Radicalism (historical) - France

France

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars it was technically illegal in France to openly advocate republicanism until 1848, so republicans usually called themselves "radicals" and the term radical came to mean a republican (who, by definition, supported universal manhood suffrage). From 1869 a faction, led by Georges Clemenceau, calling themselves Radicals claimed to be the true heirs of the French revolutionary tradition and drifted away from the moderate republicanism of Léon Gambetta. At Montmartre in 1881 they put forward a programme of broad social reforms. At that time, Radicals located themselves on the far left of the political board, opposed to the "Republican opportunists" (Gambetta), the liberal Orléanists, the Legitimists (both monarchist factions) and the Bonapartists.

These radicals then formed the Radical-Socialist Party (or Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, to give it its full name) in 1901, which was the first French left-wing modern party. Four years later, the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party was formed by the fusion of Jean Jaurès's and Jules Guesde's rival tendencies; and the French Communist Party (PCF) was created in 1920. The Radical -Socialist Party continued to be the main party of the Third Republic (1871–1940), but was discredited after the war due to the role of Radical members of the National Assembly in voting for the establishment of the Vichy regime. The Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance was established after World War II to combine the politics of French radicalism with credibility derived from members' activism in the French resistance.

Opposing Gaullism and the Christian democratic People's Republican Movement (MNR), Pierre Mendès-France tried to anchor the Radicals to the left wing. Although he managed to put an end to the First Indochina War through the Geneva Accords signed in 1954 with North Vietnam's Premier Pham Van Dong, he finally left the party in 1961 to join the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) which advocated workers' self-management, while the Radical Party split into the more conservative Radical Party "valoisien", the legal successor of the Radical Party, and a faction advocating alliance with the left, named the Radical Party of the Left. The Parti radical valoisien moved to the centre-right and affiliated itself first with the pro-Giscard d'Estaing Union for French Democracy, then with the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), while the Radical Party of the Left, which claims to be the political heir of the Republican Radicals, has close ties to the Socialist Party.