Republican Federation

The Republican Federation (French: Fédération républicaine, FR) was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the liberal Orleanists rallied to the Republic. Founded in November 1903, it competed with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique (Democratic Alliance). Later, most deputies of the Fédération républicaine and of Action libérale (which included Catholics rallied to the Republic) joined the Entente républicaine démocratique right-wing parliamentary group.^[1]

From 1903 to World War I

The Republican Federation was founded in November 1903 to gather the right-wing of the moderate Republicans (aka Opportunists) who opposed both Waldeck Rousseau's Bloc des gauches (Left-wing Block), his alliance with the Radical-Socialist Party and, for some of them, the defense of the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. These conservative Republicans were ideologically indebted to Jules Méline, Alexandre Ribot, Jean Casimir-Perier or Charles Dupuy. They represented the Republican bourgeoisie, closely connected to business circles and opposed to social reform. Furthermore, they were fond of a relative decentralisation, thus enrolling themselves in the legacy of the Girondins of the French Revolution.

Just as the Democratic Alliance, it was a party composed of notables, which rested upon local electoral committee, which merged in the National Assembly in one or several parliamentary groups. It never had many members (30,000 in 1926, 18,000 in 1939).

Inter-war period

After World War I, the Republican Federation participated during the 1919 election within the Bloc national (National Block)'s electoral lists. The same year, the Action libérale populaire (Popular Liberal Action), an alliance of Catholics who had accepted the legality of the Republican regime, entered the Republican Federation by sitting within parliamentary grouping of the Entente républicaine démocratique ("Arago group").

The Republican Federation shifted more and more to the right during the inter-war period, and it is important to note that it cannot be simply labelled a 'Christian-democratic' party (a label that is more rightly applied to the very small Popular Democratic Party). Its religious-right and ultra-nationalist wing were strengthened by the election victory of the centre-left in 1924, and the subsequent rise of the anti-parliamentary and nationalist leagues, as well as by a generational shift in its leadership. At the same time, the party's smaller [Christian-democratic] and social Catholic left-wing received a boost from the arrival of the parliamentary Catholics of the Action libérale populaire; the rift in political ethos, however, was shown by the fact that these preferred to sit in a separate parliamentary grouping from the main party (such as the Popular Democratic group, the Alsatian Popular Action group, or Pernot's Social Action group).

These changes were reflected in the handover of power from the belle-époque industrialist and conservative leader, Auguste Isaac, to the younger militant and academic Louis Marin in 1925. Under Marin's leadership, the Republican Federation slowly transitioned from a confederation of local political bosses, into a more streamlined political party on the model created by the republican left at the turn of the century. The URD became more hierarchisesd, with the creation of youth' sections, etc., while ordinary members were given more weight.

Although several members of the party participated to the Doumergue, Flandin and Laval governments of 1934-35, most of the Republican Federation opposed itself to this cooperation with the republican centre, which seemed to vindicate the "rallying of the center" (concentration républicaine) strategy advocated by the centre-right Democratic Alliance. Following the experience of the Bloc National first, and then of the Cartel des gauches (Left-Wing Cartel) in 1924, many voices inside the party argued in favor of a strategy enforcing the unity of the right-wings instead of a centrist strategy. After the February 6, 1934 riots which toppled the second Cartel des gauches, the majority of the party chose this right-wing strategy, taking the side of the opponents to the Republic accused of being "anti-patriotic."

The Republican Federation thus formed in 1937, during the Popular Front, a Front de la liberté (Freedom Front) along with Jacques Doriot's fascist Parti populaire français (PPF, French Popular Party) and the small Parti républicain national et social and French Agrarian and Peasant Party (Fleurant Agricola). Although this Freedom Front was theorized by Louis Marin and the other leaders of the party as a tactic against the growing influence of colonel de la Rocque's French Social Party (PSF) — one of the first right-wing French mass party — this union also corresponded with the ideology of the leading classes outside Paris (such as Victor Perret in the Rhône region) and of the activists opposed both to the lefts and to the center-right parties such as the Democratic Alliance or the Popular Democrats.

This shift to the right of the party during the 1930s explain that several important pre-war figures of the party left it (i.e. Laurent Bonnevay). The Republican Federation acted as the nexus between parliamentary conservatives and the anti-Republican nationalist right organized in the various far-right paramilitaries and in the ultra-monarchist Action française. Party members such as Philippe Henriot or Xavier Vallat (both future Collaborationists) thus served as intermediaries between the leaders of the Republican Federation and the extra-parliamentary right.

After 1940

Although few important members of the Republican Federation actively engaged in Collaborationism during the Vichy regime, their conservative allegiance (traditional Catholicism, anti-communism, conservative nationalism) induced most of them to accept the new regime of the Révolution nationale. The Federation was part, however, of one of the six member parties of the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR, National Council of Resistance), represented by Jacques Debû-Bridel. Alongside Louis Marin, the latter tried, without success, to recreate the Republican Federation at the Liberation. But the party remained discredited by the passive attitude of most of its members. After 1945, the National Center of the Independents was the main political structure pursuing the Republican Federation's legacy, after the failure of several structures, including the Republican Party of Liberty.

In Parliament

List of Presidents

• 1903–06 Eugène Motte
• 1906–11 Joseph Thierry
• 1911–14 Charles Prévet
• 1914–19 Charles Benoist
• 1919–21 Victor Milliard
• 1921–25 Auguste Isaac
• 1925–46 Louis Marin

Electoral results

Chamber of Deputies
Election year	# of overall votes	% of overall vote	# of overall seats won	+/–	Leader
1906	1,864,557 (#2)	21.16	78 / 585	–	Auguste Isaac
1910	1,565,698 (#2)	19.08	119 / 595	41	Auguste Isaac
1914	397,547 (#5)	4.72	37 / 601	82	Auguste Isaac
1919	1,819,691 (#1)	22.23	183 / 613	146	Auguste Isaac
1924	3,190,831 (#1)	35.35	102 / 581	81	Auguste Isaac
1928	2,082,041 (#2)	21.99	102 / 604	–	Louis Marin
1932	1,233,360 (#4)	12.88	59 / 607	43	Louis Marin
1936	1,666,004 (#3)	16.92	60 / 610	1	Louis Marin

Personalities

• Édouard Aynard, Lyonnese banker, deputy (1889–1913).
• Maurice Barrès, nationalist writer
• Paul Beauregard ( )
• Charles Benoist (1861–1936), .
• Joseph Boissin, deputy of Ardèche
• Jacques Debû-Bridel
• Paul Duquaire, senator, former member of the Alliance libérale populaire
• Édouard Frédéric-Dupont
• Philippe Henriot, Collaborationist under Vichy
• Auguste Isaac, Lyonnesse industrialist, deputy of the Rhône department (1919–1924) and Minister of Trade and Industry (1920–1921), President of the Republican Federation until 1924.
• Henri de Kerillis (very close, if not officially a member, of the Republican Federation)
• Louis Loucheur, industrialist
• Louis Marin (1871–1960), deputy of Nancy from 1905 to 1951, President of the Republican Federation from 1925 to 1940.
• Eugène Motte, industrialist from Roubaix, founder and first President of the Republican Federation.
• Georges Pernot
• Victor Perret, President of the Republican Federation of the Rhône, located at the right-wing of the party.
• Jacques Piou, former President of the Alliance libérale populaire, joined the Republican Federation in 1919.
• Emmanuel Temple
• Joseph Thierry (1857–1918), lawyer, deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhône (1898–1918), Minister of Public Works (1913), Deputy-State secretary to War (1915–1916), embassador of France to the King of Spain (1915–1918), second President of the Republican Federation ().
• François Valentin (1909–1961), lawyer, deputy (1936–1940), chief of the Légion française des combattants veterans' association under Vichy, and then a Resistant ().
• Pierre Vallette-Viallard, industrialist, deputy of Ardèche (1919–1924; 1928–1940).
• François de Wendel (1874–1949), industrialist from Lorraine, president of the Comité des forges's employers' union, deputy-president of the Union des industries métallurgiques et minières industrial cartel, regent of the Banque de France, deputy then senator, vice-President of the Republican Federation in the 1920s ().
• Xavier Vallat, close to the monarchist Action française in his youth, joined colonel de la Rocque's Croix-de-Feu in 1928, and head of the General Commission to Jewish Affairs under Vichy, condemned in 1947 for Collaborationism

References

Further reading

• William D. Irvine, French conservatism in the crisis : The Republican Federation of France in the 1930s, Bâton Rouge, 256p, 1975.
• Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, Culture, structures, stratégie d'une organisation de la droite parlementaire entre les deux guerre : la Fédération Républicaine de 1919 à 1940, University Lille 3, state thesis under the dir. of Yves-Marie Hilaire, 914p, 1999.
• Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « Mise en sommeil et disparition : la Fédération républicaine de 1940 à 1946 », in Gilles Richard & Jacqueline Saincliver (dir.), La recomposition des droites à la Libération 1944-1948, 2004.
• Laurent Bigorgne, « Le parcours d'une génération de ‘modérés’ : les jeunes de la Fédération Républicaine », in François Roth (dir.), Les modérés dans la vie politique française (1880-1965), 2000.
• Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « La Fédération républicaine, Louis Marin et l'idée de paix pendant l'entre-deux-guerres », in Robert Vandenbussche a Michel (dir.), L’idée de paix en France et ses représentations au XXe siècle, 2001.
• Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « De la présence à la distance: les milieux d'affaires et la Fédération républicaine », in Hervé Joly (dir.), Patronat, bourgeoisie, catholicisme et libéralisme. Autour du Journal d'Auguste Isaac, Larhra, 2004
• Mathias Bernard, La dérive des modérés. La Fédération Républicaine du Rhône sous la Troisième République, Editions l'Harmattan, 432p, 1998.
• Malcolm Anderson, Conservative politics in France, Allen and Unwen, 1974.
• Jean-Noël Jeanneney, « La Fédération Républicaine », in Rémond & Bourdin (dir), La France et les francais 1938-1939, 1979.
• Philippe Machefer, « L’union des droites, le PSF et le Front de la liberté, 1936–1937, RHMC, 1970.
• Kevin Passmore, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy., Oxford University Press, 2013.
• René Rémond – Janine Bourdin, « Les forces adverses », in Renovin & Rémond (dir.), Léon Blum, chef de gouvernement 1936-1937, 1981.
• René Rémond, Les droites en France, Aubier, 544p, 1982 (réed. De 1954).
• Jean Vavasseur-Desperriers, « Les tentatives de regroupement des droites dans les années trente », Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'ouest, 2002.
• Bruno Béguet, Comportements politiques et structures sociales : le Parti Social Français et la Fédération Républicaine à Lyon (1936–1939), Université Lyon 2, mémoire de maîtrise sous la direction de Yves Lequin, 2 volumes, 252p, 1982.
• Kevin Passmore, From liberalism to fascism. The Right in a French Province, 1928-1939, (study on the Rhône department) Cambridge university press, 333p, 1997.

External links

• Political program of the Republican Federation for the 1928 election).