The French and Spanish Popular Fronts

In considering the Anarchists' attitude to the Popular Fronts, we have to bear in mind Daniel Guérin's distinction between what he calls the Popular Front No. 1 – an electoral alliance between social democracy, stalinism and bourgeois liberalism – and the Popular Front No. 2 – a powerful, extra-parliamentary movement, the initiative for which came from the working class: ‘the true popular front, the popular front of the streets and not of the politicians’.

Thus, Le Libertaire, most important of the anarchist newspapers and organ of the Union Anarchiste (UA), was careful to distinguish between the Popular Front's leaders – the politicians – and its working-class supporters. The Anarchists enthused over ‘the fraternity, the solidarity and the strength of the working class’ manifested in the extra-parliamentary movement of 1934 and 1935, and they also took an active part in that movement: the old nineteenth-century anarchist disdain for mass organizations – even for ‘the masses’ – was now no longer dominant.

The UA was one of the eight organizations represented at the meeting held in the offices of the CGT on 7 February 1934. According to Lefranc, Jouhaux particularly wanted the anarchists to be associated with the call for a general strike: ‘fidelity to the ideals of his youth and the desire to cover himself against accusations of having sold out to the government’. Its members took part in the strike of 12 February, and during the summer of 1934 they were involved in the Centre de Liaison et de Coordination des Forces Antifascistes de la Région Parisienne – a non-communist rival, more or less, to the communist-dominated Comité Amsterdam-Pleyel.