1947 strikes in France
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The 1947 strikes in France were a series of insurrectionary labour actions against post-war wage stagnation and Western capitalism. The strikes first emerged as a spontaneous wave in late April at the nation's largest Renault factory. When the French Communist Party (PCF) joined the strike, it led to the May crisis, which saw all communist officials expelled from the national government.
The peak wave in September was more generalized and more directly associated with the Cominform than the wave in May, and it explicitly denounced the Marshall Plan. Soon there were 3 million strikers; 23,371,000 working days were lost to strikes in 1947 versus 374,000 in 1946, but the movement stayed less important than in Italy, where the Communists were also excluded from the government. In May, the Communist ministers in effect left the government, which ended tripartisme, and at the end of the year the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) divided into a reformist minority and a pro-Atlanticist group called Workers' Force (FO). Although they had been created in December 1944, the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) had their first real policing mission with the strikes of November–December 1947, all of which were under the leadership of Minister of the Interior Jules Moch (SFIO).
The strikes began on 25 April 1947 at the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt, which had been nationalized in 1946.[1] The day before, Paul Ramadier's cabinet had reduced the daily bread ration from 300 to 250 grams.
The plant employed 30,000 men, and the CGT claimed 17,000 members. The strike was started, among other things, by the Trotskyist Pierre Bois, an activist of the communist union and a founder of Workers' Struggle, the anarchist Gil Devillard of the Anarchist Federation, and members of the Trotskyist International Communist Party (PCI). The importance of the PCI's involvement in the movement was made clear in an article published on 26 June 1947 in Cavalcades magazine, titled "A teacher, an engineer, a journalist, leaders of the Fourth International, could paralyse France tomorrow".[2] The strike did not at first have the support of the CGT nor the PCF, which was part of the tripartisme coalition government. Plaisance,[clarification needed] a secretary of the CGT, said outside the factory: "This morning, an anarcho-Hitlero-Trotskyist band wanted to blow up the factory". The CGT then claimed "The strike arms the trusts". Despite the communist opposition, the strike quickly brought in more than 10,000 workers. Eugene Hénaff, the secretary-general of CGT Metallurgy, was booed at Boulogne-Billancourt.
On 8 May, the government enacted a three-franc wage increase. On 9 May, two thirds of the CGT voted to return to work, but some remained on strike and paralysed the factory. The strike ceased on 15 May, after the government granted a bonus of 1600 francs and an advance of 900 francs for all employees.
End of tripartisme and extension of strikes
The strikes spread. With an inflation rate of over 60% and rationing still in force, the black market remained important, and living conditions were difficult, particularly since France struggled to meet its energy needs.
On 5 May 1947, the Communist ministers were excluded from the government by Paul Ramadier. From that moment, the PCF and CGT supported the social movement, which extended to Citroën, SNCF, banks, department stores, Électricité de France, Peugeot, Berliet, Michelin, and others. The main reasons for the strikes were demands for higher wages, but the broader context was the formalization of the Cold War.
In June, a wave of insurrectionist strikes protested the Marshall Plan.