The undersecretary for leisure and sport who designed the workers' first holidays
'Our simple and human aim is to let the mass of French youth find joy and health in sport, and to organize the leisure of the workers so that they may enjoy the joy of life and the dignity regained', radio address on taking office, 10 June 1936
A lawyer and Socialist deputy who took the post the Blum government created first in the world: undersecretary for leisure and sport. With the railways' 40-per-cent-discount 'popular tickets', a boom in youth hostels and a popular sports certificate, he organized 600,000 first paid holidays in the summer of 1936, defining leisure policy as the restoration of dignity to workers. Volunteering for service in 1939, he was killed by shellfire on the Aisne front on 9 June 1940. Thousands of stadiums and gymnasiums across France carry his name today.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1900–1932From the Nord; lawyer in Paris
- 1932–1940Socialist deputy
- 1936.06The world's first undersecretary for leisure and sport
- 1936600,000 first holidays on the discounted 'popular tickets'
- 1936–1938Youth hostels; creates the popular sports certificate
- 1939–1940Volunteers for service; killed on the Aisne front, 9 June 1940
Related historical events
- 1934–1938The French Popular Front and the Strikes of 1936Undersecretary for leisure and sportWith the 'popular tickets' and the youth hostels he organized 600,000 first paid holidays that summer.
- 1940–1944The Fall of France and the Vichy RegimeFrench soldier killed on the Aisne frontHe volunteered for service and was killed by shellfire on the Aisne front on 9 June 1940.
The alternative Olympiad and popular-sport solidarity
The prospect of the Berlin Games serving as a propaganda showcase for Nazi Germany split the sports world. The opposing camp made Barcelona, which had lost the 1928 hosting contest to Berlin, the alternative venue and planned an anti-fascist People's Olympiad for 19 to 26 July 1936. Spain and France registered the largest contingents, and 6,000 athletes from 22 countries signed up in all. In France the far right and the fascist leagues backed the Berlin Games and the French Communist Party officially supported the People's Olympiad; Lagrange, a Socialist, stood in that camp.
France's official qualifying trials for the event were held on 4 July 1936 at the Pershing stadium in Paris, where Lagrange presided in person alongside Transport Minister Pierre Cot, André Malraux and other Popular Front figures, and 1,200 French athletes registered through their clubs, the FSGT among them, or individually. The same week he took part in a rally at Garches in support of the Olympiad and against the racist Berlin Games.
Blum's government ultimately refused subsidies to participants and supporters, leaving the cost to the delegations and the athletes themselves. In the 9 July vote on France's participation in Berlin the whole right voted in favour, the whole left abstained, the Communist Party included, and only Pierre Mendès France voted against. French athletes set out for Barcelona from 14 July, and the stops at each station turned into improvised demonstrations singing the Internationale, a measure of the popular support the project drew.
On the night of 18 July, on the eve of the opening, Franco's military rising began. The plan to use the Montjuïc stadium and the hotel facilities built for the 1929 international exhibition collapsed, and on 23 July the organising committee announced the cancellation of the People's Olympiad. Some athletes already in Barcelona joined the fighting against the military rising, and a number were wounded or killed.
The project never reached the track, but it shows the relationship Lagrange maintained with the unified workers' sports federation. The FSGT, founded in December 1934 by the merger of the communist Fédération sportive du travail and the socialist Union des sociétés sportives et gymniques du travail, became the strongest supporter of Lagrange's sport and leisure policy once the Popular Front government took office in 1936, moving from protest to cooperation. By 1938, after the shift towards mass popular sport, it counted over 100,000 members.