Popular Front and the Matignon Accords
The Popular Front coalition of Socialists, Radicals and Communists won the 1936 elections amid extreme polarisation, with CGT membership exploding from one to four million. A wave of factory occupations by 1.8 million workers in June 1936 forced employers to the table. The resulting Matignon Accords introduced the 40-hour week, two weeks of paid holiday, and collective bargaining rights — a top-down legal restructuring of industrial relations that conservatives experienced as revolutionary. Prime Minister Léon Blum, France's first Socialist and first Jewish premier, became the target of explicit antisemitic agitation from far-right leagues such as the 500,000-strong Croix-de-Feu. The reforms were genuine and durable, but capital flight, the Spanish Civil War split, and the coalition's incompatible components soon eroded the government.
- Year: 1936 CE
- Category: Political
