1924 French legislative election

The **1924 French legislative election** was held on 11 and 25 May 1924.

These elections bring to power the alliance known as the “Cartel of the Left”. For the first time, Socialists are present in the majority, even if they refuse to govern effectively.

## Process

The adoption, in July 1919, of a new mixed electoral system (law of 12 July 1919), combining multi-member proportional and multi-member plurality voting in one round within the framework of the department, led to the abandonment of the single-member majority vote two rounds per arrondissement, in force since 1889. The voter was asked to vote for a candidate who was a member of a list. Then there are three ways to get elected. On the one hand, the candidates having gathered an absolute majority of votes cast on their name are elected. The seats not filled were thus distributed by proportional representation, by quotient, between the different lists (the score of a list being of course equal to the sum of the votes collected individually by the candidates who appear there). Finally, the remaining seats were all allocated to the list which received the most votes. The aim of this change was to put an end to political strongholds and to allow the formation of larger and more stable political majorities capable of supporting different governments for longer.

## Background

The period of the National Bloc had a huge impact on post-war France. A series of political, economic and diplomatic reforms and actions made the arrival of the 1924 ballot as decisive.

Georges Clemenceau, leader of the National Bloc in the 1919 elections, became President of the French Republic in February 1920. He had to deal with another leader of the National Bloc; Alexandre Millerand - former Minister of War during the First World War and former independent socialist - who forms a conservative government with the support of the Radicals. Craftsman of an anti-communist policy, both internal (union repression and imprisonment of communist leaders) and external (blockade of socialist republics, diplomatic isolation, military interventions, support of anti-communist forces).

This anti-communist policy pushes the former socialist to offer his support to increasingly anti-democratic forces. The acme is expected during the events of the beginning of the Decennio Rosso, with the weakening of the Italian state in the face of the ever-growing communist threat, the fascist forces attempt a coup d'état in October 1922 which fails. Alexandre Millerand, thinking that the coup d'état had succeeded and out of sympathy for the movement, sent a secret telegram to Italian Prime Minister Luigi Facta in order to urge him to resign and make room for the fascists. The unveiled affair pushes on 15 December 1922 in the face of the magnitude of the scandal of Millerand's resignation.

The affair breaks the support of Radicals for the National Bloc, accentuated by the Bloc's heavy economic toll. The implementation of a series of economic policies (military budget, veterans, non-payment of war reparations) hit hard on the currency and forced a policy of austerity to repay the French debts contracted during the war with the Americans. The governments which will succeed the scandal will have difficulty in recovering, Raymond Poincaré who will be the president of the council from 1922 to 1924 will keep the austerity policy coupled with a deflationary policy.

## Campaign

### Division on the Right

The right by the results of the National Bloc and the Millerand Affair is divided. The former Prime Minister was popular in bourgeois circles and within the big business sector. He forged ties with many personalities, from military leaders, to church leaders, to industrialists. The coming elections pushed him to create the National Republican League (LNR), with its ambition to revise the constitution of the Third Republic to strengthen the executive power and also to force the resignation of President Clemenceau. Notably, François de Wendel, senator of the Republican Federation and chief financier of the organization, joined Millerand's movement. De Wendel would push his party to officially ally with the Millerand league.The League brings together nationalist leagues and right-wing and far-right veterans organizations.

The Republican Federation (FR) and the Democratic and Social Republican Party (PRDS) find themselves wedged between the LNR on its right and the Radicals (PRRRS) who seem attracted to the socialists of the SFIO.

The leaders of the National Bloc are then adversaries. Raymond Poincaré is head of government, Georges Clemenceau is President of the Republic but Alexandre Millerand is an opponent. A number of right-wing personalities fueled by anti-communism militate for a union between the right-wing parties (LNR included). In particular, François de Wendel, senator of the Republican Federation and chief financier of the organization, joined Millerand's movement and urged his party to formally ally itself with the Millerand League.

The FR and the PRDS are the targets of media campaigns, launched by De Wendel and other media moguls. Under increasing pressure and following the departure of certain members of the right-wing parties, certain figures began to accept and support the alliance project. This resulted in the departure of moderates from the Republican Federation, led by Auguste Isaac, which would form the Republican Popular Union. Louis Marin, leader of the right wing of FR, takes the head of the party. In the PRDS, it was the right-wingers of the party who left with Pierre-Etienne Flandin at their head.

The UPR chooses to support Raymond Poincaré but does not go so far as to form an alliance because of the impression that the Radicals give (consciously or not) of a possible formation of an alliance bringing together the whole center, but will not end up disappearing with the formation of the Cartel of the Left.

### Union of the Left

The left after the heavy defeat of 1919 elections wants to go to the conquest of power. The French Section of the Workers' International after the Republican Federation collected the most votes but because of its isolation due to revolutionary events everywhere in Eastern Europe, only manages to sit with a reduced number of elected representatives. because of the electoral law. The Radicals had supported and participated in the various governments of the National Bloc without being part of the coalition. The Millerand Affair and the clerical policy of the Bloc pushed the radicals of the right to a distance.

The split that occurred at the end of the Tours Congress allows the SFIO to turn to a new alliance with the radicals, in the purest Republican tradition of electoral alliances.

Agreements were reached during the senatorial elections of January 1921 and cantonal elections of May 19222. During the autumn of 1921, Painlevé founded the League of the Republic, which brought together the new generation of elected radicals and the Republicans-Socialists. Two new newspapers, passionately committed to the cause of the Republic, a daily (*Le Quotidien*) and a weekly (*Le Progrès civique*) were launched at the same time. As in the days of the Left Bloc, the Left Cartel is essentially based on the formation of local committees and on the support of thought societies and Masonic lodges. The radicals are often very favorable to an alliance with the Socialists, at least to prevent the electoral law from marginalizing them as was the case after the previous legislative elections.

At the Marseille Congress, the SFIO approved the formation of a purely electoral cartel, called "one minute". There was no question of compromising oneself in a possible participation in a government within the framework of bourgeois institutions. The cartel is officially launched.

The French Section of the Communist International formed after the Congress of Tours in 1920 is completely isolated. Following the united front strategy dictated by the Comintern, the SFIC sought to ally with the SFIO, in the cantonal elections of 1922 the Communist Party won seats in the socialist constituencies and constituted a threat to the left. However, the absence of leadership at the head of the SFIC makes any discussion of alliance perceived as a waste of time for the SFIO. The direct intervention of the Comintern to establish the resolutions of the Congress of Paris and the Left-Center leadership provokes the departure of part of the right. The SFIO argues that it does not want an alliance

### Violence in the electoral campaign.

This campaign is the first electoral campaign where violence interferes and becomes an electoral subject. Wanting to take an example from the Italian experience, right wing paramilitary groups seek to provoke communist and socialist organizations. Sporadic during three-quarters of the campaign, the news of the victory of the PCd'I in the Italian general election in April 1924, explodes the clashes, which become more and more violent. The most striking fact this product a few days before the election on 6 May 1924, during a meeting of the Communist candidate Jacques Duclos in Clichy, an attack was perpetrated. Five shots are fired in the direction of Duclos, he is saved by the courage of a young worker, Carini, who intervenes between the Communist and the bullets, he dies as a result of his wounds. The murderer, a gangster, will be arrested and will have been paid by members affiliated with the LRN, but he will not give the names of his sponsors.

## Results

The Cartel of the Left win the election. Although there have been many dissensions over the application of the voting instructions between the party leaderships and the local federations, the Socialists are the big winners in the election. Despite the split of Tours, the SFIO won 400,000 more votes than in 1919, the majority on the electoral grounds of the Radical Party but also by the withdrawal of communists in favor of the socialists to block the reactionaries.

The Radical-Socialist Party in its turn wins a lot of votes but is overtaken by the SFIO and is therefore no longer the leading party of the Left. However, thanks to the withdrawals of left-wing candidates and the electoral laws, the radicals have the most deputies and constitute the largest parliamentary group thus remaining at the head of the Cartel.

For the Right it's a terrible defeat, which if it had remained united would have won both in terms of the number of votes and of seats in parliament. Millerand's bet, which was to rally the spirit of the National Bloc on his League and his person, fails. It constitutes a group of 60 deputies, too small to claim to simply lead a government. The Republican Federation collapsed in terms of votes, dropping from 1,819,691 in 1919 to 1,064,352 in 1924. The Democratic and Social Republican Party won votes but remained lower than the FR while retaining more parliamentary seats. The Republican People's Union, unsurprisingly, does not score high but is capable of forming an independent parliamentary group.

The Communist Party made its first return to parliament, after unsuccessful attempts in 1920. The French Section of the Communist International obtained 1,038,100 votes despite isolation and withdrawals, 36 communists deputies enter in the Chamber of Deputies. It won its best scores in the workers' basins of the Paris region, the North, the Seine and Oise, and the Lower Seine. The PC-SFIC wins several deputies in the rural departments showing the beginning of establishment in the working peasantry.