Radical Party, France

Radical Party, France A French political movement with a fundamental commitment to a republic which originated in quasi-mystical perceptions of the French Revolution. After the creation of the Third Republic in 1870, the Radicals aimed at strengthening it as a strong, secular state. The perception of crisis which set in following the Dreyfus Affair, and the ambiguous role played by some religious orders in it which brought the place in France of the Roman Catholic Church to the political agenda, ushered in their golden age in 1899. Reconstituted as the Radical and Radical-Socialist Party in 1901, it won a tremendous victory in the 1902 elections on an anticlerical campaign. In 1904, the separation of church and state was passed as law. Returned in even greater numbers by the 1906 elections, the party formed a government under G. Clemenceau, but as the clerical issue had been settled, it became clear that Radicalism had little else to offer apart from maintaining the authority of the French state, and few of its proposed social reforms ever became law. The government fell in 1909, and though the party continued to dominate the political scene until 1936, it was continuously hampered by a weak political programme and organization. Meanwhile, the party shifted further to the right, especially in response to the Popular Front. As a member of the ‘Third Force’, it formed many postwar governments, together with the MRP and the Socialist Party. During the Fifth Republic, however, the party has become increasingly marginalized.