Clemenceau, Georges

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CLEMENCEAU, GEORGES

CLEMENCEAU, GEORGES (1841–1929), French republican parliamentarian.

Georges Clemenceau helped shape the political culture of republican France. As an uncompromising republican he promoted egalitarianism, anticlericalism, positivism, individualism, and nationalism. Following his father's profession, Clemenceau studied medicine in Nantes and Paris; there he was briefly arrested in 1862 for opposition to the Second Empire. By 1870, after an extended trip to the United States, Clemenceau was again in Paris and active in Radical politics. During the Franco-Prussian War armistice (1871) he was elected deputy for the department of the Seine. He quickly resigned to protest the peace settlement. Clemenceau had also been appointed mayor of the Paris neighborhood of Montmartre and in 1871 was in the midst of the Parisian uprising against the peace treaty and the conservative National Assembly. Clemenceau sympathized with the patriotism and republicanism of the Communards, but rejected their socialism and their willingness to secede from the new republic. With like-minded republicans Clemenceau attempted to negotiate between the Communards and the National Assembly. Conciliation failed. After the brutal repression of the Commune, Clemenceau blamed the leaders of the National Assembly as responsible for the bloodshed and at the end of the decade he led the movement seeking amnesty for the Communards, which was achieved in 1880.

Having largely abandoned medicine, Clemenceau strengthened his political career through electoral victories: member of the Paris Municipal Council, 1875; deputy for the eighteenth Paris arrondissement (which included Montmartre) in 1876, reelected in 1881; elected deputy for the southern department of the Var in 1885. He also acquired a circle of friends who shared his Radical republican views and his political ambitions. These fashionable men-about-town also had interests in impressionist painting, theater, opera, and the young actresses behind the stage doors. Clemenceau gained a reputation as a formidable duelist eager to settle personal and political affronts.

By the 1880s Clemenceau was the recognized leader of a growing group of Radical republican deputies who sat on the far left of the Chamber of Deputies. He established a newspaper La Justice to promote their politics, backing anticlerical legislation and championing the legalization of divorce. They were sympathetic to workers' demands and criticized the use of the army to repress strikes. Their first legislative priority was to reform the constitution and the electoral system in order to safeguard popular sovereignty. In 1886 this agenda led the now powerful Clemenceau to force the moderate republican government to accept his choice for minister of war, General Georges Boulanger. Boulanger then launched a disparate movement that attracted all those dissatisfied with parliamentary government. Soon many feared that the dashing Boulanger was plotting a coup. Clemenceau had been Boulanger's patron; the Boulangist movement appropriated the Radical demand of constitutional reform; key members of the Radical group became leading Boulangists. Only when convinced that Boulanger posed a threat to the republic did Clemenceau join with moderates in a successful effort to contain the movement in 1889.

These complex associations with and his repudiation of the Boulangist movement diminished Clemenceau's political authority and the ranks of his followers. In addition, the Boulangists, vowing revenge, charged Clemenceau with corruption. During the 1893 legislative elections an antirepublican coalition launched a bitter campaign against Clemenceau, who was defeated. Two years later he resigned from La Justice. He pursued a career as a freelance journalist. In 1897 he joined the staff of a new paper, L'Aurore. He sponsored the publication of Émile Zola's scathing indictment of the army for its condemnation of an innocent officer, Alfred Dreyfus. Thus began the public and political phase of the Dreyfus affair, in which Clemenceau played a key role. The campaign for Dreyfus's acquittal again placed Clemenceau at the center of politics. However, his restored prominence did not diminish his distance from former Radical associates. Although Radicals gained the most from the Dreyfus affair, they had been neither early nor ardent Dreyfusards. Clemenceau remained aloof from the organization of a formal Radical Party in 1901. In 1902 after a nine-year absence he returned to parliament as the Radical senator from the Var, a position he held until 1920.

Following the legislative elections of 1902 and 1906 Radicals dominated the Chamber of Deputies. Clemenceau had no active role in the Radical government of 1902–1905, although he supported its militant anticlerical legislation and its foreign policy—alliance with Britain. In 1906 Clemenceau became minister of the interior in a new Radical government. Eight months later Clemenceau was called on to serve as premier.

Everyone expected his Radical government to be energetic and productive. Ministerial posts went to Radicals and independent socialists. A ministry of labor was created, promising renewed interest in labor reform. The Radical finance minister was committed to the progressive income tax. However, this reformist agenda was overwhelmed by an ever-intensifying conflict between the state and syndicalist unions. Clemenceau's intransigent republicanism necessarily led him to abhor working-class anarchism and antimilitarism. He completely opposed efforts to unionize civil servants and used force against what he considered illegal strikes, as well as against small winegrowers demonstrating for government aid during the révolte du Midi (1907). To his opponents Clemenceau became the "chief cop of France." The officers of the executive committee of the Radical Party condemned the premier's repressive actions. However, the Chamber of Deputies' majority endorsed these same actions, and most Radicals voted with this majority.

In 1909 the Clemenceau government fell. Clemenceau returned to the senate, having loosened all ties to the Radical Party. Preoccupied with foreign affairs, he was convinced that war with Germany was inevitable. He fought for the extension of French military service to three years and promoted the Entente with Britain. In the desperate wartime crisis of 1917, Clemenceau was appointed premier for a second time.