Who makes up the Popular Front that won the elections in France and what are their proposals

Everything went well in May 1936. And it will go well in July 2024. According to the electoral count, the new Popular Front is the bloc with the most seats, ahead of the presidential bloc, while Marine Le Pen’s far-right is in third place.

French left-wing parties closed a deal late on June 13 to form a new Popular Front ahead of legislative elections scheduled for June 30 and July 7.

The agreement included a single candidacy in each electoral constituency in the country, as well as a joint government program, “a political program of division”, and a set of measures for the first 100 days of government and “concrete and realistic” proposals that “really change the lives of the French people.”

Manuel Bompard, a rebel leader, defended the raising of the minimum wage to 1,600 euros proposed by the New Popular Front (a coalition of left-wing parties) as a priority of the bloc in a televised debate for the legislative elections. “The French have suffered the biggest drop in purchasing power in 40 years,” the deputy said, also reminding that the coalition proposes repealing the latest pension reform and progressing towards a return to retirement at age 60 after 40 years of contributions.

“From today, we will work to expand this meeting throughout France,” declared the signatory parties, who worked to link associations, unions, political parties and personalities in this political movement aimed at stopping the rise of the extreme right represented by the National Group, formed under the leadership of Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen won the European elections on June 9 and also the first round of the legislative elections on June 30. But, according to the first data, the winners this Sunday will be members of the Popular Front. Now the battle is to see which group, France Insoumise or the Socialist Party, has the majority to propose a candidate for prime minister in the National Assembly.

After exit polls reported the victory of the far right in the European elections and without waiting for the final results, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, decided to dissolve the National Assembly on Sunday, June 9. The French will have to vote in the first round on June 30 and in the second round on July 7, in which Marine Le Pen’s party is the favorite, followed by this new left-wing group.

The parties that formed the new French Popular Front are, among others, Los Ecologistas, La Francia Insumisa, the French Communist Party or the Socialist Party, joined by other formations such as Plaza Pública (PP), Generation-S or Republicans Left and Socialists (GRS).

The new Popular Front of 2024 takes the name of a man born in interwar Europe. The left, faced with the prospect of a landslide victory by Le Pen, went one step further in a 2022 unitary candidacy, called NuPS (New Popular Social and Ecological Unity), with which it won 131 of the 577 seats. If at the time the prime ministerial candidate was the leader of France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, two years later and under the umbrella of the Popular Front, this is something that remains to be decided, if necessary.

In the first round, last Sunday, the Popular Front achieved 28%, five points behind the National Agglutination (33%), and has sealed the alliance with Macronism by withdrawing two hundred candidacies to vote against the names of Marine Le Pen in different constituencies.

And that marks the defeat of the Republican alliance Le Pen. The conservatives of Les Républicains, from the popular European family, do not want to join this coalition against the extreme right and have decided not to give voting instructions to their voters.

Proposal

The new French Popular Front promised, if it wins, to raise the minimum wage to 1,600 euros a month and reinstate a tax on large wealth that President Emmanuel Macron abolished.

According to Manuel Bompard, national coordinator of La Francia Insumisa (LFI), these measures appear on a list of 150 proposals that represent a “complete break with the policy of Emmanuel Macron”.

The main axis of the program of this new Popular Front are measures in favor of purchasing power that include a rapid increase in the minimum wage (now it is 1,400 euros per month) and indexing salaries with inflation, in addition to “blocking the prices of food and energy.”

As well as the reinstatement of the Inheritance Tax (ISF), which Macron abolished at the beginning of his first term in 2017 to attract investors and prevent the departure of wealthy people who settled abroad to pay lower taxes.

Along the same lines, the left-wing coalition would abolish the so-called ‘flat tax’, which allows a fixed and non-progressive rate to be applied to those receiving capital returns.

If it reaches the government, the Popular Front would cancel “in the first fifteen days” Macron’s controversial pension reform, which delays the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years and also the unemployment insurance reform, which toughens the conditions to be able to collect subsidies and which should come into force from this summer.

Another star measure promised by the left would be “truly free schooling”, which would include cafeterias, transport and school supplies.

Anti-fascist sentiment of 1936

The first Popular Front was formed in France in 1935. It was a watershed moment when the French Fascist Party was founded, the Ultra League proliferated, and a right-wing coup attempt had already occurred in Paris – known as the February Crisis. 1934-.

This was the time when Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy since 1922; Adolf Hitler had become the German Chancellor in 1933; and the Francoist coup in Spain was drawing near, leading to three years of civil war (1936–1939) and four decades of dictatorship (1939–1975).

There were also fascists in France, as seen in February 1934. In fact, shortly after the Second World War began, a collaborationist government with the Third Reich was created in Vichy, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain – a member of French governments of the past-, in the image and likeness of the Hitler regime.

But in that May 1936 legislative election, in which the left appeared united and effectively made a tactical comeback in the second round, the Popular Front – which had begun to take shape a year earlier, in May 1935 – won a landslide victory in the elections, with more than 50% of the vote, which allowed it to form a government in June 1936 with the socialist Léon Blum as prime minister (386 seats out of 608).

The constitution of a broad left-wing government – ​​in which the PCF did not participate – followed the so-called Matignon agreements, which, inspired by social and labour mobilisation, went beyond the vague electoral programme of the Popular Front to commit to a series of measures of profound social impact.

Among other things, the Matignon agreements introduce union rights and provide for wage increases of between 7% and 15% depending on the region – around 12% across France; the first paid holidays (two weeks) and a reduction of the working week from 48 to 40 hours.

Train tickets for workers and employees who were going on vacation were made with a 40% discount; a law was approved on miners’ retirement and another on unemployment benefits. In addition, a nationalization policy was adopted in the airline and arms industries and later in the railways (the SNCF was created in 1937); and, although the Banque de France is not nationalized, state protection is reinforced. Similarly, a national inter-professional office for large crops is created to support the prices paid to farmers severely affected by the crisis.

The Popular Front did not have a very long life, however, as it was beset by internal and external pressures. It officially sailed in neutrality during the Spanish Civil War, which in reality meant letting Franco do his thing and leaving the Republic to its fate.

Blum left the government a year later, in June 1937, to return for a few months in 1938, already on the eve of World War II, at the end of which he became briefly President of the French Republic (December 1946-January 1947).

The key lies in the change of political position in the Third International – the communist one – which goes from not agreeing with social democracy in the mid-1930s to a commitment to popular unity in defense of democracies surrounded by fascism, and which crystallizes in the idea of ​​the Popular Front, as Santos Juliá explains Europe in Crisis, 1919–1939.

If the first official approach between the PCF and the French Socialists (SFIO) for unity of action was in June 1934; in July of that year, the Central Committee of the PCE proposed to the PSOE leadership to sign a similar agreement to that which was being discussed on the other side of the Pyrenees. The strategy of the Popular Front was approved by the Third International at its Seventh Congress in December 1935 – six months after its formation in France – at the same time that the Franco-Russian bilateral pact was signed, a symptom of Stalin’s turn as head of the USSR as well.

88 years have passed since 1936, and a new French Popular Front faces the same task as it did then: stopping the extreme right. However, according to surveys and forecasts, this time the mission looks more complicated. However, it will be this Sunday when the French vote and convene a National Assembly, which is expected to have a difficult time naming a prime minister and forming a new government.