Have you thought about the current period, 2024-2026? Lost. Finally… It is perhaps not for nothing that the advent of the Popular Front in 1936 reminds us of the times we are currently living in. The elements of comparison are numerous, as shown in the documentary “1936, the Popular Front between joy and anger”, directed by Oloronais Fabien Béziat and Palois Hugues Nancy, which will be broadcast this Wednesday, May 20, at 9:10 p.m., on France 3.
Moreover, the writing of the film, planned for the 90e anniversary of the Popular Front, this year, began two years ago… just before the famous formula returned to the forefront during the legislative elections of 2024 with the New Popular Front, a union of left-wing forces, of circumstance, which did not have a long existence. Exactly like its pre-war model, with the notable difference that this one was called upon to govern and that it profoundly transformed the social realities of the country.
“There are also notable differences, such as the violence of the economic crisis of the time, incomparable with today,” observes Fabien Béziat. Millions of people found themselves unemployed. The film tells that the conditions of workers and work were deleterious, before the arrival of the Popular Front. People worked 12 hours a day, 60 hours a week, there were no union or social rights.”
Grèves massives, conquêtes sociales
Contrary to what is often thought, the major social laws of 1936 were not in the program of the Popular Front, a program of agreement between the socialists and the radicals (centrists). “There was neither 40 hours nor paid leave. All this happened thanks to massive strikes, thanks to the unions and to Léon Blum,” recalls Fabien Béziat.
Strikes born the day after the victory of the Popular Front in the legislative elections. Parts of the aeronautics industry, in Toulouse in particular, they quickly spread across the country, before a general conflagration “when bosses decided to dismiss strikers”. The major social laws of the Popular Front are more precisely conquests, demanded by the workers and peasants.
The archive caches
The documentary is based on valuable archives, which remained under German and then Russian yoke for a long time. “They had been robbed by the Germans in 1940 to have information on the militants, in order to coerce them and lock them up. Many were shot during the war.” Finally, these documents which allow us to better understand the period we are talking about “returned to France 20 years ago. It took the time to study them, to analyze them to understand them,” continues Fabien Béziat.
The film shatters the myth of a people united behind the Popular Front and its social advances. “The population was very fractured, it was 50/50 if we only look at party membership. The far right was very influential, very present in the press,” says the director. “L’Action française,” a royalist, anti-Semitic newspaper that collaborated with the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War, “vomited what it thought was Jewish influence. Elsewhere, in the streets of France, in the capital, we could hear, “France to the French, the metals outside.”
“S’emancipate and lift yourself up”
The end of the Popular Front was hastened by several factors: “The employers were very afraid of what was happening. There was a major flight of capital towards Switzerland, which voted for banking secrecy in 1934. There was no more money in the coffers,” relates the director. At the same time, sensing an open conflict approaching, the Popular Front had initiated a powerful rearmament of the country, very expensive. Blum puts social reforms on hold, “the emergency is armaments”.
“What’s frightening about the game of comparisons is what happens next. Where are we going today? HAS”
Furthermore, inflation is galloping and the middle classes are impoverished. Faced with disaster, the far right eyeing power, “the radicals, afraid of losing their political influence, turned to the right.” In 1938, less than two years after the Popular Front came to power, it lived. The following year, France fell into the Second World War.
