925 and 1929 elections; DBMOF Cd-rom, entries on Edmond Victor Lambert and André Auguste Lemoine; AD94 36J26, “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Socialiste (SFIO) Liste des Candidats.” 742 Front rouge, 15 June 1935. 743 Roujeau, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif”, pp. 146-147. 254 Toward Hegemony I

and editor of L’Humanité (1935-1937).744 His popularity, and the excitement generated by the Popular Front, can be seen in the fact that one electoral meeting held in Cachan attracted 1,500 participants.745 The socialist candidate, a 42-year-old employé, Jules Mallarte, was an early advocate of unity, having been excluded from the Party between 1933 and 1935 for his role in the Amsterdam-Pleyel movement.746 At the time of the elections, he was on the national secretariat of the Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme and in this capacity, he claimed to have directed more than 400 meetings that grouped together workers in the antifascist and anti-war struggle. With both Popular Front candidates hailing from the left of their respective parties, there were broad similarities in their propaganda.747 They called for the dissolution of the leagues, as agents of Hitler and harbingers of war, and attacked the ‘200 hundred families’ that exploited France during in the Depression. Both candidates made proposals for a reduction in the working week without the loss of salary (the communists called for a 40-hour week), a program of public works, greater assistance to those groups in need (such as the old, the unemployed), pensions at the age of 60, tax reform, and greater support for youth. They called for the unity not only of communists, socialists and parties of the left, but also of the lower classes in general. However, the language of the communist propaganda was aggressively anti-bourgeois and anti- capitalist, and stridently pro-Soviet. Vaillant-Couturier’s electoral material emphasised the need to make the rich pay with progressive income and wealth taxes, called for a Franco-Soviet treaty and highlighted his Party’s anti-militarist heritage in its struggle against the occupation of the Ruhr and the Rif war in Morocco, and its opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. The patriot Vaillant-Couturier proposed a new order based on the “plus hautes traditions françaises”748 and his Party celebrated the glorious traditions of the Revolutions of 1793, 1830, 1848 and 1871, the peasant rebellions of the Revolution and the independence of the French nation which had given France its democracy and

744 DBMOF Cd-rom, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. 745 Front rouge, 25 April 1936. 746 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Jules Mallarte. 747 Unless otherwise indicated, the account which follows is a synthesis of the following electoral tracts from AD94 36J20: “Élections Législatives de 1936 Pour le salut du Peuple Français! Programme du Parti Communiste Français”, Reproduction of a tract dated Villejuif 23 April 1936 and signed by Vaillant-Couturier, PCF electoral tracts entitled “Non! Pas de Guerre” and “Espoir!” and “Élections Législatives de 1936 Arrondissement de Sceaux Canton de Villejuif Parti Socialiste (SFIO) Jules Mallarte Un Programme d’Action et de Réalisations.” 748 36J20, Reproduction of a tract dated Villejuif 23 April 1936 and signed by Vaillant-Couturier. 255 Toward Hegemony I

incarnated the great hopes of the future.749 The communists would defend these conquests of the French Revolution. On a more practical level, the communists cited the examples of the municipalities they controlled in the canton of Villejuif and indicated the benefits that communist administration had brought to the respective local populations. In contrast to Vaillant-Couturier, Mallarte claimed that rather than systematically oppose all legislation the socialists instead voted for measures that tended to ameliorate the conditions for workers. Nevertheless, the SFIO had never participated in government and therefore did not share any responsibility for the current crisis that was caused by the bourgeois parties. The socialist program also called for a conference on disarmament, arms reductions, the revision of treaties dangerous for peace and international solidarity, and included an extensive proposal for the nationalisation of key industries such as mining, insurance, electricity, petrol, banks and sugar refining. The rightwing anticommunist Henri Chassinat-Gigot gave voters a simple choice - democratic reform within the order of republican legality or the general expropriation of all property, dirigisme, the general strike, class struggle, revolution and civil war.750 Table 5.13 (page 254 below) indicates that as in the municipal elections, the achievement of unity and enthusiasm for the Popular Front brought about a drop in abstentions, by 2.1% in Arcueil and 1.6% in Cachan, to 12.1%, the lowest figure to date in legislative elections for Cachan and the second lowest in Arcueil. Vaillant- Couturier’s personal popularity and his wholehearted embrace of leftwing unity lifted the PCF’s first ballot share of the valid votes cast by 20.4% when compared to 1932, enabling Vaillant-Couturier, with 56.9% in Arcueil, 50.3% in Cachan and 57.8% in the canton as a whole, to trounce his rivals in a single ballot. In Arcueil and Cachan, a stagnant or even declining vote had been overwhelmingly reversed by the Popular Front alliance. Compared to 1932, the vote of Gratien, now running as an Independent Radical-Socialist, fell by almost two-thirds in Cachan, and by more than two-thirds in Arcueil. The SFIO’s share of the valid votes cast was also down, by 2.5% in Arcueil (to

749 See in particular 36J20 “Élections Législatives de 1936 Pour le salut du Peuple Français!” 750 36J20 “Élections Législatives 1936 8e Circonscription de Sceaux Canton de Villejuif Henri Chassinat-Gigot Suprême Appel à tous les Électeurs.”

256 Toward Hegemony I

11.7%) and 6.4% in Cachan (to 11.4%), thereby reversing the gains the party had made in 1932 at the height of the PCF class against class line. The PCF appears to have taken votes from both Gratien and Mallarte in its overwhelming electoral triumph. Looking more closely at Arcueil, the 1936 legislative election re-confirmed the voting pattern of the previous legislative election and of the municipal election the year preceding, though in 1936 in all three sections the party received its highest vote to date. The Cité-Aqueduc confirmed its position as a communist bastion par excellence, while in the more bourgeois Centre the PCF made inroads, becoming by far the most popular party in this section. Thus, the Popular Front alliance helped the PCF to make its greatest gains in those sections where it was already the strongest, the Cité-Aqueduc and Laplace, while nevertheless establishing itself as a dominant force where it had been to date weakest, the Centre. Notwithstanding, the SFIO and Gratien had their best results in the Centre, with the latter being weakest in the Cité-Aqueduc were the non- Marxist vote (at 23.3% of the valid votes cast) was two-thirds of the Centre, Laplace being only 3.5% lower. With the PCF’s dominance achieved in all three sections, the path was set for an electoral hegemony. The extent to which this had been achieved was tested in a by-election the following year. On 16 October 1937, Paul Vaillant-Couturier died suddenly and his funeral six days later became one of the last great demonstrations of Popular Front unity where Socialists, Communists and Radicals marched together.751 His death necessitated the last election in Arcueil and Cachan prior to the World War II and the twilight of the Popular Front. The PCF presented Raymond Guyot, a 34-year-old former employé who originated from the Department of the Yonne.752 He had been elected a member of the Central Committee of the Jeunesses Communistes in 1927 and then the PCF in 1929. The SFIO once again presented Mallarte, and the Radical- Socialists presented a pro-Popular Front candidate, Isambert. An indication of political polarisation can be seen in the fact that rightwing opposition to the Popular Front came in the form of candidates from the PSF and the PPF, which presented Legrand.

751 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry Paul Vaillant-Couturier. 752 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Raymond Germain Guyot; AD94 36J21, “Depuis près de 20 ans, RAYMOND GUYOT est au service du people”, electoral tract, legislative elections 12 December 1937.

257

TABLE 5.13 - 1936 & 1937 LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS: VOTING IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Percentage of valid votes casts and abstentions in Arcueil (by electoral section/ in total) and Cachan Arcueil Cachan Centre Laplace Cité-Aqueduc Total 1936 1937 1936 1937 1936 1937 1936 1937 1936 1937

URASA PPF URASA PPF URASA PPF URASA PPF URASA PPF Anticommunist 10.4 15.2 8.7 14.9 6.4 8.9 8.7 13.4 11.5 9.9 Right Gratien PSF Gratien PSF Gratien PSF Gratien PSF Gratien PSF 12.4 10.0 11.9 7.7 8.2 5.3 11.1 7.9 13.3 14.0 Rad Rep 1936 11.7 9.7 10.9 8.5 8.0 5.5 10.4 8.1 12.8 12.0 RSP 1937 SFIO 13.4 21.5 10.3 21.3 11.4 23.0 11.7 21.8 11.4 23.1 PCF 50.6 43.5 57.2 47.6 65.3 57.0 56.9 48.7 50.3 41.1 Various 1.5 0.1 1.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 1.2 >0.1 0.7 No figures Abstentions 11.2% 18.7% 12.2% 18.5% 13.1% 17.5% 12.1% 18.3% 12.1% 16.9%*

SOURCE: Arcueil - AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal legislative elections of 26 April 1936 and 12 December 1937, commune of Arcueil. Cachan - George Lachapelle, Élections Législatives 26 Avril et 3 Mai 1936: Résultats Officiels, Le Temps, Paris, 1936, pp. 265-266; Front rouge, 1 September 1937; AD94 36J21 “Élections parlementaires 12 et 19 Décembre 1937”, tally of votes in Cachan. NOTE: Gratien ran as an Independent Radical-Socialist. Rad Rep = Radical Republican. URASA = Union Républicaine et d’Action Sociale Anticommuniste. *The abstention rate may have been marginally lower as my source for Cachan does not indicate the votes received by minor candidates.

258

Toward Hegemony I

All three Popular Front candidates campaigned on protecting the achievements of the Popular Front Government - the 40-hour week, paid holidays, collective contracts, increases in salaries, better returns for peasants, controls on credit - maintaining the antifascist struggle, while at the same time highlighting the parliamentary and/or governmental actions of their respective parties.753 Guyot pointed to the achievements of the five communist communes in the canton of Villejuif – the construction of schools, the establishment of youth clubs, school camps and health clinics, the development of local infrastructure, improvements to hygiene and sanitation, better public transport, more aid to the unemployed, the sick, the old and children, and support for the claims of the lower classes. He noted that Vaillant- Couturier had won in the first ballot of voting in 1936 and that both Conseillers- Généraux were communists. A biographical tract emphasised Guyot’s origins – born into a family of small farmers and raised from six months of age by his mother and grandparents after he and his five siblings were left fatherless - and his militant activity - he was sacked for his involvement in the train strikes of 1920, had been imprisoned a number of times for his antimilitarist and communist activity, and was one of the best directors of the Jeunesses Communistes and the PCF.754 Mallarte highlighted the achievements of the Blum administration and the fact that the SFIO had received more than two million votes in 1936 (with 146 deputies elected), had the largest representation in the chamber (156 by 1937), and governed more than 5000 communes. A brief biography of Mallarte indicated that he was born into a working-class family, and that the experience of military service in World War I, during which he was wounded, had inspired him to join the SFIO, and to become an active member of central and federal organisations of the SFIO and the secretary of the Amicales Socialistes d’Enterprises.755 Isambert pledged that under Radical leadership the gains of the Popular Front government would be consolidated and a new program of reforms

753 Unless otherwise indicated the following analysis of party propaganda is based on a synthesis of the following : AD94 36J21- PCF-Cachan Section four tracts, “POUR LA DÉFENSE DES LIBERTÉS REPUBLICAINES ET LA SAUVEGARDE DE LA PAIX”, “Les élus communistes du canton de Villejuif vous appellent à assurer une élection triomphale à RAYMOND GUYOT!”, “Élection Législative du 12 Décembre 1937 - 8e Circonscription de Sceaux-Canton de Villejuif Chers Amis”, tract signed by Guyot, and “CACHAN VA PARLER!”; “Parti Socialiste SFIO Élections Législatives Complémentaires du 12 Décembre 1937 8e CIRCONSCRIPTION DE SCEAUX Canton de Villejuif Jules Mallarte”; “Élections Législatives Complémentaires du 12 Décembre 1937 Citoyens”, R. Isambert (Radical-Socialist). 754 36J21, “Depuis près de 20 ans, RAYMOND GUYOT est au service du peuple”. 755 36J21, “Parti Socialiste Élections Législatives Complémentaires du 12 Décembre 1937.” 259 Toward Hegemony I

implemented – including legislated retirement of workers, the establishment of unemployment funds, a program of great works, the defence of the peasantry and the development of education and training. Despite the similarities in their programs, differences were now more apparent between the three ostensible allies than they had been in 1936. While the socialists and communists vowed to continue the antifascist struggle, the Radicals simply pledged to oppose all dictatorships. All parties promised to work toward international peace, however (in a pointer to the communist support for the USSR), the SFIO vowed to work for national independence from internal and external influences and the Radical- Socialists pledged to defend the nation. There was open criticism. Whilst offering its full participation in government, the PCF called for the full implementation of the program and criticised the pause implemented by Blum. In turn, the SFIO criticised the PCF for voting against its social insurance laws. Isambert pledged to defend all liberties, to oppose all dictatorships, and to support progress through order and republican legality. He expressed opposition to hatred between citizens, and rejected class struggle as promoted by the communists, and to a lesser extent the socialists. Thus, a surface level attachment of the communist, socialist and Radical candidates to the Popular Front program masked a growing rift between their parties, while at the same time there was a growing division in the local electorate between the extreme Left, the Communists, and those parties to their right. With the Radical-Socialists weakened as an electoral force locally, the extreme Right, in the form of the PSF and PPF, emerged as a political force. In its propaganda the PSF gave more emphasis to the corporatist organisation of society, national reconciliation of social groups, and the maintenance of family and social order, while the PPF was more anti-communist in emphasis and more anti-capitalist in rhetoric, although both supported a strong policy of national defence to protect France from Soviet dictatorship.756 In the absence of someone with the local and national prominence of Vaillant- Couturier, the PCF’s dominance of both Arcueil and Cachan was somewhat diminished, although Guyot still managed to triumph in the first ballot with 48.7% of

756 36J21: Emile Legrand “De Vaillant-Couturier à Guyot”, electoral tract for the by-election of 12 December 1937 and “Élections Législatives complémentaires du 12 Décembre 1937 8e Circonscription de Sceaux Programme Politique du Parti Populaire Français”; “Élections Législatives complémentaires du 12 Décembre 1937 Arrondissement de Sceaux Canton de Villejuif, Parti Social Français Jean-Louis Moine.” 260 Toward Hegemony I

the valid votes cast in Arcueil, 41.1% in Cachan and 50.9% in the canton as a whole.757 A rise in the abstention rate of 4-6% in the two suburbs may have contributed to a fall in support. Higher abstention rates are typical for partial elections, but on this occasion, abstentions were extraordinarily low when compared with the partial municipal elections examined above. This is perhaps the result of the greater importance attached to national elections, the tense political situation and a tendency during the interwar period toward lower abstention rates. Compared to 1936, the decline in the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast was less in Arcueil (where it was down 8.2% to 48.7%) than Cachan (where it was down 9.2% to 41.1%). In both suburbs, the PCF’s vote remained at historically high levels, in terms of legislative elections. With the Radical-Socialist Party in full retreat in both communes (despite the fact its candidate was pro-Popular Front), polling only 8.1% of the valid votes cast in Arcueil and 12% in Cachan, the SFIO more or less doubled its vote. With the electorate increasingly polarised and with Gratien annihilated as an electoral force (he received only a handful of votes in the canton of Villejuif), the extreme right emerged as an electoral force, with the PPF and PSF capturing the support of one-sixth of the electorate in Arcueil and one-fifth in Cachan (see Table 5.13 above). Nevertheless, the ratio of voter support for pro- and anti-Popular Front forces was around three to one in both suburbs, as the Popular Front laid the foundations for the dominance of the Marxist parties, and in particular in the PCF, in the legislative elections of the Fourth Republic.

Towards an Electoral Hegemony for the PCF?

The Popular Front offered the PCF an unparalleled opportunity to build upon the solid nucleus of support it had acquired in Arcueil and Cachan since the party’s foundation. With the advent of class against class tactics the communist electorate in the two suburbs had shown signs of plateauing - success in the 1932 municipal elections in Arcueil was counterbalanced by a reversal in the preceding legislative election. By harnessing the local enthusiasm for unity and by re-doubling the party’s local activity (this will be outlined in more detail in the next chapter), the Popular Front served to not only increase the PCF’s first ballot vote in both municipal and legislative elections, very significantly in the case of the latter, but also to persuade the overwhelming majority of leftwing voters to vote communist in the second ballot,

757 Banlieue de Paris, 17 December 1937. 261 Toward Hegemony I

thereby securing communist victories in Arcueil’s 1935 municipal election, and in both Arcueil and Cachan in the legislative elections of 1936 and 1937. In Arcueil, with a change in the local political landscape having already benefited the PCF in the 1932 partial municipal elections, the Popular Front sealed the party’s gradual rise to dominance, presaging the suburb’s emergence as a communist bastion under the Fourth Republic. In Cachan, the Popular Front removed the impediment which had stood in the way of a potential successful challenge from the Left in 1928-29, namely disunity. Nevertheless, the incumbent administration in Cachan had been firmly entrenched since Cachan’s establishment as an independent commune, and it was clearly associated with both the achievement of independence and with a long list of local improvements. These factors, along with a coalescing of the forces of the Right around the CURSDIGC (unlike 1928 and 1929, the CURSDIGC list was the only list to the Right of the SFIO in 1935) combined to narrowly frustrate the Left’s attempts to win control of the council. However by 1936, with the Radical-Socialist Party on board the Popular Front alliance and the CURSDIGC fragmenting, Cachan appears to have joined the ranks of the communist suburbs, voting in the majority for the PCF in 1936 and 1937, elections which confirmed Arcueil’s status as a communist bastion. The elections of 1935 to 1937 mirror the pattern of voting in both suburbs under the Fourth Republic, with both Arcueil and Cachan voting in the majority for communist parliamentarians and but with Arcueil alone regularly electing communist municipalities. This differential can be put down to local factors. The CURSDIGC’s record of achievement helped it to maintain control of Cachan’s municipal council even in the face of a united Left and popular enthusiasm for the Popular Front. In addition to the enthusiasm for unity, personal and local factors were also responsible for Vaillant- Couturier’s comprehensive victory in the two suburbs in 1936. As mayor of Villejuif and a leading communist proponent of the Popular Front, Valliant-Couturier was enormously popular, whereas his archrival Gratien suffered a rapid fall from grace via his association with financial scandal. As Chapter 6 indicates, antifascism appears to have played an increasingly important role in Cachan from 1934 onwards. This was reflected in Cachan’s municipal council, with a number of council members aligning themselves with the Popular Front movement in the wake of the Radicals’ formal adhesion to it. Certainly antifascism was a major focus of communist and socialist propaganda in the municipal and legislative elections, though it was not enough to

262 Toward Hegemony I

defeat the anticommunist thrust of the CURSDIGC campaign or the latter’s record of achievement. Pledges for material improvements to the lives of residents in the two suburbs were de rigueur for all parties in both municipal and legislative elections. Despite this similarity between the PCF’s programs and that of its opponents, those who voted for the PCF were voting for a party which promised a fundamental transformation of French society, which reflected its origins in the working-class ghettoes of France. In spite of the spectacular gains it made under the Popular Front, the PCF’s areas of strength remained the social ghettoes of France, such as the suburbs of Paris. It is not surprising then, that the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section of Arcueil with its large population of two very unhappy groups, the mal-lotis and cité-jardin residents, emerged as a communist bastion par excellence, though during the Popular Front the party’s support was robust and strengthening in the more industrial Laplace which also housed some mal-lotis as well as inhabitants of dilapidated apartments. Even in the Centre, which also contained some very poor housing, support for the PCF was on the rise, though the more bourgeois aspect of parts of this section acted as a restraint. If the PCF had its most significant bastion of support in the working-class ghettoes of the Paris suburbs, it was in turn within ghettoes of the individual suburbs themselves where the party tended to be strongest.

6. CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have argued that the PCF emerged in the 1920s as the natural party of a significant proportion of the French working class that had traditionally supported the extreme left in national or local politics as an electoral expression of its alienation from the bourgeois state. Hence, the PCF’s support base was greater in the historically more proletarian and radical Arcueil than in the traditionally more conservative Cachan. The PCF then built on this support base by paying particular attention to the problems of the mal-lotis in both Arcueil and Cachan, the residents of the cité-jardin in Arcueil and the Boulevard de la Vanne in Cachan, and the general state of both communes, as the next chapter indicates in greater detail. This support base was resilient. It was maintained, and at times increased, in spite of fratricidal tactics of the PCF that kept it and the SFIO from power in both Arcueil and Cachan. In Arcueil, the post-schism SFIO was squeezed between the PCF and an increasingly conservative Radical-Socialist Party, and as a consequence it fared worse than in Cachan where municipal politics was more diverse and conservative. This underscores my argument

263 Toward Hegemony I

that the post-schism SFIO essentially represented the reformist tradition of French labour, and the PCF the revolutionary, neo-Babouvist tradition. All candidates – Communist, Socialist, Radical, Centre-Right – tended to campaign in favour of similar concrete improvements to residents’ lives, even at the time of legislative elections, which were fought, from 1928 onwards, in part as localised battles. The propaganda difference was largely rhetorical but nevertheless indicated profound differences in temperament, in the way French society and the world at large was interpreted and the blueprints for improving it. This suggests that the growth in support for Communism had deeper roots than the PCF’s concern for material conditions though the latter was an essential ingredient of the party’s success. An examination of the electoral support given to the PCF in the electoral sections of Arcueil reinforces my analysis with regard to the development of a communist electorate. Initially, the PCF’s strongest zone of support in Arcueil was in the Laplace electoral section, an industrial zone where both mal-lotis and inhabitants of miserable apartment blocks suffered the ill effects of factory pollution. When the Cité- Aqueduc electoral section was created in 1932 by combining some of the most miserable zones of mal-lotis housing and the disenchanted inhabitants of the cité-jardin, it became a communist stronghold par excellence, in spite of the fact that the cité-jardin had been developed to promote interclass harmony. With a significant proportion of residents being from large, poor working-class families, the cité-jardin was an early target of the communists (see next chapter). The seeming inability of either the Radical municipality or the OPHBMS to satisfactorily address problems of hygiene and housing played into the communists’ hands. With their bourgeois dreams of home ownership or a more comfortable family life disappointed, the alienated mal-lotis and cité-jardin residents of the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section turned to the PCF in huge numbers. The party was naturally weakest in the more bourgeois electoral section of the Centre, where the Radical-Socialist Party generally maintained its greatest support, but here too support was on the increase by the Popular Front. The Popular Front confirmed the pattern the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section as a communist citadel, followed by Laplace which, in terms of support, was situated in the middle between the Cité-Aqueduc and the Centre. In addition to the ideological and socio-economic aspects of Arcueil and Cachan and their shared problems of suburbanisation, the local political situation played an important role in determining the differential in the voting patterns of the two suburbs.

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The rebirth of the SFIO in the mid-1920s and the presence of a municipal administration closely associated with Cachan’s independence and subsequent development hindered the PCF’s chances of gaining control of the municipality. By contrast, in Arcueil dissent among the Radicals on council in the wake of the death of a long-time mayor helped two communists to be elected to council in 1932, only weeks after the commune handed the PCF a defeat in a legislative election. In both communes the PCF’s embrace of unity during the Popular Front had significant ramifications for local politics and was therefore a key factor in its success in municipal and legislative elections. Therefore, I would argue for an inversion of the Kriegel counter-society model. In my view, the emphasis in Leninism on establishing strong local roots means that French communism needs to be understood in its local contexts. It is the latter that is the key to understanding the PCF, and not its place in the worldwide communist movement. This is not to say that extra-local factors did not profoundly affect the PCF’s position in a given locality. Class against class tactics undoubtedly helped keep the Marxist Left from power in both Arcueil and Cachan. Their abandonment was a key factor in the PCF realising its hegemony in Arcueil and in the significant rise in support in it experienced in Cachan. However, the communists would not have been able to, by the mid-1930s, construct a nascent communist counter-society in Arcueil and dramatically increase their support in Cachan, were it not for their activism within the local community. In fact, Chapter 6 will demonstrate that a thorough grasp of this community activism - its breadth, its depth and its impact - is fundamental to explaining why, during the interwar period, the PCF was more successful in Arcueil at laying the foundations of a communist hegemony than its counterpart in Cachan.

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6. Toward Hegemony II: The Social Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan Between the Wars.

Arguably the evolution of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan during the interwar period bears out my analysis in Chapter 1 of the party’s origins which argued that the PCF was the repository of the neo-Babouvist tradition. The PCF that emerged out of the Third Internationalist majority in the Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO had its nucleus in the agglomeration of Arcueil where there was a strong revolutionary tradition and an environment of working-class activism, the PCF having been much weaker in its early years in the more conservative, petty-bourgeois Cachan. In Arcueil the party emerged with a good combination of youth and experience, in Cachan it was hampered by a dearth of experienced talent and fact that it lacked an autonomous existence, with the local party still strongly linked to Arcueil. Nevertheless, the party gained a foothold in both suburbs during the 1920s, in spite of sectarian tactics. Arguably, this was a consequence of the fact that a significant section of the working-class in the two communes, a greater number in Arcueil, felt a keen sense of alienation and this was expressed in the long-established tradition of voting for the most extreme leftwing political party. As Chapter 3 has demonstrated, in both communes the PCF was the party of and for the proletariat, unlike the essentially reformist post-schism SFIO. In Arcueil, where politics became increasingly polarised between the communists on the Left and the Radicals on the Right, this worked to the PCF’s advantage, but in the traditionally moderate-voting Cachan the PCF was socially and politically isolated, unable to pose a threat to the incumbent municipality until it joined with the SFIO during the Popular Front. In this way, the nature and extent of communist influence was contingent upon the local environment. In Chapter 2, I set out three variables that affect the capacity of the PCF to build a local hegemony – the socio-economic structure, material living conditions and the politico-cultural character of a locality. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 argued that with a tradition of political radicalism and with miserable living conditions being the norm, industrialised, working-class Arcueil was more susceptible to communist influence. Nevertheless, in Cachan rapid population growth during the interwar period meant proletarianisation and growing support for the PCF while a poor urban habitat only helped to reinforce support for communism. In both Arcueil and Cachan, the way

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in which the PCF interacted with its local environment was the determining factor in the success or otherwise of efforts to construct a communist counter-society. In Chapter 2 I outlined the four essential constituents of a durable communist hegemony as: leadership of the local working class, the empowerment of workers through new forms of participatory democracy, the intensification of class-consciousness/forging of a communist communal identity via the appropriation of local popular culture and sociability, and the provision of competent working-class self-government at a local level. In this way the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan acted not only as a tribune that acted expressed working-class discontent but also sought to forge communist communal identity on the working-class pride of suburban outcasts. Through a stronger local profile and a more stable leadership, the PCF in Arcueil was more successful than its counterpart in Cachan at broadening its influence via grassroots activism. This grassroots activism provided the springboard for the election of Arcueil’s communist municipality in 1935. Control of municipal government was the essential tool that enabled Arcueil’s communists to build the foundations for a postwar counter- community by consolidating and expanding their influence as a step toward creating a local communist identity. This Chapter also demonstrates the role of extrinsic forces, the third factor affecting the growth and development of communism (along with working-class alienation and the characteristics of the local environment outlined above). Undoubtedly, the Popular Front broadened the PCF’s constituency by removing the impediment that the sectarianism of its class against class tactics had posed to its chances of increasing its support base. Thus, tactics decided by the Comintern and instituted by PCF leadership had an important local influence. The Depression also helped to expand communist influence. Nevertheless, this Chapter will demonstrate how during the Popular Front growing support for communism also owed a great deal to local political developments such as the localised activity of rightwing leagues and splits that developed within local elites. In the final analysis, local politics were driven by the local environment.

1. THE POLITICAL HERITAGE OF ARCUEIL-CACHAN PRIOR TO 1919

Arcueil is one of those communes or regions whose communism was an extension of an historical predilection toward radicalism. During the 1789 Revolution, the municipality of Arcueil (the suffix Cachan was only added at the turn of the

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twentieth century) was composed of ardent republicans and fervent supporters of the Revolution.758 Fiercely anti-clerical, the revolutionary municipality closed the local church and converted it into a place of worship for the Cult of the Supreme Being and renamed several streets in accordance with its revolutionary sentiments – there were rues de l’Unité, de la Réunion, Montagne, Voltaire, Brutus, Marat and places de la Liberté and de la Raison. According to Varin, the majority of inhabitants from Arcueil were sympathetic to the Paris Commune of 1871, with three residents raising the communard flag over the town hall.759 Two thousand communards were stationed in the two agglomerations of the municipality and fighting between the Versaillais and Fédérés took place in and around the commune.760 The repression that followed the defeat of the Paris Commune struck Arcueil – some inhabitants were arrested and never seen again.761 Thus the Paris Commune, regarded by Berlanstein as fundamental to suburban workers, was keenly felt in the commune of Arcueil. In addition to the experience of revolution, the social composition of Arcueil also tended to radicalise the commune. The quarrymen’s corporation was an important component of communal life from the end of the thirteenth century until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the quarry industry went into terminal decline.762 Like their counterparts in neighbouring Bagneux763, the quarrymen of Arcueil were hardworking, skilled labourers and had a reputation for radicalism.764 Most of the quarry workers in Arcueil were from the radical Limousin region and in particular the Corrèze department, a future communist stronghold.765 The quarry industry dominated local politics throughout much of the nineteenth century - between 1825 and 1875 four of

758 Varin, Mémoires, p. 68. 759 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 91-92. 760 There were trenches in Cachan and a redoubt in the northeast of Arcueil. Fighting between the Versaillais and Fédérés took place in the western part of Cachan (in the Grange-Ory district) and its borders with Bagneux, Jean-André Faucher, La Véritable Histoire de la Commune, Éditions du Gerfaut, Paris, 1969, vol. 1, Paris la rouge, p. 459 and vol. 2, Les Roses de mai, pp. 89, 96, 142 and Varin, Mémoires, pp. 91-92. 761 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 91-92. 762 Varin, Mémoires, p. 76. 763 Like their counterparts in Arcueil, the quarrymen of Bagneux had strong corporative traditions and were traditional revolutionaries, being politically well informed and active and always ready to descend on Paris to defend their republican liberties. They acted as a liaison between village and city, helping to overcome the former’s isolation, and their presence influenced the political opinion of the village, adding a revolutionary element to it, Annie Fourcaut, “Bagneux 1870-1936”, p. 39. 764 Varin, Mémoires, p. 76. 765 Vaillat “Cachan-Arcueil”, Le Temps, 29 April 1936, According to Vaillat the native born inhabitants preferred to leave the difficult and dangerous work of quarrying to the migrants, concentrating instead on viticulture and, for women particularly, laundry work. 268 Toward Hegemony II

Arcueil’s mayors were quarry proprietors766 - until it gave way to the emergence of Radicalism in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The founding father of Radicalism in Arcueil and Cachan was the chemist and Radical politician François- Vincent Raspail who came to live in Cachan in the 1860s.767 His Radical politics had a lasting impact on the commune via his two sons who shared his extreme left opinions. Benjamin Raspail was elected municipal councillor for Arcueil-Cachan in November 1873, as well as Conseiller Général for the Department of the Seine, while Emile Raspail was mayor from 1878 to 1887. His mandate was marked by the construction of schools, a communal crèche and a new Town Hall. He was succeeded by the Radical- socialist Alfred Duvillard.768 The Republican Socialist L.G. Veyssière was elected the first socialist mayor of Arcueil-Cachan in 1900. He held the position until he resigned on 7 May 1907, having been re-elected mayor on a number of occasions.769 At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of the socialist groups that went on to form the SFIO were active in Arcueil-Cachan, including one of the principal branches of the POF in the Seine-suburbs and the Blanquist Central Revolutionary Committee.770 As in many other Paris suburbs, Arcueil’s radical heritage paved the way for the rise of the Radical- Socialist Party, which in turn gave way to socialism. The distinguishing feature of Cachan’s prewar political elite was its support for separatism. The increasingly bipolar nature of the commune of Arcueil engendered particularist sentiment in Cachan.771 The result was that in 1896 the latter was added as a suffix to the name of the commune, and this was followed in January 1904 with the

766 Varin, Mémoires, p. 75. 767 A participant in both the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, F-V. Raspail was imprisoned during the latter for his radical opinions, banished in 1853 from France for ten years, condemned to two years prison for criticising the Versaillais massacre of Communards, and elected deputy for the extreme left in Marseille in 1877. He remained in Cachan until his death in 1878. 768 He held the positon of mayor during the years 1887-1888, 1892-1900, and 1907-1908. Varin, Mémoires, pp. 105-106; G. Foraine, Les Maires du Val-de-Marne, 983 Élus et Délégués de 1800 à Nos Jours, Paris, 1988, Paris et Ile-de-France, Mémoires, vol. 38, 1988, pp. 23-27. 769 Varin, Mémoires, p. 106; Foraine, Les Maires du Val-de-Marne, pp. 21, 26. 770 Hubert Rouger, France Socialiste, pp. 190, 199. There were also POF groups in nearby Ivry and Vitry, Saint-Denis in the north, Puteaux and Suresnes in the east to name a few. Blanquist groups were also active in neighbouring Bagneux and Kremlin-Bicêtre, nearby Vitry and Bourg-la-Reine, and in Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen to name a few; Chambaz, “L’Implantation du Parti communiste français à Ivry ”, pp. 66-69. 771 The following account of the pre-war separatist movement is based on the following: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3 Dossier Separation of Arcueil-Cachan dated 1920-1923, a letter from Prefecture dated 27 November 1920, “Extrait du Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal” 29 June 1921, the report of M. Andrigné on the separation of Arcueil-Cachan, July 1921, pp. 6-7, and the Declaration of Cachan Councillors, Council Meeting of June 1921; Varin, Mémoires, pp. 95, 119-121; L. L. Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 141.

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creation of two electoral sections based on the constituent agglomerations of Arcueil- Cachan.772 Notwithstanding these developments, a full-scale separatist campaign developed in Cachan just prior to World War I.773 In January 1911, Cachan’s councillors collectively resigned and were re-elected in the first ballot on an explicitly secessionist platform, and the following April more half the registered voters petitioned the prefectural administration for the establishment of a separate commune.774 On 29 September 1912, separatists were then overwhelmingly elected to a Commission Syndicale which was established to represent the views of Cachan and produced a report for the mayor and the prefect favourable to secession.775 A subsequent commission of inquiry found that voters from Cachan generally favoured partition, while those from Arcueil were opposed.776 With Arcueil’s councillors, Radical-Socialist and Socialist alike, opposing partition a slim majority of the council (12 votes to 11) voted against it on 11 October 1913.777 The advent of World War I meant that the separatist campaign stalemated, only to be re-ignited by the extremist politics of the newly emergent PCF. World War I was also instrumental in consolidating the prewar rise of the SFIO in Arcueil-Cachan, and more particularly in Arcueil. As was the case in many other suburban municipalities, in Arcueil-Cachan the SFIO helped to ameliorate the difficult circumstances faced by inhabitants of the municipality after the outbreak of war.778 Along with local unions, the SFIO was instrumental in the creation of a centre de repas populaire, with kitchens in both Arcueil and Cachan providing meals to

772 Initially fifteen councillors were attributed to Arcueil, and eight to Cachan. In 1907, this was increased to sixteen and eleven respectively, DM3/44 (1Mi 2427), Commune d’Arcueil-Cachan, Conseillers Municipaux Renouvellement 1904. 773 Proponents of separation mounted three arguments for Cachan’s independence: 1) The historical existence of Arcueil post-dated that of Cachan which had been a commune in the middle ages; 2) The majority of Cachanais supported independence, and; 3) an unequal distribution of general works and of communal infrastructure favoured Arcueil. See Varin, Mémoires, pp. 119-121. 774 For the results of the January 1911 vote see DM3/45, Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune d’Arcueil-Cachan; For the number of petitioners, see “Extrait du Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal” 29 June 1921. The two sources together indicate that the petition had 505 signatures, and there were 913 voters in the most recent election. 775 A vote held in the Cachan section on the question of separation saw 459 votes cast in its favour out of a total of 543, July 1921 Report of M. Andrigné on the separation of Arcueil-Cachan, pp. 6-7. 776 A commission of inquiry designated by the prefecture investigated the attitudes toward partition on the part of residents from Arcueil and Cachan. The results of its inquiries made on 21-23 July 1912 were that in all 309 residents (280 men and 29 women) from Cachan were in favour of separation (as opposed to 505 on the petition) and only 1 man from Arcueil, while those opposed to partition were 86 residents (78 men and 8 women) from Cachan and 395 residents (359 men and 36 women) from Arcueil. See “Extrait du Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal” 29 June 1921. 777 See “Extrait du Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal” 29 June 1921. 778 Dogliani, “Un laboratoire de socialisme municipal”, p. 511; Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, pp. 144-145; AD94 DM3/45, Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune d’Arcueil Cachan, Maires/Adjoints. 270 Toward Hegemony II

unemployed men and women. SFIO councillors also played a leading role in establishing school canteens to provide free lunches to those children in need, a longstanding demand of theirs, and in the administration of a municipal supply office, established to overcome local shortages. However, by the end of the war clear fractures had opened up between Arcueil’s socialists, Republican and SFIO, and the Radical- Socialists of Arcueil, not to mention the conservative, Bloc national-aligned Radicals of Cachan.779 In Chapter 1 I critiqued Gaillie’s argument that for the most part the PCF was successful in those Paris suburbs where there was no socialist heritage and where the success of the SFIO was recent and as a consequence of the war. I argued that Gaillie’s claim is based on a superficial reading of the party-political control of the position of mayor and that it did not take into account other measures of socialist influence, such as the level of support given to the SFIO in legislative elections. In the case of Arcueil and Cachan, Arcueil gave significant support to the SFIO (and to its socialist predecessors) in both legislative and municipal elections, with the prewar mayoralty of Arcueil- Cachan having been held by a Republican Socialist and a Radical-Socialist. The increasing success of the socialists in the Arcueil electoral section from the turn of the century (and of the SFIO after its formation) was on the back of strong revolutionary and radical working-class traditions, in the wake of the local rise of the Radical- Socialists. Cachan lacked the radical working-class traditions of Arcueil and its local political culture was infused with a particularist sentiment that was exploited by the conservative ‘Radical’ political elite which dominated the section, an elite that was in the mould of Lebovics’ social peace-seeking Opportunist Republicans. The revolutionary and radical working-class heritage of Arcueil helps account for the postwar rise to local power of the SFIO and the PCF’s subsequent rapid rise to political prominence. Similarly, an explanation of the extreme weakness of the Left in Cachan at the time of partition has to take into account the relative lack of radical, working-class tradition in this commune.

779 In December 1918 a councillor from Cachan, Guibert, put forward the proposal to assign the names Président-Wilson, Maréchal Foch and Georges Clemenceau to streets in Arcueil. The proposal succeeded by 8 votes to 4 but was opposed the socialist councillors, SFIO and Republican, DCMA-C, meetings of 22 December 1918 & 6 February 1919 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 249-254, 255-279).

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2. THE ORIGINS OF THE PCF IN ARCUEIL-CACHAN (1919-1922) The election of the entire Republican Socialist/SFIO list in the second round of the 1919 municipal elections marked a rejection of the class collaboration inherent in the Union Sacrée. Speaking in the name of Arcueil’s working class, L.G. Veyssière’s inauguration speech proclaimed that the election of socialists to council was a demonstration of the proletarian nature of Arcueil-Cachan. The socialists represented the workers, the ‘dissident’ Radical-Socialists of Cachan the bourgeoisie, of both electoral sections. In précis, his speech pledged that socialist councillors would fulfil their class duty to combat capitalist privilege and the oppression it engendered and to advance the interests of workers in alliance with an increasingly enlightened and class- conscious international proletariat. To this end, the socialists would bring social issues into the political realm via the application of a reform program that would study the problems of Arcueil-Cachan’s inhabitants, particularly with regard to schools and lotissements, and deduce specific reforms to improve their lives.780 Despite L.G. Veyssière’s counsel that his colleagues work together on practical reforms, according to the Cachan councillors the ideological zealotry of the SFIO’s new councillors not only created two irreconcilable blocks, one non-socialist and the other socialist, but also irreconcilably split the two socialist camps.781 Ignoring the fact that many party members had lived in Arcueil-Cachan for some time, the Cachan councillors described the SFIO branch of Arcueil-Cachan at this time as “constitué par des éléments dont la plupart sont nouvellement implantés dans le pays” while the Republican Socialists were a loose grouping whose affiliation was not well defined.782 While this description of the SFIO was meant pejoratively, it indicates the dynamism of a Party that was attracting newly politicised and youthful recruits. It appears that the zealous embrace of Bolshevism by the SFIO’s ‘newcomers’ alienated them from an heterogeneous grouping that was the Republican Socialists. Nevertheless, in spite of their differences the socialist councillors always united against the class enemy, the Cachan councillors. This was the case when, in May 1920, the mayor distributed a grant of 5000 francs to the families of workers who adhered to

780 DCMA-C, meeting of 23 December 1919 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 387-400). 781 Comité de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, p. 27. 782 Comité de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, pp. 23, 25. The Comité refers to all members of Marxist parties, that is those members of the SFIO who remained in the party after the schism and those members who went on to form the PCF, as communists.

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the CGT’s call for a General Strike, and then asked the council to ratify his decision retrospectively.783 It did so, with Arcueil’s SFIO councillors supporting this act of succouring the working class in its struggle for the economic re-organisation of the country.784 At the next council meeting, one of the Cachan councillors, who as a group had objected to an illegal grant of financial support to a political strike, succeeded in censuring the mayor with the support of at least one councillor from Arcueil, and the mayor lost a subsequent vote of confidence as another of Arcueil’s councillors, in all probability a Republican Socialist voted against him.785 L. G. Veyssière resigned as mayor and in an act of solidarity, thirteen socialists, including all eight SFIO councillors, tendered their resignation.786 However, unity vis-à-vis the Cachan councillors could not overcome the breakdown in relations between the SFIO and Republican Socialists, and the two groups ran separate lists in both rounds of the ensuing partial municipal elections of 1920.

The Schism in the SFIO

Ultimately eleven of the thirteen SFIO councillors accepted the majority decision made at the Congress of Tours in December 1920 to adhere to the Third International.787 According to L’Humanité, in Arcueil-Cachan 85 members of the SFIO

783 On the aid given to strikers by L. G. Veyssière and the resignation of the socialists see: DCMA- C, meeting of 26 May 1920 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 476-484); AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, Dossier dated July and October 1920, correspondence relating to the action of the mayor and the resignation of the socialist councillors, particularly a letter dated 26 June; DBMOF Cd-rom, notice on Givort. 784 DCMA-C, Meeting of 26 May 1920 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 476-484). 785 DCMA-C, Meeting of 26 May 1920; E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, dossiers dated July and October 1920; The censure motion was initially passed by nine votes to seven, and then, when another vote was demanded, by nine votes to eight. Only eight Cachan councillors were present so one or more Councillor from Arcueil has to have voted for the motion. The vote of confidence was lost twelve votes to nine, with at least four councillors from Arcueil voting for it. DCMA-C, meeting of 18 June 1920 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 484-485). That Republican Socialist councillors were more likely than SFIO councillors to have voted against L. G. Veyssière can be deduced from the fact that subsequent to the vote, Veyssière and 12 other councillors, including all eight SFIO councillors, resigned in protest, leaving three Republican Socialist councillors that were elected in 1919 who did not resign and whose names were absent from a letter from the Prefect dated 17 September 1920 listing all those who resigned. The three Republican Socialist councillors in question were present at the meeting when the censure vote took place, and it has already been noted that it was a loose grouping. 786 A meeting on 12 July 1920 failed to elect a new mayor despite three separate attempts, DCMA- C, meeting of 12 July 1920 (AD94 1Mi 1106, pp. 485-487; E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal for the partial municipal election of 1920 and Dossier: July and October 1920, correspondence, especially letter from the Prefect dated 17 September 1920. 787 According to: DBMOF Cd-rom; the procès-verbaux for the municipal elections of 1923, 1925 and 1929; Le Socialiste and. 46, January 1934, indicating the death of the socialist militant Froment, and; DCMA following the Congress of Tours. The second assistant mayor, Poënsin, joined the PCF some time in 1922. 273 Toward Hegemony II

followed the majority at Tours and adhered to the Third International, thus forming the PCF, while Givort led 30 adherents into the post-schism SFIO, comprising 13 ‘dissidents’ plus 17 new adherents.788 Thus, the PCF had almost three times as many adherents as the post-schism SFIO plus (by 1922) 11 out of the 13 SFIO councillors, though the SFIO retained four of the party’s most experienced militants (that is, those elected to council prior to the World War I), compared with two for the communists.789 The SFIO maintained an intercommunal Arcueil-Cachan branch well after the creation of the separate communes of Arcueil and Cachan,790 and this factor may have hindered the reconstruction of the party in Cachan in the years immediately following partition. The new PCF inherited the pre-schism dynamism of the SFIO in Arcueil.791 Records of the meetings published in L’Humanité in 1921 and 1922 indicate active Arcueil-Cachan sections of communist auxiliary or front organisations, including the Jeunesses Communistes, the Comité Intersyndical, ARAC, the Etoile Sportive Ouvrière, a tenants’ association, and an artistic group La Joyeuse. The Etoile Sportive Ouvrière d’Arcueil et de Cachan (ESOAC) encompassed women as well as men – it included a female basketball team.792 A local committee for the assistance of the Russian people was formed around August 1921, with the communist councillors Hérault as secretary and Puech treasurer.793 The aforementioned organisations also organised social events, such as artistic nights, talks and the like. They came together to hold an annual fête champêtre at the Bois de Verrières, Igny, with sporting activities, a concert and refreshments.794 The PCF that emerged in Arcueil-Cachan from the schism in the SFIO began immediately to develop those organisations that would give it the strong local presence upon which was predicated the hegemony achieved under the Popular Front.

788 L’Humanité, 17 January 1921. 789 Two of the SFIO’s most experienced militants adhered to the PCF - Paul Poënsin (in Arcueil) and Auguste Richerbracque (in Cachan) – while four remained with the SFIO - Xavier Gollot, Frédéric Givort, Pierre Malaurent, Vincent Tragit, all active in Arcueil. See DBMOF Cd-rom; AD94, Arcueil E Dépôt 1K47, procès-verbaux of the municipal elections of 1923 and 1925; Le Socialiste, 24 April 1932. 790 According to the DBMOF Cd-rom, the SFIO retained a single Arcueil-Cachan section up until 1934 despite the separation of the two communes. However, in April 1932 Le Socialiste indicated that Marcilloux had been secretary of the Cachan section for five years, which seems to suggest that a separate section started operating some time around 1927. 791 Prior to the schism the SFIO had 125 members, a local branch of the Jeunesses Socialistes existed and two socialists administered the Tenant’s Union of Arcueil-Cachan. DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Eugène Fournière; AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 6F1, Dossier: Locataires, Letters from Arcueil-Cachan section of the locataires dated 23 January 1920 and 6 March 1920. 792 L’Humanité, 4 September 1921. 793 L’Humanité, 18 August & 3 September 1921. 794 L’Humanité, 23 May 1922. 274 Toward Hegemony II

Arcueil-Cachan’s First ‘Communist’ Administration

Although technically Arcueil-Cachan’s first communist administration dates from the point at which the newly formed PCF inherited control of local government, the absence of any change in the mayor, his deputies or the general conduct of municipal administration pre and post-schism means that such a distinction is somewhat arbitrary. (The Cachan councillors certainly viewed the municipal government from October 1920 until the partition of December 1922 as ‘communist’). Arcueil’s first communist administration and the activity of the PCF leading up to the partition of Arcueil-Cachan, are early precursors of the communist counter-society that the PCF began to construct in Arcueil after it was elected to power in the 1935 municipal elections. As we will see below, the emergent PCF precociously used its control of municipal administration to foster not just class solidarity but also a communist consciousness, aided and abetted by the party’s numerous auxiliary and front organisations that were already to broaden the reach of communism. The ‘communist’ administration of 1920-1922 used council meetings to demonstrate its leadership of the working class, to act as its tribune, and to widen the appeal of communism. Council meetings were opened up to discussions of communist doctrines, with members of the general public (those who did not hold an elected mandate) permitted a say in the council’s decisions. The Cachan councillors complained that they were heckled by members of the public, denied the opportunity to speak, treated uncivilly and subjected to unnamed threats by the mayor, and that council meetings were effectively transformed into fora for communist propaganda.795 The administration attempted as much as possible to reinforce class solidarity and to promote a communist identity. Communist councillors visited workers at construction sites, and the municipality supported strikes and gave generous subsidies to local societies sympathetic to the communist cause, such as the local committee set up

795 For the general conduct of council meetings see: Comité de Défense de Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, pp. 27-29; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920- 1923, Picard (on behalf of the Commission Intersyndical), “Des Fautes d’Ordre administratif des Conseillers d’Arcueil (1ère Section de la commune d’Arcueil-Cachan)”, letter signed by Cachan councillors, 29 June 1921; “Extrait du Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal” 29 June and October 1921 “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, p. 4. 275 Toward Hegemony II

to give aid to the Russian people.796 According to the Cachan councillors, societies sympathetic to the communists were supported out of all proportion, while the Mutilés d’Arcueil-Cachan were subjected to all the affronts possible and refused the use of the gymnasium for meetings, along with other non-communist groups.797 External religious activity and all patriotic demonstrations were prohibited, with the municipality refusing to officially commemorate France’s war dead and suppressing celebrations for the fête nationale.798 Instead, the communist administration glorified antimilitarism and internationalism, raising the red flag at council meetings and at all public events, while at the same time lowering or prohibiting the tricolour or any other flag. According to the Cachan councillors communist books were purchased for the municipal library and school children were taught communist and antireligious propaganda. They also claimed that the communist administration propagated ‘erroneous’ interpretations of famous writers, made propaganda appeals to youth, illegally put up municipal posters that disseminated communist doctrine or requested attendance at communist meetings, and celebrated communistic fêtes. In their view these actions were nothing less than “l’appel au désordre et la destruction du régime établi.”799 The communist councillor Hérault would have concurred with the latter statement. When he resigned in May 1922 after twenty months as a councillor, he did so because he personally felt he could no longer maintain his mandate to act within the principles of class struggle that entailed a refusal to collaborate with the current regime.800 In his view only worldwide revolution and the advent of a communist regime could ensure the well-being of the working class. Thus, Arcueil’s communist councillors blurred the boundaries between the municipality and the PCF, an essential means by which communist municipalities set

796 The account that follows is derived from: “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, p. 4; Comité de Défense de Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, p. 27; L’Humanité, 18 August & 3 September 1921. 797 Comité de Défense des Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, p. 29. 798 The account that follows is derived from: AD94, E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3: “Des Fautes d’Ordre administratif des Conseillers d’Arcueil”; October 1921 “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, p. 5; Comité de Défense de Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, pp. 27, 29. 799 Quote taken from: “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil- Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, p. 5. 800 DCMA, meeting of 26 May 1922 (AD94 1Mi1107, pp. 178-179). 276 Toward Hegemony II

about constructing a communist hegemony.801 According to the Cachan councillors, council employees were recruited from among the associates of Arceuil’s councillors, including their wives, as part of a deliberate attempt to replace those municipal employees who did not support PCF, especially in the cités ouvrières where communist elements were recruited to the exclusion of others. This accusation suggests that early on, the cité-jardin of Arcueil were a particular focus of communist activity, which ultimately benefited the party electorally. The Cachan councillors also complained that paid functions were illegally attributed to councillors, including an illegal indemnity of 12 000 francs to the mayor, that unemployment relief was used as a political tool and that council decisions were subordinated to party politics, being made in advance and presented to council meetings as a fait accompli. In the eyes of the Cachan councillors, this amounted to a “dictature d’ordre moral et administratif.”802 However, while the conflation of municipal government and communism is a cornerstone of a communist counter-society, so too is the provision of rational and efficient administration. On this score, the communists were less effective as the available evidence suggests that the practical achievements of their first administration were modest. In July 1921, councillor Sidobre reported to council that the municipality had repaired and surfaced the footpaths and roads of the principal arteries and important secondary roads of the commune and was in the process of rectifying the insufficient sewerage system, with water having been piped to the various dwellings.803 A project to further extend the piping of water in the commune was only approved at the end of 1922, despite the fact that Sidobre had earlier admitted that to date that progress in this area was insufficient.804 Projects to provide wash houses and municipal baths and to modernise, repair and enlarge schools in Arcueil and Cachan appeared before the Conseil d’Hygiène Publique for approval in 1922, though their need had been outlined

801 The account that follows is derived from: AD94: E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, “Des Fautes d’Ordre administratif des Conseillers d’Arcueil”, October 1921 “Rapport de la Commission Syndicale en vue de la Séparation d’Arcueil-Cachan en 2 Communes Distinctes”, p. 5 and E Dépôt Arcueil 1D27, Annexes to the municipal meetings, 20 October “Déclaration” of Cachan councillors ; Comité de Défense de Intérêts Généraux de Cachan, Guide Illustré de Cachan, pp. 27, 29. 802 “Des Fautes d’Ordre administratif des Conseillers d’Arcueil” 803 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, “Pourquoi nous sommes contre la séparation”, Report of Sidobre to the Council 20/7/1921 (pp. 6-9). 804 DCMA-C, meeting of 24 November 1922 (AD94 1Mi1107, pp. 220-226). 277 Toward Hegemony II

as early as June 1921.805 To solve the housing crisis a HBM Office was created but no housing was built by the communist administration. In fairness to the communists, they were hindered by the penurious state of communal finances, itself a function of the poverty of local residents.806 A discussion of the situation of the mal-lotis at one council meeting indicated their central dilemma - rectifying defective lotissements meant higher taxes in a commune that was populated by poor workers and mal-lotis who possessed nothing.807 A decision made in 1922 to build a new school in proximity to the cité-jardin of Arcueil inadvertently gave an enormous boost to the separatist campaign. The inhabitants of Cachan, and in particular those of the Coteau whose children had to walk long distances to school, protested fiercely that their rapidly growing agglomeration needed an entirely new school rather than proposed extensions to existing schools.808 A groundswell of support for secession ensued, cultivated by the Cachan councillors who interpreted the decision as a vindication of their claim that Arcueil’s councillors put the interests of their section first.

The Causes and Trajectory of the Partition of Arcueil-Cachan

The decision to build a school at the cité-jardin in Arcueil, combined with the ideological zealotry of the communist councillors, re-ignited the pre-war separatist campaign, with disastrous consequences for the short-term electoral prospects for the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan. In the wake of their election in 1919 with an increased majority from their section, Cachan’s councillors used public meetings to campaign in favour of partition.809 In a declaration to the municipal council in June 1921810 and in the report of the Commission Syndicale,811 elected to investigate the issue of partition, the

805 DCMA-C, meetings of 29 June 1921 & 24 February 1922 (pp. 97-112, 160-177); République française, Préfecture de la Seine et Préfecture de Police, Compte Rendu des Séances du Conseil d’Hygiène Publique et de la Salubrité du Département de la Seine, Année 1922, Paris 1923, pp. 32-36, 232-234. 806 DCMA-C, meeting of 25 October 1922 (AD94 1Mi1107, pp. 204-220). 807 DCMA-C, meeting of 4 January 1922 (AD94 1Mi1107, pp. 148-159). 808 DCMA-C, meeting of 24 February 1922 (AD94 1Mi1107, pp. 160-177); L. L. Veyssière, Arcueil et Cachan, p. 141. 809 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Separation 1920-1923, “Déclaration” of Cachan Councillors to the Municipal Council June 1921; Varin, Mémoires, pp. 119-121. 810 “Déclaration” of Cachan Councillors to the Municipal Council June 1921. 811 “La Commission Syndicale reconnaît d’ailleurs que ce changement d’attitude, favorable à la séparation, n’aurait pas eu lieu si les communistes avaient fait preuve de capacités administratives et de libéralisme envers ceux que ne partageaient pas leurs idées,” AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, Dossier: Séparation 1920-1923, Advice dated 10 March 1922, addressed to Prefecture de la Seine and signed by Picard and to others on behalf of Commission Syndicale de Cachan.

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Cachan councillors made it clear that they had re-launched a separatist campaign as a direct response to the advent of Arcueil-Cachan’s first communist municipality and its subsequent partisan administration of municipal government. Their opponents agreed on the essentially political nature of the re-born separatist movement. “C’est seulement après la réélection des treize élus socialistes d’Arcueil que fut reprise la lutte pour la scission,” local communists claimed in an anti-separatist tract that accused secessionists of being supported by reactionary members of the Conseil Général aligned with Bloc national deputies in the legislative assembly.812 According to L’Humanité the mere existence of a communist municipality in Arcueil-Cachan was a sufficient reason for Cachan councillors and the chamber to support separation, and the Cachan councillors were merely taking advantage of divisions within the working-class movement that propitiously coincided with a politically sympathetic majority in the legislative assembly.813 To the communists, separatists were the defenders of financial and industrial capitalism.814 The prefect supported the formation of two separate communes along the boundaries of the two electoral sections because the opposing political attitudes of their councillors made the council unworkable.815 With the right-wing majority of the Conseil Général voting in favour of separation on 21 December 1921, partition became a fact a year later when the legislative assembly voted by 505 to 66 votes in its favour.816

812 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, Parti Communiste – Section Intérêts, “En face de la Séparation”, January 1922. 813 L’Humanité, 22 May 1921 & 9 November 1922. 814 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, “En face de la Séparation”, January 1922. 815 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3, “Mémoires au Conseil Général”; Copy of Report of M. Andrigné on Separation of Arcueil-Cachan, July 1921 p. 8. The Left on the Conseil Général argued that the campaign to divide a commune at the very moment when others were uniting their efforts and creating intercommunal organisations was senseless. It noted that only one part of the commune, Cachan, wanted separation and that the Council had voted against separation twice, in 1912 and 1919, and separation would render Cachan inferior to Arcueil numerically and financially, Bulletin Municipal Officiel de la Ville de Paris, 22 December 1921, p. 5195 (Cutting in E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3). The urbanist Sellier lead the battle against partition, pointing out that it was the antithesis of the policy favoured by the Department of the Seine, which opposed further fragmentation in the administration in the Paris agglomeration in favour of consolidation, and flew in the face of all efforts to rationally extend and develop the suburbs, Bulletin Municipal Officiel 14 January 1922, p. 279 (Cutting in E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3). A six votes to two majority of the Conseil d’arrondissement de Sceaux voted against separation on the basis that both communes would be worse off and that it would set a bad precedent for other communes separating due simply to local disagreements, E Dépôt Arcueil 3D3 “Conseil d’Arrondissement de Sceaux, Extrait du procès-verbal de la séance du 26 Décembre 1921” and “Mémoires au Conseil Général”. 816 L’Humanité, 9 November 1922. Special delegations were subsequently appointed to administer the two new communes in the lead up to municipal elections. The SFIO’s Frédéric Givort was president of Arcueil’s delegation, with the Communist Victor Roure and Radical Pierre Templier also forming part of the delegation. Secessionists dominated Cachan’s delegation, Varin, Mémoires, pp. 119-121. 279 Toward Hegemony II

Having failed in its campaign to prevent separation817, L’Humanité condemned the “bourgeoisie réactionnaire de Cachan” for having putting further pressure on Arcueil’s already overwhelmed communal finances thus worsening the hardships of its overtaxed working-class population.818. “Les bourgeois de Cachan ne veulent plus qu’on construise avec leur argent des écoles pour les fils des prolétaires d’Arcueil;” wrote L’Humanité, “ils ne veulent plus surtout l’affront d’une municipalité révolutionnaire.”819

The PCF as a Successor to the SFIO in Arcueil and Cachan

The above account of the foundation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan adds weight to my portrayal thus far of the PCF as the party of an alienated proletariat. Not only in terms of membership but also symbolically the PCF was the inheritor of revolutionary impulse of the pre-schism SFIO in Arcueil and Cachan. The newly formed Arcueil-Cachan branch of the PCF brought with it the allegiance of most of the membership, the bulk of municipal councillors, and most of the leaders from its forebear, the SFIO. By retaining the allegiance of experienced militants such as the former communard Poënsin, it also maintained a direct link with the revolutionary past of the French working class. The revolutionary impulse that was apparent when socialists took control of Arcueil-Cachan in 1919 was inherited by the Third Internationalist-cum-communist administration that came to power in Arcueil-Cachan in 1919-1920. However, the revolutionary enthusiasm of Arcueil’s first communist administration meant that it repeated the errors of its socialist forbears, such as the socialist municipalities of the 1890s in Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen, by giving propaganda a greater priority than the amelioration of the living conditions of local inhabitants and the delivery of efficient municipal services. Ultimately, the result was the partition of Arcueil-Cachan and the defeat of the PCF in elections for the two newly independent communes. The PCF’s subsequent focus on building firm foundations in both Arcueil and Cachan meant that this error would not be repeated.

817 Public meetings were held on 28 January 1922 at the École Maternelle in Cachan, in this case addressed by the Conseiller-Général and at the Municipal Gymnasium in Arcueil on 4 February 1922, in this case addressed by Morizet, mayor of Boulogne-sur-Seine, AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 3D2, Parti Communiste – Section d’Arcueil-Cachan, “En face de la Séparation”, January 1922. Local communists argued that profound population changes in the 10 years since voters were last consulted on the question of separation meant new inhabitants were not concerned with an issue that did not feature in the 1919 municipal elections. They dismissed as absurd and baseless claims as to the prior existence of Cachan, and false the assertion that the latter suffered from an unequal allocation of communal resources. 818 L’Humanité, 9 November 1922. 819 L’Humanité, 9 November 1922.

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3. THE ROOTS OF HEGEMONY (1923-1933)

There were fundamentally different reasons for the PCF’s defeat in Arcueil and Cachan in the municipal elections of 1923. In Cachan, with the communists only able to field seven candidates for twenty-one council seats, victory was impossible. Chapter 3 indicated that the socio-economic composition of Cachan militated against a strong communist presence at this point in time. However, the results for the communists in Arcueil must have been a bitter disappointment. Arguably, the fact that the party polled third behind the Radicals and the SFIO was a consequence of the ideological zealotry of communist councillors coupled with an insufficient focus on the delivery of efficient administration aimed at ameliorating the living conditions of local inhabitants. In my view, the communists made the mistake of Saint-Denis’ socialists in the 1890s. They attempted to create the ideological basis for a communist bastion before they created its practical foundations, central to which was improving the daily lives of local inhabitants. Moreover, their alienation of the Cachan councillors only resulted in partition, which made life more difficult for their constituents, many of whom may have punished the communists for this situation at the ballot box. During the period between the creation of the two new communes of Arcueil and Cachan and the advent of the Popular Front, sectarian tactics meant that the PCF was markedly isolated vis-à-vis other political groups, especially after Class against Class tactics came into operation in 1928. However, Chapter 4 indicated that despite its sectarianism, in electoral terms the PCF was able to put down firm roots in Arcueil and, to a lesser extent, Cachan. Did sectarian isolation therefore ultimately help the PCF to implant itself in Arcueil and Cachan? It was during the period between partition and the Popular Front that the PCF established, in the minds of local residents, its uncompromising opposition to the existing bourgeois regime and its desire to overturn it. The PCF was a political manifestation of working-class alienation, a position that contrasted with essentially reformist nature the local SFIO. Unlike the PCF, the SFIO in Arcueil maintained amicable relations with the local Radical-Socialist Party up until 1929, at which point election of new Radical mayor, Legrand, a future PPF candidate in

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legislative elections, caused a rift between local SFIO and the Radical municipality.820 In Cachan, in the 1920s the SFIO was closely aligned with the leftwing Radical- Socialists, running common lists or teaming up with them in the second round, but regarded the more conservative CURSDIGC and its Radical allies as reactionaries and treated them with the same hostility as did the communists.

The Early Implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan

By retaining the overwhelming majority of SFIO councillors and party members and control of auxiliary organisations, the newly formed PCF emerged after the schism in a much stronger position than the SFIO. In Arcueil, the backbone of the local PCF was formed by a group of mostly working-class militants who had been active locally for some time and had been part of the first communist administration. The position of the PCF in Arcueil was enhanced by the early adherence of two prominent local inhabitants, the composer Erik Satie and Paul Poënsin. Satie, who had joined the Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO after the death of Jaurès and ran as a candidate in the first round of the municipal elections of 1919, became one of the first adherents to the PCF after Tours.821 Satie’s decision to join the Party was a propaganda boon. A legend arose after his death in 1925 that he had played a pivotal role in the decision of the local branch to adhere to the Third International, though this version of events was

820 Arcueil’s Radical councillors helped to elect the SFIO socialist Givort as assistant mayor in the 1923 municipal elections while Arcueil’s Radical-Socialist council demonstrated its affinity with the Left by closing the municipal administration in a protest against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The leading SFIO socialist L. L. Veyssière co-operated with the Radical-Socialist administration, for example by completing a report for the Radical-dominated council on the construction of a new road between the Centre and the cité-jardin and by sitting on the Commission des Fêtes that organised the Bastille Day celebration. In the aftermath of the 1929 municipal elections, socialists served on diverse municipal commissions, in accordance with the express wish of the Radical mayor Templier. L. L. Veyssière was named as a member of a commission but declined his position when the Arcueil SFIO branch decided to prohibit its members from entering into municipal commissions, an indication perhaps that communist tactics had forced the SFIO to keep its distance from the bourgeois Radicals, see L’Aube sociale, no. 29, 24 September 1927; AD94 DM3/45, Commune de Cachan, Maires-Adjoints; E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal election of assistant mayor, 1925; AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1D27 – Annexes to the municipal meetings; AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1I1, 14 July celebrations, 1927 Poster and program; Letters from L. L. Veyssière dated 22 May 1929 and 22 June 1929. By 1932, Arcueil’s socialists were describing the Radical municipal municipality that administered their commune as “radicalo-réactionnaire”, Le Socialiste, 4th year no. 25, February 1932. 821 He explained in a letter to his friend L. L. Veyssière, who remained in the SFIO, that he was an old Bolshevik at heart. See Michel Robilliard, Erik Satie d’Arcueil, self publication, Arcueil, 1990, pp. 39-40; Ornella Volta, La Banlieue d’Erik Satie, Arcueil, Macadam & Cie, 1999, p.71. 282 Toward Hegemony II

hotly disputed by the socialist L.L. Veyssière.822 Sidobre celebrated him as an early enthusiast of adhesion who remained in the party despite the pressure from intellectuals to leave, and the music critic for L’Humanité, Robert Caby, inaugurated a series of concerts to the memory of the communist Erik Satie.823 Satie was a celebrated local figure - 30 June 1929 the mayor Pierre Templier unveiled a marble plaque recalling his stay in Arcueil and his adherence to the PCF reinforced the party’s local profile. The adherence of Paul Poënsin, a participant locally in the Paris Commune, long-time socialist and member of the SFIO from the time of its formation, also reinforced the party’s claim to strong local and national roots. Poënsin simultaneously linked the local PCF to the revolutionary traditions of the Parisian working class, the local pre-war socialist movement, and the pre-schism SFIO. As I will demonstrate below, the PCF readily exploited the propaganda value of Poënsin’s adherence. Thus, from the outset the PCF in Arcueil was able to project a strong local profile and to stake a powerful claim to the leadership of Arcueil’s workers. By contrast, in Cachan, the Party emerged as a significant force by default, owing to the general weakness of the Left in the immediate aftermath of the municipality’s formation. Until at least the early 1930s, and longer in some cases, in Arcueil and Cachan local branches of the PCF and of many auxiliary and front organisations were closely linked. For example, there was an Arcueil-Cachan branch of the ARAC up until the Popular Front. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the activity undertaken in this period by the Party and its auxiliaries often spanned both communes. Although I have been unable to obtain official membership figures for the period between 1923 and 1933, I would estimate that at its lowest point, in the early 1930s, the PCF perhaps had 20 members in Arcueil, and undoubtedly fewer in Cachan.824 This apparent paradox of

822 One of communists elected to council in 1935, Hyppolyte Bougard, claimed that his father, Emile Bougard, had been a direct witness to the SFIO meeting of the Arcueil-Cachan section where adhesion had been decided by one vote and he attested that the arguments of Satie in favour of adhesion had made the difference. However, L. L. Veyssière claimed this version of events was completely untrue since Satie never took part in any of the discussions of this period, including on the adhesion to the Third International. These discussions were long and passionate and the votes always occurred late in the evening by which time he had usually left, see Volta, La Banlieue d’Erik Satie, pp. 70-71; L. L. Veyssière, “Notes et souvenirs sur Erik SATIE à Arcueil-Cachan”, L’Avenir de la banlieue de Paris, no. 239, 1-7 February 1951. 823 Volta, La Banlieue d’Erik Satie, p. 89. 824 There are eighteen signatures at the bottom of a Declaration of the Communist Fraction submitted to the municipal council when Sidobre and Rivière were elected, in 1932, see DCMA, meeting of 24 June 1932 (AD94 1Mi 1377, pp. 92-96). It is reasonable to assume that the membership in Cachan, where the party was weaker, would have been lower.

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having a significant impact on local politics with a small membership is typical of the communist movement in France and can be explained by the way in which the Party sought to direct the discontents and shape the identity of local residents. One important way in which the PCF did this was via regional newspapers that acted as tribunes of the people, and in them it demonstrated not only its good grasp of the issues affecting local workers but also the leadership role assumed by the party in defending the interests of the working class in Arcueil and Cachan. Between 1926 and 1929 inclusive, L’Aube sociale indicates that Arcueil’s communists were concerned with issues such as disease, the STCRP’s treatment of its working-class passengers and staff, overcrowding in local schools, the tyrannical management at the Croix d’Arcueil brewery, the poor health of inhabitants from Arcueil’s cité-jardin and their lack services, and the closing of the municipality’s vacation camp.825 In Cachan, issues included the state of a well in the Coteau and claims of the exploitation of apprentices at the School of Public Works.826 In the early 1930s, Arcueil’s communist revolutionaries used Front rouge as a forum to mount a sans-culotte-like defence of modest working- class property owners. As state employees or factory workers, they were on modest salaries subject to fluctuations and always at risk of unemployment. Nevertheless, they were taxed like a “gros richard” purely on the basis that they had, by their own means and through an enormous sacrifice, built a four-room house of their own.827 In Cachan, communist concern with local issues stretched to the circulation of a petition in support of posting a police officer at major intersections during peak hour due to the frequency of car accidents.828 The communists also raised the issue of the deadly fumes that continued to emanate from underneath avenue Carnot as a consequence of the discharge of acids by the company Sueur et Cie, despite the earlier death of the two sewer workers (outlined in Chapter 2) and the protests and petitions of local residents.829 With the municipality yet to solve the problem, Cachan’s communists called on residents and shopkeepers to form an action committee, a tactic that the PCF would employ over and over again in Arcueil and Cachan.

825 L’Aube sociale, no. 381, 10 July 1926, no. 21, 30 July 1927, no. 29, 24 September 1927, and no. 112, 4 May, 1929, 826 See L’Aube sociale, no. 21, 30 July 1927, no. 29, 24 September 1927 827 Front rouge, 1 July 1933 828 Front rouge, 12 December 1933. 829 Front rouge, 29 July & 23 September 1933. 284 Toward Hegemony II

The election of Sidobre and Rivière not only gave the PCF in Arcueil an unparalleled chance to demonstrate its leadership of the working class but also gave the two communists a quasi-governmental role from which to prove the PCF’s capacity for rational and efficient administration. In their maiden address to council, Sidobre and Rivière greeted their election as a victory of the working class and communism over the bourgeoisie that controlled the municipality.830 Pledging to follow the example of the PCF and to act in solidarity with their working-class inhabitants, they also offered an alternative vision of efficient municipal administration dedicated to improving the lives of Arcueil’s inhabitants.831 The communists pressed for the upgrading of schools and crèches, improvements to the functioning of roads and the practicability of private thoroughfares in the lotissements, the re-organisation of municipal services (in particular this concerned garbage collection, cleaning and fire-fighting services, and the community clinic), the proper maintenance of water fountains, the institution of nightly medical services, the acceptance of a list of demands from the unemployed and the creation of an HBM Office. They questioned the costs of representation for the mayor and his assistant mayors, the tax on household waste, the functioning of the placement bureau for unemployed, criticised municipal support for the church and what they alleged to be insufficient funding for the patronage laïque. When the two communists refused to support budgets where funds were allocated for the police their ideological opposition to the bourgeois state, of which the police were a manifestation, was combined with an assertion that the funds could be better used elsewhere. They called on the council to adhere to the Comité d’action contre la guerre and to support the campaign for a general amnesty of all political prisoners. The two communists also used their positions of authority to defend the interests of local inhabitants, just as the communist administration would do after its election in 1935. In council, abuses of the eight-hour law at the Galeries Lafayette and Brasserie de la Vallée were condemned.832 During the course of 1933, the two councillors took up

830 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, Dossier dated 12, 19 and 24 June 1932 – on the partial elections, La Fraction Communiste au Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil, “Déclaration du 2 Elus communistes au Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil”, Meeting of 24 June 1932. 831 “Déclaration du 2 Elus communistes au Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil”; For the communist actions on council, see for example DCMA, meetings of 9 September & 4 November 1932, 24 May 1933 (AD94 1Mi 1377, pp. 96-148, 186-221). 832 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47 “Déclaration du 2 Elus communistes au Conseil Municipal d’Arcueil”. 285 Toward Hegemony II

complaints regarding noise and air pollution from one group of residents833, headed a delegation that presented a petition to the mayor demanding action against a polluting factory in their neighbourhood834, and wrote in support of a petition that requested the municipality to act against noise and earth tremors caused by the construction of a factory.835 In these cases, the communists contrasted their activity with the immobility of the municipality or its unwillingness to act against the perpetrators.836 Moreover, when problems were solved the communists claimed the credit. The undertaking of one factory to cease its polluting activities was welcomed as a victory for the tenacity of residents and the activity of the communist members of council.837 Similarly, on 16 December 1933, Sidobre and Rivière led around 100 victims of a fire at the Villa Mélanie in a demonstration against the insufficient aid given to them by the municipality, and then raised the issue in a subsequent meeting with the two assistant mayors. According to Front rouge, their actions succeeded in extracting an increase in aid from mayor Legrand.838 Sidobre and Rivière moved beyond the earlier ideologically- driven communist administration of Arcueil-Cachan, and their practical focus put the PCF in a position where voters would embrace its promises in 1935 to improve their lives. For otherwise powerless workers, the PCF not only acted as a political tribune but also as a vehicle through which to assert working-class hegemony in a local context.

833 On 11 February 1933 Front rouge reported that Sidobre had taken up the complaints of residents from the rue de la Gare and rue Carmignac regarding noise and air pollution from a nearby factory. 834 On 6 June 1933 Front rouge informed its readers that Sidobre had headed a delegation of residents from rues Voltaire, Jean d’Arc and Genova that handed the mayor a petition demanding action against the Moritz factory polluting their quarter. 835 On 13 September 1933, Sidobre and Rivière wrote to the mayor in support of residents of the Villa Baudran who had petitioned the municipality to act against noise pollution and earth tremors caused the construction of a factory, AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, see the letter and petition. 836 Front rouge alleged that complaints regarding pollution at rue de la Gare and rue Carmignac were before the municipality for four months before being taken up by Sidobre. An inquiry instigated by the municipality found the fumes were not noxious, and the factory concerned promised to cease its noise, but Front rouge complained that the night time noises resumed after only a couple of weeks respite, Front rouge, 11 February 1933. The municipality had acted in the wake of petitions and protests from inhabitants the rues Voltaire, Jean d’Arc and Genova stretching back a number of years. In the case of the Villa Baudran, the municipal administration responded by commissioning a report from the communal architect. Its conclusions, that the work in question was legal and if anything happened to the houses of nearby residents it was open to them to seek legal damages, were doubtless of little comfort to the residents who probably did not have the means to pursue a court case, E Dépôt Arcueil 5I3, report from communal architect dated 15 September 1933. 837 The mayor and the Prefecture accepted as legitimate the complaints regarding the factory Moritz and the latter subsequently undertook to cease polluting activities, Front rouge, 6 June 1933. 838 Front rouge, February, 1934. 286 Toward Hegemony II

The PCF empowered workers by becoming a repository of popular democracy, acting as an alternative power source over which workers could have a direct influence. Locally active organisations that were closely associated with the party were in the frontline of the PCF’s efforts to mobilise local workers. Writing in 1927, the conservative, anticommunist Gustave Gautherot claimed that the Jeunesses Communistes was particularly active in Arcueil, while the Arcueil-Cachan branch of ARAC continued operating after the schism.839 There is evidence of CGTU activity in the laundry industry of Cachan, a branch of industry where industrial organisation was traditionally weak.840 In November 1928, having not received a pay rise for three years, workers at a local blanchisserie enlisted the help of the CGTU to submit a list of demands including an increase in their hourly rate.841 Ultimately a regional union representative met with a representative of the Syndicat de la Blanchisserie after workers resisted their employer’s desire to negotiate through the CGT. These organisations closely connected to the party helped to empower them by giving them a collective voice that challenged the status quo. More importantly the PCF helped to empower workers via its active role in local non-party associations formed to defend and advocate local interests. The Tenants’ Union of Arcueil was one such organisation. In 1923, when Sidobre was president and his fellow communist, Gabriel Dieu, treasurer,842 it wrote to the mayor asking that he assist a widow with three children who was to be evicted from the residence in which she lived but who had not yet found another place to live, suggesting an unoccupied dwelling where the municipality could re-locate her. The socialist assistant mayor, Givort, subsequently met with the woman and pledged that the municipality would do what it could to assist “sans bruit et sans gestes inutiles.”843 In addition to tenants, by the early 1930s, the unemployed emerged as a major focus of activity for the communists owing to their growth in numbers - in 1931 they averaged 90 (but at one staged reached

839 Gustave Gautherot, Le Monde Communiste, New Edition, Éditions Spes, Paris, 1927, pp. 152, 168; DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Harter. 840 On the eve of the Second World War no local union existed for laundry workers, which was in part due to the fact that they were becoming fewer as a result of the industrialisation of the industry and the progressive replacement of small-scale operations with large-scale, industrial enterprises and an overall reduction in the industry. See Veyssière, Blanchisseurs et Blanchisseries, pp. 17-18. 841 L’Humanité, 22 November 1928. 842 AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 6F1, Letter dated 10 April 1923 to Mayor from Arcueil-Cachan section of the Union Fédérale des Locataires. 843 Arcueil E Dépôt 6F1, Letter from the mayor dated 13 April 1923. 287 Toward Hegemony II

300), quickly rising to an annual average of 401 in 1932, and 505 in 1933, with their numbers remaining high right up until the outbreak of World War II.844 The main vehicle for organising the unemployed was the local, ostensibly non- partisan, Comité des Chômeurs. The earliest evidence I have obtained of the latter’s activity in Arcueil comes from a police report from December 1931 detailing a meeting held in the presence of around 60 people during which the orator made the ‘routine’ communist calls for free coal, the establishment of a soup kitchen, and for all unemployed to be registered and their benefits increased.845 Those assembled resolved to establish permanent meetings every Monday and Wednesday at 3pm. According to the Radical mayor Legrand, in 1932 and 1933 the municipality worked co-operatively with the Comité, providing material aid to the families of the unemployed, by giving their children Christmas parties and trees, and by ensuring their re-registration and intervening on their behalf with the authorities.846 However, the municipality subsequently refused all contact with the Comité, alleging that the latter had claimed credit for these actions on the basis that they had been extracted from the municipality by the tireless efforts of its delegates. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter, the devotion of a number of pages in the Bulletin Municipal to attacking the Comité and the communists suggests that the latter were succeeding in portraying themselves as the defenders of the unemployed. My sources for the Popular Front period indicate that unemployment was as much a problem in Cachan as Arcueil (see footnote 190) and it is reasonable to assume that this was the case in the years preceding the Popular Front. It is not surprising then that a Comité des Chômeurs became increasingly active in Cachan at around the same time as its counterpart in Arcueil. According to Le Cri des Chômeurs, in February 1932 around 500 unemployed rallied before the property of a landlord living in Arcueil to protest his planned eviction of an unemployed woman who had care of a child and her mother. After the landlord called the police, the demonstrators marched to the School of

844 The lower figure is given by: AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, “Etat des Dépenses de Chômage Années 1931 à 1937”. The numbers peaked at 300 in 1931, 450 in 1932 and 505 in 1933. The higher figure is according to Bulletin Municipal Officiel d’Arcueil, no. 29, April 1935, p.7. 845 AN F713541, report dated 5 December 1931; “Réunion organisé par le Comité local des chômeurs, 7 rue Besson à Arcueil le 4 décembre”. Interestingly, although the orator claimed a close solidarity with foreign workers and French workers and made a call in favour of a grouping of all unemployed, several speakers claimed the priority of French workers in employment. This indicates that the communist message at such public meetings was not necessarily accepted in its totality. 846 Bulletin Municipal Officiel d’Arcueil, no. 29, April 1935, pp. 7-8. 288 Toward Hegemony II

Public Works to protest the municipality’s rejection of their demand by booing the mayor (apparently to the great joy of the students), before finishing in front of the town hall where they came into conflict with a policeman who prevented a communist from making a speech, then they dispersed.847 Confrontations with the municipality continued.848 To become a hegemon, the PCF also needed to overcome the inevitable social heterogeneity of the two communes composed of working people from diverse geographical and occupational backgrounds, and one way to do this was to promote and reinforce class solidarity. At least as far back as 1927, the SRI was playing an important role promoting proletarian solidarity in Arcueil.849 Great strides were made in this area by the creation in 1933 in Arcueil of a Maison du Peuple as the headquarters of all revolutionary organisations and organisations for the defence of local interests. It was open to all proletarian groups, and branch of Les Amis de la Maison du Peuple was formed with members contributing one or two francs per week to help it grow. The Maison du Peuple enabled the communists to better co-ordinate their activities within the community. It also acted as an information centre, a place where workers could consult their Syndicats Unitaires for advice on social insurance or work accidents, their local branch of ARAC for information on pensions, the carte du combattant, and the retirement of war veterans, or municipal representatives who addressed their local interests, for example the problems relating to the mal-lotis, unemployed, sanitation services and public hygiene.850 The Maison du Peuple was a symbol of working-class empowerment and solidarity, under the aegis of the PCF. Around the time the Maison du Peuple was created, a branch of Les Amis de l’URSS was also active in Arcueil, promoting solidarity with the Soviet peoples and a positive image of their state. In July 1933, before a crowd of 100 people, a delegation of workers who had returned from the Soviet Union addressed one of its meetings, attesting to the fact that the workers of the Soviet Union were masters of their own destinies and answering questions on the place of women, children, religion, work and

847 Le Cri des Chômeurs, Organe de l’Union des Comités de Chômeurs de la Région Parisienne, 2nd year, no. 8, March 1932. 848 For example, in December of the same year, the Comité des Chômeurs pressed the grievances of the unemployed by attending a council meeting, Front rouge 31 December 1932. 849 L’Aube sociale, no. 21, 30 July 1927. 850 Front rouge, 8 April 1933. 289 Toward Hegemony II

the like in the Soviet Union.851 In Cachan, the activity of the Comité des Chômeurs had an important role of promoting solidarity among the unemployed while the activity of the SOI fostered working-class solidarity. However, again in this area the communist imprint was not as extensive as in Arcueil. Shaping the identity of local residents meant not only encouraging and reinforcing their class pride, but also actively propagandising the local population and acting as a repository of popular culture. To this end, the ESOAC provided males and females with opportunities to engage in sport during the 1920s and 1930s.852 When the Radical municipality of Arcueil closed down the vacation camp in 1926 due to lack of patronage, the communists responded by organising games, promenades and the like for young people.853 In Cachan, the SOI formed a children’s group, the ‘Pioneers’, in the early 1930s. With a parents’ committee overseeing their activities and meeting every Thursday at 2.30pm,854 its role was to indoctrinate the young via educational and leisure activities and the positive role model it set for working-class children. Hence, on 27 April 1933 SOI Pioneers from Cachan held a cinema night in neighbouring L’Hay-les- Roses during which an antiwar film was screened. At the conclusion of the latter “un jeune pionnier monta sur une banquette et demanda à tous les enfants présents de ne plus jouer au soldat et à maudire la guerre.”855 The meeting ended with cries of “A bas la guerre!” The pioneers are clearly held up as role models in Front rouge’s account of the distribution of the games and prizes organised at the time of the municipality’s Fete of Cachan. It claimed that the children of the religious patronages behaved in a disorderly manner. They created a crush, pulled presents from the hands of the porter and broke them in the ensuing struggle, the weakest were trampled on and fights broke out over games. Front rouge blamed those charged with giving them a class education which had instilled “l’instinct de la propriété et l´égoïsme plutôt que la générosité et le désintéressement.”856 By contrast, the Pioneers wisely waited their turn. “Disciplinés, les jeunes pionniers ne tentèrent pas de participer à une curée si contraire aux principes mêmes de l’éducation du SOI où l’on cherche surtout à développer les sentiments de

851 Front rouge, 29 July 1933. 852 The lists of clubs and societies in the guides for 1926, 1927 and 1931 testify to its ongoing activities up to and beyond the advent of the Popular Front, Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, p.15-17; Arcueil et Cachan: Indicateur Officiel 1927, pp. 59-63; Indicateur Bijou, 1931, p. 37. 853 L’Aube sociale, no. 381, 10 July 1926. 854 Front rouge, 6 & 20 May 1933. 855 Front rouge, 6 May 1933. 856 Front rouge, 20 May 1933. 290 Toward Hegemony II

solidarité et d’entr’aide.”857 According to Front rouge, this event was great propaganda for the party because it displayed the dignity of the working-class children of Cachan.858 A more significant propaganda event for Arcueil’s communists was the annual banquet held to celebrate Poënsin’s life and commemorate the anniversary of the Commune of Paris. The earliest evidence I have for this event is on 26 March 1931 when, according to a contemporary police report, 500 people attended a banquet for Poënsin at a meeting hall in a cinema in Arcueil.859 This attendance is significant given the fact that this was a period when, at a national level, the PCF was at its nadir, both electorally and in terms of membership. The meeting began by rendering homage to the revolutionaries of 1871 and, in particular, the former communard Poënsin, who had been imprisoned for several months after the fall of the Commune. After evoking Poënsin’s life, including the fact that he had on several occasions been elected municipal councillor of Arcueil, the first speaker called on those who had not already done so to adhere to the Party in order to assure the triumph of a new commune. The editor-in-chief of L’Humanité, Florimande Bonte, was the next to speak. He called workers to teach their children what had happened in the Commune because the bourgeoisie had deleted their actions against workers from school textbooks. Bonte also proffered the lessons of the Commune. Its major fault was that it did not act with sufficient firmness of purpose - it should have struck its adversaries without pity and not allowed them to re-form the army. Bonte claimed that Lenin studied the Paris Commune and other revolutions and as a consequence, the Bolsheviks avoided their faults. Bonte finished by calling on workers to join revolutionary organisations in order to defend themselves against misery and war. The meeting ended with a concert that included several songs glorifying the victims of the Commune. The significance of an event like the Poënsin banquet is that it demonstrated a direct link between the local party, its militants and the French Revolutionary tradition, and at the same time connected all three with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The ritual commemoration of the Paris Commune was an important element in the maintenance of the revolutionary heritage of the Paris working class, and in the 1920s and 1930s Arcueil’s communists actively participated in commemorations of it held each year in the Paris

857 Front rouge, 20 May 1933. 858 Front rouge, 20 May 1933. 859 AN F713127, Police report dated 26 March 1931 [Microfilm roll 2/3-March 1931, no. 344(a)- (b)].

291 Toward Hegemony II

region.860 Once again, the strong activity of Arcueil’s communists in this area indicates that they maintained a stronger foothold in the suburb than their counterparts in Cachan.

A Nascent Hegemony?

The adhesion of the former communard Paul Poënsin gave Arcueil’s communists a means to assert the link between the PCF and the revolutionary past of Parisian workers, a link which it celebrated through the annual banquets held in Poënsin’s honour. The PCF also claimed Arcueil’s most famous inhabitant, Erik Satie, as its own. Thus from the outset, Arcueil’s communists could demonstrate a strong leadership of the local working-class movement, while the PCF in Cachan, having emerged by default as the strongest force on the Left in 1923, by the late 1920s was struggling to maintain this dominance against a re-invigorated SFIO. The election of Sidobre and Rivière once again demonstrated the strong profile and working-class leadership provided by the PCF in Arcueil, and gave the communists an opportunity to prove themselves as efficient administrators concerned to ameliorate the lives of local inhabitants. Regional newspapers such as L’Aube sociale underscored the PCF role as a tribune and as a leader of the working class. Through its auxiliary and front organisations such as ARAC, Arcueil’s tenants’ union, and the Comité des Chômeurs, the PCF empowered workers of Arcueil and Cachan. Organisations such as the Comité des Chômeurs, the ESOAC and the SRI in Arcueil and the SOI in Cachan fostered class and communal solidarity and made the PCF a source of local popular culture in Arcueil and Cachan, thus giving the party the means to construct a communist communal identity. Here again, the PCF in Arcueil had the advantage, with the Maison du Peuple acting as a co-ordinating centre for the PCF project to construct a communist counter- society. Overall, Arcueil’s communists were much closer to this goal by the time of the Popular Front than their counterparts in Cachan.

860 See for example: AN F713112, report dated 29 May 1927. It gives an account of a meeting held that day during which communists from Arcueil participated in a commemoration at the Mur des Fédérés as part of a group of between 1000 and 2000 people, made of sous-rayons of the Party, unions, sections of ARAC, and including 150 gardes and 200 pupilles who sung the Internationale; AN F713131, May 1933 154-188b, Report dated 7 May 1933. This reports the Arcueil section of the PCF as having joined 1000 participants from the rayons of Villejuif and Vitry at a commemoration of the Commune held in Villejuif under the auspices of the communist municipalities of Villejuif, Ivry and Vitry. Vaillant- Couturier spoke, recalling how brave communard defenders were shot without pity on 3 and 4 May 1871, and called on participants to prepare for their own revolution. While L’Internationale and La Carmagnole were being sung, he uncovered a plaque dedicated to the Fédérés which the prefect had prevented him from having engraved on the plaque “assassinés par les Versaillais.” A sign of the times, the meeting was also infused with anti-fascist slogans and the cries of “à bas Hitler.” 292 Toward Hegemony II

This was in part a consequence of actions of the municipal governments that the PCF opposed in the two suburbs during the interwar period. In Arcueil, the Radical municipality only made modest progress toward assuaging the problems of the mal- lotis, the general housing crisis, the failure of municipal infrastructure and services to keep up with population growth, the ongoing complaints with regard to industrial pollution and the discontent of cité-jardin residents.861 The onset of the Depression and then the advent of the Popular Front created a window of opportunity for Arcueil’s communists to exploit the municipality’s failings and its divisions. By contrast, between 1925 and 1935 the CURSDIGC/Radical administration in Cachan completed a vast program of improvements, much of it centring on the Lumières and Coteau quarters where the situation with regard to infrastructure provision was poor. Improvements included repairing, extending, widening and surfacing numerous thoroughfares, installing footpaths, rectifying as many defective lotissements as practicable, connecting drinking water, the sewerage system and gas to many areas that lacked them, installing fire and washing hydrants in the suburb, expanding the number of streetlights, establishing a new community clinic and a new school canteen and introducing central heating into all schools.862 A large-scale public works program saw the construction of a municipal gymnasium, a new town hall with meeting rooms, administrative offices and a post office and a new market for the Coteau. The CURSDIGC administration also

861 A 1927 report from the Prefecture stated that sufficient progress had not been made in bringing the hygiene standards of the commune up to the standard dictated by law, thus echoing earlier criticism from the socialists complaining of insufficient municipal resources and personnel and of a lack of sanitary regulation, AD94 Arcueil E Dépôt 1D27, copies of a series of letters from Veyssière dated 21 February 1924; AN F24214, Ministère de L’Intérieur, report of 4 October 1927. In May 1924, the council approved a project for extra classes at both Laplace and Centre schools and similar (or the same) projects were approved by Conseil d’Hygiène Publique in 1928 and 1929, DCMA, meeting of 26 May 1924 (AD94 1107, pp. 340-351) and Préfecture de la Seine et Préfecture de Police, Compte Rendu des Séances du Conseil d’Hygiène Publique et de la Salubrité du Département de la Seine, Année 1928, Paris, 1929, p. 350 and Année 1929, Paris, 1930, pp. 136-138. In 1933, the Arcueil’s Radical council put forward further plans for a new école maternelle at avenue Laplace and the enlargement of and/or improvements to other schools in the commune, DCMA, meeting of 21 February 1933 (AD94 1Mi 1377, pp. 149-186). 862 Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 14, 16, 47-53, 64-66, 71- 74, 77; AD94 36J10, Report entitled “Principaux Travaux Depuis 1929” and a letter from the Mayor Eyrolles to the Prefect prior to the latter’s visit to Cachan in 1943; Le Moniteur, no. 35, 4 May 1929; Préfecture de la Seine et Préfecture de Police, Compte Rendu des Séances du Conseil d’Hygiène Publique et de la Salubrité, Année 1928, Paris 1929, pp. 354-355; Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 9. 293 Toward Hegemony II

embarked on an innovative school building program863 that rivalled the pioneering communist municipalities like Villejuif.864 The provision of efficient local administration by the CURSDIGC administration was a clear impediment to communist control in Cachan. Moreover, in the conservative bastion of Cachan, the SFIO was a political force in local elections, unlike its counterpart in Arcueil. As with the communists, it was through grassroots activism that the socialists of Cachan were able to maintain significant electoral support by the late 1920s in spite of the very small membership of the Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO.865 Rebuilt under Marcilloux’s leadership in the latter half of the 1920s, the SFIO in Cachan set about conquering or agitating within instruments of local administration, such as the Caisse des Écoles and the Patronage Laïque, spearheading local associations, forming its own active auxiliary organisations in the areas politics, sport and leisure and campaigning on issues important to locals.866 Consequently, by end of the 1920s the PCF faced greater competition from a broader- based SFIO than was the case for its counterpart in Arcueil. The foundations of a communist counter-society that emerged in Arcueil under

863 The schools concerned were the groupe scolaire Paul Doumer, which consisted of an école maternelle and girls and boys primary schools and was completed in December 1932, and the école maternelle La Belle Image, completed in May 1933. Their modern aspect came from a combination of modern architectural design and technology, which included salles d’hydrothérapie where school students received hot, tepid or cold showers, and in the école maternelles sleeping rooms where infants could rest in a bed of their own and personally marked face washers for each child. The design of the schools was lauded in architectural reviews at the time and by the Conseil d’Hygiène which judged it as “parfaitement conçu” and remarked that the council had taken into account “toutes les indications de la science hygiénique”, Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 33-43; Préfecture de la Seine et Préfecture de Police, Compte Rendu des Séances du Conseil d’Hygiène Publique et de la Salubrité du Département de la Seine, Année 1930, Paris, 1931, p. 380. 864 In July 1933, the communist municipality of Villejuif inaugurated a model school, named after Karl Marx, with sports grounds and play areas, numerous, wide windows, and showers. It also used modern teaching approaches of which resident medico-social personnel were an important component, Roujeau, “L’implantation du Parti communiste français à Villejuif pendant l’entre-deux-guerres”, pp. 193-196. 865 In 1925, membership of the Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO stood at 30, which declined to 10 members in 1928, eight in 1930/31, rising to 13 in 1932, and falling again to 11 in 1933, DBMOF Cd- rom, entries on Eugène Fournière and Antoine Marcilloux. 866 In 1931, at the general assembly of the Caisse des Écoles, the SFIO list was entirely elected after defeating a list presented by the municipality by 37 votes to 28, and the socialists subsequently used their control of the Caisse to stage social events in support of children of the unemployed and the like. Marcilloux was active within the Patronage Laïque and his colleagues in Syndicat de la Vanne, a group representing mal-lotis in the Coteau. In the early 1930s, an Arcueil-Cachan branch of the FOP was formed as was a Jeunesse Sportif du Sud (Cachan), and the Jeunesses Socialistes d’Arcueil-Cachan was also active, see AD94 36J28 Affaires communal 1929-42, Letter dated 14 November 1932 from Eyrolles to Monsieur Leconte, Directeur de l’Enseignement Primaire at the Seine Préfecture; Le Socialiste, May & July 1931, February, April & December 1932, January, May, June & November, 1933. 294 Toward Hegemony II

the Popular Front were built by a PCF which, in both Arcueil and Cachan, marked itself out as a party of and for the proletariat and as a consequence was socially and politically isolated from other political groupings. Not only were the municipal administrations of Arcueil and Cachan indicative of bourgeois hegemony, but both the local branches SFIO were led by bourgeois who were not wage earners.867 In proletarian Arcueil the bourgeois-led post-schism SFIO sustained good relations with the Radicals in the 1920s, with leading members such as L.L. Veyssière maintaining their membership of local ‘bourgeois’ clubs and societies that were also integral to the social networks of local Radicals.868 This was in contrast to the isolation of Arcueil’s communists who maintained their own clubs and societies and did not mix with the bourgeoisie socially. While the Arcueil-Cachan branch of the SFIO shared the same ritual commemorations as the PCF, foremost among them being the procession to the Mur des Fédérés869, in contrast to the communists local SFIO meetings stressed that the exercise of public power by socialists and their work in parliament had improved the lives of the working class.870 The communist counter-society sprung from the isolation and alienation of the French working class.

4. THE COMMUNIST ASCENDANCY (1934-1939) The Popular Front alliance between the PCF and SFIO did not suddenly materialise from nothing midway through 1934, but instead it evolved against a backdrop of changing local, national and international circumstances which, since the

867 In the 1920s and early 1930s, Radicals from Arcueil and Cachan and CURSDIGC councillors dominated the membership of the Le Vieil Arcueil, and of various artistic, musical, lyrical and performance groups. They held predominant positions in sporting groups such as the Vélo-Club d’Arcueil et de Cachan, and in political and social groupings such as the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, l’Union Nationale des Mutilés et Réformés (Section d’Arcueil et Cachan), and the Oeuvre d’assistance aux Veuves et Orphelins des Soldats d’Arcueil et de Cachan Morts Pour La France. The councillors of Cachan were more prominent in the latter two organisations, an indication of their conservatism, while Arcueil’s Radicals were more prominent in the Ligue, see Auclair-Melot, Guide Indicateur Banlieue, 1926, pp. 15-17, 59-63; Guide-Indicateur Banlieue, Indicateur Officiel 1927, pp. 59-63; Canton de Villejuif: Indicateur Bijou, 1931, pp. 37, 70. 868 L. L. Veyssière, was a founding member and secretary throughout the interwar period of the local historical association, Le Vieil Arcueil, whose membership was dominated by Radicals. In 1927, he was also a vice-president of the Vélo-club d’Arcueil et de Cachan and vice-president of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme while with another socialist, Froment, was its secretary and its president and treasurer were Radical-Socialists, Le Vieil Arcueil, 1st year, no. 1, February 1927, pp. 3-4 and Guide-Indicateur 1927, pp. 59-63. 869 See AN F713080, “Au sujet de la manifestation du Parti Socialiste (S.F.I.O.) au Mur des Fédérés”, dated 1 June 1930. 870 AN F713080, Report dated 23 January 1931 relating to a meeting organised by SFIO at Salle Phillipe, 2 rue Benoît-Malon at Arcueil on 22 January, 1931. 295 Toward Hegemony II

onset of the Depression, had the potential to bring the two parties together. As early as September 1931 the PCF leadership had secretly discussed with Comintern agents and representatives from the SFIO the possibility of a non-aggression pact and a plan of union with the SFIO.871 On the local front, in October 1932, the Arcueil branch of the PCF invited its socialist counterpart to participate in the Congress of Amsterdam as part of the Amsterdam-Pleyel movement (a provisional local committee consisted of communists only).872 This suggestion of a common front at time when the PCF continued to subject members of SFIO to severe criticism was rejected on suspicion that it was a tactical manoeuvre designed to draw working-class support away from the SFIO and to cause division within the party. Such an application of ‘senseless’ class against class tactics, “qui aboutit à cette chose monstrueuse de dresser des travailleurs contre d’autres travailleurs”, could not be supported.873 Instead, socialists stated that they would work to bring the entire working class together in action against their capitalist oppressors. “Front unique?”, Le Socialiste asked rhetorically, “Etes-vous bien qualifiés pour lancer de tels mots d’ordre, vous qui portez la responsabilité des scissions politiques et syndicales qui, en même temps qu’elles ont affaibli la classe ouvrière, l’ont livrée à la réaction.”874 However, this hostility did not stop the Arcueil-Cachan branches of the communist and socialist veteran organisations, ARAC and the Fédération Ouvrière et Paysanne (FOP), from forming an entente committee in February 1933.875 Nor did it prevent the SFIO and the PCF from combining to oppose a list supported by the incumbent municipal administration in the June 1933 election of seven members to the administration council of the Caisse des Ecoles in Cachan.876 These apparent

871 AN F713127 [Microfilm role 2/3 1931 November no. 480], secret report dated 16 September 1931 and entitled “Communication exclusivement réservée à la Direction de la Sûreté Générale.” This report details a meeting of communist directors held at Paris, attended by principal agents of the Comintern and representatives of the SFIO. It reported Comintern agents as stating that Stalin was currently occupied with a plan for union between the communist and socialist camps. This involved the communists momentarily renouncing the extremes of their doctrine and working toward a socialist- communist front. It reported that work was already actively underway in Germany relative to an accord between socialists and communists. The French communists could offer the socialists unlimited financial support during electoral campaigns, elaboration of a pact of non-aggression and delimitation of the spheres of work for both socialist and communist allies and agreement to withdraw in second ballot in favour of the best-placed candidate. 872 Le Socialiste, October 1932. 873 Le Socialiste, October 1932. 874 Le Socialiste, October 1932. 875 Front rouge, 25 February 1933. 876 Front rouge, 3 June 1933. The socialist/communist list was defeated by 74 votes to 65, after, the communists alleged, students from School of Public works were sent to bolster votes.

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gestures toward unity, coinciding as they did with an ongoing internecine feud between the leadership of two Marxist parties, suggest that the onset of the Depression and the rising threat of fascism produced a fluid situation prior to the Popular Front, and that this was reflected in the changing dynamics of local politics in suburbs such as Arcueil and Cachan.

The Genesis of the Popular Front

In his comprehensive history of the Popular Front, Julian Jackson posits a direct relationship between the localised activity of nationalists and the formation of local antifascist committees comprising of communists, socialists and others following the ‘fascist’ riot of 6 February 1934.877 This is certainly the case in Cachan where a Comité de vigilance et d’action antifasciste (CVAA) was formed in Cachan on 29 March 1934, well before the formal establishment of the Popular Front. The CVAA was composed of mandated delegates from the PCF, the SFIO, the Amis de l’URSS, Amis de l’ARAC, Comité des Chômeurs, Comité Intersyndical, Comité Amsterdam-Pleyel, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Jeunesses Socialistes, Secours rouge International, Jeunesses Communistes, and the FOP. Its goals presaged those of the Popular Front. They included battling a central government that protected fascists and lowered wages, salaries and pensions, demands for the immediate dissolution of fascist groups and arrest of their leaders, and the achievement of the widest possible alliance within the working-class movement through an end to mutual criticism and by engaging in actions decided in common. The CVAA and its adherents also committed themselves to struggle for working-class liberties via the constitution of self-defence groups to protect meetings, posters, militants and to free the streets for workers.878 The CVAA was formed in response to fascist activity in Cachan. In April 1934, Marcilloux wrote an article in Le Socialiste entitled “A Cachan: Centre fasciste” which claimed that freedom and democracy were under threat from “l’activité de divers groupements qui ont transformé Cachan en un véritable centre fasciste pour notre canton…avec l’appui des pouvoirs publics.”879 According to Marcilloux, the 69th branch of the Croix de Feu met monthly at the Town Hall and had its headquarters in the Maison Commune, with its president

877 See Jackson, Popular Front, pp. 30-31. 878 Le Socialiste, May 1934. 879Le Socialiste, May 1934. 297 Toward Hegemony II

being the communal architect and its secretary a municipal employee. There were also sections of Action Française, Jeunesses Patriotes, Solidarité Française and Phalange universitaire in Cachan. Marcilloux warned that, with the formation of the CVAA, Cachan’s fascists would now find before them an antifascist front.880 Soon afterwards, on 23 May L’Humanité gave notice of a meeting of fascists planned for Cachan where the School of Public Works was an active centre for the formation of Jeunesses Patriotes and Solidarité Française and the municipality was fascist.881 This meeting, which would be led by Jean Renaud, was given widespread publicity via numerous posters and, according to L’Humanité, was part of a campaign of some duration whereby fascist bands from Cachan and neighbouring communes had attempted to inflame the labouring population in the region., and particularly in Cachan. On this occasion, the communist perception of the situation is supported by a report from the Prefect of the Seine. According to the latter, the Cachan meeting was part of a campaign by nationalists to group themselves together and to oppose the emerging Front Commun with a Front National.882 Secretly negotiated by Pierre Taittinger and Jean Renaud, the Front National was intended as a defensive and offensive front against the former, as well as a means of organising propaganda for the elections of 1935-36. The directors of the Front National decided to mark the formation of the aforementioned organisation by multiplying their propaganda meetings in the provinces and the suburbs, even in places where their opponents were the most active, in order not to appear intimidated by the hostile, at times violent, actions of their adversaries. The CVAA of Cachan, to the clarion call of “A bas les Canailles Fascistes!”, opposed the planned meeting. It alerted the labouring populations of Cachan, Arcueil and other neighbouring communes883 to the fact that “celles qui le 6 Février tentèrent un coup d’Etat Fasciste”, bands of mercenaries from the Solidarité Française paid for and armed by Coty and Stavisky and commanded by Jean Renaud, were planning a meeting at Cachan-Palace cinema on 23 May.884 The CVAA urged workers of all opinions to

880 Le Socialiste, May 1934. 881 L’Humanité, 23 May 1934. 882 AN F713028, Dossier: “Seine: Rapports Hebdomadaire du Préfet 5.4.1934” Rapport Hebdomadaire, 26 June 1934. The Front National was a formalisation of existing co-operation between the two nationalist leagues and included the Action Française, Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp .66-67. 883 AD94 36J28, Comité de Vigilance et d’action Antifasciste de Cachan, “A bas les Canailles Fascistes!”, flyer advertising a counter-demonstration for 23 May 1934. 884 Comité de Vigilance et d’action Antifasciste de Cachan, “A bas les Canailles Fascistes!” 298 Toward Hegemony II

form a single front that would force the fascists into a retreat. “En masse vous descendrez dans la rue pour barrer la route aux domestiques du grand capital et assassins d’ouvriers.”885 The result was that five hundred members of Solidarité Française and Jeunesses Patriotes converged on Cachan and came into conflict with two thousand antifascists of all tendencies from Cachan, Arcueil and other neighbouring communes heeding the CVAA’s call to prevent the meeting to chants of “Unité d’action! À bas le fascisme!”886 The prefect’s report summarised the events as follows.

Sous l’égide du ‘Front National’, les nationaux ont tenu cette semaine de multiples réunions, dont la plus marquantes, ont été, pour la région parisienne, celle organisée à Cachan, le 23 mai, par la Solidarité Française. Elle a pu avoir lieu normalement en dépit d’une contre-manifestation des extrémistes de la localité grâce aux mesures énergiques prises par un important service d’ordre. Une courte bagarre eut même lieu entre les manifestants et les gardiens de la paix qui dispersèrent les perturbateurs.887

Of course, the socialist and communist press interpreted the event quite differently, portraying it as an invasion by hostile and belligerent forces that cowardly sheltered behind the police.888 According to their accounts, with the approval of the mayor Eyrolles, seven hundred889 police and mobile guards ‘militarily occupied’ Cachan, stationed at crossroads and numerous roadblocks, in an effort to protect the fascists who upon arriving in cars under a police escort, gave the fascist salute “à la Hitler” and insulted bystanders and spectators watching from their windows. Shops were closed and a stupefied population turned out on the streets or watched from their windows as their commune was placed in a state of siege, with its inhabitants molested, frisked and gratuitously struck by batons as the police dispersed the slightest sign of a gathering. The first outbreak of violence occurred at 7.30 pm in front of a café in Place Gambetta when police agents clubbed and gravely wounded some patrons. At some point, a car

885 Comité de Vigilance et d’action Antifasciste de Cachan, “A bas les Canailles Fascistes!” 886 Front rouge, 2 June 1934. The sections on the local news of Arcueil and Cachan claimed that around 2000 communists, socialists, and workers without party affiliation had demonstrated against the fascists in Cachan to the cries of “Unité d’action! À bas le fascisme!” 887 AN F713028, Rapports Hebdomadaire du Préfet: Seine 1934, “Rapport Hebdomadaire, 26 June 1934”. 888 The following account is according to: L’Humanité, 24 May 1934; Le Socialiste, May 1934; Le Populaire, 25 May 1934; Front rouge, 2 June 1934. 889 This figure is based on the account of Front rouge, 2 June 1934.

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load of fascists was stoned. The demonstration was breaking up peacefully when some extremist elements, opposed by communists and socialists, started to construct a barricade, and the police responded by attacking and pursuing the remaining demonstrators through the streets where they sought shelter. Eventually, after talks with the police, they were allowed to disperse in small groups. While the socialists credited Marcilloux with preventing carnage by negotiating with police,890 the PCF claimed its vigilance alone rather than the actions of the self-aggrandising ‘statesman’ Marcilloux had prevented grave incidents.891 The sarcastic commentary on Marcilloux indicates that despite the apparent moves toward unity at the grassroots level a sectarian mentality persisted among the regional and local PCF leadership. The editorial director of Front rouge, Vaillant- Couturier, maintained the paper’s class against class line, expounding the view that local socialists wanted to protect bourgeois democracy at any cost and therefore resorted to vague phrases on the taking of power rather than form a single front at the base between communists and socialists.892 Cachan’s communists characterised their socialist counterparts as electoralist, in contrast to the revolutionary PCF.893 A speech by Marceau Pivert, one of the leaders of the SFIO’s Leftwing, at an antifascist meeting held in response to the events of 23 May, was dismissed as grandiloquent since its reference to the necessity of revolutionary struggle contradicted the politics of his party that he had always supported at its conferences.894 For its part, Le Socialiste was very critical of the communists right up until April 1934, after which explicit criticism was largely, though not completely, absent.895 Longstanding hostilities were difficult to jettison even if the SFIO claimed that 23 May demonstrated to the local population the need for unity of action against fascists.896 It was only after the formalisation of a unity pact that such explicit criticisms ceased. This indicates that although local factors had a

890 According to the socialist press, Marcilloux had taken refuge with fifty or sixty comrades, Le Socialiste, May 1934; Le Populaire, 25 May 1934. 891 Front rouge, 2 & 16 June 1934. Front rouge’s treatment of Marcilloux is contemptuous and sarcastic. 892 Front rouge, 2 June 1934. 893 Front rouge gave as evidence of this the fact that the SFIO had mounted a poster following the demonstration concerned solely with electoral matters rather than organising against fascism or dissolving the leagues, see Front rouge, 2 June 1934. 894 Front rouge, 16 June 1934. 895 The socialists were very critical of the way the communists acted towards them. The April issue carried an article that claimed the German communists were responsible for Hitler’s rise to power because they had divided the forces of the working class, see Le Socialiste, May 1934 and earlier issues. 896 Le Populaire, 25 May 1934. 300 Toward Hegemony II

fundamental role in determining the direction of local politics they nevertheless did not obviate the influence of the Comintern and the Soviet policy on the local PCF. Nevertheless, 23 May gave the emerging Popular Front in Cachan an enormous boost when, on 2 June 1934, the constituent organisations of the CVAA held a public meeting in response to the fascist provocation. Marcilloux was ecstatic.

Cachan a répondu et d’une façon magistrale. Que de figures nouvelles! Que d’antifascistes, jusque-là inconnus! Que d’enthousiasme dans la salle.897

According to his account a large crowd attended the meeting which opened at 9pm and was addressed by Vaillant-Couturier for the PCF, and Marcilloux and Pivert for the SFIO, the local communist leader Cellier for ARAC, and speakers from the Jeunesses Communistes, CGTU, the Union des Comités des Chômeurs, and the Amsterdam- Pleyel committee. Their overriding theme was for the need to struggle everywhere against all facets of fascism, with emphasis given to the role their movements played in the antifascist struggle and the battles they faced in defending the interests of the groups they represented. In contrast to Pivert’s call for unity of action and the liberation of the imprisoned German communist leader Thaelman, Vaillant-Couturier condemned the failure of so-called governments of the Left, and called for revolutionary action without concession or compromise to turn the imminent imperialist war into a class war. Sectarian rhetoric was difficult to jettison. Despite their ongoing criticisms of the socialists, the PCF agreed to work at a practical level with socialist workers on the basis of Pivert’s speech and welcomed the public meeting as a way of preventing the implantation of fascists in Cachan.898 Front rouge celebrated the fact that the CVAA was gaining new adherents everyday, thereby rapidly transforming the commune into an antifascist citadel. Marcilloux claimed in Le Socialiste that an important contingent of young antifascists with around 70 adherents was in the process of forming at Eyrolles’ School of Public works and would distribute an antifascist journal among the school’s students.899 Further progress toward unity came when the Comité d’entente des Associations d’anciens combattants d’Arcueil et

897 Le Socialiste, June 1934. 898 Front rouge, 16 June 1934. 899 Le Socialiste, June 1934. 301 Toward Hegemony II

de Cachan organised a protest meeting on 26 May against the decree laws which was attended by around 400 people.900 In the case of Arcueil, there is little evidence of the localised activity of rightwing leagues that brought the local branches of the SFIO and PCF together in Cachan in advance of their national leaderships. Local communists continued to criticise their socialist counterparts notwithstanding the overtures they had made to them as far back as December 1932.901 However, by the end of June 1934 the local communist-led antifascist committee had combined with various “organisations révolutionnaires” the SFIO, and the Pelletanists to form a Comité d’action contre les manœuvres aériennes.902 By the end of 1934, a Popular Front committee existed in Arcueil that comprised of the PCF, the SFIO, the Pelletanists and various antifascist organisations.903 The Union of Socialist Sections in the canton of Villejuif and its communist counterpart subsequently signed a unity of action plan, and then on 11 November a local alliance was signed between the Pelletanists and the PCF and SFIO.904 These three groups had been present at an antifascist meeting held on 10 August where 250 participants discussed the need for a local strategy for unified action in the struggle against fascism and war.905 In its manifesto the Popular Front Committee claimed to represent those members of Arcueil’s labouring classes who wanted to defend their liberties and stated its aim was to bar the route to fascism.906 Hence its call for the immediate dissolution of all fascist groups in France, the dismissal of fascist generals and army officers, disarmament and an end to militarism. Beyond its antifascist stance, the committee opposed reductions in veterans’ pensions, wages and the aggravation of working conditions, while championing the defence of democratic rights and liberties against the threat of war. The manifesto exhorted manual and intellectual workers, functionaries, veterans, shopkeepers, and artisans of all opinions and beliefs to unite in a Popular Front of work, liberty and peace.907

900 Front rouge, 2 June 1934. 901 For example, a public meeting held by the PCF in May accused the secretary of SFIO in Arcueil, Delest, of collaborating with the bourgeois mayor Legrand, Front rouge, 21 April 1934 902 Front rouge, 30 June 1934. 903 Front rouge, 29 December 1934. 904 Vaillant-Couturier, “A un départ “en beauté” LEGRAND, Maire d’Arcueil, préférera-t-ill la fuite honteuse d’un Gratien?”, Front rouge, 17 November 1934. 905 Front rouge, 24 August 1934. 906 Le Socialiste, November 1934. 907 Le Socialiste, 12 January 1935. 302 Toward Hegemony II

Enthusiasm for the Popular Front soon brought activists together from the two communes. On 26 October 1934, the PCF and SFIO held simultaneous antifascist meetings in both Arcueil and Cachan with the aim of alerting the population of the two communes to the dangers of fascism and the threats of chauvinistic and militaristic propaganda. 908 Beaugrand, Marcilloux and Longuet spoke at both meetings, where they joined with local activists to condemn the Doumergue government for aggravating the misery of the Depression, warn of the imminent threat of war and the danger posed to liberty by fascism, and commend the accomplishment of unity as a necessity to combat fascism. The meeting ended with a call to group the widest possible alliance of workers, employés, small shopkeepers, artisans and all victims of capitalism around local antifascist committees. This meeting, and others like it outlined above, point to one of the central interpretations of the Popular Front which can be drawn from the works of Julian Jackson and others, the fact that the Popular Front was above all a social mobilisation. In the early stages of the Popular Front, throughout France the local activity of the PCF and SFIO was driven as much by events on the ground as much as by party hierarchies. The precocious development of the Popular Front in Cachan was clearly driven by the perception that fascists posed a threat in the locality. Popular enthusiasm for unity made it too difficult for the PCF, SFIO, and eventually the Radical-Socialists, not to embrace Popular Front, and once it was embraced no party was able to better exploit this social and political alliance than the PCF.

The Popular Front and the Mobilisation of the Masses in Arcueil and Cachan

Thus, the Popular Front was more than a political movement; it was a social mobilisation that provided an unparalleled opportunity for the expansion of PCF influence. Public meetings multiplied. For example, on 7 November 1935, 350 people attended a Popular Front meeting where they heard speakers from the PCF, SFIO, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Pelletanists, CGT, ARAC and the FOP.909 One interwar inhabitant of Arcueil, Marthe Sentuc, recalled how in 1936 the suburb was swept with enthusiasm for the Popular Front. The social life of the community intensified, with frequent public meetings and night time fetes organised by the CGT, PCF or the SFIO as part of the local Popular Front committee, with women playing an active role via the

908 Front rouge 10 November 1934; Le Socialiste, November 1934. 909 Front rouge, 16 November 1935. 303 Toward Hegemony II

Comité féminin contre la guerre et la fascisme.910 One such meeting was held on 18 January 1936 when Sidobre presented a screening of the film Rassemblement du 14 Juillet in the presence of the president of the Pelletanist group, Vaillant-Couturier, and an SFIO representative. This event, which concluded with musical performances and dancing, demonstrates how a significant moment in the recent political history quickly became a potent symbol of working-class politics.911 The clearest manifestation of the Popular Front as a social mobilisation was the strike movement of June 1936, which had a significant impact on Arcueil. This is evident from the account of an interwar resident of Arcueil, Madame André, who began working at the Galeries Lafayette in 1932, joining 1,200 (mostly female) employees who undertook arduous work in difficult conditions and under a feudal discipline.912 The majority of the workforce went on strike in 1936. According to Madame André, they occupied their workplace for 21 days,913 mounting pickets to prevent their bosses from entering, taking over the kitchens and sleeping on the premises. The women marked the successful conclusion to the strike914 by marching to the town hall behind the Red Flag and the tricolour, singing the Internationale, cheered en route by the local population which had supported their cause and accompanied by the assistant mayor, Ambrogelly. At their destination, they were met by Sidobre who pledged that the municipality would continue to aid the workers and a delegate of the strike committee thanked the municipality and the population for their support. Other factories also went on strike. According to Sentuc915, when workers at the metallurgical factories Camions Bernard and Barriquand went on strike they received the sympathy of the population, with the shopkeepers giving them supplies. The strike movement brought fundamental change to industrial relations and working conditions in Arcueil. Madame André remembered that for the first time she received sick pay and went on vacation - prior to the strikes there had been no social

910 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marthe Sentuc. 911 Front rouge, 25 January 1936. 912 According to Madame André, workers were paid by the hour. All workers could be forced to work through their lunch breaks, and therefore to go without eating, so as to finish their requisite work. Failure to complete the latter for two days running meant dismissal, as did arriving one minute late more than once, AD94, E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Madame André. 913 Front rouge (27 June 1936) gives a figure of 19 days for the occupation of the Galeries Lafayette. 914 The interior minister, Salengro, arbitrated an end to the conflict, with the lowest paid employees receiving a pay increase of 25%, and the highest paid 8-10%, Front rouge, 27 June 1936. 915 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marthe Sentuc. 304 Toward Hegemony II

protection.916 She also recollected that the strike changed workplace culture as in its aftermath there was a greater resistance to the demands of bosses. Those who had previously done extra work no longer wanted to (although the bosses continued to insist that they did so, threatening them with the sack).917 According to Front rouge, at the end of the strike all Galeries Lafayette employees were members of the union.918 Sentuc saw first hand how the Popular Front brought real benefits to Arcueil inhabitants.919 Women and men’s work conditions were ameliorated and their hours reduced, which enabled them to frequent his barber’s shop more often, and he in turn benefited with an earlier closing at 7pm. In Cachan, the Popular Front was also experienced as a social mobilisation, although, owing to the lack of industrialisation, the strike movement did not have the same impact. Local activists came together in public meetings with significant figures from the major parties. Hence, on 5 October 1935, one such meeting was addressed by the socialist municipal councillor Lemoine, the local communist leader Cellier, speakers from the CGTU and CGT, Longuet and Gerard, the SFIO mayor of Kremlin, and the communist Conseiller Général Beaugrand.920 Significant numbers of people began attending public meetings. A public meeting on the issue of alleged maladministration by the Eyrolles municipality attracted 1000 participants to listen to speeches from Cellier, Marcilloux and Vaillant-Couturier,921 while 1500 attended an electoral meeting for the latter the following month,922 and 1000 people went to see Conseiller-Général Beaugrand render account of his mandate, with the socialist councillor Lemoine in attendance, in February 1937.923 The Left mobilised locals on the issue of the Spanish Civil War. The Popular Front Committee held meetings to express solidarity with Republican Spain and to ask for a reassessment of the non-intervention policy,924 and a

916 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Madame André. She went on vacation for the first time in 1937 to Hendaye, returning in 1939 during which her husband was called to the army. 917 E Dépôt Arcueil, interview with Madame André. 918 Front rouge, 27 June 1936. 919 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, Interview with Marthe Sentuc. 920 Front rouge, 5 October 1935. 921 The meeting focused particularly on the ‘affair of the bricks.’ The communists and socialists ran a campaign against the administration of Cachan under Eyrolles, alleging the municipality had paid too much for the bricks used in the construction of the new town hall and that there was a conflict of interest owing to the fact that the brick company used was the same company used by Eyrolles for the construction of the School of Public Works, see Front rouge, 7 March 1936. 922 Front rouge, 25 April 1936. 923 Front rouge, 20 February 1937. 924 Front rouge, 30 January 1937. 305 Toward Hegemony II

Committee for Aid to the Basque People was formed, encompassing members of the Radical, Socialist and Communist parties and other organisations of the Popular Front.925 Speakers at one its meetings in July 1937 included the leader of the Bataille Socialiste faction of the SFIO, Zyromski, Isambert from the Radicals, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and Vaillant-Couturier. Sometimes the social activism that accompanied the Popular Front took on an intercommunal form. A Comité d’Unité des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de la Guerre Générale was formed encompassing the Arcueil and Cachan sections of the FOP and ARAC, and its establishment was celebrated with a gala night followed by a ball on 2 March 1935.926 In November 1935, the municipalities of Arcueil and Cachan chose to hold a combined commemoration of the war dead at the Monument to the Dead of Arcueil-Cachan which was attended by 1500 people.927 The mayors of the two councils, their deputies and municipal councillors headed the parade, marching behind the tricolour and red flags. The participants they led bore banners and placards upon which were written the proclamations of the Popular Front, and included school children, the patronage laïques of the two municipalities, the various organisations that made up the Popular Front, including ARAC, the FOP, the SFIO, the PCF, the Pelletanists, the League of the Rights of Man, the CGT, the CGTU, the Comité féminin contre la Guerre et Fascisme, and the Comité des Chômeurs.

The Activity of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan During the Popular Front

It was at the local level that the Popular Front gave the PCF an unparalleled boost in both Arcueil and Cachan. The Popular Front enabled the Party to expand its activities and propaganda via the proliferation of auxiliary and front organisations. These acted as advocates of local interests, and gave the PCF greater opportunities to act as a promoter and repository of lower-class solidarity, and to gain control of local culture and mould local attitudes. In these endeavours, the Party was assisted by popular mobilisation that translated into a large increase in membership, based on my presumption that in June 1932, when the party was at its nadir nationally, there were around 20 members of the PCF in Arcueil (see footnote 67), and most likely fewer in Cachan owing to the party’s relative weakness in this suburb. In 1937, the only year during the Popular Front that I

925 Front rouge, 17 July 1937. 926 Le Socialiste, 12 January 1935. 927 Front rouge, 16 November 1935. 306 Toward Hegemony II

have been able to obtain any membership figures, the membership of the PCF in Cachan was somewhere between 200 and 250, with around 50 Jeunesses Communistes.928 Membership figures were almost certainly higher in Arcueil where the PCF was stronger and controlled the municipal government after 1935. The Party’s membership in the two suburbs was therefore much larger than that of the SFIO which had only 10 members in Arcueil in 1935, and 55 in Cachan in 1936.929 Other measures also give an indication of the party’s strength. As has been noted above, in Cachan 1500 people attended one of Vaillant-Couturier’s electoral meetings in April 1936 and 1000 people attended an account of Beaugrand’s mandate held in February 1937.930 On 11 November 1934, the Arcueil-Cachan branch of ARAC had a sizeable turnout of 250 people to a meeting that was also attended by various revolutionary groups and some communist municipalities.931 The creation of autonomous auxiliary organisations where they had previously been common to both suburbs - for example, a separate branch of ARAC was formed in Cachan on 25 March 1936 with 30 members – also suggests that membership of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan grew during the Popular Front.932 By April 1935, the PCF claimed that it sold more than 250 copies of L’Humanité each Sunday in Cachan.933 Locally based cells were formed – in Cachan in 1939 they included the Lumières and Paul Vaillant- Couturier cells.934 In Arcueil, Les amis de L’Humanité collected 800 signatures against the arrest of Lucien Sampaix, while Jean-Jaurès cell collected 900 signatures, the Centre cell 1200 signatures and the workers of Bernard 180 signatures to oppose his

928 On 20 February 1937 Front rouge reported the membership of the Cachan section of the PCF was 200, on 8 May 1937 it claimed 250 members and 50 Jeunesses Communistes; the same figure is claimed in, Section de Cachan “La Population Cachanaise doit avoir la parole”, a local communist journal without a date, issued circa February 1937; On 28 August 1937, Front rouge claimed 350 members, however, this appears to be an exaggeration as one week later on 4 September only 200 members were claimed. 929 Arcueil’s branch of the SFIO had only 10 members in 1935, DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Eugène Fournière. 930 Front rouge, 20 February 1937 & 25 April 1936. 931 AN F713028, Dossier: Seine Rapports Hebdomadaires du Préfet 5.4.1934, “Rapport Hebdomadaire 17 November 1934.” By way of comparison, the following numbers participated in other suburbs: 400 at Bois-Colombes, 100 at Bondy, 1800 at Genevilliers, 250 at Gentilly, 80 at Montrouge, 120 at Nanterre, 80 at Romainville, 400 at Saint-Ouen, 100 at Puteaux, 130 at Fontenay-sous-Bois, 300 at Vitry. 932 Front rouge, 4 April 1936. 933 Front rouge, 21 April 1935. 934 Front rouge, 8 April 1939. The communist cell Lumières held a meeting on 21 March, with Cellier talking about the party’s policies to almost 40 people. 307 Toward Hegemony II

imprisonment.935 These numbers are significant in the context of growing hostility toward the PCF. During the Popular Front, the activity of the PCF in Cachan and, especially, Arcueil brought it closer to realising the four constituents of communist hegemony. The PCF asserted it leadership of the working-class movement in the two suburbs. In speeches to the Arcueil’s council some months before the 1935 municipal election, Sidobre and Rivière claimed a mandate to speak on behalf of the working population of Arcueil that had voted them in because “le Parti communiste avait de profondes racines dans notre localité.”936 Until prohibited from doing so, Sidobre and other communists such as Ambrogelly attempted to demonstrate their administrative skills by serving on municipal commissions.937 In the absence of any council representation, Cachan’s communists bypassed the established local authority. According to Front rouge, the local branch was instrumental in closing down a battery factory that polluted the Lumières quarter.938 After the mayor had rejected their petition, a delegation of local residents sought the assistance of the branch. The latter brought the matter to the attention of the communist Conseiller Général Georges Beaugrand, and he in turn referred it to the Prefect of Police, who ultimately had the factory closed. The PCF expanded it role as an upholder of popular democracy and as a vehicle through which workers were empowered to take control of their own lives. Its use of diverse local committees and auxiliary organisations rapidly expanded under the Popular Front. The Comité Intersyndical defended the rights of workers, by, for example, distributing tracts in May 1934 condemning the working conditions endured by printers at a local firm in Arcueil who were forced to labour for up to 56 hours at the normal rate of pay.939 The Arcueil branch of the Vieux travailleurs (which claimed 300 members in March 1939940) supported the interests of older workers, as did a Cachan branch of this organisation.941 Some organisations crossed communal boundaries, such as the Committee of Action of Arcueil and Cachan Against the Decree-Laws, formed in

935 Front rouge, 29 July 1939. 936 AD94, E Dépôt Arcueil 1D27, “Déclaration des élus Communistes Sidobre et Rivière”, 23 February 1935. 937 Déclaration des élus Communistes Sidobre et Rivière”, 23 February 1935. Ambrogelly joined the unemployment commission as a representative of local unionists, only to be expelled for having given an account of the commission meetings to a group of local unemployed, Front rouge, 7 April 1934. 938 Front rouge, 8 May 1937. 939 Front rouge, 7 April 1934. 940 Front rouge, 25 March 1939. 941 Front rouge, 18 February 1939. 308 Toward Hegemony II

August 1935.942 In June 1937, communists were active in the formation of an amicale, with more than 50 members, by tenants of the cité-jardin and the Berry lotissement in Cachan.943 Its aim was to prevent the unemployed from being evicted for non-payment of rent. The party in Cachan projected itself as a defender of the shopkeepers, proposing to the municipality the formation of a Comité d’Initiative des Fêtes to promote organisation of fetes and exhibitions of local industries that would be an economic boon for local shopkeepers.944 When the national government decided to increase public transport costs in 1939, Cachan’s communists formed a Comité local des usagers contre l’augmentation des transports.945 Alongside the organisation of local inhabitants into committees and the like, local communist propaganda defended the interests of local inhabitants with regard to issues such as the state of the boulevard de la Vanne, pollution caused by a large factory and laundries, the expulsion of the unemployed from the cité-jardin, and the need for a program of municipal public works.946 In general, the party attempted to organise the lower classes to defend their interests against the privileged and the powerful. Persistently high unemployment in both suburbs during the Popular Front meant that the PCF maintained its focus on the unemployed.947 On 30 June 1934, Cachan hosted the largest of four simultaneous demonstrations co-ordinated by the Union Régionale des Comités de Chômeurs and supported by the Fédération des Locataires de la Région Parisienne, with 800 participants from the Comités des Chômeurs of Ivry, Gentilly, Cachan, Arcueil, Kremlin-Bicêtre, Malakoff, and the 13th and 14th

942 Front rouge, 10 August 1935. 943 Front rouge, 12 June 1937. 944 AD94 36J28, Parti Communiste Français, Section de Cachan, “Lettre Ouverte Aux Petits Commerçants.” 945 Front rouge, 24 June 1939. 946 AD94 36J28, “La Population Cachanaise doit avoir la parole”, PCF tract. 947 In December 1934, the unemployed numbered 951 in Arcueil, or 5.87% of the population, and 577 in Cachan, or 4.51% of the population. Unemployment generally rose between October and February, peaking in the latter month, Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, no. 26, January 1935, p. 5. The numbers in Cachan were 1 February 1935 665, on 20 February 1936 691, and 5 January 1937 539, rising to 549 in April, Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 1, March 1937, p.2 and no.4, June 1937. The 1936 census of Cachan indicates whether a resident is unemployed (the Arcueil census does not). My analysis of a sample of just over 50% of French male heads of households recorded in the 1936 census for Cachan indicates that 11.1% of them were unemployed, a significant proportion of the workforce, see Listes nominatives de Cachan 1936. In Arcueil the average unemployment figures were: 1934 750, 1935 900, 1936 980, 1937 770, and 1 January 1938 902, and 1 January 1939 1055. See AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, “État des Dépenses de Chômage Années 1931 à 1937”; DCMA, meeting 28 January 1939 (AD94 1Mi 1390, pp. 230-251). The figures only include those workers who were registered as receiving unemployment support and the unregistered or those struck off and therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the problem was in fact worse than these figures indicate. 309 Toward Hegemony II

arrondissements.948 Demonstrators carried placards such as “du travail ou du pain”, ‘les 12 francs par jour”, “les exonérations des loyers” and “l’ouverture de travaux d’utilité publique.”949 Speakers, who included a municipal councillor from Arcueil, addressed issues such as the problems of the unemployed and the need for unity to defeat the threat of fascism and imperialist war. The PCF and communist municipalities were congratulated for their tenacious support of the unemployed and the working class in the face of hostile public powers. At the conclusion, participants dispersed after singing ‘l’Internationale’. The Comité des Chômeurs de Cachan remained an irritant for its municipality. It continued to agitate for what it claimed were reasonable proposals to materially improve the lives of the unemployed, submitting demands to the mayor and council for serious consideration.950 In 1938 it demanded for the unemployed: free education, winter clothing and footwear for their children, soap, 50 kilograms of coal, social services (sports facilities for the young, a reading room for seniors), weekly allocations of dry vegetables and horsemeat, exemption from rents, assistance to departing and returning conscripts, large scale communal works for the unemployed, the reintegration of all unemployed whose benefits had been revoked and the cessation of disciplinary measures, the indexation of benefits and their equality between the French and foreigners, the posting of official notices concerning the unemployed, and the official recognition of the Union des Comités des Chômeurs.951 In Arcueil, the Comité des Chômeurs worked closely with the communist municipality after its election in 1935. The Popular Front also gave the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan greater opportunities to move beyond its role as a popular tribune, leader of the working-class

948 AN F713562, Unemployment Situation 1934, “Manifestations organisées par l’Union Régionale des Comités de chômeurs”, police report dated 30 June 1934. The other three venues were Montreuil, where 400 people participated, Puteaux with 200 participants and Saint-Ouen with 700 participants. 949 AN F713562, “Manifestations organisées par l’Union Régionale des Comités de chômeurs.” 950 AD94 36J12, “Lettre Ouverte à Monsieur le Maire ainsi qu’à Messieurs les Conseillers Municipaux”, signed secretary of the Comité des Chômeurs (signature illegible). A note dated 5 March 1938 from an unnamed municipal councillor indicates a general contempt for the Comité des Chômeurs and in particular Winkopp, its secretary, “C’est un homme en lequel on ne peut avoir aucune confiance et qui a la prétention de vouloir imposer sa volonté à tout le monde, en un mot, il est peu intéressant.” It notes that Winkopp has been registered for unemployment for some months, is divorced with a child aged 6 and lives with a 32-year-old woman, and takes part in all the fêtes organised by the PCF, see AD94 36J28. 951 AD94: 36J12 Ville de Cachan, Comité Local des Chômeurs, “Cahiers de Revendications”, 10 February 1938; 36J28 Union Départementale des Comités de Chômeurs, Comité des Chômeurs de Cachan, letter from the secretary Winkopp dated 9 March 1938.

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movement and a vehicle for working-class empowerment, and to shape the class and communal identity of the two communes. In the first place, the party aimed to reinforce and mould working-class identity in its image by organising and giving ideological cast to a strong, pre-existing sense of class solidarity. A principal means achieving this was the formation of mutual aid committees that acted to give material assistance to families of the unemployed. For example, on 5 February 1936, Cachan’s Comité des Chômeurs organised a meeting at the municipal gym to aid unemployed that raised 5500 francs as well as clothes and supplies, which were distributed to the families of the unemployed. Though the municipality refused to be associated with it, a local parish priest, one socialist and one non-socialist municipal councillor attended, in addition to attendance by a number of organisations, and declared their support for the aims of the mutual aid society.952 On 1 March 1936 the local mutual aid committee formed by the Comité des Chômeurs in Cachan organised a day of solidarity with the unemployed which raised 4000 francs as well as gifts of food and clothing.953 Two (non-socialist) councillors and young Christian workers participated, with entertainment provided by the musical societies ‘Fantasia’ and the musical circle of Cachan. (This event had been organised to combat the actions of the Croix de Feu’s purchase of a property in Cachan with the objective of setting up a social centre, outlined above). Other organisations also played an important role in provisioning aid and promoting solidarity. The SOI of Cachan claimed 75 adherents in April 1934 and its specific aim was to raise funds to send children of the unemployed for holidays to the sea or to use in solidarity with worker struggles.954 This was part of the remit of the Cachan branch of the Association Nationale de Soutien de l’Enfance et des Vacances. In 1937, it raised funds to send 17 of the most deprived children to the municipal vacation colony in the Cher for 47 days.955 In 1938, it helped to send 15.956 In Cachan, communists joined the explicitly apolitical Committee for Aid to the Basque People, alongside members of the Radical-Socialist and Socialist parties, other organisations of

952 Front rouge, 9 May 1936. 953 Front rouge, 7 March 1936. 954 Front rouge 21 April 1934. 955 Front rouge, 2 August 1937. 956 Front rouge, 9 July 1938. 311 Toward Hegemony II

the Popular Front, the mayor and fellow non-Marxist councillors.957 It aimed to relieve the suffering of the Spanish Basques, to express solidarity with them and to popularise their heroic struggle for liberty. By 1939, the issue of Spain was largely the preserve of the communists. While Arcueil’s municipality actively campaigned against non- intervention, in Cachan communists demonstrated in favour of opening the frontier and giving planes to Spain.958 The Party was active in aiding the republican cause, for example on 5 February 1939 it collected clothing and provisions such as boxes of milk and raised 1371 francs in Cachan and 4200 francs in Arcueil.959 Before the election of a communist municipality, auxiliary organisations actively promoted class solidarity in Arcueil. When a local tannery went on strike to fight salary reductions in June 1934, the Comité Intersyndical took collections to support striking workers and their families during their struggle against their employer.960 Although such acts of mutual aid and solidarity were largely subsumed by the communist municipality in 1935, communist-dominated organisations continued nevertheless to complement the activity of the municipality. In Arcueil on 30 March 1936, a mutual aid committee distributed shoes and clothing to more than 100 unemployed men, women and their children.961 By January 1937, when it raised 12 000 francs and clothing to aid the families of the unemployed, it was composed of more than 20 organisations and personalities.962 In March 1939, the Comité des Chômeurs established a solidarity fund to aid comrades threatened with eviction or deprived of electricity and gas.963 Party members assisted the effort of the municipality to promote solidarity with the Spanish republican cause and victims of the Spanish civil war. In October 1937, a local branch was formed of a movement that had been launched by the PCF the previous July to group together antifascists and former international brigade volunteers to work for the aid of Spain and the suppression of non-intervention.964 The

957 The Committee was formed on 27 or 28 May 1937 in response to the bombing of Guernica, AD94 36J28, Ville de Cachan, “Comité d’Aide au Peuple Basque”, no date, circa June 1937, “Bombardements de Villes Ouvertes”, no date circa May 1937; Ville de Cachan, “Comité d’Aide au Peuple Basque”, letter dated 8 June 1937. For member of the committee see Front rouge, 17 July 1937. 958 Front rouge, 4 February 1939. 959 Front rouge, 11 February 1939. 960 Front rouge, 2 June 1934. 961Front rouge, 4 April 1936. 962 Front rouge, 30 January 1937. 963 Front rouge, 25 March 1939. 964 Fernandez Paloma, “Le Retour et l’Action des anciens volontaires français des brigades internationales en région parisienne de 1937 à 1945”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris I, 1983- 1984, pp. 54-55. 312 Toward Hegemony II

communists were also concerned to look after those Frenchmen who had fought for the Republicans. Thus, on 12 February 1939 the Arcueil branch of Volontaires de l’Espagne républicaine organised a fete for the benefit of volunteers who were wounded and unemployed after returning from Spain and did not receive benefits.965 Building upon a strong sense of class pride, the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan then attempted to shape communal identity. This was achieved via three means: party- political meetings, the activities of auxiliary organisations, and the organisation of community events. Constructing a counter-society meant not only giving a political education to members, sympathisers and the general community but also acting as a generator of local sociability. The results could be unusual, such as the time when, on 24 February 1937, Arcueil’s branch of the PCF held an invitation-only screening of Les Souliers Percées, apropos the struggle of the German PCF, along with Walt Disney’s Mickey.966 On another occasion, the local branch also held a private screening of the film La Vie est à Nous on 3 February.967 A Young Communist Circle was established in 1937 to provide amusements such as table tennis, cards, books and a monthly film.968 Soon after its formation, it held a table tennis tournament with prizes for the winners. In Arcueil, a party-political event metamorphosed into a community event. Here I am referring to the ‘Popular Banquet’ that simultaneously venerated the life of Poënsin, the communist and former communard, and the Paris Commune. As indicated above, a banquet celebrating for Poënsin’s life had taken place as early as 1931. However, in the years between 1935 and 1939 inclusive, it became a major event on the social calendar of Arcueil, one that was heavily promoted by Front rouge.969 It developed from a banquet and rustic ball attended by around 120 people in 1936 to a grand fraternal banquet which, on 4 June 1939, began at midday in the Salle des Fêtes before progressing onto the Municipal Park Vaillant-Couturier where 2500 people joined in a grand bal champêtre at 3pm and an apértif-concert at 6pm. Organised by a Committee of the Friends of the Commune and of Comrade Poënsin, the PCF luminaries attending the banquet included parliamentary deputies, Conseillers Généraux, and mayors of neighbouring communes such as L’Hay-les-Roses, and the mayor of Arcueil and his

965 Front rouge, 4 February 1939. 966 Front rouge, 20 February 1937. 967 Front rouge, 16 January 1937. 968 Front rouge d, 20 February 1937. 969 Front rouge, 15 May 1935, 7 & 21 March 1936, 29 May 1936, 4 April 1936, 1 May 1937 (presided over by Vaillant-Couturier), 23 April 1938, 22 & 29 May 1939, 10 June 1939.

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fellow councillors. The banquet would also be attended by representatives from organisations such as ARAC, the PCF and Jeunesses Communistes, the tenant’s union, Centre syndical and members of the SFIO. As a rule, Poënsin was praised for his participation at 19 years of age in the Commune, and his devotion to the cause of the working class and unflagging political activity. While Poënsin would generally recall his experience in the Commune, other speakers evoked its lessons and the inspiration it provided to the Russian Revolution. The Popular Front brought a patriotic re- interpretation of the Commune as a rising of the proletariat against the “traîtres à la patrie qu’étaient Versailles”970 and an emphasis on the need for unity between the SFIO and the PCF. In 1938, for the first time the banquet also celebrated the life of mayor Sidobre as well as Poënsin. While the PCF in Cachan lacked a Maison du Peuple and a popular event to rival Poënsin’s banquet, auxiliary organisations were nonetheless active within the suburb. Chief among these was the SOI, which undertook important work with educating and amusing children. For example, in January 1935 it joined with the Comité des Chômeurs to hold a fete for the children of the unemployed, with each child receiving a streamer and fruits.971 Front rouge reported that while they were waiting for the performance many of the children read ‘Mon camarade’, offered freely by the sellers of L’Humanité. The following April, the SOI of Arcueil and of Cachan joined forces to organise a children’s fete held in Cachan on 18 April with a children’s theatre organised by the youth commission of the AEAR (association des artistes et écrivains révolutionnaires). The aim was to amuse and teach the children of the proletariat. “Suivant les traditions de l’antique théâtre de poupées, il prétend, à l’aide de la satire et par le rire, dénoncer les maux actuels de la société, flageller les profiteurs du régime et orienter les jeunesses vers un idéal de civilisation nouvelle où régnera l’égalité.”972 In a program that consisted of a satirical saynète, a comical sketch and dances performed by the children of Villejuif’s patronage laïque was a play entitled Marche en Avant, a history of the class struggle traversing the ages, in three acts and seven scenes. By acting as the provider of recreation and leisure, the PCF had a more subtle influence on the local population. The activity of the Étoile Sportive Ouvrière d’Arcueil et de Cachan (ESOAC), in existence since the early 1920s, grew during the Popular

970 Front rouge, 29 May 1936. 971 Front rouge, 11 January 1935. 972 Front rouge, 14 April 1935. 314 Toward Hegemony II

Front, when it held large events. For example, on Sunday 26 August 1934 it held a sports day with athletics, basketball, cycling, soccer, and boxing competitions and prizes were offered by shopkeepers of the two communes, with the day’s events having been preceded by a dance the night before.973 By 1936, such events had grown in scale. The ESOAC joined with ARAC to hold a ball, artistic gala and a sports carnival on 28 and 29 of March.974 While Arcueil’s communist municipality took on the responsibility of organising major community events after its election, in Cachan the PCF itself continued to organise them. Thus, on 6-7 June 1935 the SOI held a ball and then an outdoor concert in Cachan with 3000 participants.975 In March the following year, the Party held a kermesse populaire that attracted 5000 people, 2000 of whom were from neighbouring communes.976 Another kermesse was held on 3 and 4 July 1937.977 The communists promoted the kermesse as being good for local shopkeepers.978 In Arcueil, communists were the principal animators and leaders of the Comité des fêtes which organised a three-day fête in the Laplace-Barbusse district in 1939 to celebrate 14 July.979 At times, the Party’s provision of leisure also had a dual function. This was the case on 10 April 1935 when the Friends of the USSR held a film night at the cinema in Arcueil where they screened three films, including a silent animation and a film on mountaineering, to raise funds for the Maison du Peuple.980 On another occasion, the afternoon of 5 February 1939, the Comité des Chômeurs joined with the mutual aid committee, the Secours Populaire de Cachan and the Centre Syndical d’Arcueil to stage an artistic party that lasted more than two hours, with festivities that included afternoon tea and distribution of games for around 200 of the underprivileged children of the commune.981 In addition to promoting solidarity with the underprivileged this event raised funds for them. The emphasis given by the PCF in both Arcueil and Cachan to leisure and recreation is indicative of how the Popular Front brought communists closer to the

973 Front rouge, 24 August 1934. 974 Front rouge, 7 March 1936 975 Front rouge, 27 July 1935. 976 Front rouge, 29 March 1937; AD94 36J28, Parti communiste français, Section de Cachan, “Lettre Ouverte aux Petits Commerçants”, Cachan 26 May 1937. 977 Front rouge, 10 July 1937. 978 AD94 36J28 “Lettre Ouverte aux Petits Commerçants.” 979 Front rouge, 22 July 1939. The communist councillor Lesage headed the Comité des fêtes. 980 The title of the three films were: Je suis un évadé (film in French), Chasseur canadien (a silent animation) and Trois vies et un corde (a film on mountaineering). See Front rouge, 7 April 1935. 981 Front rouge, 18 February 1939. 315 Toward Hegemony II

mainstream of French society via the PCF’s embrace of mass (consumer) culture. Perhaps the clearest indication of this mainstreaming is in the Party’s treatment of women, if Susan B. Whitney’s characterisation of it is accepted.982 According to Whitney, before 1935 the PCF did not consider women as a distinct constituency and a gender-neutral archetype prevailed of a comrade-in-arms in the working-class struggle. Young women were mobilised within the avowedly revolutionary Jeunesse Communiste, an organisation which tended to marginalise specifically female concerns and which was masculinised by its role as the vanguard of the revolution. When, in 1935, women were recognised as a separate constituency it was in accordance with the attitudinal status quo that prevailed in French society at the time. The appearance of a national Jeunes filles communistes organisation in 1936, renamed soon after as the Union des Jeunes Filles de France, marked the re-feminisation of young women as future wives and mothers. Whitney claims that the new organisation embraced the attitudes toward women prevalent in consumer culture, such as the ‘feminine’ concerns of leisure and friendship. Not surprisingly then, in the years between 1935 and 1939 party activity among the women of Arcueil and Cachan focused on their traditional role as mothers and carers. For example, on 31 March 1936 the Arcueil branch of the Mouvement Mondial des Femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme gave a talk on women’s hygiene.983 Three years later, with the threat of war on the horizon, the Cachan branch of this group held a course for health and assistance volunteers. Physicians and nurses educated the women in the principles of hygiene and the urgent care of the sick and wounded, and instructed them on the dangers and best means of preparing for aeronautical chemical warfare.984 The communist municipality supported the Comité féminin d’Arcueil in the work it did to support women’s traditionally nurturing role. This committee’s remit included making collections for families of the unemployed, victims of the Spanish Civil War, the Comité de l’Enfance, and for Christmas for school children, as well as organising trips for parents to see their children at the vacation and running first-aid courses. More than 200 women were said to attend first-aid courses run by the Comité féminin d’Arcueil held one night a week. They aimed to give mothers, young women and girls

982 Susan B. Whitney, “Embracing the Status Quo: French Communists, Young Women and the Popular Front”, Journal of Social History, vol. 30, no. 1, 1996, pp. 29-45. The analysis which follows of communist policy toward women paraphrases this article. 983 Front rouge, 4 April 1936

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instruction in the treatment of the sick or injured while waiting for the doctor, which included how to execute correctly the orders of doctors, give injections, and apply dressings. This was complemented by an education in the different vaccines, circulation, anatomy, infectious illnesses, fever, respiratory and digestive illnesses, the lungs, and suffocation accidents with the aim of preventing illness in children and saving their lives.985 As befitted their traditional role, the Comité mondial des femmes held a fete with afternoon tea for children in January 1939.986 Nevertheless, I would argue that the PCF’s activities among women reflect the pervasiveness of patriarchal attitudes, even among avowed Marxists, rather than any integration into the dominant bourgeois society. Women’s revolutionary potential had not been obviated since they would play an important role in the communist resistance of World War II, particularly in Arcueil. Moreover, the integrationalist potential of the mainstreaming tendency apparent in the Popular Front was balanced by the desire on the part of local communists to propagate a new, communist world order. Thus, on the first Sunday of August 1939, PCF members went door to door in Arcueil presenting to local workers an “ouvrage précieux”, namely l’Histoire du Parti Communiste de l’U.R.S.S. The intention was that they learn the history of a country that had built socialism in one sixth of the world and was in the process of developing Communism, and as such was a living example of progress and well-being. “ Les Travailleurs d’Arcueil voudront connaître l’histoire du Parti qui ne s’est pas trompé, et qui n’a pas trompé, ainsi que l’histoire de ses hommes,” announced Front rouge.987 This vision of an alternative society where the well-being of the working class was paramount underpinned the PCF’s focus on providing modern, efficient administration which advanced the interests of the working class and made concrete improvements to their lives.

The Communist Municipality of Arcueil 1935-1939

According to Michelon’s study of Arcueil, the election of a communist municipality in Arcueil in 1935 brought with it the first real preoccupation with urban habitat on the part of a local government.988 After making some modifications it set

984 Front rouge, 29 July 1939. 985 Front rouge, 29 April & 3 June 1939. 986 Front rouge, 4 February 1939. 987 Front rouge, 29 July 1939. 988 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 21. 317 Toward Hegemony II

about implementing the existing communal development plan, a process that would only be interrupted by the onset of the Second World War.989 Between 1935 and 1939, the communist municipality extended the provision of sewerage, tap water and gas, installed electric lighting, rectified almost all defective lotissements, upgraded and extended existing schools via, among other things, the installation of central heating and the provision of new classes, transformed exhausted quarries into open parkland, opened school camps at Sables-d’Olonne in 1935 and Villers-sur-Mer in 1936, acquired 35 000 square metres for the provision of sporting facilities, enlarged the local cemetery, constructed a Maison de l’Enfance, started work on a new municipal patronage building at the Park Vaillant-Couturier, and refurbished the community clinic and improved its services.990 The latter provided much needed general medical, dentist, gynaecological, and paediatric consultations.991 The municipality brought the issue of covering the Bièvre to Beaugrand’s attention as a matter of urgency.992 Plans were outlined in 1937 for the redevelopment of the centre of the commune and in 1939 for the construction of a HBM along rue E. Raspail, but they were interrupted by the war. The achievements came in spite of the fact that the desire of the municipality to improve the living conditions of its inhabitants was constrained by a lack of funds.993 The communist municipality paid particular attention to enhancing the physical and mental wellbeing of Arcueil’s children. The school camp program began in 1935,

989 The new communist administration faced depression-induced fiscal crisis that forced it to postpone much needed projects voted by the previous administration - the extension of the municipal crèche, the fitting out of a community clinic and the establishment of a vacation colony and of health checks for infants. One of its first decisions was to redirect one million francs approved by the prefecture in October 1934 for these projects, as well as for the purchase land for new schools, toward urgent projects of school construction and a refurbishment. See AN F22803, Dossier Arcueil 1934-1938, correspondence from the Ministry of the Interior, Direction of Departmental and Communal Administration and extracts from the register of the Deliberations of Council of the Commune of Arcueil. 990 Michelon, “Arcueil”, p. 21; AN F22803 Dossier: Arcueil 1934-1938, correspondence from the Direction of Departmental and Communal Administration, the Ministry of the Interior and extracts from the register of the Deliberations of Council of the Commune of Arcueil; Varin, Mémoires, p. 131; DCMA, meetings of 27 May (AD94 1Mi1377, 490-504) & 4 December 1936 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 21- 42), 6 October 1937, 15 October 1938, 28 January & 15 April 1939 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 108-132, 204- 222, 230-262); Front rouge, 29 February 1936, 6 February 1937 & 4 March 1939. 991 The fact that it fulfilled a previously unmet need can be seen from the rapid growth of numbers attending - from 471 in September 1935, to 685 in October, 971 in November, 1394 in December and 1447 in January 1936, Front rouge, 29 February 1936. 992 Front rouge, 10 August 1935.

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with 200 children being sent on vacation.994 In 1937 the same number were sent to the new Villers-sur-Mer camp where, for 35 days, they were accommodated 800 metres from the sea.995 The aim was to improve the health of the children and to bolster their resistance to epidemics - instead of being exposed to pollution, dark and poorly ventilated housing and inadequate nourishment they enjoyed a healthy diet, exercise, sunshine, fresh air and outdoor activities. The needs of those children who did not go on vacation were also attended to by, for example, organising visits to the Vincennes Zoo.996 During the school year, between four and five hundred children attended the patronage every Thursday and Sundays – a new building under construction in 1939 was to have a kitchen, lockers, basins, shower, toilet, a room for films, spectacles or games, including soccer matches with local teams.997 Schools were a particular focus. In 1937, the municipality proudly introduced musical education for schoolchildren,998 while in 1939, children who had completed their certificate of studies were taken on an excursion by coach that included visits to the chateau de la Reine-Blanche, Chantilly and a tour of the airport at Le Bourget to see planes of different genres.999 The material well-being of children was also seen to. In 1936 the number of free pairs of shoes given to the children of the unemployed increased from 400 to 600, visits of infants to the community clinic increased and the number of free and half-cost meals received at the school canteens had quadrupled between 1935 and 1937 to 800.1000 The communist administration then used every opportunity to press home to local residents these achievements, through electoral meetings, such as the one held on 20 February 1936 as part of Vaillant-Couturier’s campaign for legislative elections, or through meetings of local groups, such as the one held with the unemployed in April 1938. 1001 Cachan’s communists also saw the propaganda value of the work of their colleagues who administered Arcueil. Their propaganda contrasted the allegedly poor

993 Looking back in 1939 at its accomplishments since coming to power, the municipality noted that they had been achieved in the face of rising inflation that had increased the costs of infrastructure by at least 50%, exerting heavy pressure on the diverse projects of the last two years – the project to increase class sizes at Laplace which completed at end of 1937 had cost 200 000 francs more than first budgeted despite fact that there was nothing added to it, see DCMA, meeting of 28 January 1939 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 230-251). 994 Front rouge, 10 August 1935 DCMA, meetings of 31 May 1935 & 27 May 1936 (1Mi 1377 pp. 391-409, 490-504). 995 DCMA, meeting of 6 October 1937 (1Mi 1390 pp. 108-132); Front rouge, 31 July & 7 August 1937. 996 Front rouge, 10 August 1935 997 Front rouge, 4 March & 22 July 1939. 998 Front rouge, 20 February 1937. 999 Front rouge, 14 July 1939. 1000 Front rouge, 1938.

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state of the community clinic, which it was said lacked modern technology, with those that existed in communist communes such as Villejuif, Gentilly and Arcueil.1002 When in December 1935 the Prefect imposed the costs of the police on the municipal budget as mandated by law, Arcueil’s communist municipality claimed that the inclusion of these costs, which it had left out of its original budget, delayed important communal works and purchases, such as the construction of new classrooms and purchase of new garbage trucks. 1003 Beyond the implementation of rational, efficient administration, control of local government gave Arcueil’s PCF greater scope to fashion a communist bastion in the manner I have analysed above. Arcueil’s communist administration led the way in defending the interests of local residents. Thus, when presented with a petition from 300 residents concerned that shanty housing was being built by stealth on vacant land rented out as garden plots, the municipality immediately wrote to and summoned the proprietor to ensure that no buildings other than small garden sheds would be erected.1004 For the municipality, protecting the hygiene of its inhabitants meant preventing people from constructing and inhabiting shanties that were without any roads, footpaths, infrastructure, water, gas, or rubbish collection. The communist municipality attempted to redress residents’ complaints regarding industrial pollution, and blamed their inability to do so on the tardy responses by both the offenders and the Prefecture of Police to its requests for action.1005 The administration tried to recognise Arcueil’s private roads en bloc, thereby giving the mal-lotis who inhabited them access to municipal services, however the Prefecture thwarted them in this action.1006 The communist municipality acted to protect small shopkeepers by banning mobile food stalls on horse-drawn vehicles – selling milk, butter, eggs, cheese, vegetables, conserves, and bazaar items – on the basis that the company that owned them was backed by big capital.1007 By acting to defend the underprivileged in their struggle

1001 Front rouge, 29 February 1936, 9 & 30 April 1938. 1002 AD94 36J28, “La Population Cachanaise doit avoir la parole”, PCF tract. 1003 DCMA, meeting of 19 December 1935 (AD94 1Mi1377, pp. 451-467); Front rouge, 25 January 1936. 1004 DCMA, Meeting of 15 April 1939 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 251-262). 1005 Front rouge, 11 September 1937 & 27 May 1939. 1006 DCMA, meeting of 15 October 1938 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 204-222). By law, the proprietor had to make a declaration ceding that part of the thoroughfare that they owned. 1007 Front rouge, 10 August 1935 320 Toward Hegemony II

against power big capital and the state, the municipality sought to create a broader communal solidarity based on the sans-culottide struggle of les petits against les gros. In addition to leading the struggle, the communist municipality also helped to empower local inhabitants by organising them around issues of importance either to the community as a whole or to specific groups. To this end, the municipality helped form a Committee of Future Users of the Metro of Gentilly, Arcueil, Cachan and Environs with the objective of petitioning for lower tariffs, shelters at stations and for better access to facilities and to platforms on the metro which would soon be extended to Arcueil.1008 In the spirit of the Popular Front, it was open to Christians and secularists, democrats, republicans, Radicals, Socialists and Communists. Under the aegis of the municipality, an Association of Old Workers was formed to advocate for the interests of men and women over 55 who did not have any personal funds with which to fund their retirement. It advocated a pension or annuity for the over 55s, and its honorary president was the mayor Sidobre.1009 The municipality followed up its earlier effort to protect the interests of petits commerçants On 16 January 1936, around 60 people responded to the municipality’s endeavour to group together shopkeepers, small industrialists and artisans in defence of their interests. A defence association for small commerce was formed, and the communist administration pledged to use of all available resources in order to aid it.1010 As would be expected from a municipality that prided itself on defending the interests of the working class, the communist administration used its governmental powers and resources to actively support industrial struggles, whether local or outside the suburb. When navvies in Arcueil went on strike in March 1936 to protest, among other things, their working conditions, Sidobre visited their workplace where he met with a municipal inspector of work and the union secretary and observed that the working conditions did not meet safety requirements.1011 I have already noted above the support given by the municipality to the (mostly female) striking workers at Galeries Lafayette during the June strike wave and the thanks they received from the strikers.1012 Toward the end of 1936, the municipality gave support to the industrial action of local dye workers and voted 200 francs to the Building federation of the CGT to aid it in its

1008 Front rouge, 29 May 1937. 1009 Front rouge, 9 January 1937. 1010 Front rouge, 25 January 1936. 1011 Front rouge, 4 April 1936.

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industrial struggles.1013 When a half-day strike was called on 18 March to protest the deaths in Clichy, the municipality joined in solidarity with 2000 striking local workers, closing its offices, stopping all municipal services for the afternoon, and draping the tricolour and red flag over the town hall balcony.1014 The communist administration was at the forefront of the efforts of workers to defend the gains of the Popular Front. In April 1937, the workers of the breweries of Brasserie de la Vallée and Croix d’Arcueil went on strike in solidarity with brewery workers in the Paris region who had been sacked, according to Front rouge, as part of an employer counteroffensive against militants and the new welfare provisions of the Popular Front government.1015 When both factories were occupied by workers, the municipality organised warm meals for the strikers and requested a meeting with the director of the company, in the presence of the workers’ delegate, a municipal councillor, Vallet.1016 The latter was part of a delegation, headed by Sidobre and including his first assistant Ambrogelly, which met with the Ministry of the Interior, with the latter undertaking to examine the case. Notwithstanding, the dispute ended when the factory was evacuated by the police, an act that was held as evidence of the bad faith of the employers opposed to the gains of the Popular Front. By giving moral and material support to striking workers, the municipality was not only acting as a defender of local interests but also as a locus of class and communal solidarity. The control of local government made available to the PCF additional resources to draw upon and encourage latent class and communal solidarities, and to in turn mould these into a communist communal identity. Local administration enabled the granting of one-off acts of succour, such as voting 2500 francs in May 1935 to residents affected by the flooded sewers caused by a recent thunderstorm,1017 and symbolic actions such as voting a subvention of 200 francs to the building of a statue to Paul

1012 Front rouge, 27 June 1936. 1013 Front rouge 29 December 1936. 1014 Front rouge, 27 March 1937. According to Front rouge Galeries Lafayette, the local breweries and Barriquand & Marre closed down. The numbers on strike were: 1200 employees from Galeries Lafayette, 150 workers from the breweries, 600 workers from Barriquand & Marre, 86 workers from the Fosse, Langles and Guillout biscuit factories, 86 from the David dye factory and 100 workers from the Ercorcheville dye factory, and 100 out of 100 workers on the Sceaux railway line. 1015 Front rouge, 17 April 1937. 1016 Front rouge lauded the discipline of the workers who behaved themselves by adhering to a strict self-imposed prohibition on consuming beer despite the fact that the employer normally allowed this privilege. 1017 DCMA, meeting of 27 May 1936 (AD94 1Mi1377, pp. 490-504). 322 Toward Hegemony II

Lafarge in Draveil.1018 Strengthening communal bonds also meant supporting local organisations, whether communist or non-communist. In August 1935, the mayor gave a reception to a local member of the Vélo Club of Arcueil-Cachan who had completed the Tour de France,1019 drawing what Front rouge regarded as ‘pertinent’ sporting and political conclusions from the fact that the member concerned was a worker and the child of workers. In February the following year, the municipality hosted a banquet for the Vélo Club, which, in the spirit of the Popular Front, was also attended by Caron, an assistant mayor of Cachan, and Lucien Dimet, the Radical President of the Club.1020 Sidobre spoke of the importance of sport, pledging active support to the club from the communist municipality. The Spanish Civil War presented a unique opportunity for the municipality to blend class solidarity with ideology. From the outset, the council pledged to support the republican cause with all its available forces, demanding an immediate end to the blockade on Spain and saluting the aid given to the Spanish Republic by the International Brigades among whom were volunteers from Arcueil.1021 To support the republican cause was not only to struggle against fascism but also meant defending the French Republic and French democracy from the threat of being surrounded by fascist states, especially since Hitler had stated in Mein Kampf that he wanted to encircle France. Along with the PCF, the SFIO, and their youth wings, the local trade union committee, the Radical-Socialist Party, the Pelletanists, and other pro-republican political movements in the commune, the municipality was part of the Comité d’aide et de soutien à l’Espagne. Midway through 1938 it raised 2350 francs plus clothing and boxes of milk, for Spanish republicans.1022 Six months later a collection for Spain raised 4200 francs and a great quantity of provisions and clothes.1023 As the situation in Spain worsened, aiding refugees, especially the children among them, was a pressing concern, with the council demanding that special trains be used to transport them on across the frontier to safety.1024 By February 1939, 144 Spanish refugees, for the most part women, children and the elderly from the Basque country and Asturia who had been taking refuge in Catalonia before the defeat of the

1018 Front rouge, 29 December 1936. 1019 Front rouge, 10 August 1935. 1020 Front rouge 8 February 1936. 1021 DCMA, meeting of 4 December 1936 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 21-42) 1022 Varin, Mémoires, p. 131; Front rouge, 6 August 1938. 1023 Front rouge, 11 February 1939. The collection took place on 5 February.

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Republic, arrived at the Villers-sur-Mer vacation camp. After a stay of one and a half months, the refugees were visited by Sidobre and three other councillors who reported to the council that their state of health had improved a great deal since the beginning of their stay.1025 The refugees presented the councillors with flowers and thanked the municipality and people of Arcueil for their support. When soon after the local prefect of Lisieux directed that the refugees had to be returned to their provinces of origin the municipality sent a letter of protest.1026 Accommodation among families in Arcueil was organised for unaccompanied children by a welcoming committee composed of people of all political opinions, including the parish priest, and presided over by Sidobre.1027 Arcueil’s inhabitants responded by giving sanctuary to child refugees and by giving the committee gifts of goods and clothing.1028 The Children’s Council of the Patronage Laïque wrote an open letter inviting the refugee children to participate in its collective games and stating that their parents had explained to them the courage of the Spanish children and the sufferings they had endured under the fascist terror. It ended with the slogans: “A bas la terreur fasciste! Vive l’Espagne républicaine! Vive le front de la Liberté!”1029 The municipality also supported international volunteers, treating wounded volunteers returning from Spain in its community clinic in 1937 and 19381030 and holding a collection on 2 April 1939 for those wounded volunteers who did not receive a pension, part of a national day of collection organised by the Comité national d’aide aux volontaires blessés et mutilés.1031 Constructing a communist communal identity meant not only acting as a locus for communal solidarity but also becoming a major source of local popular culture in order to subtly or explicitly shape local identity. To this end, community events played an important role. They could take the form of a children’s matinée held on 5 January 1936 at which more than 600 children were entertained by clowns, comedies, and dancers1032 or the fête enfantine held in mid 1936 that involved the distribution of

1024 DCMA, meeting of 25 January 1939 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 223-230). 1025 DCMA, meeting of 15 April 1939, (pp. 251-262); Front rouge, 1 April 1939. 1026 Front rouge, 1 April 1939. 1027 Front rouge, 18 February 1939. 1028 Front rouge, 4 September 1937. 1029 Front rouge, 4 September 1937. 1030 Paloma, “Le Retour et l’Action des anciens volontaires français des brigades Internationales en région parisienne”, p. 40. Other municipalities did the same, namely Bagnolet, Romainville, Villejuif, Vitry, Gentilly, L’Hay-les-Roses. 1031 Front rouge, 1 April 1939. 1032 Front rouge, 11 January 1936. 324 Toward Hegemony II

cakes.1033 More significant was the annual kermesse. The latter took place over the course of a weekend with the aim of raising funds to aid local children by, for example, sending them on vacation. Festivities could include theatre, music, a circus, ballet exhibitions, performers in provincial costumes (in 1936 from Rouergue, Corrèze, and Brittany), performances by acrobats, comedians, gymnasts, dancers, the distribution of prizes, renditions of popular songs, a cycle race, radio broadcasts and a grand night time ball and fireworks.1034 In 1939 the kermesse was preceded by a Grand Gala Sportif held on Sunday 12 March that included boxing, wrestling, weightlifting and cycling races for which the municipality awarded cash prizes1035, and a Fête Foraine du Printemps held between 18 March and 2 April with floats, a cycling race, a concert, parade, and games for children.1036 These events were generally well attended - 7000 people attended the Grand Kermesse Populaire held on 7 and 8 September 1935.1037 They became increasingly politicised in the lead up to World War II. In 1936 there was a Victory of Work march and in 1939 there were stalls from ARAC, the Centre syndical, the Comité des femmes d’Arcueil, the local branch of the Vieux travailleurs and a ‘Grand Prix de Front rouge’ was given to the winner of a cycling race.1038 The kermesse provides an example of the way in which the PCF politicised what were ostensibly community events, transforming them into instruments of propaganda. Thus, Arcueil’s communist municipality celebrated the installation of electric lighting to the municipal park in 1935 not only with a night time performance by a local trombone society La Fantasia but with speeches from the mayor Sidobre and Conseiller Général Beaugrand highlighting the significance of such a gathering organised by the communist municipality under the sign of the Popular Front of Work, Liberty and Peace.1039 The following year, the municipality set up loudspeakers and a picture screen on the balcony of the town hall to broadcast the results of voting for Vaillant-Couturier, the PCF and the Popular Front in general in the first round of the legislative elections.1040 The first announcements of success were met with music from the local

1033 DCMA, meeting of 27 May 1936 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 490-504). 1034 For the 1935 kermesse, see Le Moniteur, no. 330, 18 October 1935 and Front rouge, 25 August 1935. For the 1936 kermesse see Front rouge, 27 June 1936. For the 1939 kermesse see Front rouge, 10 June 1939. 1035 Front rouge, 11 March 1939. 1036 Front rouge, 18 March 1939. 1037 Le Moniteur, 18 October 1935. 1038Front rouge, 10 June 1939. 1039 Front rouge, 21 September 1935. 1040 Front rouge, 9 May 1936. 325 Toward Hegemony II

group La Fantasia, followed by singing of the Internationale and speeches from Sidobre and Ambrogelly regarding the victory of PCF and the Popular Front. A collection for the PCF was made during the proceedings. At the end of the 1939 school year the communist administration gave the top students in each class an illustrated version of Romain Rolland’s Valmy as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the “Grande Révolution Française de 1789.”1041 The conscious attempt to transform Arcueil into a communist bastion manifested itself in the decisions of the municipality to rename the rue de Gentilly in honour of the communist Henri Barbusse, in recognition of his work in the antimilitarist struggle, to name a street and the municipal park after Paul Vaillant- Couturier’s following the latter’s death.1042 The clearest indication of Arcueil’s emergence as an integral part of the Red Belt in 1936 came when its communist municipality followed in the footsteps of Bobigny,1043 the longstanding suburban bastion of communism and host of the first Communist Party School, by playing host to the latter’s successor. Presumably, Arcueil was regarded, like Bobigny before it, as a secure base from which to train party cadres. Sidobre located a suitable venue opposite the train station in Arcueil for the second PCF school whose facilities came to include classrooms, leisure rooms, a dining room and a library and a small garden. 1044 “Le camarade Sidobre était très intéressé par notre école et visiblement très fier que la commune dont il était maire soit l’hôte de l’école”, attested Fritz Glaubauf, who was sent from Moscow to aid in setting up the school, “Sa secrétaire, Maï Politzer, veillait à la liaison constante entre l’école et lui.”1045 The school at Arcueil was not a copy of its predecessor in Bobigny, it was instead a French party school that aimed to give a central place to French problems. Its three central foci were:

1041 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1R19, Ville d’Arcueil, “A Messieurs les Industriels et Commerçants d’Arcueil, Pour Donner des Vacances, de la Joie, de la Santé, aux Enfants de Nos Écoles”, 12 July 1939. 1042 On the re-naming of street after Barbusse see DCMA, meeting of 31 August 1935 (AD94 1Mi1377, pp. 409-426) and the re-naming of the route de L’Hay-les-Roses as the avenue Paul Vaillant- Couturier, meeting of 22 October 1937 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 133-137). The municipal park was re-named some time after Vaillant-Couturier’s death, as is indicated by accounts of events which took place at the aforementioned park. 1043 In November 1924, the first national school of the PCF had been founded in Bobigny. Bobigny had been chosen on the basis that it was solidly and reliably communist, the mayor Clamamus having sheltered communist agents and the municipality having been communist since the schism. Bobigny was therefore adjudged to be a safe place to put into practice Moscow’s instructions to establish a Marxist- Leninist school as a means of training future leaders from working-class backgrounds, many of whom not only had little knowledge of Marxism but were barely literate, Stovall, Red Belt, pp. 117-119. 1044 Fritz Glaubauf, “Mon Travail à l’École d’Arcueil du Parti Communiste Français”, Cahiers de l’Institut Maurice Thorez, no. 7, 2nd trimestre, 1974, pp. 154, 157-158. 1045 Glaubauf, “Mon Travail à l’École d’Arcueil du Parti Communiste Français”, pp. 157-158. 326 Toward Hegemony II

the study of Marxism-Leninism with a strong emphasis on its historical aspect; the study of France, with a particular emphasis on the current situation and the problems of the Popular Front; and the practical work of communist organisations. The school taught four principal subjects - political economy, philosophy, Marxism-Leninism, and history – but also aimed to provide a general education to workers by helping them develop their oral and written expression and through some complementary teaching of French, while cultural and scientific problems were also discussed. Strict discipline was imposed on a group of mostly young students who originated from all over France, with teaching beginning at 8am and continuing until nightfall, the afternoons being reserved for practical work in suburban organisations. Students participated in all the demonstrations organised by the party and monitored all current events, particularly the civil war in Spain. Officeholders from the Central Committee gave lectures on specific problems, such as the Popular Front in the case of Thorez, and in the case of Marcel Cachin attended social events. The activity of the school continued well into 1939, possibly right up until the communist administration was dissolved on 4 October 1939,1046 and many of the students went on to play active roles in the Resistance.1047 The school and its students must have acted as an example and source of inspiration to local militants, while at the same time giving Arcueil and its communist administration an important place within the movement as a communist bastion. In the wake of the election of a communist municipality, the presence of a PCF school in Arcueil marked the suburb out as an emergent communist bastion. The PCF emerged as a hegemon in Arcueil through its auxiliary organisations and its control of local government. Together, the grassroots activity of the party and its control of local government demonstrated more than ever the PCF’s dominance of the local working- class movement and its capacity to empower local inhabitants. Control of local government also gave Arcueil’s communists an unparalleled opportunity to reinforce class and communal class solidarity and to shape local popular culture in such as way as to create the foundations for a communist counter-society.

1046 DBMOF Cd-rom. A search using the “École d’Arcueil” reveals a number of students from who took courses at the school from 1936 until May 1939. 1047 Glaubauf, “Mon Travail à l’École d’Arcueil du Parti Communiste Français”, pp. 155-160. 327 Toward Hegemony II

The Popular Front and the Changing Political Landscape of Arcueil and Cachan

By mid-1938, the division and disarray among the PCF’s opponents in Arcueil and Cachan gave way to an unravelling of the Popular Front alliance. By July 1937 the PCF was once again proclaiming that the majority of Cachan’s municipal council was reactionary, citing the fact that the council had refused to participate in a float organised by the Popular Front on 13 July 1937 to celebrate the storming of the Bastille.1048 Cachan’s municipal council had refused to participate because it did not want to be associated with political groupings or ‘elements of disorder’. When the administration banned all political organisations from using municipal facilities, the PCF blamed the influence of the fascist leagues, now transformed into political parties (a key complaint of the local PSF had been the use of municipal facilities for political purposes).1049 By April 1938, the communists were complaining that Eyrolles maintained control of the council because some councillors had given up the fight and resigned, while another who had pledged allegiance to the Popular Front continued to support Eyrolles.1050 They accused the Radicals of making statements in support of the Popular Front but then voting in support of Eyrolles’ administration.1051 By November 1938, the municipality of Cachan was holding its service for the Great War one week early in order to avoid coinciding with the one organised by Arcueil’s communist municipality. More ominously for the Popular Front, the local alliance of communists and socialists also began to break down. The SFIO and PCF were closely allied well into 1937, with a local Comité d’Entente Communiste-Socialiste formed in Cachan in April 1937.1052 This committee held meetings and banquets including one on 8 May 1937 at which Lemoine, the communist Conseiller-Général Beaugrand, and delegates from the regional Communist and Socialist federations were present.1053 However, in the second half of 1937 the local alliance between communists and socialists in Arcueil and Cachan began to deteriorate. By December 1937, anticommunist articles once again

1048 Front rouge, 31 July 1937. 1049 AD94 36J28, “La Population Cachanaise doit avoir la parole”. The PCF also complained that despite being a legal party that supported the Popular Front government it was equated with the fascists who were plotting against the Republic and France in the interests of Mussolini and Hitler, who were enemies of peace. See also the PSF letter read out to council by Eyrolles, DCMC, meeting 20 November 1936 (AD94, pp. 447-451). 1050 Front rouge, 9 April 1938. 1051 Front rouge, 30 July 1938. 1052 Front rouge, 1 May 1937. 1053 Front rouge, 15 May 1937. 328 Toward Hegemony II

filled the pages of Le Socialiste.1054 In July 1938, Cachan’s communists effectively crippled the entente committee when they criticised the socialists for supporting the municipal budget and councillor Lemoine for his absence from crucial council votes.1055 Despite repeated requests, the socialists subsequently refused to re-convene the entente committee on the basis that Lemoine had been defamed.1056 Furthermore, socialist women left Cachan’s Comité mondial after Munich because the communists had been critical of it and the socialists supportive.1057 By 1939, non-communist organisations were no longer present in Cachan’s Popular Front Committee, which existed in name only.1058 Calls for unity of action with their SFIO counterparts from the Cachan branch of the PCF went unheeded throughout 1939, this despite the fact that fascists, and the PSF in particular, remained active in the suburb.1059 In the wake of the death of the Popular Front, the local deputy Guyot could only attract 150 participants to a public account of his mandate in Cachan in November 1938 (compared with 1000 for Beaugrand in 1937).1060 Thus, by the time the Hitler-Stalin pact had rendered the PCF illegal, the disintegration of the Popular Front had already somewhat stymied the ascendancy that the party had been enjoying in Cachan. Lacking the level of implantation of Arcueil’s PCF and weakened by its illegal status and isolation vis-à-vis other political groups, the PCF in Cachan scarcely survived the outbreak of war as a political force.

The Outbreak of War

When war broke out in September 1939, the communist municipality of Arcueil threw its full support behind the French war effort. It sent “salutations émues” and its “voeux les plus chaleureux” to all comrades, colleagues and inhabitants of Arcueil

1054 See for example, Le Socialiste, December 1937. 1055 Front rouge, 30 July 1938. 1056 Front rouge, 19 November 1938 & 1 April 1939. 1057 Front rouge, 13 May 1939. 1058 By February 1939, the CGT, PCF and Comité Mondial des Femmes are listed as constituent organisations of the Popular Front Committee, Front rouge, 11 February 1939. 1059 For example, see the appeals made in Front rouge, on 1 April , 13 May, 29 May & 12 August 1939. Front rouge, 24 June 1939, reported that a fascist attacked a lone seller of L’Humanité in the Lumières quarter in the same month. Front rouge, 15 April 1939, claims that the PSF was given permission to hold a ball in a municipal venue, despite the systematic refusal of communal facilities to communists. On 29 April 1939, Front rouge claimed that the mayor had visited the local head of PSF at the same time as de la Rocque. On 3 June 1939 Front rouge reported the capture of the Caisse des Écoles by the PSF. 1060 Front rouge, 5 November 1938. 329 Toward Hegemony II

“sans distinction de situation sociale” who had been called into service to “défendre leur Patrie” against Hitler.1061 The language used is a total contrast to the anti-patriotic behaviour of the 1921-1922 communist administration and it reflects the patriotic rebirth that Arcueil’s communists underwent during the Popular Front, although it should be noted that communist patriotism entailed the presence of red flags and revolutionary slogans at commemorations of the Great War, an anathema to nationalists such as the PSF sympathisers on Cachan’s council. Arcueil’s communist municipality was suspended on 4 October 1939 and, for having refused to disavow the Germano- Soviet pact, Sidobre’s mandate was withdrawn in February 1940.1062 Sidobre was placed under house arrest the following June, detained in the Vichy zone and then deported to Algeria. Not all of the communist councillors followed Sidobre’s lead. At least two other councillors, Augros and Tenet, were unable to support the PCF’s political line following the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact and resigned from the party.1063 At least two other councillors chose to collaborate (detailed in Chapter 7). The party as it had existed in the interwar period was no more, as communist militancy was forced underground. The remaining communist militants became part of the Resistance where, in time they were joined by new adherents to communism.

A Fledgling Hegemony?

In both Arcueil and Cachan, the Popular Front was not simply a political alliance, it was a mass movement that saw various groups, communist and non- communist, mobilised via the proliferation of meetings and other activities. The strikes of June 1936, which had a direct impact on Arcueil, brought this mobilisation to the unorganised masses. This climate of activism provided an unparalleled opportunity for the PCF to expand its influence, and the number, scope and level of activity of its auxiliary and front organisations multiplied. Once again, Arcueil’s communists were at an advantage. Building upon the depth of the local organisations, the election of two councillors in 1932, local enthusiasm for the Popular Front, the weakness of the local SFIO, disillusionment with the Radical administration, and splits among the local

1061 DCMA, meeting of 29 September 1939 (p. 286). 1062 Varin, Mémoires, p. 137; DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Sidobre. 1063 DBMOF Cd-rom, entries on Robert Étienne Jean Augros and Robert Pierre Tenet. Augros resigned on 27 October 1939, while Tenet wrote on 9 February 1940 to the prefect after his dismissal as councillor to state that he no longer belonged to the Communist Party and still less the Communist International.

330 Toward Hegemony II

Radicals, the PCF took control of Arcueil’s local government, thus putting the local party in a unparalleled position from which to mould Arcueil into a communist bastion. Assisted by the local branch, it became the champion of the people, a force for popular democracy and working-class empowerment, and a shaper, and ultimately a major generator, of working-class sociability and popular culture. In this way, control of local government enabled a nascent communist communal identity to emerge in Arcueil, an identity that now wholeheartedly embraced revolutionary patriotism. However, unlike their predecessors that controlled the last municipal administration of Arcueil-Cachan, the communist administration of 1935 to 1939 made sure that its major pre-occupation was the pursuit of efficient administration focused on ameliorating living conditions and sensitive the needs of locals. If local circumstances help to explain the stronger position of the PCF in Arcueil between 1935 and 1939 vis-à-vis Cachan, they also help to explain the rapid rise in support for communism in the latter. At a time when mutual hostility still characterised relations between the two parties, in Cachan the local branches of the PCF and the SFIO formed part of a local antifascist alliance that arose from a grassroots antifascist reflex in a suburb where the extreme right was active. This activity went beyond meeting held by Solidarité Française held on the 23 May 1934. In March 1936, the Croix de Feu opened a philanthropic social centre in Cachan in the presence of 300 members (40 of whom were from Arcueil and Cachan) and six local councillors, the Jeunesses Patriotes, and later members of the PSF, intermittently clashed with communists as they attempted to sell their newspapers, while Front rouge claimed that clandestine meetings were held between local fascists and members of council.1064 This is the context in which local councillors began to drift toward the Popular Front while support rose for the PCF. Despite the fact that the CURSDIGC/Radical list had run an anti-Popular Front campaign in the 1935 municipal elections, soon after these elections members of this list, including two assistant mayors from the Radicals, began to sympathise with the Popular Front.1065 The end result was that the majority of the council voted in favour of an SFIO sponsored motion in support of the Blum government, and were subsequently

1064 Front rouge, 16 June 1934, 4 April, 28 November & 26 December 1936, 6 February 1937, 3 July & 13 November 1937.

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severely censured by the local PSF which, in a letter to council, condemned the administration for having betrayed its anti-Popular Front voters.1066 The intervention of the PSF in local politics prompted more defections to the Popular Front from local councillors, and by February 1937 Front rouge claimed that the majority of Cachan’s municipal council sympathised with the Popular Front and its program, while the remainder was sympathetic to the PSF.1067 It was not only this anti-fascist backlash that was conducive to growing support for the PCF in Cachan. As the activity of the municipality slowed yet problems persisted with the provision of infrastructure and as the municipality encountered difficulties in the building of the new town hall, chinks appeared in the image of the CURSDIGC and its Radical allies as competent and efficient administrators striving to improve the lives of local inhabitants.1068 This helped the PCF in Cachan to expand its audience but not to the extent achieved by its counterpart in Arcueil. In part this was because the PCF in Cachan faced a broad-based, dynamic SFIO whose members were active in local associations. The fact that it was a real competitor in municipal politics is evidenced by the election of three socialists to Cachan’s council in 1935 when the PCF

1065 The earliest signs of a split in the CURSDIGC/Radical administration came soon after the 1935 election, and by September councillors from Cachan were reported to have appeared as delegates at an antifascist meeting and by November the local Popular Front now included Radical-Socialists. Municipal councillors attended functions held by the Comité de Chômeurs in the run up to the legislative elections of 1936, Front rouge, 21 September & 2 November 1935, 7 March & 9 May 1936. 1066 DCMC, meeting of 10 June 1936 (AD94 1Mi 1377, pp. 371-410) for the motion in favour of the Blum government and meeting of 20 November 1936 (AD94 1Mi 1390, pp. 447-451) for the letter from the PSF read out to council. 1067 Front rouge, 28 November & 26 December 1936, 6 February 1937. 1068 Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 9-10. Nevertheless, the period from 1935 to 1939 was marked by the long-awaited surfacing of the Boulevard de la Vanne, the opening of the new town hall and post office, and the construction of a groupe scolaire in the Coteau, Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, p. 71; AD94 36J10, Report entitled “Principaux Travaux Depuis 1929”and a letter from the mayor Eyrolles to the Prefect prior to the latter’s visit to Cachan in 1943. Conseil Municipal de Cachan, Cachan: Création de la commune, pp. 53-54. The mayor Eyrolles was attacked for having paid too much for the bricks used to construct the town hall and for having exhibited favouritism in the choice of the building contractor. He was also lambasted for spending millions on an extravagant building when the budget was in deficit, the people suffering a depression, and there were numerous deficiencies in the communal infrastructure, particularly in the Coteau, left unimproved. See Front rouge, 8, 22 & 29 February 1936, 7 & 21 March 1936. When the Syndicat du Boulevard de la Vanne held its general assembly on Sunday 24 March 1935 it observed and regretted “que la Municipalité ait attendu 6 ans pour se préoccuper de la grave question de l’assainissement de tout ce quartier,” Le Socialiste, 28 March 1935. 332 Toward Hegemony II

failed to have any elected.1069 However, ultimately it was the greater depth and breadth of communist influence in Arcueil (for reasons outlined above) and the PCF’s control of local government in this suburb which put Arcueil’s communists in a stronger position locally vis-à-vis their counterparts in Cachan.

1069 Membership of the SFIO grew from 10 in 1934, to 22 in 1935 and 55 in 1936, DBMOF Cd- rom, entry on Antoine Marcilloux. The president of the Syndicat de la Vanne ran as an SFIO candidate in the municipal elections of 1935, while, André Lemoine, the president of the Association Propriétaires Sinistrés de la rue des Vignes representing inhabitants of a street located in the Coteau, was elected to council, AD94 36J26, “Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935, Parti Socialiste (SFIO), Liste des Candidates.”

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5. CONCLUSIONS

In both Arcueil and Cachan, but especially in the former under the communist administration of 1935-1939, the reach of the PCF was all encompassing. From entertaining and educating children to looking after the interests of old workers, from mundane issues to do with public transport to organising aid for the Spanish republicans and looking after refugees from the Spanish civil war, from first aid classes for mothers to protecting the interests of shopkeepers, communists were always defending the interests of les petits. At its base, the communism of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan was a militant form of sans-culottisme. Its success was contingent on an intensely local focus, a pre-requisite for the construction of counter-community. In my view, this focus on the local is the key to understanding French Communism because the success or otherwise of the PCF in constructing a local communist bastion always turns on specifically local factors. While the electoral and social implantation of communism went hand in hand in both Arcueil and Cachan, the trajectory of implantation in these two suburbs differed. In Arcueil, a strong history of working-class militancy, a historical attachment to its revolutionary traditions, the precocious development of socialism, an ascendant pre- schism SFIO, and a growing proletarianisation and industrialisation, pre-disposed the suburb to communist penetration. This led to the post-World War I successes of the SFIO and to an early communist administration. Despite electoral defeats during the 1920s, due in no small part to the sectarian tactics dictated by Moscow but faithfully enacted by local militants, the PCF in Arcueil gradually put down roots. communist organisations were formed which promoted class consciousness, working-class solidarity and an anti-bourgeois communal identity. These organisations stood outside the traditional groupings that were dominated by Radical-Socialists and which included members of the SFIO, an indication of the SFIO’s integration into the dominant bourgeois society. In their efforts, Arcueil’s communists were assisted by the new party’s retention of the majority of party activists, including experienced militants, former councillors and newcomers. They retained heroes such as the former Communard Poënsin, and rising stars such as Sidobre. In Cachan, however, the Left was very weak, a corollary of the fact that it did not have the same history of working-class radicalism and at the time of partition was more bourgeois in character. The PCF initially emerged as the main party of the Left by

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default, owing to the fact that the SFIO was almost non-existent in Cachan after the schism. Even then, the party was weak, hence it only fielded seven candidates in the 1923 municipal elections. However, the PCF rapidly developed post-partition, concomitantly with a rapid growth in the population and its attendant proletarianisation. The PCF put down roots in much the same way as in Arcueil, with many party and auxiliary organisations being intercommunal until the advent of the Popular Front. During the Popular Front, the growth in support for the PCF in Cachan was undoubtedly aided by a splitting of the local political elite into pro- and anti-Popular Front factions, thereby permanently weakening the CURSDIGC as a political force. At the same time, the re-birth of the SFIO in the mid- to-late-1920s, as a left of centre party often closely allied with leftwing Radicals, was a blow to the PCF in Cachan. Unlike its counterpart in Arcueil, the SFIO in Cachan was a real competitor to the PCF, especially as the latter was hamstrung electorally by sectarian tactics that helped keep the Left from power. The socialists benefited from emulating communist activism, by the fact that party members kept their distance from the local ruling elite, and by divisions which opened up in the latter in the late 1920s. In Arcueil, the PCF was already on the rise as the Depression deepened in the early 1930s, and this ascendancy was transformed into a latent communist hegemony under the Popular Front. Leftwing unity multiplied opportunities for the PCF to organise and indoctrinate the local population by broadening the party’s audience and membership, thus helping it to win power in the 1935 municipal election. Once in power, the party was able to put into place the four constituents of a communist hegemony. Competent and efficient local government brought material improvements to the lives of local residents, thus proving the efficacy of communist administration that saw the Soviet Union as a model. Through its control of the resources and authority invested in local government, the PCF in Arcueil was able to expand its leadership of the working class and its role as a tribune of the people, its defence and empowerment of workers, and its appropriation of working-class sociability and local popular culture, with the ultimate aim of conflating class and local identity with Bolshevik communism. Thus, the Poënsin banquet which had been a communist event in the early 1930s, metamorphosed under the Popular Front into a communal celebration, one which was supported by the municipality as much as by Front rouge. In its celebration of the Paris Commune and of Poënsin, and in its speeches tracing the communard inheritance of the Bolsheviks, this event linked together a veteran local politician, the revolutionary

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traditions of Parisian workers and the Bolshevik Revolution. In this way the PCF municipality attempted to lay the foundations for a communist counter-society. The Popular Front therefore represented a watershed for the PCF in Cachan since disunity on the Left had helped to keep the CURSDIGC in power and had acted as a break on the expansion of support for the PCF. Consequently, the PCF in Cachan benefited from the Popular Front in the same way as its counterparts in Arcueil, with the important exception that it did not win control of the municipal administration. This meant Cachan’s communists entered World War II having been unable to establish the ideological foundations for hegemony to the same extent as their counterparts had done in Arcueil. As we shall now see, while Arcueil’s communist resistance maintained the rudiments of a communist hegemony that was built up in the interwar period, in Cachan the war appears to have more or less wiped out the local communist movement.

336 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

7. The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?: The PCF in Arcueil and Cachan, 1940-1958.

At first glance, the patriotic role of the PCF in World War II and its immediate aftermath appears to be problematic for one of the central hypotheses of my thesis, namely working-class alienation from bourgeois society. The PCF’s wartime role, however, was consistent with the revolutionary patriotism that has been so fundamental to the French working class and which was present in the PCF from the outset, though it has been given a greater emphasis at different times, such as during the Popular Front. The Resistance and its immediate aftermath did not mark the integration of the PCF and its working-class constituency; rather they were, like the Popular Front, a brief parenthesis in the otherwise enduring legacy of alienation. Thus, in May 1947 the PCF was once again banished to the social and political ghetto, and took with it its now significant working-class constituency, a constituency that demonstrated its alienation by voting for a stridently pro-Soviet political party at the height of the Cold War during which France was allied to the USA, the main enemy of the USSR. World War II played a critical role in the postwar surge in support, both electorally and in terms of membership, for the PCF. In Section 1 of this chapter I demonstrate how the war ultimately reinforced the fledgling communist hegemony that had emerged in Arcueil via the role that local communists played in the Resistance and by the fact after the war Arcueil retained many of its leading communist militants from the interwar years, with many of them, including the former mayor Sidobre, having gained renewed prestige as a consequence of the repression they were subjected to by Vichy and the Nazis. Thus, the strength and stability of the PCF in Arcueil that I have established in the preceding chapters as characteristic of the interwar period was re- confirmed after World War II. However, in Cachan resistance to the occupier was spearheaded by non-communists while the party lost much of its militant base, including Cellier, the local branch secretary at the time of the outbreak of war. In this way the pattern I have established for the interwar period was maintained, namely the relative weakness of the PCF in Cachan vis-à-vis its counterpart in Arcueil. This left the PCF in a much stronger position to assert its hegemony in Arcueil than was the case in Cachan. Nonetheless, my analysis of electoral politics in Arcueil and Cachan from 1945

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to 1958 in Section 2 of this chapter indicates that the PCF was the dominant electoral force in both suburbs under the Fourth Republic. In Arcueil this was confirmation of a long-term trend whereby the PCF had emerged in the mid-1920s as the main political opposition and then in the mid-1930s as the dominant political force. In Cachan, the dominance of the PCF was a re-affirmation of the 1936/37 departure from the interwar norm, and in the 1950s Cachan’s electorate began a return to its interwar moderation. In Section 3, my analysis of the politico-social implantation of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan between 1945 and 1958 demonstrates the importance that control of municipal government played in consolidating communist hegemony. Control of local government enabled Arcueil’s communists to put in place the foundations of a durable communist hegemony. Losing control of municipal government in 1947 dealt a fatal blow to any attempt to establish communist hegemony by denying Cachan’s communists the resources and political authority invested in local government that were critical in a suburb that lacked the radical traditions of Arcueil. Consequently, in a hostile Cold War environment and in the face of rapid demographic growth from the 1950s onwards under a dynamic socialist mayor, the PCF faced an uphill battle asserting hegemony in Cachan.

1. ARCUEIL AND CACHAN DURING WORLD WAR II

Arcueil and Cachan’s inhabitants endured difficult living conditions as a result of war and foreign military occupation. Undoubtedly, the ability and willingness of inhabitants to resist the latter was limited in view of the daily preoccupation of getting enough to eat and of keeping warm in the winter. Hunger was a major preoccupation for wartime inhabitants of Arcueil who reported going days without eating, having to use coupons to purchase black, contaminated bread, having to queue at the town hall for 100 grams of bread, receiving only 90 grams of meat and queuing for two hours to buy a rabbit.1070 The lack of coal in the winter of 1942 meant that Monsieur Fréguin suffered temperatures of minus seventeen degrees, while Monsieur Debest used alcohol for heating, which caused unbearable humidity.1071 People fled the suburb or, like Madame Choquet, were sent to Germany to work, while the German army requisitioned the

1070 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interviews with Madame André, Madame Guibert and Monsieur André Fréguin. 1071 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interviews with Monsieur André Fréguin and Monsieur Debest, 31 Rue Berthollet.

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cinema and all the other places of leisure, with the former only showing very old German films.1072 In Cachan, less than half the pre-war population remained in the suburb in May 1941.1073 The remaining population included refugees more or less stranded in a suburb where all butchers and bakers but one had left and there were no doctors. Under these circumstances, the municipality kept the population fed by re- opening the bakeries, procuring and requisitioning foodstuffs, and by opening a soup kitchen which by March 1941 had given meals to 1000 people.1074 However, despite the difficulties there is clear evidence of resistance activity in Arcueil and Cachan, though of a different nature. In his study of the Resistance movement in what is today the Department of the Val-de-Marne, Jean-Marc Behar identifies two poles of resistance.1075 One pole corresponded to the working-class suburbs south of the capital, with Ivry being an epicentre and the communist movement the main impetus, although the activity of the latter was not uniform. The other pole was centred on residential and rural suburbs in the east of the Val-de-Marne and here various Gaullist movements were formed with their activity becoming notable from 1943 onwards. By associating protest movements and patriotic struggles with acts of sabotage and armed struggle and by supporting the struggle of the working-class masses against the occupier, the Communist Resistance received the support of the local populations in the first pole of resistance, and this support enabled continual renovation. Arcueil was part of the first pole of resistance, with the PCF spearheading the Resistance in this suburb, partly as a continuation of inter-war militancy and partly through the infusion of new blood into the movement. However, in Cachan the PCF had never attained anything approaching political hegemony before the war and the evidence I have found suggests that non-communists led the Resistance.

Resistance and Collaboration in Arcueil

After the suspension of the communist municipality on 4 October 1939, Louis Mafrand, an entrepreneur of public works, was named president of a special delegation

1072 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interviews with Madame Choquet and Monsieur André Fréguin. 1073 AD94 36J15, Cachan WW2. Letter from Eyrolles dated March 1941 to the Prefect on the situation in Cachan. According to the latter, a census undertaken on 1 January 1941 showed only 6248 inhabitants instead of the 13 379 inhabitants prior to the war. 1074 AD94 36J15, Letter from Eyrolles dated March 1941. 1075 Jean-Marc Behar, “La Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Paris VIII, 1987, pp. 39, 62, 113, 121.

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that was subsequently installed in Arcueil.1076 At the direction of the Prefect, the new municipality attempted to wipe away the stain of Arcueil’s communist past.1077 The avenue Paul Vaillant-Couturier reverted to the route de L’Hay-les-Roses, the parc Paul Vaillant-Couturier to the parc municipal d’Arcueil and the rue Henri Barbusse to the rue de Gentilly.1078 The local syndic of a private road was permitted to change the name of rue Raymond Lefebvre to the rue Danton. On 24 September 1941, in his monthly report to the Prefect of the Seine, Mafrand wrote that, although formerly favourable to communist ideas, the population had not been difficult to administer.1079 Communist and Gaullist tracts were sometimes distributed in the commune but he claimed their number was no more elevated than in any of the surrounding communes. A new council was installed on 20 February 1942 and included a number of Radical-Socialist councillors under the Templier and Legrand administrations, with Jews and Freemasons excluded.1080 The mayor left no doubt as to his allegiance, referring to Pétain as “l’illustre chef qui lui sacrifie avec amour ses jours et sa vie, et vers lequel elle [France] se retourne dans un élan sans pareil de reconnaissance et de respect.”1081 “Arcueil, saura, grâce à sa municipalité, s’associer sans réserve à l’oeuvre de rénovation nationale, qui doit lui permettre de poursuivre son épanouissement,” he declared before ending his speech with “VIVE LE MARECHAL…VIVE ARCUEIL…VIVE LA FRANCE.”1082 The suspension of the communist municipality, the arrest and deportation of Sidobre, and the criminalisation and repression of the PCF undoubtedly had a deleterious impact on the party in Arcueil. As indicated in Chapter 6, at least two communist councillors disassociated themselves from the party after the Hitler-Stalin pact. Worse still, the former deputy mayor, Adolphe Ambrogelly, and his brother-in-law and fellow former councillor Lucien Chapelain, became collaborators and were members of the central

1076 Varin, Mémoires, p. 137. 1077 A letter from the Prefect dated 17 November 1939 and circulars dated 18 January and 26 May 1940 instructed the Special Delegation that “aucune appellation de voie ou d’édifice public n’évoque plus les idées, ni les hommes, ni les faits de la IIIème Internationale.” DCMA, meeting of 14 December 1940 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 344-352). 1078 DCMA, meeting of 14 December 1940; Varin, Mémoires, p. 138 1079 Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1080 Varin, Mémoires, p.138; DCMA, meeting of 22 March 1942 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 407-409). The list of names also includes Schaidt, who had ran as an SFIO candidate in the 1923 municipal elections. 1081 DCMA, meeting of 22 March 1942 (AD94 1Mi1390, pp. 407-409). 1082 DCMA, meeting of 22 March 1942.

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committee of Gitton’s collaborationist Parti ouvrier et paysan français.1083 The ageing Poënsin lost contact with his comrades owing to a grave illness to which he had succumbed in 1941.1084 Under such circumstances, Arcueil’s communist forces were forced to re-group and re-organise. Nevertheless, signs of resistance emerged early in Arcueil, with women at the forefront. Residents signed a petition against the arrest of Sidobre.1085 According to Mme Josette Dumeix, a monitor in 1939 at the vacation colony in Villers and member of the Union des Jeunes filles de France, a special delegation set up by Sidobre after the outbreak of war remained in operation for several months following the interdiction of the PCF.1086 Lucienne Maertens, a member of regional direction of Seine-Sud and of the Arcueil branch of the clandestine PCF, continued to distribute tracts.1087 She remained in Arcueil after the German occupation of Paris to help re-establish the party, while many of her colleagues left. Three days after the occupation she had her first meeting with a member of the regional direction of the PCF who explained to her that the party now had to operate on the basis of three person cells or triangles. Marguerite Lagrange, wife of a municipal councillor imprisoned during war, remembered how she enlisted her support:

Lucienne Maertens m’a proposé de participer à la reconstitution du Parti communiste qui était très désorganisé. J’ai dit: oui, tout de suite. Il fallait bien remplacer mon mari qui était prisonnier de guerre. J’ai connu tout de suite Jeanine, la coiffeuse, chez qui je prenais des paquets de tracts. Je les répartissais chez certains camarades.1088 Another resident, Jeanine Sentuc, recounted her resistance activity to Varlin in the following terms: Au salon de coiffure, rue de la gare…je voyais Lucienne Maertens, Marguerite Lagrange, Lucienne Oheix, Mme Barbieri. Dans la première temps, ma tâche a été un travail de solidarité, notamment avec les femmes

1083 DBMOF Cd-rom, entries on Adolphe Marius Jean Ambrogelly, and Lucien Pierre Chapelain. Ambrogelly was executed by the Resistance in the forest of Sénart in September 1944 and Chapelain was condemned after Liberation to five years of national degradation. 1084 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Poënsin. 1085 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Mme Choquet. 1086 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Mme Josette Dumeix. 1087 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 141-142. 1088 Quoted in Varin, Mémoires, p. 142.

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de prisonniers auxquelles j’apportais des tickets de ravitaillement. D’où ils venaient, je n’en sais rien.1089

The hairdressers’ salon became a letterbox for the Resistance while Maertens brought militants into contact with each other, including those who had been recently demobilised. At the same time, the Young Communists continued to meet at Mme Caussimon’s house, in avenue Laplace, once a week.1090 Lagrange organised meetings and, with the help of comrades, distributed L’Humanité in letterboxes at night in the sector assigned to her.1091 Whereas during the Popular Front the role of women in the PCF became somewhat more mainstream, with women being organised around their ‘traditional’ roles as carers and the PCF attempting to gain their support via an embrace of leisure activities (see Chapter 6), World War II saw a reversion to an earlier pattern. Once again, women were revolutionaries just as when they had been organised under the banner of Jeunesses Communistes, only this time, with many communist men imprisoned, working as forced labour or in hiding, the role of women had an added importance. Women who had not been active before the war joined the Communist Resistance.1092 The Resistance movement also helped to create communists. Before the war Alfred Simon had not been a communist; however in 1941, after returning from the army he met with Vallade, an employé from the commune, and the two of them decided to regroup some of their comrades.1093 They organised, found arms, and disseminated clandestine propaganda. “Ainsi, en 1941, moi qui ne suis pas communiste, j’ai distribué L’Humanité dans ma ‘tôle’,” attested Simon, “Les travailleurs ont très bien pris cela.”1094 He represented the clandestine CGT in the Front national formed in 1941. Léon “Lucien” Hible headed a group of the Francs-tireurs et Partisans (FTP) that he had formed with Albert Honorine in 1943, its main tasks being to protect militant speakers at markets and to distribute tracts. On 4 July 1944, the Arcueil FTP unfurled the tricolour flag on the aqueduct and helped protect a demonstration staged at rue Monsieur-le-Prince in Paris.1095

1089 Quoted in Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1090 Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1091 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marguerite Lagrange. 1092 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marguerite Lagrange. 1093 Behar, “La Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 143. 1094 Quoted in Varin, Mémoires, p. 143. 1095 Varin, Mémoires, p. 143.

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Not all resistance activity was communist. There was a local group of the socialist Mouvement de Libération Nationale (MLN), which concentrated on research and information activities.1096 Libération Nord also had a section at Arcueil that, at the end of the war, numbered around 100 members. Marguerite Lagrange has attested that Arcueil was home to a clandestine Jewish journal, J’ACCUSE, Organe de liaison des forces françaises contre la barbarie raciste, produced with the help of Madame Castel, who refused to wear the Jewish star.1097 A copy dated 10 October 1942 is held in the Fonds Desguine, thus indicating its diffusion in Arcueil.1098 It attacks the Nazis and their French collaborators for their repression of the Jews and the atrocities committed against them, detailing executions, forced deportations and cases where young children had died or disappeared during the latter. J’Accuse warned that the deportation of the Jews was a precursor to the mass deportation of the French population. Jews were merely the first, the communists had followed them and next would be French people without any political affiliation. It called on its readers to unite against Vichy and the Nazis, welcoming the growing opposition of Catholics, Protestants, clergymen, and people of all classes to anti-Semitic measures. Castel was eventually arrested and deported, along with all the Jews who remained in the suburb, the latter having largely consisted of those who had no choice but to stay because, unlike Madame André’s employers, they lacked the means to flee.1099 The fate of Madame Castel indicates the dangers faced by resisters in Arcueil, with communists often being the victims. Marguerite Lagrange recalled that many comrades were deported at around the same time as the Jews, and a friend of her’s died at Auschwitz.1100 According to Behar, between 1941 and 1944, six members of the Resistance from Arcueil were shot and seven died in deportation.1101 They included Felix Letellier, assigned the task of stocking arms and materials for propaganda, who was arrested in 1941 and deported to Buchenwald, his wife Rose to Ravensbrück, and a communist employé, F. Lareyre, who, having been arrested and deported for resistance

1096 Varin, Mémoires, p. 144. 1097 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marguerite Lagrange. 1098 J’Accuse, Organe de liaison des forces françaises contre la barbarie raciste, 10 October 1942, no. 1 (AD94 35J51, Dossier: Journaux de la Résistance). 1099 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Mme André. 1100 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marguerite Lagrange; Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1101 Members of the Resistance in neighbouring suburbs also suffered. To the east in Ivry, 33 were shot or guillotined and 57 died in deportation, while at Vitry 37 were shot, decapitated or died while being tortured, and 46 died in concentration camps. To the north, in Gentilly six were shot and 20 died in camps.

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activity,1102 died some months after returning from a concentration camp. Paluho, a comrade of Alfred Simon and a member of a communist triangle at the factory where he worked, was shot at a death camp.1103 Municipal councillors elected in 1935 also suffered as a result of their resistance activity. Louis Frébault became active in the Resistance after his demobilisation in 1940. Arrested near the place de la Bastille while accomplishing a mission, he was imprisoned in a forced labour camp in France and then deported, dying at Gusen in Austria on 5 May 1945, the day the Americans came into the camp.1104 His colleague Jules Rouveyrolis was arrested in May 1941 in the company of the communist deputy Jean Catelas, deported to Germany, and died in Buchenwald on 27 June 1944.1105 Among the other councillors, Brunet and Sidobre were deported (the latter to Algeria), Raymond Lagrange was made a prisoner of war, Lesage was imprisoned for three years before returning to Arcueil, while Marolle escaped imprisonment.1106 Marguerite Lagrange had to keep her papers hidden in the pipes of a gas cooker down in her basement, and her work distributing them exposed her to great danger. Arrested with two other resisters on the night of 30 April 1941 while distributing clandestine copies of La Vie ouvrière and L’Humanité along the Sceaux line, she spent some days at the police depot and then in prison at la Roquette but was released due to lack of proof because she had rid herself of the tracts when arrested.1107 On another occasion, she was surprised by a policeman who, luckily, turned out also to be a supporter of the Resistance.1108 In the post-war period, the communists could point to numerous victims of wartime repression as evidence of their resistance activity in Arcueil. However, not all resistance activity was overtly political. Behar’s study found eleven acts of resistance though no recorded acts of sabotage. There were two attacks on guardians of the peace, two acts of recovering food coupons, and seven protest and/or

1102 Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1103 Varin, Mémoires, p. 143. 1104 DCMA, meeting of 31 May 1945 (AD94 1Mi 2036, pp. 112-124); DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Louis Julien Frébault. 1105 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Jules Étienne François Antoine Rouveyrolis. 1106 DBMOF Cd-rom. See entries on Charles Marcel Brunet, Sidobre, Raymond Lagrange (whose wife was active in the Resistance, see above), Gaston Lesage and Marolle. Brunet signed an open letter to communists in May 1942 from the Parti ouvrier et paysan français but was nevertheless arrested and deported. He was not part of the post-war council. 1107 Varin, Mémoires, p. 142. 1108 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Marguerite Lagrange.

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patriotic actions.1109 Patriotic actions included the unfurling of a flag on 14 July 1944. Protest actions were chiefly led by women who held four demonstrations. Between August and June 1941, women in Arcueil demonstrated in an effort to obtain better provisions of food and of coal, meeting with the mayor or special delegations.1110 They were successful in obtaining supplementary coal. On 23 April 1942, housewives demonstrated at the town hall, demanding food tickets.1111 Similar actions by women are recorded in 1943.1112 Arcueil’s women produced a newspaper, La Voix des femmes d’Arcueil. Issue number one of December 1942 proclaimed:

…Unissez-vous. Protestez en groupe devant les Mairies. Qu’on augmente à 500 g la ration de PAIN. L’hiver c’est la faim et la froid, c’est-à-dire la faiblesse, la maladie, la tuberculose peut-être. Si vous aimez vos enfants, vous les protègerez. Femmes françaises! Empêcher par tous les moyens vos maris d’aller aider la horde de Berlin qui les exploite comme vil bétail. Travailler en Allemagne, c’est travailler contre la France! Travailler en Allemagne, c’est travailler contre vous-mêmes.1113

Dissent also spread to local industries. In 1943, there were strikes of between one hour and half a day at Barriquand and Marre, Camions Bernand, Jobin and Yvon, a local brewery, the Société d’étude de liaison téléphonique à longue distance (SELT), and factories on the rue Aristide Briand, ostensibly over salaries and provisions.1114 In April 1944, SELT was again a centre of industrial activity with workers demanding salary increases and bonuses for having to move to a different location for work.1115 On the humanitarian front, the church acted as a hiding place for refugees1116 while a local physician, Dr Conso, aided members of the Resistance, hid Jews, and forged medical certificates to prevent deportation to Germany as part of service du travail

1109 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, pp. 39, 62, 121, 123. 1110 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, pp. 27, 33. 1111 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 128. 1112 In February 1943, a delegation of housewives met with the mayor and sometime around November 1943 a delegation of women went to the town hall of Arcueil to demonstrate against the suppression of milk supplies. See Behar, pp. 136-137. 1113 Quoted in Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 121. 1114 Varin, Mémoires, p. 143. 1115 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 138. 1116 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Mr André Fréguin.

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obligatoire.1117 Dr Conso’s presence on the PCF list for the municipal elections in 1945 reinforced its dominant role in the local Resistance movement. Arcueil was liberated on 17 August 1944 with the capture of the town hall.1118 Barricades had been constructed at rue F.V. Raspail, to prevent occupiers from fighting the approaching Americans, and at rue Berthollet, where shots were fired.1119 The Arcueil branch of the Forces Français à l'Intérieur (FFI) formed a stronghold at the Place Mairie in case the Germans passed by, but this did not eventuate.1120 On 19 August, the mayor Colin and one of his deputies, Blondy, were arrested as collaborators, with another councillor, Marcel Moine, remaining on council to assure the interim direction of the municipality in liaison with Resistance movements.1121 One wartime inhabitant expressed his dislike for Blondy whom he regarded as a collaborator who kept a close watch over rations.1122 A settling of accounts ensued, with some women having their heads shaved and those who had collaborated and informed on fellow citizens being quickly and quietly arrested by the police. Those who had helped to force the communists into underground had themselves been criminalised. On 21 August, the local resistance committee designated a municipal executive presided over by Henri Travers of the PCF and composed of members of the MLN, Libération, Front national and the CGT. An insurrectional municipality was proclaimed four days latter with Sidobre as honorary mayor, Emilien Prunier of the Front National as mayor, and members of the PCF, CGT and the Comité populaire. Then on 2 September a municipal council was constituted after a meeting of members of the PCF, CGT, Union des femmes françaises, Forces unies de la jeunesse patriotique, Libération, Mouvement national des prisonniers de guerre, Union des travailleurs chrétiens, MLN, Francs-tireurs et Partisans Français (FTPF), the SFIO, ‘Ceux de la Résistance’, the Front National, the Comité Populaire, and several former municipal councillors. René Marolle, a former deputy of Sidobre, was unanimously elected mayor, a Front National member Prunier as first assistant mayor, a communist, Travers, as second assistant mayor, and Simon and Hible (see above) as third and fourth assistant mayors respectively, with the council vowing that upon his return Sidobre would chair the

1117 Varin, Mémoires, p. 143. 1118 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 107; Varin, Mémoires, p. 144. 1119 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Monsieur Debest, 31 Rue Berthollet. 1120 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Monsieur André Fréguin. 1121 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 146-149; DCMA, meetings of September, 27 October & 6 November 1944 (AD94 1Mi2036, pp. 66-67, 73-79).

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council. The municipality was legitimised by the prefecture on 2 September 1944 as a special delegation. On 25 October, Sidobre returned, and two days later, he resumed as mayor by unanimous vote of council, being designated as president of the special delegation by the Prefect on 15 November. One of the earliest acts of the new municipality was to re-name streets, with the rue Gentilly once again becoming rue Henri Barbusse, the Parc Municipal d’Arcueil becoming the Parc Paul Vaillant- Couturier, rue Danton becoming rue Raymond Lefebvre, and the route de L’Hay-les- Roses becoming avenue Gabriel Péri.1123 The communists were clearly back in control and set about re-establishing their hegemony.

The Impact of World War II on the PCF in Arcueil

Thus, in Arcueil the PCF, reconstituted clandestinely, took a leading role locally in the Resistance, mainly by supporting the struggles of local inhabitants to ensure their survival and through anti-Vichy and anti-Nazi propaganda. It emerged from the war with its martyrs, but also retaining many of its inter-war activists and much of its leadership, some of whom now had the added prestige of being resisters or deportees. The PCF was now more dominant than ever. With Sidobre re-installed as mayor it was in a position to continue where it left off when his administration was suspended in September 1939. The fact that the communists had continued their grassroots activity and propagandising during the war, albeit in a clandestine manner, and the return to power of many of its interwar militants, meant that there was a strong element of continuity in Arcueil’s post-war communist municipality. Moreover, the communist movement in Arcueil now benefited from its association with a Resistance movement that could be simultaneously patriotic (in its resistance to the foreign occupier) and revolutionary (in its pledge to overthrow the existing regime and install a new, more just one in its place). The demise of the Hitler-Stalin pact had allowed the PCF to once again embrace revolutionary patriotism just as it had done under the Popular Front. Did Liberation therefore mark the end of working-class alienation? Arguably, the expulsion of the PCF from government only a few years later in 1947 suggests otherwise, as the communist movement was once again banished to working-class ghettos such as Arcueil.

1122 E Dépôt Arcueil 1S11-12, interview with Monsieur André Fréguin. 1123 DCMA, meeting of 5 October 1944 (AD94 1Mi2036, pp. 67-73).

347 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

Resistance and Collaboration in Cachan

The situation in Cachan during World War II was significantly different from that of Arcueil. In the absence of any PCF members of council, the outbreak of World War II did not disrupt the municipal administration.1124 In July 1940, in the wake of the defeat of France and its occupation by the German army, Eyrolles was installed as president of a special delegation that governed the municipality,1125 resuming his position as mayor in March 1942 when the Prefect decreed a new council which was dominated by former councillors and included the former socialist, Lambert.1126 Of his former colleagues, Marcilloux was mobilised and thereafter no longer featured in local politics.1127 His adherence at the conclusion of the war to the collaborationist Paul Faure’s Parti socialiste démocratique suggests that he supported collaboration. This was certainly the case for the collaborationist Lemoine who continued to attend council meetings after the outbreak of war but was not appointed by the Prefect to council in 1942.1128 The outbreak of war effectively ended the local political careers of the two most prominent SFIO members of inter-war Cachan. Other local socialists became resisters. Marcel Bonnet, an SFIO candidate in the 1935 municipal elections, helped to re-constitute the SFIO clandestinely and was active in the Socialist Resistance in the suburbs south of Paris.1129 He and his wife, Lucienne, were deported, and while she survived, Marcel died not long before his camp was liberated. Similarly, Cellier, the secretary of the local communist branch in the 1930s, died in deportation,1130 while Charles Spor, a candidate in the 1935 municipal elections, was arrested on 12 January 1941 and interned on 20 June to serve a six month sentence, only to escape on 7 or 8 July.1131 The local PCF did not recover enough from this repression of its local cadres to become a significant a force in the local Resistance, as was the case in Arcueil. I have drawn this conclusion not just from the lack of evidence of the Communist Resistance in Cachan but also from Behar’s study which does not indicate any resistance activity in Cachan between August 1940 and July 1944.1132

1124 DCMC, meeting of 25 February 1940 (AD94 1Mi1261, pp. 1-29). 1125 DCMC, meeting of 20 July 1940 (1Mi1261, pp. 55). 1126 DCMC, meeting of 22 March 1942 (1Mi1261, pp. 260-262). 1127 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Marcilloux. 1128 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on André Auguste Lemoine. 1129 L’Avenir de la Banlieue de Paris, 24 February to 2 March 1949. 1130 La Vie nouvelle, 22 April 1950. 1131 DBMOF Cd-rom, entry on Charles Victor Spor. 1132 Behar, “Résistance dans le Val de Marne”, p. 120.

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Contemporaneous sources add weight to this conclusion. In March 1941, in a report to the Prefect, Eyrolles indicated that the best part of a regiment of the German army had recently occupied the suburb for more than a month and that they were left unmolested by local residents, to the extent that the German Colonel gave his thanks to the Mayor when he left.1133 Similarly, when in July 1941 the Germans became concerned that communist propaganda was being propagated in the ETP1134, the Prefect responded the following August by stating that:

Il semble improbable que Mme Eyrolles ou son mari favorise en aucune façon la propagande communiste clandestine à Cachan. Cette localité qui est d’ailleurs une de celles où la municipalité élue n'a jamais été communiste, ne paraît pas avoir été touchée d’une façon particulière par les théories moscoutaires [sic]. De plus, l’enquête n’a permis d’apprendre qu’une organisation clandestine y serait particulièrement active actuellement.1135

Although both Cellier and Bonnet subsequently had streets in Cachan named after them, the available evidence suggests that non-Marxists, and in particular Eyrolles’ ETP played a key role in the Resistance at Cachan. There is clear evidence that the ETP was the main locus of resistance activity in Cachan, though the attitude of Eyrolles to the German occupiers, the Vichy regime and the Resistance is open to question. Eyrolles was arrested as a collaborator by the Liberation committee of Cachan, which seized control of the municipality on 21 August 1944.1136 Eyrolles’ arrest followed a unanimous decision of a meeting of the Légions Françaises Anti-Axe on 25 September 1943 to condemn Eyrolles to death for intelligence with the enemy (a decree to this effect was issued on 1 October 1943).1137 Certainly, Eyrolles’ apparent friendship with Pierre Laval suggests that he was

1133 AD94 36J15, Letter from Eyrolles dated March 1941. 1134 APP BA2000, Dossier: Léon Eyrolles, a report in German with title “Paris, den 22.Juli 1941”. 1135 APP BA2000, Dossier: Léon Eyrolles, a report in French dated 18 August 1941 and stamped “Faire Dossier Provisoire”. 1136 AD94 35J62, Cachan WW2, Dossier no. 2, statement at time of arrest of Eyrolles by the Liberation committee of Cachan, on 21 August 1944. According to this statement Eyrolles was among the “traîtres et les collaborateurs notoires” and would face justice for his “servilité envers les hommes de Vichy.” 1137 AD94 36J15, copy of Condemnation to Death by Légions Françaises Anti-Axe made on 1 October 1943. The Condemnation appears to be a response to Eyrolles’ decision to allow a poster to be put up at the ETP on 4 June 1943, warning students against circulating resistance tracts, one of which had been found in ETP, at the risk of severe reprisals for the ETP and its students.

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sympathetic to collaboration.1138 During the war, this ‘friendship’ was noted in Eyrolles’ favour by the Prefect when he responded to concerns raised by German authorities regarding Eyrolles.1139 Moreover, when the new municipal council was inaugurated on 22 March 1942, it accepted Eyrolles’ motion for a unanimous vow of allegiance to Pétain,1140 while Eyrolles subsequently drew the Prefect’s attention to the fact that his council had “voté un voeu en faveur du Maréchal Chef de l’Etat et du Gouvernement.”1141 On 4 September 1944, however, the Minister of the Interior, Parodi, ordered Eyrolles’ release.1142 Eyrolles not only denied any links with the Vichy government or the German occupiers but also that he had been Laval’s friend, claiming instead that he had not had any personal relations with Laval since the mid-1930s. Correspondence from the Prefect to Eyrolles dated 10 July 1942 appears to confirm Eyrolles’ claim that he was admonished for refusing to co-operate with Vichy and that he was intransigent in his attitude toward German requests for assistance even though this had put him in danger.1143 According to an anonymous and posthumously produced biographical booklet, some weeks prior to the German defeat in Paris Eyrolles categorically refused to accede to the request of a Nazi general to provide him with a list of communist voters in the suburb.1144 Moreover, it is difficult to see how a man whose Jewish wife was imprisoned for a time by the Germans could support the anti-Semitic Vichy regime that

1138 In an article entitled “Cachan En État De Siège”, the Radical newspaper Le Régional (no. 2, 1 April 1935) criticised Eyrolles for inviting Laval to officially open the new town hall. In the socialist and communist press the visit was interpreted as an indication of Eyrolles’ support of Laval. Gratien’s Le Moniteur gave glowing coverage to the visit. 1139 See also APP BA2000 “Faire Dossier Provisoire.” The Prefect reported to the German authorities that while there were negatives associated with Eyrolles, namely his Jewish wife, his rumoured membership of the freemasons and the fact that he had been a socialist of the unified tendency (a complete misrepresentation of his politics), in his favour was his friendship with Laval and the fact that he was a member of the Legion of Honour. 1140 See DCMC, meeting of 22 March 1942 (AD94 1Mi1261, pp. 260-262). 1141 AD94 36J10, Dossier: Visit of the Prefect to Cachan 1943, “Monsieur le Préfet”, letter from Eyrolles undated but post March 1942, p. 7. 1142 AD94 36J10, Dossier 2, letter dated 28 August 1944 from Eyrolles defending his role in the war. 1143AD94 36J10. The letter is dated 10 July 1942, is unsigned and undated and is addressed to “Monsieur le Maire”. The letter claimed that after initially being co-operative, from May 1941 onwards Eyrolles had become obstructive. At one point it asserts: “Vous m’avez ainsi privé de l’autorité nécessaire à la gestion normale des affaires municipales.” I have interpreted this as a reference to the Prefect’s oversight of municipal government. The author of the l0 July letter complained that in February 1942, Eyrolles prevented him from occupying the schools and from assuring the direction of the municipality and that after co-operating briefly again in March, since June representations had gone unanswered. The author warned that the situation could become grave, stating that he remained faithful to the Marshal and the Révolution Nationale and wanted Eyrolles to carry out the directives of Pétain.

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would have posed a mortal danger to her.1145 Eyrolles also had a son who was a Prisoner of War (POW), which would not have made him sympathetic to the German authorities. Eyrolles also claimed he personally aided the resisters and that the ETP was an important support for the Resistance. He claimed to have provided refuge at his home to a Jewish nephew who was enrolled as a doctor in the Forces Françaises à l'Intérieur (FFI) and to a niece who needed a hiding place each time she was pursued by the Gestapo for her activity in the Resistance. He went to all possible lengths to prevent the army of occupation and the government requisitioning students from the ETP. According to Eyrolles, the general secretary of the ETP was occupied in the Resistance and was in liaison with the Comité Supérieur, and he made a room at the ETP available to a member of the Comité (Maranne, former president of the Conseil Général). According to Eyrolles, an anti-collaborationist atmosphere reigned at the ETP, especially after 1943, and its personnel were ceaseless in their struggle against the government and the Germans. ETP students distributed resistance tracts and a resistance group at the ETP was given permission by the sub-director to create an arms depot. When an ETP student killed a German while on vacation and was subject to a Gestapo inquiry, he was hidden and nourished by the ETP, which gave the German police a false lead as to his whereabouts. What is more, Eyrolles gave teaching positions to two men who had been sacked for their opposition to the government.1146 The post-war testimony of students affirms that the ETP played an important part in the Resistance1147, as does other archival material in the Fonds Eyrolles which includes a report from March 1944 concerning students listening to Radio-France and talking about the approaching English armies, and examples of false identity cards produced by the ETP.1148 Depositions from former students and their parents, and testimony from Lancrenon, a member of the Comité Parisien de la Libération, detail the role that the ETP, and in particular the Maison de Famille and its director, André Desguine, played in the Resistance. Desguine helped students to avoid being

1144 Léon Eyrolles (1861-1945), anonymous booklet. 1145 Mme Eyrolles was denounced for officiating at the opening of the municipal sports ground sometime in 1942, see AD94 36J10, Dossier 2, letter from Eyrolles defending his role in the war, dated 28 August 1944. See also photo of letter indicating that Mme Eyrolles was freed by Germans on 30/11/42, AD94 36J15, Dossier Cachan WW2. 1146 AD94 36J10, Dossier 2, letter dated 28 August 1944 from Eyrolles. 1147 For example, a letter dated 7 August 1945 with an illegible signature that attests to the fact that the school was a centre of the Resistance in Cachan, AD94 35J62, Dossier 2. 1148 AD94 35J62, Cachan during the war, Dossier 5, students listening to Radio France, dossier 4 false identity cards.

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requisitioned by the Germans, assisted them in their resistance activity, such as transporting parachuted arms, tracts, and war materials by night, and protected them from arrest by the Gestapo.1149 “Je puis vous classer dans nos meilleurs résistants,” Lancrenon wrote to Desguine in an effort to proclaim the work that he undertook to “orienter et lancer” the students of the ETP “dans les mouvements de résistance.”1150 The diverse organisations of the Resistance were permitted to function at the Maison de Famille, with Desguine assisting in their secret exercises and military training.1151 “Et je dis que c’est un miracle que ce dernier n’ait point été fusillé à cause de ses entreprises courageuses ou à la suite des héroïques imprudences de nos élèves,” attested the former student Charles Massoli.1152 Desguine grouped together a body of 200 students for the purpose of creating a cache of arms to be stored in the basement of the Maison.1153 Once again, Lancrenon attested to the centrality of the Maison de Famille to the Resistance in Cachan:

Je puis témoigner que sous votre direction la Maison de Famille était un magnifique centre de fabrication de faux papiers, un dépôt d’armes clandestines, et surtout un centre d’éducation de tous vos jeunes dans le sens le plus patriote et le plus résistant.1154

Thus, the available evidence suggests that while the repression of the PCF that followed the outbreak of war, the defeat by Germany and the subsequent occupation effectively muted the communists as a force in the Resistance in Cachan, the ETP became the central resistance point to the German occupation and the Vichy regime.

1149 AD94 35J62, Cachan during the war, Dossier 1: deposition Marcel Isidore Michel signed 14 March 1945; deposition from the parents of former student, Jacques Georges Henri, signed 25 March 1945; deposition dated 27 October 1944, from the parents of a 20-year-old Resistance hero shot by the Germans after being wounded in combat, signature illegible; letter to Desguine from Lancrenon, member of Comité Parisien de la Libération, 8 November 1944. 1150 35J62, letter to Desguine from Lancrenon, member of Comité Parisien de la Libération, 8 November 1944. 1151 35J62, deposition of Charles Massoli, 15 October 1944. 1152 Deposition of Charles Massoli. 1153 35J62, Deposition dated 27 October 1944, signature illegible. 1154 35J62, Letter to Desguine from Lancrenon, member of Comité Parisien de la Libération, 8 November 1944.

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The Impact of World War II on the PCF in Cachan

Whereas a member of the PCF presided over Arcueil’s municipality after Liberation, in Cachan it was a convinced Gaullist, Alphonse Verdier, who took over.1155 (He succeeded Gaston Audat who died the same day he was designated to direct the commune, having participated in a battle between the FFI and the German Army on 21 August 1944 in Cachan.1156) In Cachan where the profile of the PCF had always been weaker, the loss of its local leader, Cellier, and of local militants, such as Spor, was a particularly severe blow. It meant that the PCF in Cachan was unable to maintain the same level of continuity in personnel and leadership as its counterpart in Arcueil, and this is one of the major reasons why the PCF in Cachan did not emerge at Liberation in a hegemonic position, as it did in Arcueil. Nonetheless, the enhanced standing that the PCF had gained nationally because of its role in the Resistance would have benefited a local party that was completely renewed in the immediate post-war years and became the dominant force on the left, the local SFIO having been weakened by the collaboration of its local leadership. Although the SFIO did not gain the ascendancy until the 1950s, once again under a dynamic leader, it nevertheless remained important at Liberation, holding the balance of power between the Communists and the equally strong Gaullists. Arguably, the strength of the latter was a legacy of the role of non- communists in spearheading the Resistance in Cachan, in particular the ETP and one of its employees, Desguine. Once again, Arcueil maintained its reputation for leftist and Cachan for centrist politics.

World War II and Communism in Arcueil and Cachan

World War II had differing impacts. In Arcueil, it effectively acted to reinforce the fundamentals of communist hegemony. With women taking a leading role re- constituting party cells clandestinely, party members spearheaded local resistance, supporting the subsistence struggles of local inhabitants and actively propagandising against the Vichy regime and the Nazis. Moreover, nationally the moral authority of the PCF rose as a result of its activity in the Resistance and this was repeated locally as activists were martyred or deported during the occupation. Those who joined the PCF during the war and inter-war militants came together to ensure that the party resumed

1155 Blanc-Césan, Maires du Val-de-Marne, pp. 35-36. 1156 AD94 34J14, notes by Chenel-Desguine.

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the ascendancy it enjoyed under the Popular Front. In Cachan, however, the burgeoning of the PCF during the Popular Front was based on a less resilient foundation owing to a weaker implantation during the 1920s. Consequently, the war fundamentally weakened the party, as it did also for the SFIO whose local leadership became collaborators, enabling non-communists to play a significant role in the local Resistance. The war sowed the seeds for a post-war battle for control of municipal government between Communists and Gaullists, with the SFIO in the middle acting as the ultimate arbitrator as to the direction of the municipality.

2. THE FOURTH REPUBLIC I: ARCUEIL, CACHAN AND THE ELECTORAL HEGEMONY OF THE PCF

In France as a whole, and in Arcueil and Cachan in particular, the Fourth Republic saw the PCF build upon the gains it had made under the Popular Front, when it polled around 15% of the national vote. Benefiting from its association with the French Resistance, the PCF emerged in the October 1945 legislative election as the largest party with 26.1%, peaking at 28.6% in the November 1946 election and maintaining electoral support of around a quarter of the votes cast up until the legislative elections of 1958.1157 Thus, nationally the PCF consistently polled about 10% higher under the Fourth Republic than it had at the time of the Popular Front. Even when the onset of the Cold War saw the PCF banished to the political periphery in 1947, the party’s drop in electoral support was a modest 4% of the vote. The Fourth Republic also saw the PCF consolidate its hold on the Paris suburbs. In the 1951 legislative elections, with the Cold War having well and truly commenced, the PCF polled 32.1% of the vote in the Paris region.1158 The elections of the Fourth Republic took place in two very different contexts. The first was that of post-liberation France where politics underwent a radical change from the interwar period. The role of communists in the Resistance and the prestige that the Soviet Union gained as a consequence of its role in the defeat of the Nazis produced a surge in support for the PCF. With most political groupings of the right discredited by their wartime collaboration and the Radicals by their association with the failed Third

1157 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 75, 78. In the election of June 1946 the PCF polled 26.2% of the vote, in 1951 the figure was 24.8%, and in 1956 25.9%, pp. 76, 83, 86. 1158 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, p. 83.

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Republic, the stage was set for the rise of a progressive, Christian democratic political force, the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP), which captured much of the non- Marxist vote. A general swing to the Left on the part of the electorate was accompanied by a strong desire for unity of action on the Left, and in particular from the communists. The result was the tripartite governments of the PCF, SFIO and the MRP. However, from 1947 onwards the political context underwent a radical change. The advent of the Cold War led to the PCF’s expulsion from government in May 1947 which meant that the party was once again banished to the social and political margins. Henceforth, the PCF was debarred from alliances with the SFIO, which rapidly moved further to the Right thereby confirming its interwar evolution toward the reformist Centre. In the context of the rise of Gaullism as a political force and the recovery of traditional political groupings such as the Radicals, the PCF returned to the marginalised position that it occupied throughout most of the period of this study. This was particularly apparent in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the Cold War unfolded against a backdrop of the Berlin airlift of 1947-1948, the Korean War and the 1953 uprisings in East Germany, and foreign policy thus became a major area of political contestation. In response, the PCF was as pro-Soviet as it had ever been, while those political groupings to its right (from the SFIO to the Conservatives) were never more pro-American, with the socialists firmly of the belief that American funds, via the Marshall Plan, were needed to restore France.1159 Furthermore, political isolation and a hard-line Stalinist outlook, exemplified in a strident anti-Titoism, meant that the PCF now became increasingly estranged firstly from the student movement and then from the intelligentsia after having held considerable sway over both these groups since the war.1160 Most intellectuals broke with the PCF after it approved of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, an attitude which only consolidated the party’s isolation from the student movement.1161 While François Fetjö claims that events such as the Hungarian uprising had less effect on the PCF’s working-class supporters because it had been supported by the bourgeoisie, the party’s political isolation and its internal ructions,

1159 M. Adereth, The French Communist Party a Critical History (1920-84), from Comintern to ‘the colours of France’, Manchester University Press, Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire, 1984, pp. 149-151; Francois Fetjö, The French Communist Party and the Crisis of International Communism, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1967, pp. 19-21, 32-34. 1160 Richard Johnson, The French Communist Party versus the Students: Revolutionary Politics in May-June 1968, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1972, pp. 12-12, 24-28, 30-33, 38; Adereth, French Communist Party a Critical History, pp. 19-21. 1161 Johnson, French Communist Party versus the Students, pp. 28-30, 38.

355 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

which had led to the purging of the popular Marty among others, were not without effect, with militants affected by a serious malaise. 1162 By 1956 the PCF had lost half or more of the membership it boasted a decade earlier, with losses occurring in working- class areas.1163 (However, for its part the SFIO had also lost two-thirds of its members and in 1958 the PCF’s membership still probably equalled that of all other parties combined.1164) De Gaulle’s patriotic defence of French independence and his anti- Americanism enabled him to draw support away from the PCF.1165 Though Danièle Joly argues that the PCF’s attitude toward the Algerian War from 1954 onwards was essentially patriotic and therefore indicative of the party’s integration into the nation- state, one could equally argue that the party’s equivocation on the issue was opportunistic, being driven by the need to maintain the allegiance of its working-class supporters, many of whom opposed Algerian independence.1166 The other background to the elections of the Fourth Republic that needs to be sketched is the electoral systems that were in use. The first observation is that under the Fourth Republic women could vote in elections for the first time in France. Traditionally the French Left had feared that granting women the vote would favour the forces of reaction, however under the Fourth Republic the PCF recorded its best electoral performances to date in Arcueil and Cachan. The 1945 municipal elections held in Arcueil and Cachan took place using the two ballot system of the interwar period (in Arcueil the PCF list was elected in the first ballot with an absolute majority). The 1947 and 1951 elections were held using a system of single ballots and proportional representation with panachage permitted. Under the Fifth Republic the Gaullist government reintroduced the majority list two ballot system used under the Third Republic for municipal elections in the hope that the return of the second ballot would benefit the Gaullists locally in the same way it had in legislative elections.1167 Legislative elections took place using a system of proportional representation

1162 Fetjö, The French Communist Part and the Crisis of International Communism, pp. 23-27, 79. 1163 Adereth, French Communist Party a Critical History, p. 158. 1164 Adereth, French Communist Party a Critical History, p. 158; Philip M. Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, third edition, Longman Group Limited, London, 1972, p. 77. 1165 Greene indicates that like the PCF, de Gaulle won the support of a large number of working- class voters, Greene “The Electorates of Non-Ruling Communist Parties”, pp. 80-81. 1166 Danièle Joly, The French Communist Party and the Algerian War, McMillan Press, Basingstoke, 1991, pp. 145, passim; Williams, Crisis and Compromise, p. 85; Johnson, French Communist Party versus the Student, pp. 40-43. 1167 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, p. 187.

356 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

and a single ballot, with some minor variations in the way in which seats were allocated.1168 Prior to 1951, voters were only permitted to vote for entire lists containing as many candidates as seats contested, whereas in 1951 and 1956 panachage, incomplete lists and signed preferences assigned to individual candidates were permitted.1169 The 1958 legislative elections, the first of the Fifth Republic, saw a return to the past, with the reintroduction of the second ballot and the single-member constituency system of the Third Republic. This disadvantaged the isolated PCF which lost a quarter of its 1956 electorate in the heated atmosphere of the 1958 legislative election.1170 The survey of election results ends with the legislative elections of 23 and 30 November 1958. These elections occurred during the interregnum between the granting of full powers to de Gaulle on 2 and 3 June, which effectively brought an end to the Fourth Republic, and the formal installation of de Gaulle as President on 8 January 1959, which marked the birth of the Fifth Republic. Consequently, these elections could be viewed as both the last elections of the Fourth Republic and the first of the Fifth Republic. At one level these elections demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the communist electorate since the PCF maintained the support of almost 20% of the electorate. Yet, at the same time these elections saw the PCF lose almost a fifth of its electoral support, much of which it did not recover in the 1960s. In this way, the legislative elections of 1958 demarcate the Fourth Republic as the apogee of the PCF in terms of its electoral support. The detailed analysis of municipal elections finishes with the elections of 1953 as these were the last municipal elections of the Fourth Republic. However, I trace the results of the 1959 and 1965 municipal elections and their implications for the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan under the Fifth Republic.

Municipal Elections in Arcueil and Cachan During the Fourth Republic

Locally, the political landscapes of Arcueil and Cachan were somewhat different. In Arcueil the PCF emerged from the war still led by its last communist

1168 In 1945 and June 1946 seats were allocated by the quotient (see Chapter 5 for explanation) and then by the highest average. In November 1946, seats were allocated by the highest average only. In 1951 and 1956, the quotient was reintroduced as the first step in allocating seats, followed by the largest remainder. The latter was obtained by multiplying the quotient by the number of seats already won by the list and then subtracting this from the total poll of the list, Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 73-86. 1169 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 73, 81-82; Thérèse and Lancelot, Atlas des circonscriptions électorales en France depuis 1875, pp. 11-12. 1170 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, pp. 92-93. The PCF polled 18.9% of the vote but received only 2.2% of parliamentary seats.

357 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

mayor, Sidobre, whose reputation was no doubt enhanced by his experience as a deportee of the Vichy regime. He headed all the PCF lists of the Fourth Republic. As in the interwar period, the PCF competed against the SFIO and the Radical-Socialists, although the latter had transmogrified into the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines (RGR) by 1947, with both groups also retaining some of their political figures from the interwar years. The biggest change was the arrival of the MRP on the local political scene. In Cachan, the changes to the local political scene were more significant. The PCF’s leading member of the Popular Front era, Cellier, perished during the war while the CURSDIGC had disappeared as an entity by 1945, the same year in which Eyrolles died. In place of the CURSDIGC the MRP and a myriad of other local or special interest lists arose. Turning to Cachan, the SFIO underwent major rebuilding in the aftermath of the war and emerged weaker electorally, when compared to its performances in municipal elections of the late 1920s and 1935. Thus, the political landscape in Arcueil exhibited a degree of continuity between the interwar and postwar periods that was absent in Cachan. A comparison of Table 7.1 with Table 5.1 (page 187) indicates a relatively high level of abstentions in municipal elections of the Fourth Republic, a reversal of the trend after 1925, and especially in 1935, toward lower abstention rates. This may be a function of women having been granted the vote, since Cole and Campbell indicate that the abstention rate of women tended to be 10% higher than men.1171

TABLE 7.1 - MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS 1945-1953

VOTERS ENROLLED & ABSTENTIONS IN ARCUEIL & CACHAN

Arcueil Cachan

Year Voters Enrolled Abstained Voters Enrolled Abstained

8844 (1st Ballot) 25.6% (1st Ballot) 1945 9484 23.5% 8846 (2nd Ballot) 29.6% (2nd Ballot)

1947 9517 21.6% 9052 21.4% 1953 10 282 21.1% 9186 25.0%

SOURCE: Commune of Arcueil procès-verbal - for the elections of 29 April 1945 and 19 October 1947 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47 Dossier 29 April 1945 & 19 October 1947; also for 19 October 1947 AD94 2833W/10 Dossier 10451/67/1/1/1; for 10 April 1953 AD94 2833W/14 Dossier 10451/67/1/122/4.

1171 Cole and Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, p. 72.

358 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

Cachan: Commune of Cachan procès-verbal – for first ballot 29 April 1945 AD94 2533W/11, Dossier 10451/6711/106/4 and for second ballot 13 May 1945 Dossier 10451/67/1/107/4; for 19 October 1947 AD94 2833W/10 Dossier 10451/67/1/1/1; for 10 April 1953 AD94 2833W/14 Dossier 10451/6711/122/4. a) Municipal Elections of the Fourth Republic

Figure 7.1 - PCF vote in Arcueil & Cachan municipal elections 1945-1953 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 Percentage of valid votes cast 10.0 5.0 0.0 Ballot 1st 1945 2nd 1945 1947 1953 Arcueil 52.2 Not Applicable 47.4 51.3 Cachan 36.9 53.7 37.3 39.2

SOURCE: See Table 7.1 above.

In Arcueil the PCF presented a list in the 29 April 1945 municipal election that was headed by Sidobre and included five former councillors who had been elected on the communist list in 1935, plus the wife of another. The SFIO mounted two candidates from 1935, while the Radicals put forward three candidates that had been on Legrand’s list and two who had run on the combined Pelletanist-SFIO list. This indicates that local politics in Arcueil after World War II did not undergo a complete renewal. The PCF extended the dominance it had gained over municipal politics in 1935. Whereas in 1935 it had won control of municipal government in the second ballot with almost 60% of the vote, in 1945 it attained an absolute majority in the first ballot. Under the Fourth Republic, the PCF’s vote only dropped below an absolute majority in 1947, with the onset of the Cold War, and even then only marginally so. The proportional system used in the 1947 and 1953 elections did not stop the PCF from maintaining its dominance,

359 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

since on both occasions the party had 14 councillors elected out of 27, but it did mean that communist councillors had to work with non-communist councillors, including those from the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF). Sidobre headed the PCF list in 1947, which included eight other outgoing councillors, and in 1953, when it included twelve outgoing councillors. In both elections, the PCF presented four veterans from the 1935 to 1939 communist council (Sidobre, Emile Bougard, Raymond Bayette, Pierre Bonvalet and Gaston Lesage).1172 Thus, the lists that the PCF presented in Arcueil’s municipal elections had a good combination of experience and new blood. By way of comparison, while the SFIO only presented two candidates in 1945 that had appeared on their list of 1935, in the 1947 election they presented sixteen candidates from the previous election and in 1953 the number was ten.1173 In 1945 the communist campaign in Arcueil focused on the struggle against fascism and pledged to ameliorate the living conditions of locals residents, in the first place by establishing a municipal HBM office.1174 In a similar vein the SFIO campaigned on providing basic necessities, hygienic housing and for social works in favour of the old and children, while the Radicals claimed affiliation with the work accomplished by the interwar Radical mayor of Arcueil, Templier. In 1947 there was a vigorous anticommunist campaign which accused the municipality of being hostile to private property. The 1953 campaign was built around similar themes to the interwar years. The three lists – the PCF, SFIO and the combined MRP/RPF/RGR list - all

1172AD94: E Dépôt Arcueil, procès-verbal Commune of Arcueil, municipal elections of 29 April 1945 and 19 October 1947; “Liste d’Union Républicaine et Résistante de Défense des Intérêts Communaux présentée par le Parti Communiste Français”; D3M2/34 “Élections municipales du 26 avril 1953 Section électorale d’Arcueil Liste d’Union Ouvrière et Démocratique de Défense des Intérêts Communaux dans la Paix et l’Indépendance Nationale présentée par le Parti Communiste Français”; DM3/46 and DM3/47 Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune d’Arcueil, Conseillers Municipaux, Renouvellement 1935, 1945, 1947 and 1953. 1173 AD94 36J27, “Ville d’Arcueil Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Liste d’Emancipation Municipale et Sociale Parti Socialiste SFIO Parti Radicale-Socialiste Camille Pelletan”; E Dépôt Arcueil 1K47, procès-verbal Commune of Arcueil, municipal election of 29 April 1945 and “Parti Socialiste SFIO Fédération de la Seine Section d’Arcueil Liste des Candidats aux Élections Municipales du 19 Octobre (1947)”; D3M3/34 “Élections Municipales du 26 avril 1953 Liste d’Action Socialiste et Démocratique pour la Défense des Intérêts Communaux présentée par le Parti Socialiste SFIO”. 1174 Varin, Mémoires, p. 160.

360 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

campaigned strongly on local issues.1175 Their propaganda contained detailed proposals with regard to housing, education and schools, municipal infrastructure – such as roads and footpaths – and services, sport and leisure, local culture, unemployment and transport, with the PCF highlighting the achievements of the communist municipality in these areas. In terms of local issues, the main difference between the PCF and its rivals was its stress on secularism and its highlighting of the communist municipality’s struggle against the Autoroute du Sud which the state had forced upon Arcueil, leading to the loss of sporting facilities among other things. The socialists invoked the achievements of Sellier and others in the municipal arena. The big difference in communist propaganda was the highly political preface to the local program replete with attacks on the Americanisation of French government and politics, the policies of the current government, the attitude of the socialists and the exploitative capitalist system. “Le gouvernement détourne, pour les besoins de sa politique américaine de fascisme et de guerre, les ressources municipales”, thundered the communists as they called for an end to the Marshall Plan and for accords between Bonn and Paris, an end to the Vietnam War, the establishment of normal economic relations with the USSR, a massive reduction in military and police spending, an increase in welfare payments and an end to the persecution of communists.1176 Thus, just as they had done in the interwar years, in Arcueil the PCF’s municipal election campaigns of the Fourth Republic combined careful attention to local issues and a promise of effective local government that ameliorated the lives of local inhabitants, with a resolute hostility to the status quo. The antagonism of Arcueil’s communists to bourgeois society and the capitalist state and their attachment to the Soviet Union endured under the Fourth Republic. In Cachan the PCF only fielded one candidate in the municipal poll of 29 April 1945 who had appeared on the 1935 list, though the SFIO was in the same position,

1175 The analysis of party propaganda that follows is based on: AD94 D3M2/34, “Élections Municipales du 26 avril 1953 Section Électorale d’Arcueil Liste d’Union Ouvrière et Démocratique de Défense des Intérêts Communaux dans la Paix et l’Indépendance Nationale présentée par le Parti Communiste Français, Madame et chère électrice/Monsieur et cher électeur”; “Élections Municipales Scrutin du 26 Avril 1953 Ville d’Arcueil Liste d’Action Socialiste et Démocratique pour la Défense des Intérêts Communaux présentée par le Parti Socialiste SFIO, Citoyens, Citoyennes”; “République Française Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Liste Républicaine d’Union Municipale et d’Action Sociale, Programme.” 1176 AD94 D3M2/34, PCF electoral tract, 1953 municipal election.

361 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

with the former municipal councillor Edmond Lambert running on its list in 1945.1177 In the second ballot of 13 May, Lambert appeared as one of three socialists on the PCF- sponsored Liste d’Union Républicaine Antifasciste et de Resistance, which also included three members each of Libération-Nord and the MLN on a list that was otherwise dominated by the communists and members of communist front or auxiliary organisations.1178 The appearance of socialists on the PCF lists suggests some disquiet in socialist ranks at the decision of the local party to run a common list with the MRP, the Radical-Socialist Party and the Association des Prisonniers de Guerre in the second ballot.1179 Prior to the election, La Vie nouvelle ran a feature on Léon Juzaine who became Cachan’s first communist mayor when the entire PCF-sponsored list was elected in the second ballot.1180 It highlighted his activity as a unionist while working for railways, his incarceration for six months following the suppression of the PCF in September 1939 and his resistance activity in Cachan and other suburbs for which he was once again imprisoned. Upon being liberated in August 1944, Juzaine was designated as a delegate to the Comité local de Libération and was subsequently appointed by the latter to the post of vice-president of the special delegation administering Cachan, thus forming an important part of an administration that, according to La Vie nouvelle, strove to ensure that the local population had sufficient food to eat, improved conditions at the local schools and increased aid to the needy. Unfortunately for the PCF, the proportional system used in 1947 and 1953 would deny the party the opportunity to consolidate its hold over municipal government. In 1947, the outgoing communist mayor Juzaine headed a list composed of sixteen candidates from the communist lists of 1945, including twelve outgoing councillors. On this occasion, the PCF was well short of an absolute majority (with 37.3% of the vote) and the 11 council seats it gained were three short of a majority. In postwar Cachan, the local branch of the SFIO had re-emerged as somewhat more conservative than its interwar predecessors, being prepared to ally with the Christian

1177 AD94: 36J26 “Ville de Cachan Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Communiste (SFIC) Liste du Bloc Ouvrier et Paysan”; “Ville de Cachan Élections Municipales du 5 Mai 1935 Parti Socialiste (SFIO) Liste des Candidats”; 35J458 “Élections Municipales du 29 Avril 1945 Ville de Cachan Liste d’Union Républicaine Antifasciste”; “Élections Municipales du 29 Avril Liste d’Action Socialiste Républicaine de la Résistance.” 1178 AD94 35J458 “Scrutin de Ballottage du 13 Mai 1945 Ville de Cachan Liste d’Union Républicaine et de Résistance.” 1179 35J458 “Scrutin de Ballottage du 13 Mai 1945 Ville de Cachan Liste d’Union Socialiste et Démocratique de la Résistance contre le Fascisme.” 1180 La Vie nouvelle, 24 April 1945.

362 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

democratic MRP in the second ballot of 1945. Thus, the SFIO’s refusal to vote for a communist mayor is not surprising in the context of the May 1947 expulsion of the communists from government which heralded the onset in earnest of the Cold War. Claiming that both the communists and the Gaullists were a threat to democracy, the three socialists elected to council put up their own candidate, Jacques Karaimsky, the future mayor of Cachan.1181 Admitting that his group of councillors was rightwing socialists, Karaimsky pointed to the fact that 16 non-communist representatives were elected as a clear indication that a majority of the electorate did not want a communist municipality. He called on communists to vote socialist to prevent the formation of an RPF municipality (nine RPF councillors had been elected), and RPF councillors to vote for him if they were concerned with the threat posed by communism. The end result was that an RPF mayor was elected, a bitter blow to the PCF.1182 The anticommunism of local socialists and the politics of the Cold War had denied them the mayoralty of Cachan. Throughout the Paris suburbs, similar alliances in 1947 between the SFIO, the MRP and the RPF cost the PCF nine of the 18 additional municipalities that it had captured in 1945 when compared to 1935.1183 In 1953 the PCF mounted a list headed by Jean Laffon, a building technician, with eight candidates from the previous campaign, including seven outgoing councillors, while the SFIO presented a list with fourteen candidates from the last election, including two outgoing councillors.1184 Once again the local leadership of the PCF had undergone a renewal, as had much of its candidate list. The communist propaganda for this election was much the same as that employed by the communists of Arcueil. Before moving onto local issues, the electoral propaganda of Cachan’s communists focused on the identical national and international issues as in Arcueil,

1181 Paris-Sud, 1 November 1947. 1182 For detailed explanation of the vote see Paris-Sud, 1 November 1947 and La Vie nouvelle, 1 November 1947. 1183 Alain Croix (ed), Histoire du Val de Marne, Messidor/Conseil Général du Val-de-Marne, Créteil, 1987, p. 310. 1184 AD94 D3M2/34 Dossier Cachan: “Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Section Électorale de Cachan Liste d’Union Ouvrière et Démocratique de défense des intérêts communaux dans la paix et l’indépendance nationale présentée par le Parti Communiste Français”; “Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Ville de Cachan Liste d’Action Démocratique et de Réalisations Sociales présentée par le Parti Socialiste SFIO.”

363 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

more or less repeating the same rhetoric analysed above.1185 They then moved onto criticising the socialist-supported RPF municipality which they alleged had increased municipal taxes but done little to improve the lives of inhabitants, in contrast to what had been achieved by nearby communist municipalities in Arcueil, Bagneux, Gentilly and Villejuif. The PCF program in Arcueil set out plans to build more housing and a new school, to provide more support for children – vacation camps, material aid, patronage municipal – and aid to those segments of the population in need such as the elderly, to create a new health clinic, to repair and surface thoroughfares and footpaths, particularly in the Coteau and to improve local infrastructure through the provision of utilities – gas, water, public lighting – and the creation of a new municipal park, to facilitate the development of industry and finally to support leisure and culture in the commune. In contrast to the PCF, the SFIO in Cachan devoted its propaganda exclusively to local issues, with little reference to events beyond the local sphere1186, an aspect common to the electoral propaganda of the other non-communist groups contesting the election.1187 Criticising the current RPF administration for its timidity and inaction, the SFIO positioned itself as a moderate, constructive force in between the ‘demagogic’ communists on the Left and the reactionaries and clericalists to their Right. Local socialists were most critical of the PCF, alleging that it used municipal administrations for its own benefit. All non-communist groups called for the construction of housing, improvements to local infrastructure and schools, support for popular culture, sport and leisure at a local level, and greater welfare assistance to those in need. Once again, it was the PCF’s emphasis on national and international politics, their anti-capitalism and its resolute hostility to the status quo that communist propaganda differed from that of non-communists. The aftermath of the 1953 municipal election in Cachan was almost an exact

1185 AD94 D3M2/34 Dossier Cachan : “Élections Municipales du 26 Avril Cachan Programme d’Action Municipale de la Liste d’Union Ouvrière et Démocratique pour la défense des Intérêts Communaux dans la Paix et l’Indépendance Nationale, présentée par le Parti Communiste Français, avec la tête Jean Laffon conseiller municipal sortant.” 1186 AD94 D3M2/34 Dossier Cachan, “Élections Municipales – Scrutin du 26 Avril 1953 Liste d’Action Démocratique et de Réalisations Sociales présentée par le Parti Socialiste SFIO.” 1187 AD94 D3M2/34 Dossier Cachan, see electoral tracts: “Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Commune de Cachan Liste d’Action Sociale et Familiale patronnée par le MRP Pour un politique de progrès social”; “Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Ville de Cachan Liste d’Union d’intérêts communaux et d’action sociale du RPF et des Indépendants Électrices et Électeurs de Cachan”; “Ville de Cachan Élections Municipales du 26 Avril 1953 Groupement d’Action Municipale et des Intérêts Communaux (Intérêts Communaux-RGR-RPF-Indépendants nuance Pinay Électrices, Électeurs de Cachan.”

364 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

repeat of 1947, with 11 communists elected to council (after receiving a vote almost 2% higher than in 1947).1188 Interestingly, support for the PCF appears to have been highly regionalised, with the party polling 33.0% in electoral booths one to three located at the town hall and municipal gymnasium in the centre of Cachan, 46.7% in booths four and five at the Coteau schools and 43.4% at booth six located at the Paul Doumer school in the cité-jardin. The ongoing problems in the Coteau appear to have benefited the PCF. Three socialists were again elected to council but the political groupings to the right had fragmented and the RPF, with only two councillors elected, was no longer a force. Despite the increased support for the PCF, the 1953 election was a watershed election in Cachan’s development as a socialist bastion. In a context where independents or unaligned councillors dominated the non-communist majority, the SFIO emerged as a new force, with one of their candidates, the journalist Jacques Carat (previously known as Jacques Karaimsky) elected as mayor after having been voted in with the support of most of the non-communist councillors, a number of whom were elected as assistant mayors.1189 In this way the stage was set for the SFIO’s dominance of local politics in Cachan under the Fifth Republic as Carat united much of the non-communist electorate behind him.

Legislative Elections of the Fourth Republic in Arcueil and Cachan

Under the Fourth Republic, Arcueil and Cachan formed part of the 4th electoral (Seine Sud) district of the Department of the Seine encompassing the Seine suburbs south of Paris.1190 This was a multi-member seat with eight seats contested in the elections of 9 October 1945 and 2 June 1946 and nine in the elections of 10 November 1946, 17 June 1951 and 2 January 1956. The legislative elections of the Fourth Republic saw the PCF more or less consolidate the level of support it achieved in Arcueil and Cachan in the 1937 legislative elections (at 48.7% and 41.1% respectively). This electorate was reasonably stable, although it is apparent that in the 1950s support for the PCF in Cachan was in gradual decline. This decline accelerated in 1958, with support for the PCF falling markedly in both Arcueil and Cachan in the first ballot, but recovering significantly in the second. A comparison of Table 7.2 with Table 5.2 (page

1188 DM3/47 Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune de Cachan, Conseillers Municipaux, Renouvellement 1953. 1189 L’Avenir de la Banlieue de Paris, 14 August to 20 May 1953. 1190 Thérèse and Lancelot, Atlas des Circonscriptions électorales en France depuis 1875, pp. 56, 57, 59, 60 (Maps 51-53, 55, 56).

365 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

187) indicates that in Arcueil and Cachan abstention rates under the Fourth Republic were roughly in accordance with those interwar elections post-1919, though abstention rates tended to increase under the Fourth Republic whereas they tended to decrease during the interwar period. It may be that increasing disillusionment with the Fourth Republic before its collapse led to higher abstentions.

366 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

TABLE 7.2 - LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS 1945-1958

VOTERS ENROLLED & ABSTENSIONS

Arcueil Cachan

Year Voters Enrolled Abstained Voters Enrolled Abstained

Oct 1945 9103 11.7% 9086 15.3%

Jun 1946 9247 12.9% 8641 12.2%

Nov 1946 9686 17.6% 8960 16.7%

1951 9934 18.3% 8868 16.4%

1956 11 926 15.1% 10 783 12.5% 11 970 (1st ballot) 22.9% (1st ballot) 12 207 (1st ballot) 18.4% (1st ballot) 1958 11 968 (2nd ballot) 15.5% (2nd ballot) 12 208(2nd ballot) 21.8% (2nd ballot)

SOURCE: For 21 October 1945 La Vie nouvelle, 27 October 1945; for 2 June 1946 Paris Sud 9 June 1946; for 10 November 1946 La Vie nouvelle, 16 November 1946; for 17 June 1951 AD75 28W/10, procès-verbal commune of Arcueil and République Française, Ministère de L’Intérieur, Les Élections Législatives du 17 Juin 1951, La Documentation Française, Paris, 1953, p. 342; for 1956 AD75 28W/19 procès-verbal communes of Arcueil and Cachan; for 1958 Communes of Arcueil and Cachan procès- verbal AD75 28W/78 for first ballot 23 November 1958 and AD75 28W/28 for second ballot 30 November 1958. b) Legislative Elections 1945-1958

Figure 7.2 - PCF vote in legislative elections Arcueil & Cachan 1945-1958 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 Percentageof validcast votes 5.0 0.0 Oct 1945 Jun 1946 Nov 1946 Jun 1951 Jan 1956 1st 1958 2nd 1958 Ballot Arcueil 47.1 45.9 48.8 47.2 47.7 39.3 44.6 Cachan 39.1 39.5 41.7 38 36.9 28.9 34.7 367 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

SOURCE: See Table 7.2 above. In each of the Fourth Republic elections the PCF won four seats in the fourth sector of the Department of the Seine (compared with one for the SFIO). The PCF’s lists in each election were headed by Maurice Thorez and included Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a former prisoner of Auschwitz and the widow of the former deputy Paul Vaillant-Couturier who had been elected overwhelmingly as deputy representing Arcueil and Cachan in the first ballot in June 1936. The PCF lists presented were remarkably stable. The only change to the list of 10 November 1946 was the addition of a candidate while only one change was made to each communist list in all subsequent legislative elections of the Fourth Republic. When the PCF’s candidates were not outgoing deputies they were generally Conseillers Généraux for the Department of the Seine and/or mayors and assistant mayors of communes that formed part of the electoral district. The strong local and regional character of PCF lists and their constancy meant that the PCF emerged as a permanent, stable feature of the local and regional political landscape, thus reinforcing the normality of voting communist in Arcueil and Cachan under the Fourth Republic.1191 In both suburbs, the result was that from 1945 up until the first Fifth Republic election of 1958, the PCF’s vote was high and relatively stable, hovering around 45% to 50% in Arcueil and 35 to 40% in Cachan, figures well above their nearest rivals the SFIO, MRP and (in 1951) the RPF. The elections of this period can be divided into two epochs. The first was the period from 1945 to 1946 which saw the PCF resume the role it had firmly embraced under the Popular Front, that of a tribune and defender of the plebeian classes. The PCF attempted to broaden its support base and the appeal of communism by toning down its usual anti-status quo rhetoric and taming typical emphasis on class warfare. The isolation of the communists from 1947 onwards brought with it a renewed anti-status quo posture, one which was particularly strident in its criticisms of French foreign policy, but which still hoped for an alliance of the Left with an SFIO that was rapidly moving to the Right. What is interesting then, is that the PCF did not suffer huge falls in electoral support in either Arcueil or Cachan in spite of its isolation. Graph 7.3 indicates

1191 La Vie nouvelle, 20 October 1945; AD94 35J458: “Élections générales du 2 juin 1946 – 4e Secteur Liste Communiste et d’Union Républicaine et Résistante” and “Élections générales du 10 Novembre 1946 – 4e Secteur République Liste Communiste et Union Républicaine et Résistante”; République Française, Ministère de l’Intérieur, Les Élections Législatives du 17 Juin 1951, pp. 373-345 and Les Élections Législatives du 2 Janvier 1956, pp. 374-376, La Documentation Française, Paris, 1953/1957.

368 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

that in Arcueil there was only a marginal decrease in support for the PCF in 1951 compared to October 1946, while support for the party increased slightly in 1956. The trend in Cachan was somewhat different, with the PCF’s share of the vote in 1951 being reduced by close to a tenth, more than double the loss in Arcueil, and with the trend continuing downward in 1956, albeit gradually. Whilst the PCF remained, by a wide margin, the most heavily supported party in Cachan at the time of the legislative elections, a gradually declining vote presaged a much more significant fall under the Fifth Republic. Be that as it may, the maintenance of a large and relatively stable communist vote in Arcueil and Cachan between 1951 and 1956 suggests that the events in East Germany in 1953 and in Hungary had little impact on the PCF electorate in the working-class suburbs of Paris. During the campaign for the October 1945 elections, Maurice Thorez claimed that all French people paid homage to the sacrifice that 75 000 communists (a debatable figure) had made during the war for France and reminded readers that the PCF had opposed the Munich agreement that he claimed lay at the origins of World War II (he of course did not mention the PCF’s response to the Hitler-Stalin Pact).1192 Describing the PCF as “le Parti des Fusillés, le Parti de l’Union, le Parti de la Renaissance de la France”, he went on to claim that the PCF was the best defender of the people – including private and public sector workers, shopkeepers and artisans, the elderly, housewives and former prisoners and deportees.1193 The only real anti-establishment statements were references to the need to liquidate the institutions and spirit of Vichy and the need to abolish “trusts sans patrie.”1194 For her part, Marie-Claude Vaillant- Couturier reminded readers of the atrocities committed by the German SS.1195 In June 1946 the PCF campaigned on remaining faithful to the charter of the National Council of the Resistance, putting forward a program which it claimed would lead to an economic renaissance and a democratic renewal. This encompassed the reconstruction of France and its industry, with the major branches of the latter to be nationalised.1196 It also meant ensuring adequate nourishment for the population, restoring French finances,

1192 “Dites NON à réaction! VOTEZ COMMUNISTE!!!”, Maurice Thorez, La Vie nouvelle, 20 October 1945. 1193 Thorez, La Vie nouvelle, 20 October 1945. 1194 Thorez, La Vie nouvelle, 20 October 1945. 1195 “Non! Nous ne pouvons pas et nous ne voulons pas oublier”, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, La Vie nouvelle, 20 October 1945 1196 AD94 36J458, “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 (4e Secteur de la Seine) Liste Communiste et d’Union Républicaine et Résistante Français et Françaises.”

369 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

protecting the family, children and the old, ensuring the growth of French culture, removing all vestiges of Vichy, and the conclusion of a Franco-Soviet pact. Beyond a reference to “Les 200 familles, les hommes des trusts” there is little explicit criticism of the current social and political environment, much less so than at the time of the Popular Front.1197 This was even more the case come the November 1946 general elections when the PCF was campaigning for the election of parliamentary deputies with five year terms.1198 Once again the PCF ran on its resistance record. Apart from references to the threat posed by forces of reaction and by trusts, there is little hint of the PCF’s earlier extremism, and in fact the party posed itself as a defender of property which had been gained by work. There were the usual calls for ties to be resumed with the USSR and assertions that the PCF was the strongest defender of national independence, themes that would be constants also during the 1950s. Thus the growth in support for the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan came at time when the PCF was making its greatest efforts to broaden its support. The isolation of the PCF is clearest in its approach to foreign affairs in both the 1951 and 1956 legislative elections. A strident anti-Americanism emerged in PCF propaganda for the 1951 elections, with the party emphasising the threat posed to world peace by the Americans who had engendered the ousting of the communists from the government in 1947.1199 Since then the budget had been driven into deficit as the USA imposed the Marshall and Schumann Plans and the Atlantic Pact, the results of which had been the deaths of French soldiers in Korea and Vietnam and the threat of two to three years of military service. The PCF asserted that the USSR was not a threat but instead had proposed peace and arms reductions. It claimed that its opponents, including the SFIO, were preparing the way for the return of the fascist de Gaulle, whereas the PCF was an essential bulwark against the erosion of liberty in the same way as it had been indispensable in the liberation of France from the Nazis. In the area of foreign relations the PCF called for a peace pact between the five great powers, the denunciation of those accords that harmed the independence of France, a Franco-Soviet

1197 “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 (4e Secteur de la Seine) Liste Communiste et d’Union Républicaine et Résistante Français et Françaises.” 1198 AD94 36J458, “Élections Générales du 10 Novembre - 4e Secteur de la Seine Liste Communiste et d’Union Républicaine et Résistante Français et Françaises.” 1199 BNF 4-LE102-46 Élections Législatives à l’Assemblée Nationale 2ème législature 17 Juin 1951: Recueil de tracts électoraux, listes, programmes, professions de foi et engagements des candidats aux élections, Vol. 5, Seine, Bibliothèque nationale imprimées, Tracts 1209 & 1210.

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Pact, an end to the Vietnam war and a peace treaty with the Vietnamese government, controlled and progressive reduction of arms and a reduction in arms spending, a treaty with a demilitarised Germany, prohibition of nuclear arms and other such destructive weapons, the return of French soldiers from Korea and the re-establishment of normal commercial relations with all countries. In the domestic sphere it pledged support for a balanced budget, reduced taxes, both direct and indirect, the taxation of the super-profits of companies, higher salaries and pensions, better treatment for the young, veterans and ex-POWs, assistance to small and medium-scale peasants, shopkeepers, artisans and small-scale industrialists, and the protection of individual liberties. In 1956, the PCF’s position on foreign affairs was more or less the same, with the party renewing its calls for ties with the USSR and its satellites, for a renunciation of the anti-Soviet alliances that France had formed, for general disarmament and for the recognition of the East German and Chinese communist governments.1200 Turning its attention to the conflict in North Africa, the PCF called for the troops to return home and for negotiations with qualified representatives in Morocco and Algeria. In the social and economic spheres, the party made very similar pledges to those it had made in 1951. This time round, the PCF stated that is was ready to act in alliance with the Socialist Party. A strong appeal was made to the SFIO and similarly-aligned parties to unite with the PCF, an indispensable element of any government of the Left. Even as it sought alliances with parties of the Left, in its ongoing devotion to the USSR and international communism the PCF remained an anti-government and anti-bourgeois party under the Fourth Republic isolated from an increasingly anticommunist mainstream. This is reflected in the electoral propaganda of the PCF’s opponents under the Fourth Republic. In the run up to the poll on 10 November 1947, the MRP defended its role alongside the PCF and SFIO in the tripartite governments that followed Liberation on the basis that by achieving stability in government the MRP had saved France from the “péril de la dictature du Parti Communiste.”1201 According to the MRP the choice for

1200 BNF 4-LE102-46 (1956, 7 bis), Elections Législatives à l’assemblée Nationale, 3e Législature 2 Janvier 1956, Recueil de tracts électoraux, listes, programmes, professions de foi et engagements des candidates aux élections. Classement dans l’ordre alphabétique des candidats, Complementary volume VII bis, Seine: IVe secteur, PCF electoral propaganda. 1201 AD94 36J458, “Élections Générales du 10 Novembre 1946 MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire Citoyennes, Citoyens.” I also reviewed an MRP tract circulated at the time of the June 1946 general elections and found no anticommunist references, see “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire Citoyennes, Citoyens.”

371 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

the French was between liberty, justice and progress or “esclavage du communisme.”1202 Whereas local SFIO propaganda was more or less devoid of anticommunism in 1946, by the time of the 1951 legislative elections the political landscape had been totally transformed as the socialists now adopted an explicitly hostile anticommunist stance.1203 SFIO propaganda described itself as “Contre le bolchevisme destructeur de toutes les libertés (liberté de pensée, de réunion, de syndicat)” as it called for an alliance of republicans against the threat posed to French liberties by the communists on the Left and the Gaullists on the Right.1204 The SFIO now totally abandoned its claim commonly made to Arcueil and Cachan’s electors during the interwar period that it was a resolute defender of the USSR, the first workers’ state.1205 It now warned that communist rule would mean Soviet domination, which in turn would mean suppression of all liberties, abolition of the right to strike, the militarization of unions which would be used as police in factories, periodic purges that would even strike communists, and concentration camps of forced work. Claiming that France lived in fear of aggression as a consequence of the expansionist policies of Soviet Russia and its systematic sabotage of international institutions, the SFIO pointed out that the Soviets had set up a vast military alliance and remilitarised East Germany while refusing to open talks between the USSR, its satellites and West Germany. The SFIO would preserve the independence of France without engaging in an anti-Soviet crusade. In 1956, the local socialist propaganda I reviewed did not have the same anticommunist emphasis, focusing instead on the SFIO’s work in parliament, its support for the government of Pierre Mendès- France, on proposals for improving living conditions in the banlieue sud, on the need for disarmament and the massive expansion of housing and for the encouragement of economic growth as an answer to social and economic problems.1206 Most of the parties of the Centre and Right – the SFIO, the MRP, RPF/Gaullists, the Radicals, the RGR – embraced the notion of social progress in a manner that tended to consolidate the emergent welfare state that had been an anathema to most non-Marxist political

1202 36J458, “Élections Générales du 10 Novembre 1946 MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire Citoyennes, Citoyens.” 1203 For the SFIO’s attitude in the 1946 legislative elections see, for example 36J458, “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 Parti Socialiste SFIO Citoyennes, Citoyens.” 1204 BNF 4-LE102-46, Élections Législatives à Assemblée Nationale 2ème législature 17 Juin 1951, Tract 1220. 1205 See Chapter 5. 1206 BNF 4-LE102-46 (1956, 7 bis), Complementary volume VII bis, Seine: IVe secteur, SFIO electoral propaganda.

372 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

groupings in France during the interwar period.1207 In this context the PCF’s devotion to the USSR and the international communist movement was the one aspect of each campaign which most clearly isolated the party from other political groupings come election time. Nowhere was the PCF’s isolation clearer than in the 1958 legislative elections that ushered in the Fifth Republic. Against a background of political instability, an ongoing war in Algeria, the possible threat of civil war in France and the drafting of General de Gaulle to save the republican regime from collapse, the communists faced the greatest threat thus far to their dominant influence over the French working class and their pre-eminent position on the French Left. The return to the two ballot single- member constituency system used under the Popular Front was designed to further marginalise the PCF, which it succeeded in doing. The 1958 legislative elections shook the communist hegemony that had reigned in Arcueil during the postwar years, with the SFIO candidate defeating his communist rival in Arcueil in the second ballot. This election signalled the end of the communist ascendancy in Cachan by accelerating a hitherto gradual decline in support for the PCF. Moreover, the victorious socialist candidate campaigned on the SFIO’s support for de Gaulle, pointing out that several socialists served in his government and calling on voters to vote yes in the referendum to establish the Fifth Republic as conceived by de Gaulle.1208 Gone was the anti- Gaullism of the socialist campaigns of 1956 and 1951. Campaigning on the communists’ postwar parliamentary record and on its past glories such as its roles in the Resistance and the Popular Front, the PCF was completely isolated among the major parties in its anti-Gaullism and its opposition to the new republican regime that was to be installed.1209 This provided voters in Arcueil and Cachan with the clearest

1207 See for example: AD94 36J458, “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire Citoyennes, Citoyens”, “Élections Générales du 10 Novembre 1946 MRP Mouvement Républicaine Populaire Citoyennes, Citoyens”, and “Élections Générales du 2 Juin 1946 – 4e secteur de la Seine Parti Républicaine de la Liberté”; BNF 4-LE102-46, Élections Législatives à Assemblée Nationale 2ème législature 17 Juin 1951, Tracts 1220 and 1221 from the SFIO, Tracts 1237 and 1238 from the MRP, Gaullist tracts 1253 and 1254; BNF 4-LE102-46 (1956, 7 bis), Complementary volume VII bis, Seine: IVe secteur, electoral propaganda of the SFIO, the RGR, the MRP, Rénovation Française et de Progrès Social and the Liste d’Union Démocratique et Sociale composed of Social Republicans (ex-RPF), Independents and the RGR. 1208 BNF LE108-2 (1958, 21), Elections Législatives à l’assemblée nationale (Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958) 1ère législature 23-30 novembre 1958, Recueil de tracts électoraux, listes, programmes, professions de foi et engagements des candidats aux élections, vol. 21, Seine (47e à 55e circonscription - Seine-et-Marne), pp. 103-104. 1209 BNF LE108-2 (1958, 21), Elections Législatives à l’assemblée nationale (Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958) 1ère législature 23-30 novembre 1958, pp. 99-100.

373 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

demonstration of the postwar years that a vote for the PCF was a vote against the status quo. In spite of the rally of almost all non-communist forces behind the SFIO, the PCF still managed in the second ballot a third and almost 45% of the valid votes cast in Cachan and Arcueil respectively, an indication that at the beginning of the Fifth Republic a solid core of support for the PCF remained in the two suburbs. However, as was the case in the interwar years, this support base was significantly higher and more stable in Arcueil, and as such enabled the PCF to retain control of the Arcueil’s municipality well into the Fifth Republic whereas Cachan was transformed into a socialist bastion.

Arcueil’s Electoral Sections

In the electoral sections of Arcueil, the interwar trends were more or less confirmed under the Fourth Republic.1210 In the first elections held since Liberation, the PCF polled 46.7% of the valid votes cast in the Centre, thereby consolidating the hold it had gained in the Centre at the time of the Popular Front when it polled just over 40% of the vote in the first ballot of the municipal elections. Furthermore, in the Centre the PCF clearly outdistanced its nearest rivals in 1945 just as it had done in 1935. The notable drop in support recorded in 1947 coincided with the rise of the Gaullist RPF, which appears to have taken votes from the three tripartite parties – the PCF, SFIO and MRP. A rebound in the communist vote in 1953 (to the level recorded in 1945) followed the fragmentation of the Gaullist movement and therefore suggests that Gaullism had the potential to draw some support away from the PCF in the Centre. With the PCF polling close to half of the valid votes cast in two out of three municipal elections under the Fourth Republic, the Centre emerged a strong bastion of communist support in a way that it had not been for most of the interwar period This conclusion is given added weight when one considers the fact that the communist vote in the Centre was also very high at over 40% in legislative elections, with the PCF easily out-polling its rivals in the elections of November 1946, 1951 and 1956, when it actually increased its vote compared to the two previous elections. In the first municipal election of the Fourth Republic, the Laplace section maintained the position it had held in the interwar years as the second strongest

1210 The analysis that follows of the PCF’s vote in the electoral sections of Arcueil in the municipal and legislative elections of the Fourth Republic is based the sources listed for Arcueil in Tables 7.1 (page 353) and 7.2 (page 361).

374 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

electoral section for the PCF, with the absolute majority that the party achieved in 1945 representing a significant increase in support when compared to 1935. By 1947 Laplace remained the second bastion of the PCF by a slim margin as the party dropped back to the levels it had achieved in 1935. Its drop in support in 1947 was more significant and the vote for the RPF higher in Laplace than in the Centre. Nonetheless, the PCF’s vote remained remarkably high, and in 1953 Laplace also registered an increase in the PCF’s vote, in spite of the Cold War. In legislative elections the PCF’s vote in Laplace also remained consistently high, ranging between 46% and 42%. Nonetheless, in the 1951 and 1956 legislative elections the trend in the PCF’s vote was downwards, albeit very gradually, and by the fall of the Fourth Republic the Centre had overtaken Laplace as the second strongest electoral section for the PCF. Overall though, an analysis of the PCF’s vote indicates that in Laplace, as in the Centre, the PCF maintained a strong electoral hegemony throughout the Fourth Republic. Under the Fourth Republic, the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section resumed its position as the bastion of communism in Arcueil. The PCF’s vote in municipal elections was up on its first ballot results of the interwar period, although it never equalled the two-thirds of the vote achieved in the second ballot of 1935. In the Cité-Aqueduc section the PCF’s vote only dropped (marginally) below 60% in the municipal elections in 1947 when there was a major Gaullist thrust in local elections. In fact, in spite of the PCF’s isolation as the Cold War become a permanent fixture of the political landscape, the communist vote actually increased in 1953 when it once again approached the two- thirds mark achieved under the Popular Front. In the Cité-Aqueduc, the non-communist vote was far behind that of the PCF and much lower than in the Centre and Laplace. At close to 60% the PCF’s vote in the legislative elections of October 1946 and 1951 was only slightly lower than in municipal elections. The communist vote was lower in the 1956 legislative elections, thus confirming the very gradual downward trend in the PCF’s Cité-Aqueduc vote in legislative elections since October 1947. Notwithstanding, the Cité-Aqueduc was a bedrock of support for the PCF in the postwar period. In the second ballot of the 1958 legislative elections, the PCF’s Marie-Claude Vaillant- Couturier was victorious in the Cité electoral section with 57.1% of the valid votes cast, but was defeated (by the SFIO’s Lacroix) in the three other electoral sections of

375 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

Arcueil.1211

The Fourth Republic and the Electoral Hegemony of the PCF

Having emerged from World War II with significant electoral support in Arcueil and Cachan, the PCF became unequivocally the dominant electoral force in both suburbs under the Fourth Republic. Building on its resistance record, the party extended the gains that it had made under the Popular Front. These gains were more considerable in Cachan which was more or less transformed from a Centre-Right municipality in the interwar period to a communist municipality in 1945 and subsequently a suburb that voted in the majority for the PCF in both municipal and legislative elections. In Arcueil, the PCF had already achieved a high level of support in 1935, and the Fourth Republic saw it manifestly confirm its electoral dominance by consolidating the strong electoral position that it had built up throughout the interwar period. Electoral support for the PCF rose in all three electoral zones of Arcueil, each of which the PCF dominated. The Cité-Aqueduc remained an extraordinarily strong zone of communist support, as it had since its creation in the 1930s, and the extremely high level of support that the PCF gained here was critical to the electoral hegemony the PCF exerted in Arcueil under the Fourth Republic. The PCF maintained a sizeable and relatively stable electorate in both Arcueil and Cachan, the main difference being that throughout the Fourth Republic this electorate was always larger in Arcueil where the PCF’s share of the valid votes cast stood at or close to an absolute majority. The vote in municipal elections tended to be higher for the PCF than in legislative elections (more so in Arcueil than Cachan), a reversal of the trend of the interwar period. This suggests to me that the PCF was seen as having strong local roots in both communes and as being a party of competent local administrators, with a small portion of its voters prepared to support the party on this basis alone. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of the working-class population in Arcueil and Cachan voted for the PCF in spite of the onset of the Cold War and the resultant social and political isolation of the communists, an isolation that was spelt out clearly during each election campaign by the electoral propaganda of the PCF and its opponents. Arguably, evidence of the part that working-class alienation played in

1211 A fourth electoral section, Henri Barbusse, was created in 1958. I am presuming here that the cité-jardin remained the nucleus of electoral section 4, the Cité, hence its name. Vaillant-Couturier’s vote in the other sections was: section 1 (Centre) 42.4%; section 2 (Laplace) 38.9%; section 3 (Henri Barbusse) 41.8%.

376 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

sustaining support for the PCF during the Fourth Republic can be found in the fact that a significant number of the predominantly working-class residents of Arcueil and Cachan voted for the PCF at a time when it was clearly marginalised ideologically, socially and politically from bourgeois society and its state.

3. THE FOURTH REPUBLIC II: THE POLITICO-SOCIAL HEGEMONY OF COMMUNISM IN ARCUEIL AND CACHAN?

The electoral hegemony of the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan under the Fourth Republic was predicated in the first place on the social implantation achieved by the party during the interwar years, and in the second place by the impact of World War II, and in particular the PCF’s role in the Resistance, which helped to push the PCF membership to 800 000. In this context, the PCF was the dominant party both in Arcueil and Cachan and won control of both municipalities in 1945. However, differences remained. Electoral support for the PCF remained greater in Arcueil than Cachan where the conquest of municipal government was greatly dependent on the mood of unity that reigned on the Left at Liberation. This was completely transformed with the onset of the Cold War and the expulsion of the communists from government in May 1947, thus marking an end to the tripartite governments of the PCF, SFIO and MRP. This is the context in which the PCF lost control of Cachan in 1947 as the local SFIO refused to support the election of a communist mayor. The PCF had put down firmer roots in Arcueil during the interwar period and had maintained them during the occupation and this put Arcueil’s communists in a stronger position in the Fourth Republic than their counterparts in Cachan. Unbroken control of municipal government enabled the PCF to consolidate its hegemony in Arcueil. This was achieved via their vigorous defence of local working-class interests, their empowerment of workers through issue-centred local committees, the forging of class-consciousness and communal identity interfused by communism by appropriating working-class sociability and local popular culture and history, and through the provision of effective local government by and in the interests of local workers. In this way, by the end of the Fourth Republic the PCF in Arcueil had in place the four constituents of communist hegemony outlined in Chapter 2. Like its counterpart in Arcueil, the PCF in Cachan renewed its interwar practices of social implantation in an effort to extend and consolidate influence. These efforts, however, were less effective in the absence of long-established control of municipal government.

377 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

Arcueil’s Communist Municipality 1945-1958

Arcueil’s communist municipality under the Fourth Republic was a resolute defender of local interests, as is illustrated in its struggles against two projects that threatened the local community, the extension of the Cité Universitaire and the construction of the Autoroute du Sud. On 24 October 1945 the new postwar French government decreed its intention to extend the Cité Universitaire in Paris into Montrouge, Gentilly and the extreme northwest of Arcueil in order to create a university and scientific centre.1212 Arcueil’s communist municipality vigorously opposed the plans, as did the municipalities of Montrouge and Gentilly, with the three municipalities submitting an alternative plan that proposed the use of the Fort Montrouge.1213 La Vie nouvelle and the municipality of Arcueil claimed that the plans for the extension of the Cité Universitaire as envisaged by the Ministry of National Education affected 20% of Arcueil’s territory and would have resulted in the destruction of 70% of Arcueil’s industry (with deleterious effects on local employment and on communal finances), leaving 3000 residents homeless at a time of an acute housing shortage and resulting in the loss of a modern school which taught 600 children.1214 The municipality of Arcueil gained the support of the communist president of the Conseil Général of the Department of the Seine and the local communist deputies George Marrane and Albert Petit to oppose the development. The Conseil Général expressed opposition to the project while Petit tabled a parliamentary motion to rescind the law permitting the extension of the Cité Universitaire.1215 In typical communist fashion, defence associations were formed in Arcueil, Gentilly and Montrouge and together they collected thousands of letters from inhabitants, proprietors, tenants, shopkeepers, industrialists and workers opposed

1212 Bulletin municipal d’Arcueil et Gentilly, special no., June 1949, pp. 8-9; AN F1714552: letter dated 27 Jan 1948 from Seine Prefect to the Minister for National Education on the proposition to expand the Cité Universitaire into the communes of Arcueil, Montrouge and Gentilly; Dossier on plans: “Création d’Un Ensemble Universitaire et Scientifique dans la Région Parisienne sur le territoire des Communes d’Arcueil-Gentilly-Montrouge”; Dossier: Gentilly, Contre Projet des Municipalités, Letter dated 2 May 1947 to M. Ciosi Minister for National Education from Mayors of Gentilly, Montrouge and Arcueil. According to the plans, the project was to encompass 40 hectares of Arcueil, including the area north of avenue Jean Jaurès to rue Foubert, a triangle bounded by avenue Jean Jaurès, rue Renan (along the railway line) and avenue Laplace, plus an area roughly in a rectangle shape bounded by avenue Aristide Briand and below rue Laplace to rue Berthollet, rue de la Valley, and avenue Richard. The project was to affect 13.5 hectares of Gentilly and 18.5 hectares of Montrouge. 1213 AN F1714552 Dossier: Gentilly, Contre Projet des Municipalités, Letter dated 2 May 1947 to M. Ciosi Minister for National Education from Mayors of Gentilly, Montrouge and Arcueil; La Vie nouvelle, 15 December 1945. 1214 La Vie nouvelle, 8 & 15 November 1945. 1215 La Vie nouvelle, 15 September 1945 & 17 November 1947.

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to the project and forwarded them to presidents of the Republic, the National Assembly and to members of the government.1216 The project to expand the Cité Universitaire into Arcueil never came to fruition, in the first place because the ministry of finance refused to accord the funds needed for the purchase of the buildings and land on the proposed site1217, and finally because a motion authored and spoken to by Petit in the National Assembly which rescinded approval for the project was passed with PCF support at the beginning of 1948 by 385 votes to 75.1218 The communists celebrated the vote as a great victory for local inhabitants, one that had been led by the PCF and the communist municipalities of Arcueil and Gentilly, claiming that local residents who were affected gave thanks to the communists once the project was abandoned.1219 More politicised, and ultimately less successful, was the struggle against the Autoroute du Sud, a project that had been envisaged in 1935 and had been taken up again by the government in 1949.1220 Cutting through Villejuif, Gentilly, Arcueil, Cachan, L’Hay-les-Roses and Kremlin-Bicêtre, this freeway was designed to relieve the suburbs to the south of Paris from traffic emanating from the provinces south of the city. The Autoroute du Sud was opposed by the communists in the first place because of the deleterious impact it had on the communes affected. Arcueil’s communists opposed the new roadway because it would completely cut-off some districts from the rest of the commune, “milliers de locataires seraient jetés à la rue”, local centres would have to be moved, a local sports ground was slated for destruction, workers would be deprived of their gardens and a great number of shopkeepers would be ruined.1221 However, communist objections went further. The Autoroute du Sud was attacked as an “ouvrage de guerre”, “ouvrage d’intérêt militaire et policier” and “préparation à la guerre”, with the communists claiming that the real designs for the Autoroute were strategic - the highway was designed to link Paris to Orly, where the Americans planned to locate an air force base.1222 In this way Arcueil’s communists were able to ‘demonstrate’ how the Atlantic Pact that they violently opposed had a

1216 La Vie nouvelle 17 November 1947. 1217 AN F1714552, note dated 22 May 1947 with illegible signature. 1218 La Vie nouvelle, 21 February 1948. 1219 La Vie nouvelle, 21 February 1948. 1220 La Vie nouvelle, 20 May & 16 September 1950. 1221 La Vie nouvelle, 24 June & 16 September 1950. 1222 La Vie nouvelle, 3 & 10 June & 16 September 1950.

379 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

direct, detrimental impact on local residents – the imposition of the Autoroute upon their commune, bringing with it destruction, dislocation and distress on a local scale. “La lutte contre le projet d’Autoroute n’est seulement une forme de lutte pour la paix,” wrote La Vie nouvelle.1223 Moreover, the Autoroute was attacked as an improper allocation of resources, with vast sums to be spent on a roadway when they could otherwise be directed toward health, housing, education and the like. “On juge gouvernements à leurs actes!”, exclaimed La Vie nouvelle, “Pour l’autoroute-Sud: 16 Milliards Pour logement, la santé, les écoles et autres oeuvres de Paix: ZERO.”1224 The anti-militarist and anti-American themes outlined above and attacks on the inappropriate allocation of scarce resources were prevalent themes at a local protest meeting attended by 500 people (according to La Vie nouvelle) and addressed by the assistant mayor Raymond Bayette.1225 As with the struggle against the extension of the Cité Universitaire, the communists counselled unity and action, and to this end a defence committee was formed and petitions against the roadway were collected.1226 The affected communist municipalities led the quixotic battle against the Autoroute du Sud which to this day continues to cut a path through Arcueil. When defeat came it was given an anti-capitalist interpretation, another indication of how the social regime in France exploited the poor.1227 The struggles against the extension of the Cité Universitaire and the Autoroute du Sud are the most striking examples of the general ongoing efforts made by the PCF and the communist municipality in Arcueil to mobilise the population, particularly around local issues.1228 The communists also never missed an opportunity to incorporate such activity into the broader political and social struggle against capitalist society and the bourgeois state.1229 The postwar communist municipality followed in the footsteps of its interwar predecessor in the support it gave to the struggles of the unemployed and unionists. In

1223 La Vie nouvelle, 27 May 1950. 1224 La Vie nouvelle, 3 June 1950. 1225 La Vie nouvelle, 24 June 1950. 1226 La Vie nouvelle, 27 May & 24 June 1950. 1227 La Voie nouvelle, 27 June 1953. 1228 For example, see Sidobre’s efforts on behalf of residents affected by the widening of a road, La Vie nouvelle, 16 March 1946. 1229 In particular, the municipality propagandised and mobilised the local population against the re- armament of West Germany and in favour of a negotiated settlement in the Algerian War. Sidobre was suspended from his functions for protecting workers who went on strike to protest German re-armament and received death threats from the Organisation armée secrète, La Vie nouvelle, 27 January, 3 & 17 February 1951, La Voie nouvelle, 13 & 27 February 1954 and Varin, Mémoires, pp. 162-163.

380 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

the first half of 1953 the municipality responded to representations from the Comité des travailleurs sans emploi by providing the children of the unemployed with material aid, including free milk up to the age of three and free canteen meals for all children attending school, 50 kilo bags of coal, toiletries to families of the unemployed, and free medical assistance to the sick.1230 The municipality had wanted to accord nine francs per day to the unemployed but was prevented from doing so by the Prefect. In December 1952 the Comité de Défense des Travailleurs des camions Bernard (a truck manufacturer located in the northwest of the suburb) went into battle against retrenchments, reductions in hours worked and salary cuts, turning to the municipality for assistance.1231 At the same time, the Comité d’Entreprise et les délégués de l’usine Barriquand et Marre (at a metalwork factory also located in the northwest of Arcueil) also turned to the municipality for help in an analogous strike movement. In both cases the municipality and the factory delegates broadened the scope of their fight to encompass political issues such as free commerce with all companies, including the USSR and the ‘popular democracies’, the constitution of government independent of the tutelage of another country (that is, the USA), and a reduction of military spending with the transferral of these funds toward useful ends.1232 The municipal council resolved to organise a meeting between the directors of local factories, the enterprise committees, artisans, shopkeepers and unions of all tendencies to study solutions to the current economic crisis.1233 However, the management of Ateliers Barriquand et Marre refused to meet with a delegation from the municipality because its propositions were political and had nothing to do with the company management.1234 Again in October 1954, with close to 200 workers on strike at Camions Bernard in an effort to secure higher wages and a reduction in work rates, Arcueil’s communist municipality demonstrated its solidarity with the strikers by providing them with meals each day.1235 Under the Fourth Republic, the PCF tightened its influence over local culture

1230 AD94 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, letter from the Mayor dated 7 April 1953 to the secretary of the Comité des travailleurs sans emploi. 1231 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, letter from the Comité de Défense des Travailleurs des camions Bernard, 29 December 1952. 1232 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, letter from Mayor dated 7 April 1953; Letter from Comité de Défense des Travailleurs des camions Bernard, 29 December 1952; Council Motion of 16/1/53. 1233 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, council Motion of 16/1/53. 1234 E Dépôt Arcueil 7F6, letter 28 January 1953 from Ateliers Barriquand et Marre, 77-81 avenue Aristide-Briand. 1235 La Voie nouvelle, 2 & 9 October 1954.

381 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

and communal identity through its celebration of local history and culture and by strengthening Arcueil’s identification with the international communist movement. The municipality continued to be a source of popular culture, staging an annual kermesse and similar such events as it had done in the interwar period.1236 However, under the Fourth Republic there was a particular emphasis on local history reminiscent of the communists in interwar Halluin or the socialist Sellier in interwar Suresnes. On 15 April 1945 and with the participation of local societies including Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil, the municipalities of Arcueil and Cachan hosted a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of François-Vincent Raspail. In Arcueil a plaque was attached to the house where Raspail died, while the biography contained in the commemoration program celebrated both his scientific achievements and his revolutionary politics.1237 Four years later the municipality paid homage to the chemist Berthollet and the mathematician Laplace, both of whom had achieved worldwide notoriety for discoveries they made in their fields of science after they came to reside in Arcueil in the early nineteenth century.1238 On 25 June the following year, Arcueil’s communist municipality and Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil turned their attention to the celebration of the life and music of Erik Satie with speeches and a musical concert. Sidobre traced Satie’s revolutionary contribution to the musical arts and his adhesion first to the SFIO and then to the PCF, while the musical critic for L’Humanité and biographer of Satie, Robert Caby, claimed that Satie embraced dialectical materialism and that this was reflected in his music and his adherence to the party of the French working class, the PCF.1239 Satie was celebrated not only as an internationally-renowned musician but also as a committed communist. In this way an important figure of local culture and history was inextricably linked to communism. The construction of a communist communal identity went beyond celebration and the appropriation of local history - the communists had to influence the way local residents interpreted contemporary events. Thus municipal bulletins intermingled local

1236 See for example La Voie nouvelle, 26 June 1952. 1237 AD94 1J382, Program entitled: “Les Amis du Vieil Arcueil Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie d’Arcueil et Cachan Dimanche 15 Avril 1945 Commémoration du 150e Anniversaire de la Naissance de François-Vincent Raspail Organisée avec Concours des Municipalités d’Arcueil et de Cachan et la participation des Sociétés Locales.” 1238 AD94 35J265, “République Française Liberté - Égalité – Fraternité Ville d’Arcueil Hommage aux Savants Illustres Berthollet et Laplace qui ont été citoyens d’Arcueil, à l’occasion du bicentenaire de leur naissance Dimanche 26 Juin 1949 à 14h.30”; La Vie nouvelle, 11 December 1948. 1239 La Vie nouvelle, 1 July 1950.

382 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

news and enumerations of the achievements of Arcueil’s communist municipality with denunciations of the Atlantic Pact, the American alliance, the Korean, Indochinese and Algerian wars and the capitalist system which were variously blamed for plunging France into war, threatening it with nuclear holocaust and exacerbating the housing crisis through the diversion of scarce resources away from social housing.1240 Government policies were denounced for depriving Arcueil’s municipal administration of the means needed to build new housing, schools and municipal infrastructure and to provide welfare services to those in need such as the elderly and former prisoners. The bulletins often pointed out areas where the ‘war budget’ of the government had a direct impact at a local level, for example in the lack of funds available to the municipality to refurbish the girls’ school at Laplace or in the reduction of funds available for school nutrition, thus forcing the municipality to reduce the amount of milk and sugar available to school children.1241 The opening of new communal infrastructure also presented an occasion for the municipality to propagandise the local population.1242 Arcueil’s communist municipality also attempted to link their commune indelibly with the international communist movement. On 30 April 1950 and in the presence of elected representatives and the Soviet ambassador, the municipalities of Arcueil and Gentilly inaugurated an avenue Staline, which was then celebrated with musical performances.1243 In the preceding fortnight the inauguration had been widely publicised via the press and posters as an act of Franco-Soviet friendship and had gone ahead despite a campaign from the anticommunist press, and in particular Le Figaro, and attempts from the police in Gentilly to prevent it.1244 La Vie nouvelle claimed that several thousand attended the inauguration, including families and the elderly, where they encountered a large portrait of Stalin in profile above which was written a slogan that stated the French people would never go to war with the USSR.1245 Surrounded by the flags of France, the USSR, the People’s Republic of China and countries of the Eastern Bloc, speakers celebrated Stalin’s foresight, wisdom, tenacity and commitment

1240 See in particular: Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil et de Gentilly, June 1949, p. 1, 3, 8-9; Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, no. 2, 1953, p.5; Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, supplément du no. 274 de La Voie nouvelle de mars 1958, pp. 3, 12, 15. 1241 Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil et de Gentilly, June 1949, pp. 15; Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, March 1958, p. 12. 1242 For example, see the speech given by Thorez on 29 September 1957 at the opening of the groupe scolaire Henri Barbusse, La Voie nouvelle, 21 September & 5 October 1957. 1243 La Vie nouvelle, 29 April 1950. 1244 La Vie nouvelle, 6 May 1950. 1245 La Vie nouvelle, 6 May 1950.

383 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

to peace. With the death of Stalin two years later, the facade of the town hall was adorned with a photograph of Stalin that was surrounded by flowers and tricolour flags and which carried a quote from Stalin.1246 This act of commemoration was followed with another: the installation of a cenotaph to Stalin inside the town hall onto which flowers were placed by mourners. “Des croyants, après un court prière, laissaient la place à des hommes ou des femmes de toutes conditions et chacun apposait sur le livre d’or l’empreinte de sa peine,” wrote La Voie nouvelle in March 1953. The façade of the Centre Intersyndical d’Arcueil et Cachan was emblazoned with the words “Gloire Immortelle au Grand Staline.”1247 The response of Arcueil’s municipality to Stalin’s death at a time when the Cold War was at its height underlines Arcueil’s emergence as a communist commune, especially since in the municipal elections that followed some weeks later the PCF increased its share of the valid votes cast by close to 4% when compared to 1947. This suggests that the feelings expressed by the municipality to the recently departed Stalin resonated widely among local residents. Finally, the communist hegemony built by the PCF in postwar Arcueil would not have been possible without the unfailing focus of the communist municipality on improving the material conditions of local residents. “La gestion des affaires municipales exclusivement au bénéfice de la Population d’Arcueil”, was the aim of Arcueil’s communist municipality, according to its mayor Sidobre.1248 One of the first priorities was housing, and in particular re-housing those residents who lived in the tenements of Arcueil, such as the Villa Mélanie described in Chapter 3.1249 Between 1951 and 1953 the housing complex Paul Vaillant-Couturier, consisting of 135 dwellings, was constructed on municipal land, and between 1956 and 1958 the plan for the renovation of the town centre began with the construction of the HLM Cherchefeuille, consisting of 148 dwellings, and the HLM Raspail, consisting of 24 dwellings. In 1956, construction commenced on Chaperon-Vert complex (see Chapter 3) which was completed in 1964 and eventually housed 1600 inhabitants. Other housing developments came under the Fifth Republic. Beyond housing, the municipality followed in the footsteps of its interwar activity via improvements to communal infrastructure, and in particular local schools, and improvements to and/or an expansion

1246 La Voie nouvelle, 14 March 1953. 1247 La Voie nouvelle, 14 March 1953. 1248 Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, supplément no. 310 Voie nouvelle novembre 1958, p. 3. 1249 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 154-155.

384 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

of sanitation, welfare, health, sport, leisure and children’s services provided by the municipality, all the while ensuring that local residents were aware of the benefits they received from competent, working-class-led local government.1250

The PCF in Cachan During the Fourth Republic

When the Comité local de Libération assumed control of the local government in Cachan on 21 August 1944, Léon Juzaine assumed the functions of the first assistant mayor. The first task of the new administration was to ensure that local residents had sufficient food, though this administration also made some improvements to Cachan’s schools.1251 The following year, Juzaine became mayor of Cachan’s new communist-led municipality. His administration was also initially concerned with basic necessities, such as ensuring that local residents had wood for heating.1252 With finances tight and facing a short term in office the scope for major developments was not great. Cachan’s communist municipality nevertheless made some notable improvements to local living conditions. In terms of local infrastructure, this included the creation of a central kitchen to provide more economical meals to schoolchildren, the installation of municipal baths in the town hall, repairing and surfacing roads, extending the sewerage system and the provision of tap water and gas, a complete revamp of public lighting, and the installation of central heating and other improvements to local schools. In terms of social services, the communist municipality improved the services of the community health clinic which included the distribution of milk to children under two years old, consultations for infants and free smallpox vaccinations, and it paid particular attention to the needs of children by renovating the school camp at Triguères and developing the Patronage Laïque.1253 Each year the municipality staged a kermesse.1254 In an act of proletarian solidarity, the municipality and the Caisse des Écoles took charge of 10 children of the miners of the Nord.1255 As thanks, the commune of Cachan received 20

1250 Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil et Gentilly, 1949, p. 15; La Voie nouvelle, 28 March 1953, 27 September 1958 & 21 February 1959; Varin, Mémoires, pp. 170-173; Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, November 1958, p. 2; Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, March 1958, p. 13; Varin, Mémoires, pp. 170-173. On 29 March 1953, the municipality held an exhibition that trumpeted the achievements of Arcueil’s postwar communist municipality, Bulletin Municipal d’Arcueil, 1953, p. 12. 1251 La Vie nouvelle, 21 April 1945. 1252 Carat, Cachan à 70 ans, p. 11. 1253 Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 2, 1947, pp. 2-3, 6-7, 8-9, 11-12, 16. 1254 Renaissance, no. 1, September 1945, Parti Communiste Français, Section de Cachan, Cellule Paul Vaillant-Couturier, monthly journal (AD94 35J194); Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, 1947, p. 11. 1255 Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 2, 1947, p. 12.

385 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

tonnes of coal from the miners of Loos-en-Gohelle in the Pas-de Calais department, which was distributed by the municipality to those dependent on social welfare and to retired workers and the elderly.1256 Thus, Cachan’s communist municipality administered the commune in the same vein as its counterpart in Arcueil, with a focus on improving the material lives of local residents. The election of an RPF mayor in October 1947 occurred against a background not only of the Cold War and the consequent estrangement of the local PCF and SFIO, but also the hostility felt by many residents towards having a communist municipality.1257 In this context, the communists only increased their isolation by denigrating the record of the Eyrolles administration that was not only closely associated with Cachan’s independence but which had done much to modernise the suburb and transform it for the better.1258 At a time when Arcueil’s communists embraced local history, Cachan’s communists attempted to re-write it. By contrast, having been elected as the suburb’s first socialist mayor, Jacques Carat embraced the legacy of the Eyrolles administration. When Carat inaugurated the avenue Léon Eyrolles in Cachan towards the end of 1957, he referred to realisations made during Eyrolles’ term as mayor as a “tour de force” that was indicative of the “dynamisme extraordinaire de l’animateur et de son sens de l’efficacité.”1259 The socialist Carat pledged to assume the legacy of Eyrolles in his administration of Cachan:

Devant une telle tâche, nous ne serons pas trop de toutes les bonnes volontés réunies pour essayer, modestement, de nous instruire auprès du grand exemple que Léon Eyrolles nous a laissé, pour retrouver, dans son souvenir, un peu de la ferveur qui l’animait.1260

While the communists dismissed the achievements of the Eyrolles mayoralty, Carat expressed his gratitude and respect “au Maire dont le nom…n’a jamais cessé d’être associé à l’histoire et aux destinés de notre belle cité.”1261 In my view, by embracing a local figure whom local socialists had pilloried in the interwar period as a fascist and reactionary, Carat was embracing the local heritage and history of Cachan. In doing so

1256 Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 2, 1947, p. 12; La Vie nouvelle, 22 March 1947. 1257 Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 2, 1947, pp. 2, 10. 1258 For example see Bulletin Municipal de Cachan, no. 2, 1947, pp. 2, 10. 1259 Journal de Cachan, no. 221, December 1957 (press cutting AD35J59 Dossier 3). 1260 Journal de Cachan, December 1957. 1261 Journal de Cachan, December 1957.

386 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

he was able to unite disparate non-communist forces behind his SFIO administration, and thus successfully entrench the marginalisation of the communists in local politics. As in the interwar period, under the Fourth Republic the PCF in Cachan attempted to lead, mobilise, organise and shape both the local working-class movement and local community via its grassroots activism.1262 Losing control of the municipality in 1947 made this task difficult since it deprived the PCF of the resources and authority that were invested in local government and which were essential to the establishment of a durable communist hegemony.

The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

In Arcueil the PCF’s unbroken control of municipal government from 1945 until the end of the Fourth Republic gave it the means to firmly entrench a politico-social hegemony, the foundations of which had been established under the Popular Front and had withstood World War II. It did this by leading the defence of local and working- class interests, by mobilising and empowering local residents at a grassroots level, by appropriating and shaping class and local culture, and by providing efficient and responsive working-class government, and by always locating these activities within the communist worldview which denoted Arcueil as a communist bastion. In Cachan, the growth in electoral support for the PCF that was apparent in the 1930s resumed under the Fourth Republic but the PCF’s victory in the 1945 municipal election was contingent upon the machinations of the two-ballot system (that is, the fact that only a simple majority was needed in the second ballot for an entire list to be elected) and on the presence of non-communists on the PCF’s list. Lacking the same degree of social and political pre-eminence as the PCF in Arcueil, Cachan’s communists fell victim to the politics of the Cold War. Without the resources and authority invested in local government, the PCF was unable to transform electoral dominance into politico-social hegemony. For most of the history of Cachan, the PCF had been politically and socially isolated, and the overwhelming victory in Cachan of the socialist Lacroix in the 1958 legislative elections signalled that the attempt of the PCF to move out of its working- class ghettoes in Cachan under the Fourth Republic was doomed to failure. Thus, the attainment of communist hegemony was inextricably linked to the control of local

1262 See for example: Renaissance, no. 1 September 1945; La Vie nouvelle, 24 June 1950, 22 April 1950 & 10 February 1951; La Voie nouvelle, 18 July 1953, 27 February, 3 April, 17 July, 9 October, 27 November 1954 & 19 March 1955; L’Avenir de la banlieue de Paris, 4 to 10 March 1954.

387 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

government. It was the control of local government under the Fourth Republic which enabled the PCF in Arcueil to establish the social foundations of a communist hegemony that lasted well into the Fifth Republic.

4. CONCLUSIONS

With the election of a communist municipality in Cachan in 1945 it looked for a time as if Cachan might tread the same path as Arcueil and become a solid communist bastion. However, the election of Cachan’s communist municipality was made possible by the political context that accompanied Liberation, namely the PCF’s participation in the tripartite governments, the broad-based nature of the PCF list (which included some socialists) and the machinations of the second ballot where only a simple majority was required. Had the SFIO supported the election of a communist mayor in 1947 or had the two-ballot system been in operation, Cachan’s political evolution may have resembled Arcueil’s. In reality, although clearly the strongest electoral force in Cachan, the PCF was never able to move beyond a support base that amounted to a sizeable but, except in the case of the second ballot in 1945, not an absolute majority. By contrast, the PCF maintained an electoral support base in Arcueil that amounted to an absolute majority or else was very close to one. Nonetheless, in both Arcueil and Cachan a large portion of the electorate voted for a PCF that never wavered in its commitment to the communist teleological project. Nowhere was this clearer than in the electoral propaganda of the 1950s where the PCF’s devotion to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement stood in stark contrast to a ubiquitous anti-Soviet and anticommunist sentiment that now infused even SFIO propaganda. It is not a great step to conclude that those who voted for a marginalised and isolated political group were themselves alienated from the bourgeois society. I have identified alienation as the first factor contributing to the rise of French communism. However, the success that Arcueil’s communists had in building a postwar communist hegemony, and the failure of their counterparts in Cachan to do so as well, point toward the importance of the local context, the second factor. In this case the first two variables I have identified as affecting support for communism - socio-economic structure and material conditions - gave a slight advantage to Arcueil’s communists. Still, under the Fourth Republic Arcueil’s communists were much more successful in assimilating into and appropriating for their own benefit the local politico-cultural environment than their counterparts in Cachan. One reason why was undoubtedly

388 The Consolidation of Communist Hegemony?

related to the third factor I have identified as playing a role in the rise of French communism, that of extrinsic factors. By creating a gulf between the local PCF and SFIO, the onset of the Cold War dealt a terminal blow to PCF hopes of gaining control of Cachan’s municipal government, and thus of establishing a communist hegemony. Drawing on the unquestionable advantage of operating in a commune with a strong leftwing tradition, the PCF in Arcueil was able to put in place the four constituents of communist hegemony. Under the Fourth Republic, the communist municipality in Arcueil led the defence of local interests, as exemplified by its struggles against the extension of the Cité Universitaire and the Autoroute du Sud. In these and other battles and around issues of local importance the communists helped to bring local residents together and to collectively empower them. The municipality reinforced class sentiment by supporting the struggles of striking workers while at the same time celebrating and appropriating local history. Class and local pride were combined in a communist communal identity that firmly linked Arcueil with the international communist movement, an identity that was given expression when the Avenue de Staline was dedicated in 1951 and when Stalin’s death was commemorated. In the final analysis it ensured ongoing support by providing competent local government that focused on the needs of local residents and which stood as an exemplar of working- class self-government that looked to the USSR for inspiration. Cachan’s communists acted to defend the interests of local residents, mobilised the latter around local issues, assisted striking workers and attempted to widen the appeal of the communist worldview. The PCF’s brief control of municipal government showed that while local communists were capable administrators their control of government remained something of an anomaly in Cachan. Their clumsy attempts to re-write local history only served to isolate them from the mainstream, in stark contrast to the socialist mayor Carat who embraced the legacy of Eyrolles, or even the communists of Arcueil who celebrated local historical figures whether communist or not.

389

8. Conclusion

With the PCF projecting itself as the party of order and contemptuously dismissing the student protest movement, it could be argued that the PCF’s response to the events of May 1968 was indicative of the party’s integration into French society. There is certainly truth in David Caute’s assertion that by this point capitalism had become a comfortable opponent for a PCF that had many similarities with Gaullism (a devotion to order and authority, the fostering of the cult of the personality, anti- Americanism).1263 The PCF had long been a permanent fixture of the French political scene. Doubtless, in trying to keep students and workers apart and in directing the strike movement toward improvements to pay and conditions rather than to challenge power, the PCF was attempting to protect itself against assaults on its base from groups to its left and from the state. While the tactical opportunism of the PCF in May ‘68 was designed to protect its support base, it did not ipso facto signal a communist reconciliation with bourgeois society. (A similar argument could be made for the PCF’s attitude during the Algerian War). Arguably, the PCF had a realistic appraisal of the forces arrayed before the insurrectionaries of May ‘68 and knew workers would pay the heaviest price if civil war was to erupt.1264 The PCF was rigidly centralised and unconditionally devoted to the USSR whose lead it faithfully followed, and therefore the party’s attitude in May ‘68 may well have been in part motivated by Soviet concerns that the ‘revolution’ would be exported to the Communist Bloc, as Caute reproachfully claims.1265 However, right up until its demise, devotion to the USSR was an overwhelming characteristic of PCF apparatchiks and militants alike and set French communists radically and enduringly apart from the rest of France.

1263 David Caute, Sixty-eight: The Year of the Barricades, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, 1988, p. 222. 1264 This is the view of Johnson, (French Communist Party versus the Students, p. 185), whereas Caute (Sixty-eight, pp. 226-227) views May ‘68 a revolutionary moment gone begging as a consequence of the actions and attitudes of the communists. 1265 Caute, Sixty-eight, p. 223. 390 Conclusion

Map 10 PCF municipalities in banlieue rouge in the mid-1980s

SOURCE: Andrew Knapp “A receding tide? France’s Communist Municipalities”, Marxist Local Government, p. 146.

391 Conclusion

While de Gaulle’s reintroduction in 1958 of the two-ballot system was designed to curtail the influence of the PCF nationally, it only served to reinforce communist hegemony in Arcueil where the entire PCF list was elected in the municipal elections of 1959 and 1965.1266 Sidobre remained mayor of Arcueil until his death on 30 April 1964, which was commemorated with a large funeral procession for a communist militant held up by La Voie nouvelle as an exemplar.1267 Unbroken control of municipal government enabled the PCF to maintain an electoral hegemony in Arcueil until recently. In the first two decades of the Fifth Republic a communist municipality was consistently re-elected with an ever-increasing majority. In 1963 the PCF received 53.3% of the valid votes cast in Arcueil, in 1965 58.9%, in 1971 60.58% and 1977 75.91%, running on a list that included socialists and other local personalities of the Left.1268 In the 1960s and 1970s Arcueil was continually represented by a communist deputy as the PCF dominated the western portion of the Department of the Val-de- Marne.1269 In November 1962, Vaillant-Couturier was elected in the first ballot with 50.04%, and then re-elected in 1973 and 1978 (after 1973 as deputy of the first district of the Val-de-Marne).1270 After re-electing a communist municipality in 1983, Arcueil remained one of the strongest bastions of the PCF in the Paris region throughout the 1980s even as municipal communism receded.1271 The 1989 municipal elections saw Trignon elected mayor after heading a common list of the Left that was successful in the first ballot with 67.66% of the vote.1272 In 1981, Arcueil’s residents helped elect the general secretary of the PCF, Georges Marchais, as their local deputy in an election which indicated that support for the PCF in the west of the Val-de-Marne was on the wane.1273 In the 1986 legislative elections, the PCF received a third of the vote in Arcueil, which made it one

1266 AD94 DM3/47, Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune d’Arcueil, Conseillers Municipaux, Renouvellement 1959 and 1965. 1267 Varin, Mémoires, p. 160; La Voie nouvelle, 8 May 1964. 1268 Varin, Mémoires, p. 161. 1269 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 418. 1270 Varin, pp. 164-165. 1271 On the decline in the PCF’s influence in the Paris region after the 1983 municipal elections see Andrew R. Knapp, “A receding tide? France’s Communist Municipalities”, Marxist Local Government, pp. 141-142, 146-147. 1272 The results of voting in Arcueil and Cachan in municipal, legislative and presidential elections from 1989 onwards have been sourced from: http://elections.figaro.net/historique/select.html. They were sourced using the drop-down menus, with the results for Arcueil and Cachan located under 94 Val-de- Marne. 1273 Varin, Mémoires, pp. 164-165. The PS succeeded in gaining control of a seat located south of Arcueil in the extreme south-west of the Val-de-Marne, Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 418. 392 Conclusion

of the most solid communist bastions along with Gennevilliers, Villejuif and Vitry (where support for the PCF was highest).1274 In 1995, Trignon headed a list that polled 56.90% in the first ballot, with the extreme Left polling 4.80% and others on the Left 4.04%. Nevertheless, the declining fortunes of the PCF in Arcueil were in evidence in the presidential elections of this year. In 1995, Hue for the PCF managed 22.47% in Arcueil, behind the PS’s Jospin with 24.82% but ahead of Chirac with 16.28%, Le Pen with 12.28% and Laguiller of Lutte Ouvrière with 6.21%. Jospin received 60.14% in Arcueil at the second ballot. The new millennium has proved to be catastrophic for the PCF in Arcueil. The PCF lost control of the municipal government in the 2001 municipal elections.1275 The new mayor Daniel Breuiller belongs to the Groupe Entente Citoyenne which holds 11 of the 33 council seats, while the PCF and its allies hold nine council seats and the PS five.1276 The terminal decline of the PCF in Arcueil was confirmed in the 2002 presidential election. In the first ballot Hue received 11.75%, less than Le Pen’s 13.8% and Chirac’s 12.94%, with Jospin topping the poll on 18.24%. One reason for the PCF’s decline in Arcueil was support gained by a plethora of candidates on the Left. These included Chevènement of the Pole républicaine with 7% and Mamère of the Greens with 6.31%, in addition to the extreme Left with Laguiller receiving 6.07% and Besancenot of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire 5.36%. In Cachan, having a socialist mayor in place for six years between 1953 and 1959 proved to be a real boon for the SFIO. With fourteen socialists elected in a contest for 27 council seats, the SFIO emerged in the 1959 municipal elections as the dominant force in municipal politics, definitively displacing the PCF which did not have a single councillor elected.1277 This dominance was sealed in 1965, with all but three of the SFIO’s list being elected.1278 Carat was re-elected mayor and he turned Cachan into his fief under the Fifth Republic as he went on to become Conseiller-Général for the Department of the Seine and then the Department of the Val-de-Marne, Regional

1274 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 464. 1275 According to Le Figaro (http://elections.figaro.net/historique/select.html.) the first ballot saw two groups of divers gauche polled 44.07% and 9.45%, along with 14.49% for four candidates of the extreme left and 12.47% for the greens. Divers gauche polled 49.85% in the second ballot, the greens 22.2% and the Right 28.04%. 1276 For the political orientation of Arcueil’s current municipality see http://www.arcueil.fr/03_vos_elus.php. 1277 AD94 DM3/47, Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune de Cachan, Conseillers Municipaux, Renouvellement 1959. 1278 DM3/47, Listes d’Élus Municipaux, Commune de Cachan, Renouvellement 1965. 393 Conclusion

Councillor for the Ile-de-France and socialist senator for the Val-de-Marne.1279 Thus, under the Fifth Republic Cachan became a socialist bastion.1280 In 1989, Carat was elected in the first ballot with 50.59%, the PCF polling only 12.07%. In 1995 Carat’s support had dropped significantly to 38.56% in the first ballot and 45.91% in the second. The PCF with 8.74% in the first ballot was out-polled by two Green candidates with 10.14% and 10.91%, with the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) emerging as the second strongest political force in the commune. Under the Fifth Republic, the PCF’s legislative vote was significantly lower and the PS higher than in Arcueil, while socialist Conseillers-Généraux were elected for Cachan in 1982 and 1985.1281 In the 1995 presidential election, the first ballot saw Jospin lead in Cachan with 30.2%, ahead of Chirac with 21.63%. Hue on 9.1% was beaten by Le Pen with 12.03%, though he at least out-polled Laguiller with 5.82%. The same cannot be said for the presidential election of 2002, when with only 3.61% of the vote Hue was out-polled in Cachan by both Laguiller with 4.45% and Besancenot with 3.63% and was well behind Le Pen with 12.8%, Jospin with 22.39%, Chirac with 17.37%, Mamère with 7.34% and Chevènement with 7.17%. In so far as Cachan is concerned, the distinguishing feature of the Fifth Republic vis-à-vis the Fourth is the marginalisation of the PCF as a political force in the suburb, especially in local politics. What has caused this decline? In Chapter 1 I suggested that the universal decline of the PCF has been caused by six factors: the PCF’s ultimate weakness vis-à- vis the state, socio-economic change which undercut the PCF’s support base; transformations in the political landscape of France such as the renewal of the PS as an electoral force and the emergence of the Front National; an internal institutional crisis within the PCF; the fall of the Soviet Union and the manifest failure of the PCF’s teleological project; and, cultural change within the PCF working-class and peasant support base and French society as a whole. Like many other Paris suburbs Arcueil was struck by the wave of de-industrialisation that followed in the wake of the economic crisis of the 1970s, with a number of factories closing down.1282 The apogee of the PCF

1279 See entry on Jacques Carat, in Dictionnaire Biographique – Who’s Who in France, 30th Edition 1998-1999, Antoine Hébrard (ed), Éditions Jacques Lafitte, Levallois-Perret, p. 378. 1280 Catherine Rhein indicates that Cachan’s municipality was socialist following the municipal elections of 1959 and 1989, Catherine Rhein, “Ségrégation résidentielle et parc de logements (1920- 1990)”, Ouvriers en banlieue, p. 208. 1281 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, pp. 460, 575, 595. 1282 Varin, Mémoires, p. 156. 394 Conclusion

coincided with a relatively stable population in Arcueil1283, whereas its recent falls in support have coincided with an increasing gentrification of southern suburbs adjoining or close to Paris.1284 Similarly, as Cachan once again resumed its rapid population growth (rising to 26 283 in 1967 from 15 858 in 1954) and soon surpassed Arcueil (at 21 817) in size, so its nature transformed. With the installation of an école normale supérieure, two technical schools, a technical centre and college in the 1960s, Cachan became home to 5000 students, which gave it a very different character to the industrial and dormitory suburb Arcueil.1285 In this way, socio-economic change can be seen as one cause of the decline of the PCF in Cachan. Though the causes of the PCF’s decline outlined above had their origins beyond Arcueil and Cachan they nevertheless had a clear impact on the two suburbs. Does the decline of the PCF herald the integration of the working class and the demise of what I have termed the neo-Babouvist tradition? In the 2002 presidential elections, 70% of workers voted neither for Jospin or Chirac.1286 We have already seen in Chapter 1 that many workers now turn to the Front National as a means of expressing their alienation, while overall fewer workers are voting for the Left, down from 47% in the 1995 presidential election to 41% in 2002.1287 Yet in the past decade or more so- called Trotskyist groups have arisen to challenge the PCF on the extreme Left and are now a stable feature of the French electorate.1288 In the 2002 presidential elections both Laguiller of Lutte Ouvrière, in fifth position with 5.72%, and Besancenot of the Ligue Communiste, eighth with 4.23%, out-polled the PCF, tenth with 3.37%.1289 Laguiller’s electorate tends to be more working-class than Besancenot who attracts more support from young, educated voters opposed to globalisation. Overall the extreme left (PCF included) polled close to 14%, the same figure as in 1995 when the PCF’s vote had

1283 In 1977 a survey by the municipality indicated that 86% Arcueillais lived in city for more than 10 years, 60% since before 1961, 29% in 1945, Varin, Mémoires, p. 181. 1284 Boyer et al, La France Septentrionale, p. 563. 1285 Jean-François Destin, “Cachan: M. Jacques Carat, maire depuis 13 ans, expose ses projets”, France-Soir, 28 December 1966 (Press cutting AD94 35J251). 1286 Pierre Martin, “Dossier, The French Elections of 2002: L’Élection Présidentielle et Les Élections Législatives Françaises de 2002”, French Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 2003, p. 15. 1287 Martin, “L’Élection Présidentielle et Les Élections Législatives Françaises de 2002”, p. 13. 1288 Andrew Appleton, “Parties under Pressure: Challenges to ‘Established’ French Parties”, West European Politics, vol. 18, no. 1, January 1995, p. 61. 1289 Miguet, “The French Elections of 2002”, p. 209. 395 Conclusion

been more than double its 2002 result.1290 Thus, the PCF appears to be losing support to other groups on the extreme Left - those who vote for the extreme Left as a whole (PCF included) do so for more or less the same reasons, the two main impulses being employment and social inequality.1291 One area for future research is the recent rise of ‘Trotskyism’ as a political force and the extent to which the groups on the extreme Left have drawn support away from the PCF in the Paris region. Further historical research on the recent evolution of the extreme Left in France will help determine the extent to which working-class alienation is still a factor on the French Left and whether it accounts for the extraordinary (in the context of Western European) persistence in France of an extreme Left that has an important electoral presence. In Chapter 1 I argued that the root cause for the rise of communism was the alienation of a significant portion of the French working-class from bourgeois society and the bourgeois nation-state. This alienation was not only historically conditioned but was embedded in the political structures and dominant cultural discourse during the period of this study (1919-1958). It was particularly prevalent during the critical interwar period when the PCF laid the foundations of the postwar hegemony it exerted in the working-class suburbs of Paris. Chapter 1 argued that the legacy of the French Revolution and an historical experience of alienation on the part of the French working- class provided the context out of which three broad socialist traditions arose - a reformist tradition which sought integration into bourgeois society, a neo-Proudhonian tradition which sought to displace the bourgeois state with a society based on the free association of workers, and the neo-Babouvist tradition which sought, by whatever means possible, to capture the bourgeois state and re-fashion it in the interests of workers. The neo-Proudhonian and neo-Babouvist traditions formed part of an insurrectionist current in the French labour movement which was resolutely hostile to bourgeois society and refused to be accommodated within it. The PCF was yet another manifestation of the neo-Babouvist tradition, in the same way that the Guesdists had been. While the proud revolutionary tradition of Paris meant that the neo-Babouvist tradition was strong in the Paris region, the politico-cultural alienation of French workers manifested itself in the banishment of the proletariat to the periphery of the

1290 Miguet, “French Elections of 2002”, p. 210; Martin, “L’Élection Présidentielle et Les Élections Législatives Françaises de 2002”, p. 15. 1291 Martin, “L’Élection Présidentielle et Les Élections Législatives Françaises de 2002”, p. 16. 396 Conclusion

French capital where they found refuge in suburban working-class slums quarantined from the bourgeois city. This is the context for the initial rise of the PCF in Arcueil where a pre-existing tradition of radical working-class politics was reinforced by the arrival of an increasing number of workers, a corollary of industrialisation and population growth during the prewar and interwar periods. This radical tradition manifested itself firstly in support for the Radical-Socialists, then in increasing support for the SFIO. As was the case in many other Paris suburbs such as Bobigny and in many localities throughout France, in Arcueil the PCF emerged after the schism as the natural party of a section of the French working class that had long expressed its hostility toward and alienation from bourgeois society by voting as practically as possible to the Left. Consequently, those workers in Arcueil who had supported the SFIO on the whole transferred their support to the PCF. Chapters 5 and 6 indicated that lacking the same radical working-class traditions and largely bypassed by industrialisation, Cachan entered the interwar period as a bastion of moderation and conservatism, a sentiment that was only reinforced by a feeling among its residents that the Marxist-dominated municipal council of Arcueil-Cachan neglected their interests and was Arcueil-centred. Conservatism and particularism were closely connected in Cachan, which was less affected by prewar population growth than Arcueil. The rapid population growth of Cachan in the interwar period (more rapid than Arcueil) and an accompanying proletarianisation helped overcome the conservative, particularist sentiment that had underpinned Cachan’s drive for independence, and consequently support for the Left grew in the 1930s. The PCF’s claim to be the party of alienated workers and its appropriation of the French socialist tradition in Arcueil and Cachan was underlined in Chapter 4 by the socio-professional analysis of the candidates fielded by all the parties during the interwar period. This analysis demonstrates that in Arcueil and Cachan the PCF was a party of the working class, dominated overwhelmingly by wage-earners and in particular by manual workers, both in terms of the candidates it fielded in elections and the militants that were active in and led the local party organisations. In this way the PCF’s character differed fundamentally from a de-proletarianised SFIO. Not only did the PCF’s composition isolate it from local bourgeois society in Arcueil and Cachan, but Chapter 6 indicated that, unlike many socialists, communists deliberately held themselves aloof from local bourgeois associations, preferring to form their own. However, whether the PCF could transform its core support into a localised

397 Conclusion

hegemony depended on the nature of the local environment and how the party responded to it. This brings us to the three variables that I outlined in Chapter 2 as affecting the capacity of the PCF to establish hegemony in a given locality. The first of these is socio-economic structure. The nature of French society and working-class culture meant that a locality dominated by wage-earners, and in particular by manual workers, was predisposed to communist implantation; though communist hegemony was in no sense guaranteed. Thus, I have argued in Chapters 3 and 4 that Arcueil entered the interwar period as a quasi-industrialised, working-class suburb whereas semi-rural Cachan was much more petty-bourgeois in aspect. This meant that from the outset local conditions were more conducive to communist implantation in Arcueil than in Cachan. The growth of the metallurgical industry during the interwar period and under the Fourth Republic only reinforced Arcueil’s communist tendencies by bringing to the suburb an increasing number of metallurgists, one of the three working-class groups singled out by Molinari as pillars of the PCF (the other two being miners and railway workers). Nevertheless, in Cachan rapid population growth in the interwar period brought proletarianisation and by the mid-1930s support for the PCF was on the rise. It became the dominant political party in Arcueil at the legislative elections of 1936 and 1937. Chapter 4 indicated that by 1936, the socio-professional composition of Arcueil and Cachan was broadly similar with wage earners accounting for close to three-quarters of male heads of households. Still, there were 4.4% more manual workers in Arcueil, and 5.3% more white-collar workers in Cachan. Little had changed by 1954 when the differences recorded in the socio-professional structure of the male heads of households were more or less the same as in 1936. Therefore, taking into account the fact that manual workers were more likely to vote communist than white-collar workers, the socio-economic structure of Arcueil was more conducive to communist implantation. Nevertheless, the differences between Arcueil and Cachan were not significant enough during the period of this study to discount Cachan as a potential communist bastion. The strongest electoral bastion of communism in Arcueil, the Cité- Aqueduc, was not the most proletarian part of the commune though manual workers still made up by far the largest proportion of the male heads of households in 1936. Thus, socio-economic structure alone did not determine the political orientation of Arcueil and Cachan, or of other localities in the Paris region and beyond. Coming to Arcueil and Cachan for the most part from Paris or the provinces, new arrivals encountered material conditions that only served to either reinforce communist

398 Conclusion

sentiment or to create new supporters of the PCF. Chapter 3 indicated that Arcueil’s legions of mal-lotis and tenement-dwellers endured abject living conditions that included poor housing, a lack of basic amenities and a polluted local environment. This bred discontent which in turn fed into support for the PCF. Nowhere was this clearer than in the case of the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section in Arcueil. The cité-jardin of Arcueil had been built to foster class harmony yet Chapter 3 indicates that ongoing problems with the housing supplied, the inadequate provision of municipal services and the deleterious impact of local living conditions on the health of cité-jardin children, created a cité of malcontents. The feelings of resentment on the part of the cité-jardin inhabitants were only exacerbated by the apparent indifference of the Radical municipality to their plight and by the buck-passing on the part of both the municipality and the OPHBMS. Chapter 6 indicated that from the outset the PCF made the cité- jardin a particular focus of their attention. The results are indicated in Chapters 5 and 7, with the Cité-Aqueduc electoral section emerging in the 1930s as the strongest bastion for the PCF in Arcueil, a position that was consolidated under the Fourth Republic. The role of the malcontents of the cité-jardin in making the Cité-Aqueduc section a communist citadel is underlined by the fact that in 1936 there was little difference in the socio-professional composition of this electoral section and Laplace, yet by 1935 the Cité-Aqueduc was supporting the PCF in elections to a much greater degree than in Laplace. Chapter 3 has demonstrated that Cachan also suffered the deleterious impact of rapid suburbanisation, though to a lesser extent than Arcueil. Alongside the presence of dilapidated tenements in the centre of Cachan, other districts such as the Grange-Ory, Lumières and Coteau suffered the problems typical of mal-lotis, that is inadequate infrastructure provision, which resulted in impassable streets in inclement weather, and a lack of amenities such as sewage services. However, in the case of Cachan the centre- right CURSDIGC/Radical municipality to some extent helped to keep the lid on discontent through competent local government that was primarily aimed at improving the lives of local residents via practical improvements such as the surfacing of roads, the paving of streets, the construction of modern schools and the like. Nevertheless, the problems were particularly intractable when it came to the Boulevard de la Vanne in the Coteau, and the latter district remained problematic in the postwar period when it stood out as an area of strong communist support. Despite the general absence of industry when compared to Arcueil, Cachan was not immune to the pernicious effects of

399 Conclusion

industrial pollution as is attested by the death in 1927 of two sewage workers who were asphyxiated by industrial waste pumped into a sewer running through Cachan. This meant that in Cachan too, the material conditions that many local residents endured also facilitated the implantation of communism, though once again the PCF was in a better position in Arcueil than in Cachan, where local administration did a good job of ameliorating the living conditions of local residents. This brings us to the third variable affecting communist implantation at a local level, namely the politico-cultural character of a locality. As I have indicated above with regard to the discussion on working-class alienation, the politico-cultural character of Arcueil played a critical role in the implantation of communism. Not only did Arcueil’s revolutionary and radical working-class heritage provide the PCF with a solid core of support from the outset, it also helped to reinforce similar sentiments among the many working-class newcomers who arrived in the suburb in great numbers during the interwar period. Chapter 6 indicated how this heritage was critical in giving the local PCF the organisational basis from which to construct a communist hegemony. The emergent PCF inherited the SFIO’s pre-eminent position in the working-class movement of Arcueil, as is evidenced by the fact that the mayor, two assistant mayors and most of the leading militants went on to join the PCF in 1922. The staging of an annual banquet in the 1930s to celebrate the birthday of one of the leading figures in the local PCF, Poënsin, the former Communard and SFIO councillor, simultaneously underlined both the party’s local roots and its continuity at a local level with the French socialist and revolutionary traditions. In this way there was a progressive evolution in the political alignment of Arcueil’s working class from Radicalism, to Socialism and then to Communism. The PCF’s broad attempts to extend its influence in every dimension – social, political, cultural – helped it to conquer Arcueil’s municipal government in 1935, and once in control of the resources of local government these efforts became much more effective as the communists attempted to interfuse communal identity and communism. As Chapter 6 indicated, the traditional conservatism of Cachan immediately after World War I can be seen in the re-election of separatist, anti-communist councillors to the Cachan electoral section and their subsequent, politically-motivated campaign for Cachan’s independence. After Arcueil-Cachan became two separate communes in 1922, the PCF emerged as the dominant force on the Left but in a situation where the Left was very weak. The subsequent tactical extremism of the PCF

400 Conclusion

and the rise in the late 1920s of a dynamic SFIO that was prepared to ally like-minded Radicals only served to further isolate the PCF in Cachan. Chapter 6 attested to the fact that the PCF achieved a good degree of social implantation in Cachan during the interwar period. It did this by resolutely defending the interests of local residents, and thereby reinforcing class solidarity as local residents were mobilised to defend their interests collectively. Nevertheless, it was only against the background of leftwing unity under the Popular Front that the PCF became the dominant electoral force in Cachan. Thus, while the Popular Front represented a consolidation of communist influence in Arcueil, it came as a breakthrough in Cachan. Chapter 7 demonstrated that as a consequence the PCF in Arcueil was in a better position to lead the local resistance movement during World War II than its counterpart in Cachan. After the war the interwar and Resistance record of Arcueil’s communists enabled them to build on the politico-cultural hegemony they had begun to construct between 1935 and 1939 via unbroken control of municipal government. Under the Fourth Republic the social foundations of communism in Arcueil were consolidated as the communist municipality appropriated local history and culture, acted as a resolute defender of local interests and made every effort to firmly associate the commune with the international communist movement. The inauguration in Arcueil of the avenue Staline in April 1950 at a time when the Cold War was at its height is symbolic of Arcueil’s embrace of a communist communal identity. Three years later, the communist municipality was returned not only with an increased vote but with an absolute majority. The results of municipal elections in the 1960s and 1970s outlined above indicate that this communist counter-society had strong foundations. In Cachan, the Cold War atmosphere of 1947 ensured that the isolation of the communists was re- affirmed. Whereas the communist administration had been at odds with Cachan’s history of political moderation and had attempted therefore to re-write local history, the newly elected mayor embraced the local legacy of Eyrolles and the CURSDIGC and was rewarded with an unbroken stint as mayor until his retirement in the 1990s. The fate of the PCF in postwar Cachan highlights the critical importance of the way in which the communist project and the PCF as an organisation interfaced with its local environment. The four constituents that I listed as essential to communist hegemony are explanatory tools that help explain how the meeting of communism and its local environment determined not only whether the PCF was successful in creating a communist counter-society at a local level but also the contours of such a counter-

401 Conclusion

society. These four constituents – the provision of dynamic leadership to the local working class, the empowerment of the disempowered through new forms of participatory democracy, the appropriation of local popular culture and sociability with a view to reinforcing class-consciousness and forging a communist communal identity, and a focus on practical improvements to the lives of local residents through the provision of competent, effective working-class self-government at a local level – were firmly in place in Arcueil under the Fourth Republic. The PCF created a communist counter-society in Arcueil because it emerged after the schism as the leading party on the extreme Left. The PCF emerged from the schism with the allegiance of Arcueil-Cachan’s mayor and two assistant mayors, and with a stable core of militants that would provide the backbone of the party in the interwar period and even beyond. Sidobre provided steady leadership throughout the interwar period and then during the Fourth Republic against the constant renewal of party ranks that was typical of the PCF in Arcueil as it was elsewhere. Chapter 6 analysed a pattern that was set in the interwar period whereby the local PCF led the way in defending local interests through the role of militants in local committees, through the issues it took up in its regional newspapers, through the activity firstly of two communist councillors elected in 1932 and then of the communist municipality, and through the representations of communist general councillors. This pattern was repeated under the Fourth Republic as the communist municipality resolutely defended local interests against firstly the expansion of the Cité Universitaire and then the Autoroute du Sud. Defending local interests often meant mobilising local residents into committees or associations centred on issues as diverse as tenancy, old age pensions and public transport, or else taking the lead in organisations formed outside the auspices of the communists. These forms of popular democracy helped to give otherwise powerless workers a sense of control over their lives and gave them a vehicle to assert their class and communal pride. By supporting striking workers, aiding the republicans in Spain and the volunteers who had been wounded fighting for them, or promoting mutual aid initiatives for the benefit of the families of the unemployed, the communists reinforced class sentiment and working-class sociability while giving them a communist tinge. The founding of the Maison du Peuple in Arcueil in 1933 not only enabled the PCF to co- ordinate the activities outlined above more effectively, it was also a symbol of working- class empowerment and solidarity and a place where workers could receive practical assistance.

402 Conclusion

Through mediums that were sometimes explicitly political, such as film nights, sometimes apolitical, such as the annual kermesse, and sometimes a mixture of both, for example the young communist circle formed to provide entertainment to young people, Arcueil’s communists acted both as a source and shaper of popular culture. The Poënsin banquet transmogrified under the communist municipality of the Popular Front into a large-scale public celebration. This practice was perfected under the Fourth Republic when the communist municipality would switch effortlessly from commemorations of local historical figures (Berthollet, Laplace, Raspail) to celebrations of the life of the local communist and composer Erik Satie to the inauguration of the avenue Staline and the public mourning of Stalin’s death. Such actions marked Arcueil as a communist counter-society, one which ultimately rested on the ability of the communists to provide responsive and efficient municipal government. The reputation of the communists as administrators helped them to get elected in Arcueil and kept them in power, and was a major focus of communist campaigns for re-election. By focusing on improving the lives of ordinary people the PCF brought practical ameliorations to the way residents lived. This meant everything from surfacing roads and footpaths to installing municipal baths, from developing local sporting facilities to building new schools, from creating community health clinics to expanding the provision of social welfare. Vulnerable or disadvantaged groups – children, the unemployed, the elderly – were always a particular focus of attention and communist welfare initiatives (such as aiding striking workers) often had the effect of promoting class and community solidarity. In the postwar period the provision of housing became a particular focus, and the considerable numbers housed by the communists would form a bedrock of support for the party. The greater level of support for the PCF in municipal elections that is revealed by Chapter 7 underscores the importance of good municipal administration to communist hegemony in Arcueil. With resources of local government behind it, the PCF was better able to put all the elements of communist hegemony into place in Arcueil under the Fourth Republic. In Cachan the PCF was only ever partially successful in laying the foundations for communist hegemony. As Chapter 5 and 6 indicated, to begin with the party was relatively weak in Cachan. Organisationally the PCF had been dominated by Arcueil under the single commune of Arcueil-Cachan and consequently the party in Cachan was not left with the same solid core of militants as in Arcueil. Whereas Sidobre led the PCF in Arcueil throughout most of the interwar period and throughout the Fourth Republic,

403 Conclusion

the leadership of the PCF in Cachan constantly changed. This made the job of creating a communist hegemony that much more difficult in an historically conservative commune with a stable governing elite in the CURSDIGC and conservative local Radicals. Moreover, in Cachan the PCF had a rival in the local SFIO which took a prominent role in local causes, and in particular the problems associated with residents of the Coteau. Thus, Cachan’s PCF did not enjoy the same level of pre-eminence in the local working- class movement as was the case in interwar Arcueil. The war weakened the PCF in Cachan and the fact that the ETP functioned as an important centre of resistance activity meant that non-communist forces were not completely discredited by collaboration. Nevertheless, Cachan’s communists were active at a grassroots level. It was evident from Chapter 6 that during the interwar period the unemployed, whose numbers ballooned as a consequence of the Depression, were a particular focus of their attention, as were discontented tenants. After World War II the mal-logé became a particular focus of attention. The PCF in Cachan also sought to reinforce class sentiment and shape local popular culture, bringing a communist tinge to both. However, as far as laying the foundations of communist hegemony went, the PCF’s period of power in Cachan was all too brief. While the communists made some important improvements over two years to the living conditions of local residents they were left with too little time to do anything substantial. Encountering the hostility of many local residents, the communists attempted to wipe away the memory of an interwar municipal administration closely connected with Cachan’s independence and in doing so further isolated themselves. Having lost the authority and resources that came with local government the PCF was unable to extend its influence in the hostile atmosphere of the Cold War and in the 1950s went into a gradual electoral decline, as Chapter 7 indicated. This became a rout during the Fifth Republic under the socialist mayor Carat who consciously drew on the legacy of the Eyrolles administration. In this study I have stressed the role of working-class alienation and of the local environment in the evolution of communism in Arcueil and Cachan without denying the role of extrinsic factors. Prior to the Popular Front, the sectarianism of the Comintern- imposed political line hindered the PCF’s efforts to attain hegemony in Cachan where moderates and conservatives dominated local politics in the interwar period. In a suburb that lacked a strong leftwing tradition, the disunity of the Left spelt defeat. Even in Arcueil, where the PCF built up a significant support base in spite of its sectarian tactical line, animosity between communists and socialists helped to keep the PCF out

404 Conclusion

of power before 1935 because some socialist voters refused to support the PCF in the second ballot. Conversely, the decision of the Comintern to embrace leftwing unity in 1934 was enormously beneficial for the PCF in Arcueil and Cachan. In both suburbs the Popular Front saw the party record its best electoral results of the interwar period. It was during this period that the foundations were laid for postwar communist hegemony in Arcueil while the PCF was propelled to the position of dominant political party in Cachan. Thus, the attitude of the Comintern did have a real impact at the local level. This was also the case for broader historical changes. The advent of the Great Depression helped to set the PCF on the path to victory in Arcueil and Cachan. By contrast, the arrival of the Cold War ruined any chance the PCF had of establishing party-political hegemony in Cachan, where historically the most significant gains of the PCF had been made during times of leftwing unity. The Cold War that arose out of the rift between the USSR and the Eastern Bloc and the USA and its allies had a tangible local impact since it prevented the election of a communist mayor. Had the SFIO helped elect a communist mayor in 1947, the fate of Cachan may have been different since in objective terms (for example, the socio-professional breakdown of its population or the living conditions of local residents) there appears to be little reason why this suburb could not have followed the same political path as Arcueil under the Fourth Republic. Furthermore, de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958 on the corpse of the Fourth Republic helped deal a terminal blow to the PCF in Cachan while shaking the foundations of communist hegemony in Arcueil. Nevertheless, in the final analysis local factors were critical. While the tactical direction of the PCF had affected the way some residents voted in the legislative election it did not count for as much in the local context. Similarly, the rise in support for the PCF in Cachan under the Popular Front occurred against a backdrop of popular mobilisation in opposition to fascist activity in the commune, a mobilisation that predated and presaged the unity pact signed between the national leaderships of the PCF and SFIO in July 1934. Moreover, as divisions opened up within the local CURSDIGC/Radical-Socialist coalition, support for the PCF rose. The PCF’s firmer interwar foundations in Arcueil allowed it to dominate the Resistance movement in this suburb in a way that it did not in Cachan, and this put the party in a better position to establish a postwar hegemony once the war had concluded. In Cachan the interwar SFIO had often formed alliances with progressive non-communists, and the self- confessed rightwing socialists of postwar Cachan carried on this tradition as they allied

405 Conclusion

with the MRP and Radicals in the second ballot of the 1945 municipal elections (though some local socialists dissented by running on the PCF list) and were prepared to see a Gaullist elected mayor in 1947 rather than a communist. It may be that the Cold War only reinforced an innate hostility that the socialists of Cachan felt toward the PCF. What then are the implications of my study for the historiography of French communism and the French Left? My study has demonstrated the efficacy of Kriegel’s counter-society model as a means by which to explain how the PCF could establish an electoral hegemony in Paris suburbs such as Arcueil in spite of the apparent social and political marginalisation that has characterised the party throughout most of the period of this study (1919-1958), with the Popular Front (1934-1938) and the Resistance/Liberation periods (1941-1946) being the exceptions to the rule. However, while the PCF was guided by Leninist precepts as it sought to impose a communist hegemony on the local environments in which it operated, the successful implantation of a communist counter-society depended on local factors. Thus, my study has borne out Hastings’ anthropological approach to the origins of communism.1292 This approach locates the key to understanding the origins and nature of a communist counter-society in the confrontation between the communist project and the PCF as an instrument of socialisation with the local environment in its totality, that is the socio-economic conditions and politico-cultural traditions of a locality. Ultimately, the PCF in Arcueil was better placed and better adapted, and thus more effective, in laying and consolidating the foundations of a communist counter-society than its counterpart in Cachan. Hence, this study underscores the importance of the local approach pioneered by Girault in the 1970s. By retaining both Kriegel’s counter-society model and Girault’s local emphasis this study suggests that the key to understanding French communism is in its local manifestations, not in the character of the worldwide communist movement as Kriegel asserts. This thesis has demonstrated the importance of working-class traditions and heritage to the successful implantation of a communist counter-society in Arcueil. It has presented evidence that working-class alienation not only underpinned the rise of communism in Arcueil and Cachan but also facilitated its growth. In so doing, it brings

1292 See in particular, Michel Hastings: “Jalons pour une Anthropologie Culturelle des Implantations communiste en France”, pp. 51-68; “Le communisme saisi par l’anthropologie”, pp. 99-113; Halluin la rouge, 1919-1939, passim ; “Identité culturelle local et politique festive communiste: Halluin la Rouge 1920-1934”, pp. 7-25 ; “Le migrant, la fête et le bastion Halluin-la-Rouge 1919-1939”, pp. 211-221.

406 Conclusion

into question the assumptions upon which Gallie based his analysis of working-class radicalism in France, namely the wartime integration of the French working class and a denial of any significant positive role for French revolutionary and socialist traditions in the rise of French communism1293. My study of communism in Arcueil and Cachan suggests that its origins and the key to its durability were much more complex than Gallie’s high level of workplace grievance. Like Courtois and Lazar1294, this thesis also recognises the importance of decisions made by the Comintern and Stalin on local politics. Recent research may have underlined the dominance wielded by the Soviet communists over the PCF during the period of this study but this thesis has also demonstrated the key importance of local developments beyond the reach of Comintern or the CPSU in the evolution of communism in Arcueil and Cachan. For a significant part of the twentieth-century the PCF dominated the working- class suburbs of Paris as well as the French Left. The unique approach of this thesis, specifically its comparative analysis of two Paris suburbs and its periodisation which atypically spans the interwar, wartime and postwar periods helps to explain why and how. In the first place, my comparative study of Arcueil and Cachan has indicated that even in those Seine suburbs dominated by working people, communist hegemony was by no means inevitable. The case of Arcueil and Cachan indicates that objective conditions alone did not determine the rise of the banlieue rouge. Arguably, the fate of communism in Arcueil and Cachan demonstrates the importance of socialist and working-class traditions in the rise of the PCF in the Paris suburbs alongside the problems encountered by suburban residents and the way the PCF responded to these. Moreover, this study furnishes us with clear evidence that at its base, support for communism was rooted in working-class alienation, both historical and contemporary. Historical alienation and the French Revolution produced an insurrectionist current in the French Left that was anti-integrationist, out of which arose the neo-Babouvist tradition whose hostility to bourgeois society was coupled with a cherished aim of capturing the state for the working class. This tradition was strong in Paris, and the PCF was merely its latest manifestation. In this context, the history of communism in Arcueil and Cachan is indicative of the PCF as a continuum of the traditions of the French Left. Nothing in my study has indicated that the PCF was alien to Arcueil’s society, or that it

1293 See in particular, Duncan Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain, pp. 23, 224-251, 258, 266-268. 1294 See for example, Courtois and Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, , pp. 17-18, 20. 407 Conclusion

was any more foreign to the more moderate Cachan than the pre-schism SFIO had been. The PCF gave workers in Arcueil, Cachan and other suburbs of the banlieue rouge the means to simultaneously defend their interests and assert class pride against a hostile bourgeois state. Where communist hegemony and ultimately a communist counter- society were established, as in Arcueil, the PCF also became a means of asserting community pride now suffused with communism. In terms of urban history, this thesis has underlined the important impact that politics and culture can have on the character of urban areas and on the urban landscape, and how these in turn then feed into politics and culture. Suburbs such as Arcueil and Cachan arose as the bourgeoisie pushed workers and industry out beyond the city of Paris. Rejected, isolated, and forgotten, suburban workers were left to rot in festering slums, their interests more or less neglected until they became a political problem. Their turn to communism had profound implications, both in terms of the development of their suburbs and in the way political elites dealt with the working class. While communists left their imprint on suburbs through high-rise housing and by the re- naming of streets in honour of the communist movement, the working class became a general focus of interest as never before. Ultimately the result was not only the development of the French welfare state to counter working-class alienation but also the deliberate efforts made to break the support base of the PCF. The postwar government policy of decentralising industry was designed to de-industrialise the inner suburbs dominated by the PCF and in doing so to transform the Paris region. While the ongoing demise of French communism is inextricably linked with the downfall of the Soviet Union, one specific aspect stands out for me. As was the case with the Social Democrats in Vienna during the interwar period, so the PCF’s major strength, the cultural hegemony it maintained over the suburban working class of the Paris region, was also its ultimate weakness. In a non-revolutionary context the PCF’s cultivation of a minority communist culture helped for a time to give the party a stable, secure base which appeared impregnable. Yet, in the final analysis the sanctuary provided by PCF’s working-class ghettos was a sign of weakness. The communists have been impotent in the face of government policy, economic transformation and cultural change that has remorselessly eroded communist bastions under the Fifth Republic. To a great extent, efforts to extinguish French communism have succeeded, aided by economic crises, de-industrialisation and the fall of the Soviet Union. The reasons for the PCF’s decline will only become clear with more studies of the PCF in its

408 Conclusion

local bastions during the Fourth and Fifth Republic. In particular, local histories of the PCF in Paris suburbs where it has maintained until relatively recently a strong presence would provide a good basis from which to assess the reasons for the PCF’s decline. Beyond the question of suburban communism, this thesis has provided some indication as to the origins and nature of the hegemony that the Socialist Party has exerted in some suburbs. However, the SFIO’s presence in the Paris suburbs in the interwar and postwar periods remains a neglected area of study. Directing more attention toward the study of socialist bastions in the Paris region, and in particular postwar bastions such as Cachan, would better enable historians to compare and contrast the local foundations of socialist and communist hegemony, and in doing so gain a clearer understanding of both. I hope that this thesis also gives some understanding as to why French workers living in the suburbs of Paris would appropriate a stigmatising identity and wear it as a badge of pride. Historically, it is not unusual for a marginalised group to hold steadfast to an identity that stigmatises them vis-à-vis society as whole and to hold firm to this identity in the face of persecution and repression. The authoritarian nature of French workplaces and the poor living conditions to which workers returned meant that in their daily lives they were constantly reminded of their marginal status. Their daily lives merely re-confirmed a potent history of working-class marginalisation in French society. History and experience therefore taught suburban workers to be hostile to bourgeois society and its symbols and to embrace what the bourgeoisie rejected. For many workers this meant that if the bourgeoisie impugned the USSR as a brutish, authoritarian regime and Stalin as a murderous dictator, the opposite must be the case. In this way, a deep suspicion of bourgeois society meant that suburban workers could embrace Stalin at the height of the Cold War when his crimes were well-known. In the same way that in the postwar period many sympathisers of the USA have been unable to see how American governments often undermined democracy in different parts of the world, so suburban communists refused to admit the realities of the Soviet Union and Stalin. While the spectre of Arcueil’s communists embracing Stalin appears abhorrent in light of the irrefutable evidence of his crimes, it remains the case that for much of the twentieth century supporting the PCF in Arcueil was a normative decision for a large number of local inhabitants. In suburbs such as Arcueil the PCF demonstrated how workers could collectively defend their own interests and competently govern themselves. In Arcueil, as in other suburbs of the banlieue rouge and beyond, municipal communism was a symbol of pride for a recalcitrant and alienated working class.

409

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Unless otherwise indicated, I have consulted the microfilm copies held at the Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne, with the exception of L’Humanité. In the case of L’Humanité I used press clippings and the microfilm holdings of the Australian National University. The library of the University of New South Wales possesses a microfilm copy of the Archives Départementales du Val-de-Marne holdings of Front rouge.

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Websites http://elections.figaro.net/historique/select.html http://www.arcueil.fr/03_vos_elus.php

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