Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and French political groups
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A historiographic overview
- 3 International comparisons
- 4 Notables
- 5 Bourgeois parties and the female electorate
- 6 Organized business and politics
- 7 Administration
- 8 Opposition nationale
- 9 The Parti Républicain de la Liberté
- 10 Machine à ramasser les Pétainistes? The Mouvement Républicain Populaire and the conservative electorate
- 11 The Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines
- 12 The Rassemblement du Peuple Français
- 13 Independents and Peasants
- 14 The Groupement de Défense des Contribuables
- 15 Conclusion
- Appendix. The electoral law of 1951 and apparentements
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - The Groupement de Défense des Contribuables
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and French political groups
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A historiographic overview
- 3 International comparisons
- 4 Notables
- 5 Bourgeois parties and the female electorate
- 6 Organized business and politics
- 7 Administration
- 8 Opposition nationale
- 9 The Parti Républicain de la Liberté
- 10 Machine à ramasser les Pétainistes? The Mouvement Républicain Populaire and the conservative electorate
- 11 The Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines
- 12 The Rassemblement du Peuple Français
- 13 Independents and Peasants
- 14 The Groupement de Défense des Contribuables
- 15 Conclusion
- Appendix. The electoral law of 1951 and apparentements
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In a general sense we saw an awakening on the part of certain sectors and a search for electoral outlets by the professions. Such phenomena, which were not confined to the Jura, were omens of wider movements, which would take the form of Poujadism. No doubt they deserved to receive more attention.
The remark quoted above was made by Edgar Faure with reference to the general election of 1951, and particularly with reference to the role of the Groupement de Défense des Contribuables (GDC) in those elections. The GDC has received almost no attention from historians: the most comprehensive work on the parties of the Fourth Republic devotes precisely one paragraph to it, and the official biography of the party's most prominent organizer – Léon Gingembre – discusses the episode in less than three pages. This neglect is not surprising in view of the apparent electoral failure of the GDC, which put only one deputy in parliament and obtained more than 5 per cent of the vote in a mere five constituencies.
The historian's verdict on the GDC is, in some respects, a reflection of the party's own propaganda as well as its apparent electoral failure. The GDC's leaders presented their movement as one of simple ‘little men’ who were indignant at the machinations of professional politicians: The games of politics are incomprehensible to us.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945–1951 , pp. 252 - 264Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995