Rally of the French People
프랑스 인민연합
A French party founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1947 and put into abeyance in 1955. Refusing the left–right divide though usually classed on the right, it opposed the Fourth Republic with the programme of the Bayeux speech: a stronger executive, sovereigntism, anticommunism and a “third way” between capitalism and communism. It is the only Gaullist formation launched by de Gaulle himself.
In depth
During the Second World War and the months after it, de Gaulle refused to create a political party. In 1945 the MRP served as a refuge for many Gaullists, but the break came in 1946 over the choice of institutions (the Bayeux speech). De Gaulle announced the creation of the Rally of the French People in his Strasbourg speech of 7 April 1947 and launched it officially on 14 April. To rally as widely as possible he allowed dual membership, so that members of any party except the Communists and those compromised with Vichy could join while keeping their original party. Early leading figures included Jacques Soustelle, André Malraux, René Capitant, Jacques Foccart and Louis Vallon.
Within a year it had, by specialists’ estimates, about half a million members—a mass party second only to the Communists—while the party claimed a million. Its members came mainly from the middle classes—artisans, shopkeepers, middle managers and clerks—more than a quarter were women, and they ranged from Maurrassian monarchists to left-wing republicans, Christian democrats and Radicals. Six months after its creation, in the October 1947 municipal elections, it won 38% in towns of over 9,000 inhabitants and took the town halls of Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille, Strasbourg and Rennes.
But after the Third Force government restored order during the social unrest of autumn 1947, conservatives and business needed de Gaulle less, and the reputation of its Marseille administration and de Gaulle’s exclusion from radio also weakened the party. It did well again in the 1949 cantonal elections, but its membership fell sharply. In the 1951 general election it won over four million votes (22%) and 117 seats, but the system of “apparentements” denied it the victory of over 200 seats its leaders had hoped for.
In March 1952 twenty-seven RPF deputies voted for Antoine Pinay’s government against de Gaulle’s instructions and were expelled, and in July forty-five more broke away. After the party lost half its vote in the municipal elections of 6 May 1953, de Gaulle released its parliamentarians and withdrew again. In 1954 the votes of Gaullist deputies, together with the Communists’, helped defeat the European Defence Community. The RPF was officially put into abeyance on 13 September 1955, some members continuing as the Social Republicans (1955–1958). Its secretaries-general were Soustelle (1947–1951), Louis Terrenoire (1952–1954), Foccart (1954) and Michel Anfrol (1954–1955).