The Radical-Socialist Party (Parti Républicain, Radical et Radical-Socialiste, more commonly called Parti Radical-Socialiste - Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party), was a major French political party of the early to mid 20th century, part of the radical Republican tradition. The Radical-Socialist Party represented one of the mainstream party of the Third Republic, especially in the 1920s and the 1930s, as well as during the Fourth Republic (1946-58). The name became rather famously a misnomer, as by the 1920s the Radicals, now led by Edouard Herriot were generally a moderate center-left party, and, apart of Pierre Mendès-France's specificity (mainly, his opposition to colonialism and to Charles de Gaulle's proclamation of the Fifth Republic on October 4, 1958), even a center-right party at the end of the Fourth Republic and during the Fifth Republic. Replaced by the SFIO which had became the main social-democrat party, the Radicals continued to exist as a minor liberal party under the umbrella of center-right Union for French Democracy (UDF), then the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), while the more left-wing members of the party split off in the 1970s to form the Parti Radical de Gauche (PRG), which exists to this day as a small ally of the Socialist Party (PS). Even today, radical senators of both the left and right wing often sit in the same group, the "democratic, social and European rally". They thus represent both center-left and center-right, their anti-clericalism, although softened because of the lesser importance of the subject, still separating it from the conservatives on specific and exceptional issues (such as the conservatives' demonstrations in the 1980s against president François Mitterrand's project of law on private schools, which most are Catholic). However, despite the UDF's refusal to fusion in the UMP founded in 2002, the center-right Radicals decided against their UDF allies and were thus absorbed the UMP, which is led today by Nicolas Sarkozy.

1901 foundation and gathering of the radical republicans

Radicalism was already a well-established movement in France before the Radical Party itself was established in 1901 in wake of the Dreyfus Affair. The radical-led government led by René Waldeck-Rousseau had been responsible for major reforms since 1899 and the creation of Radical Party was an attempt to regroup all the radical republicans into a unified political force to support him against the political influences of the Catholic Church. It was successful, and Waldeck-Rousseau's successors, Émile Combes and Maurice Rouvier, maintained a radical agenda, culminating in the 1905 laws on secularity which formed the backbone of laïcité, France's separation of church and state.

For the latter part of the Third Republic (1870-1940), the Radicals, generally representing anti-clerical peasant and petit bourgeois voters, were usually the largest party in parliament, but with their anti-clerical agenda accomplished, the party lacked any real guiding force. Its leader before World War I (1914-18), Joseph Caillaux, was generally more noted for his advocacy of better relations with Germany than for his reformist agenda.

After World War I: from the Cartels des gauches to the overthrow of the Republic

The name became rather famously a misnomer, as by the 1920s the Radicals, now led by Edouard Herriot were generally a moderate center-left party. In 1924 and again in 1932, the Radicals formed electoral alliances with the Socialists, but then gradually drifted right over the life of the parliament, moving from Radical governments supported by the non-participating Socialists (called "Cartels des gauches" or "Left-wing Coalitions" - 1924-1926, 1932-1934) to coalitions with more conservative parties (1926-1928, 1934-1936). The second Cartel des gauches fell on February 7, 1934, following riots organized by the far-right leagues on the eve. Radical-Socialist Camille Chautemps's government had been replaced by popular figure Edouard Daladier in January, after accusations of corruption against Chautemps' government in the wake of the Stavisky Affair and other similar scandals.

This pattern seemed to be broken in 1936, when the Popular Front electoral alliance with the Socialists and the Communists led to the accession of Socialist leader Léon Blum as Prime Minister in a coalition government in which the Radical leaders Camille Chautemps and Edouard Daladier (representing respectively the left and right of the Radical Party) took important roles. Over the tempestuous life of the coalition, however, the Radicals began to become concerned at the perceived radicalism of their coalition partners, and following the failure of Blum's second government in April 1938, Daladier formed a new government in coalition with conservative parties. After the September 29, 1938 Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland to Germany in exchange for an illusion of peace, Daladier was acclaimed at his return to Paris as the man who had avoided the war. However, with the invasion of Poland on September 3, 1939, the French government led by Daladier finally understood that war with the Nazi regime was inevitable, and declared it on the same day. Following the August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, Daladier engaged in an anti-communist policy, by prohibiting the French Communist Party (PCF) and the edition of L'Humanité newspaper. Furthermore, Daladier moved increasingly to the right, notably repealing the 40 hours work week which had been the Popular Front's most visible accomplishment. The early prohibition of the PCF, which thus entered clandestinity before the July 10, 1940 vote of the full powers (les plein pouvoirs) to Pétain, which allowed him to proclame the next day the substitution of the Third Republic by the "French State" (Etat Français), explains why the communists were the first to engage in the Resistance, before being joined, especially after 1942, by others patriots of various political opinions. Daladier would eventually resign on March 1940, and takes part in Paul Reynaud's (Alliance démocratique, center-right) government as minister of National Defense and of War. After the defeat of the Battle of France, the French army being overwhelmed by the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the French government declares Paris an "open city" on June 10 and flew to Bordeaux. The same month, Daladier would escape to Morocco. Thus, he wasn't there during the suspicious July 10, 1940 vote of the full powers, which Charles de Gaulle and several historians (Michel Winock, etc.) refused to recognize, arguing that although it had superficially respected legality, it had taken place amid lies from Pierre Laval, pressions on deputies, and the absence of main political figures such as Daladier.

The Fourth Republic (1940-1958)

After World War II (1939-45), the Radicals, like many of the other political parties, were discredited by their support for granting emergency powers to Marshal Pétain on July 10, 1940, which led to the instauration of the Vichy regime (Etat Français), this despite the ambivalence of such senior radical leaders as Edouard Herriot, the President of the Chamber of Deputies. Edouard Daladier was judged in 1942 by the Vichy regime during the Riom trials, which accused him of being morally and strategically responsible of the defeat of France, among others political leaders such as socialist (SFIO) Léon Blum and conservative Paul Reynaud. After the war, the Party was reconstituted, and formed one of the important parties of the Fourth Republic (1946-58), but never recovered their dominant pre-war position.

In the early years of the Fourth Republic the party returned to the moderate left under the leadership of Pierre Mendès-France (PMF), a strong opponent of French colonialism whose premiership from 1954 to 1955 saw France's withdrawal from Indochina and working out an agreement for French withdrawal from Tunisia. Mendès-France, a very popular figure who helped renew the Radical-Socialist Party after its discredit, had been elected on a program of stopping the Indochina War (1946-54). Mendès-France hoped to make the Radicals the party of the mainstream left in France, taking advantage of the difficulties of the SFIO socialist party. The more conservative elements in the party, led by Edgar Faure, resisted these policies, leading to the fall of Mendès-France's government in 1955. Another split, this time over France's policy at the beginning of the Algerian War (1954-62), where Mendès-France opposed the hard-line policies of Socialist prime minister Guy Mollet, led to his resignation as party leader, and the party's move in a distinctly conservative direction.

The Fourth Republic was characterized by constant parliamentary instability because of the divisions of the different political parties on the issues of the Algerian War, which until the 1990s was officially called a "public order operation". Leader of the left-wing of the radical party Pierre Mendès France opposed the war and colonialism, while the right-wing of the SFIO led by Guy Mollet supported it. Because of the beginning of the Cold War, all political parties, even the SFIO, opposed the French Communist Party (PCF), which was very popular due to its role during the Resistance (it was known as the parti des 75 000 fusillés, or "party of the 75 000 executed people"). The PCF was also opposed to "French Algeria" and supported its independence. In the midst of this parliamentary instability and divisions of the political class, Charles de Gaulle took advantage of the May 13, 1958 crisis to return to power. On May 13, European colons seized the governor general's building in Alger, while Opération Résurrection was launched by the right-wing insurrectionary Comité de Salut Public. De Gaulle, who had deserted the political arena during a decade by disgust over the parliamentary system and its chronic unstability (the système des partis which he severely criticized), appeared on this day as the only man able to reconciliate the far-right and the European colons, which were threatening Paris of a coup d'état, with the Republic. He was thus called to power and proclaimed the end of the Fourth Republic, according to him too weak because of its parliamentarism, and replaced it by the Fifth Republic, a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system tailored for himself. The Radicals party supported him at this crucial moment, which led Pierre Mendès-France to quit the party, while François Mitterrand would later write the Coup d'Etat permanent ("The Permanent Coup d'Etat") to describe this quasi-putsch Concerning the May 13, 1958 crisis, see Michel Winock, L'agonie de la IVe République - 13 mai 1958 (Gallimard, 2006) ISBN 2070775976 . Opposed to the constitution project presented by de Gaulle, Mendès-France campaigned for the "no" at the September 28, 1958 referendum. However, the new Constitution was finally adopted and proclaimed on October 4, 1958.

The Fifth Republic (1958)

Popular figure Pierre Mendès-France (or PMF as he was familiarly called) thus quitted the Radical-Socialist Party which had crossed the treshold to the center-right, as had the early moderate Republicans at the beginning of the Third Republic when the Radical-Socialist Party pushed them over the border between the left-wing and the right-wing. Mendès-France then founded the Centre d'Action Démocratique (CAD), which would later join the Parti socialiste autonome (PSA, which had split from the SFIO socialist party), which in turn would fusion in the Parti socialiste unifié (PSU) on April 3, 1960. This new socialist party thus gathered all the dissidents from the Radical-Socialist Party and the SFIO whom were opposed both to the Algerian War and to the proclamation of the new presidential regime. Mendès-France would become officially member of the PSU in 1961, a year before the March 18, 1962 Evian Accords which put an end to the Algerian War.

The Radical-Socialist Party supported the 1958 come back of Charles de Gaulle, then returned in opposition in 1959. It declined in the 1960s. Allied with the SFIO in the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, it supported François Mitterrand at the 1965 presidential election. This federation split in 1968.

Under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the party again made tentative moves to the left in the 1970s, but stopped short of an alliance with Socialist François Mitterrand and his Communist allies, leading to a final split in 1972, when the remaining left-wing Radicals left the party, becoming eventually the center-left Parti Radical de Gauche (PRG)

The remainder of the party continued in a conservative direction, joining conservative president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's Union for French Democracy (UDF), an umbrella organization for the non-Gaullist right, in 1978. Thus some of the radicals joined the center-left PRG while the others joined the center-right UDF, which, albeit supporting Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), refused to fusion in it and often criticize it. However, the Radicals left the UDF to join President Chirac's UMP in 2002.

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