The incomparable John
writes:
One
of the recurring themes of this blog has been my attempt
to illuminate the history of particular expressions of left-wing Christian
politics. My focus has largely been on the post-war Continental European
Catholic Left, particularly left-wing Christian Democracy in Italy and Germany.
Interestingly, the Italians and Germans were both heavily influenced by the
British Labour Party of Clement Attlee. Left-wing Christians in Italy and West
Germany tried mightily to create native Italian and West
German Labour Parties at both the national and regional levels.
Just
to give one example of how influential British Labourism was, starting
in the autumn of 1947 the Italian economist Federico Caffè
reported directly from Great Britain on the economic policies of the Labour
Party government in the Cronache Sociali, the official periodical
of Giuseppe
Dossetti and his group of left-wing Christian Democrats. Caffè's reports
would have a major impact on the left-wing of Italian
Christian Democracy, influencing figures such as Amintore Fanfani, Giorgio
La Pira, Giuseppe
Lazzati, and Aldo
Moro, as well as Dossetti himself.
France
also had its own movement inspired by Old Labour. Called "French travaillisme"
it was a political movement among French Christian Democrats during the years
of the Occupation. The movement began with the Rue de Lille Group, a
resistance organization comprised of French Catholics and socialists. Between
1943 and 1944, the Rue de Lille Group published the Cahiers du
travaillisme français, a publication calling for an alliance between
Catholics and socialists.
The British Labour Party was the primary inspiration
of the Rue de Lille Group because it was seen as
an example of a left-wing party that was committed to reform while not
having the baggage of anti-clericalism associated with the Marxist parties
of the Left. Travaillisme was a program that both socialists and
Catholics could support. Support for the travailliste concept also came
from the Confédération
Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC).
Unfortunately,
the travailliste movement collapsed when attempts to forge an alliance
between the Section Française de
l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), the Mouvement
Républicain Populaire (MRP), and the Union démocratique et socialiste de
la Résistance (UDSR) failed to produce a French version of the British
Labour Party.
While French travaillisme as an organized movement did not survive long after the end of World War II, as a victim of the difficult institutional landscape of post-war French politics, it is not the case that the movement died from intellectual bankruptcy. The end of the Cold War and the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism will hopefully revive the old travailliste dream.
While French travaillisme as an organized movement did not survive long after the end of World War II, as a victim of the difficult institutional landscape of post-war French politics, it is not the case that the movement died from intellectual bankruptcy. The end of the Cold War and the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism will hopefully revive the old travailliste dream.
SOURCES
Delbreil, Jean-Claude. "The French Catholic Left and the Political Parties," in Left Catholicism, 1943-1955, ed. Emmanuel Gerard and Gerd-Rainer Horn (Leuven: Leuven Univeristy Press, 2001), 45-63.
Vinen, Richard. Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945-1951. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Hello Mr. Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the post!
Ever since the French Revolution inaugurated the worlds first secular state (the US has never been secular) the European Left has been an anti-Christian force, taking over the functions of education, healthcare and welfare from the Churches.
ReplyDeleteThe European Unions refusal to mention Europes Christian origins sums up the modern European Left.
What a thing it must be only ever to have read one book (which one, exactly?), and not even to have understood half of that.
ReplyDelete"The US has never been secular"? I have heard it all now! It has never been anything else, and well into living memory it never even pretended to be.
I was hoping to provoke you into publicly exposing your historical ignorance- it didn't take much work.
ReplyDeleteMany US states still sponsored Churches long after the Constitution.
Any serious historian will tell you the French state was the first in the world to disestablish religion from public life.
The post-Revolutionary French state took over the task of recording the population from the Catholic Church and then secularised education and welfare.
I suspect you didn't know any of this-but please don't take out your ignorance on your dear readers.
You only know about the continuing Established Churches at state level because you are are a regular reader here. I have been writing about them from time to time since you were in primary school.
ReplyDeleteDon't flatter yourself-you sound mentally fragile.
ReplyDeleteI know considerably more about French Revolutionary and US history than you'll likely ever learn.
When was the last time you wrote a dissertation on Burke?
I have not been required to produce a dissertation for many a long year, dear boy.
ReplyDelete