Radical Party (France)
급진사회당 (프랑스)
A French party founded in June 1901, officially the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party. First placed on the left, it moved gradually to the centre-left and the centre, and after its left wing left in 1972 to the centre-right. It was the pivotal party of the Third Republic, taking part in almost every government between the wars, and initiated reforms such as the 1905 separation of Church and State.
In depth
Radicals existed as a current of thought from the early 19th century, around figures such as Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc. Gathered around Ledru-Rollin in 1843 under the July Monarchy, they took part in founding the Second Republic and supported the reforms of 1848—universal male suffrage, the abolition of slavery, freedom of the press and of assembly. Opposing Napoleon III, they found a leader in Léon Gambetta in 1868, whose 1869 Belleville programme gave them a platform. Once the republicans held the state from 1879, the Radicals embodied anticlericalism and opposition to colonial expansion. Georges Clemenceau, who did not join the party created in 1901, was one of the most prominent figures of radicalism.
The party was founded on 21–23 June 1901, before the July 1901 law on freedom of association, uniting parliamentary groups, local electoral committees, Masonic lodges and sections of the Human Rights League and the Education League in a single national party. After its victory in the 1902 elections it was the pivot of the Bloc des gauches and put Émile Combes at the head of government; it initiated the 1905 separation of Church and State, the Labour Ministry and the weekly rest day in 1906, workers’ and peasants’ pensions in 1910 and, at Joseph Caillaux’s urging, income tax in 1914. Its 1907 Nancy congress adopted a programme reported by Édouard Herriot.
The party reached its peak between the wars, when Radicals headed 13 of the 42 governments (four by Camille Chautemps, three each by Édouard Daladier and Édouard Herriot, two by Albert Sarraut and one by Théodore Steeg). It returned to power in 1924 in the Cartel des gauches with the SFIO, and in 1927 Daladier, one of the “Young Turks”, succeeded Herriot as party leader. In 1936 it joined the Popular Front with the SFIO and the Communists, but its right wing opposed it, and in 1938 the party ended the Popular Front with a new “concentration” government with the centre-right. On 10 July 1940 most Radical parliamentarians voted full powers to Philippe Pétain, but 13 of the 80 who refused were Radicals, and Vincent Badie drafted a protest against the coming dictatorship. Under the Occupation many Radicals, including Jean Moulin and Pierre Mendès France, joined the Resistance.
After the Liberation the party was associated with the failed Third Republic and fell to around 10% of the vote. It formed the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines with the UDSR and others, became a pivot of government again after the end of tripartism in 1947, and supplied several prime ministers of the Fourth Republic. Mendès France took the party’s helm in May 1955 to modernise it and ally it with the left, but divisions over Algeria and strategy continued.
Under the polarised Fifth Republic the party allied with the right and centre, and its left wing broke away in 1972 to form the Movement of Left Radicals. Thereafter called the “Valoisien” Radical Party, it was an associated party of the UDF (1979–2002) and the UMP (2002–2011) and a founder of the UDI in 2012. It merged with the Radical Party of the Left in 2017 to form the Radical Movement, but was relaunched as an independent party in 2021.