Popular Republican Movement

During the Occupation, résistants such as Pierre Brossolette and Jean Moulin envisaged a single party of the Resistance to replace the old parties, but the plan was abandoned after their deaths and the rise of the Communists. Of the options open to Christian democrats, the one backed by Georges Bidault prevailed: a party of Christian inspiration led by Catholic forces not tied to the old parties, such as the CFTC and the ACJF. The first national founding congress met on 25–26 November 1944. The party built on the interwar Popular Democratic Party, the Republican Movement of Liberation launched by Gilbert Dru and Maurice-René Simonnet, and regional movements such as the Popular Republican Union of Alsace. It presented itself as a non-confessional Christian-democratic party, but repeatedly clashed with the Radicals, the SFIO and the Communists over secularism.

With 24% of the vote in 1945 and 28% in June 1946, the MRP became one of the three great parties of the early Fourth Republic and the largest in the second Constituent Assembly. It drew the newly enfranchised women and conservative voters orphaned by the fall of Vichy, and was seen as the party of loyalty to de Gaulle, although he was never a member. In the constitutional debates, however, it accepted a parliamentary regime, and after the Bayeux speech de Gaulle broke with it for good.

When the Communists were excluded from government in 1947 and de Gaulle founded the RPF, the socialists and Christian democrats widened the coalition to the Radicals, the UDSR and the moderates in the “Third Force”. The MRP became a central force of the regime, providing three prime ministers—Schuman, Bidault and Pflimlin—while Schuman, foreign minister in 1948–1953, proposed the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950. The party supported the European Defence Community and was the main supporter of the Indochina War. Its vote declined after 1947 and halved in the 1951 and 1956 elections. Its presidents were Maurice Schumann (1944–1949), Bidault (1949–1952), Pierre-Henri Teitgen (1952–1956), Pflimlin (1956–1959), André Colin (1959–1963) and Lecanuet (1963–1965).

Divided over Algeria, the MRP nonetheless unanimously supported de Gaulle’s return in 1958, and in that year’s election fell below 10% for the first time. In 1962 its five ministers resigned over de Gaulle’s rejection of a federal Europe and it went into opposition. After Lecanuet won 15.6% in the 1965 presidential election he founded the Democratic Centre, into which the MRP merged with other parties in 1966.