Swiss Socialist Federation

On July 5, 1940, Le Travail and Le Droit du Peuple were banned by the Swiss government. The government also wished to ban the FSS as such, but found it legally complicated as the party had four members of parliament (Léon Nicole, Jacques Dicker, Ernest Gloor and Eugène Masson). However the Vitznau Commission came up with a compromise solution. At its meeting on April 28, 1941, it decided to equate the activities of the FSS with those of the banned Communist Party, thus paving the way for a ban on the FSS. The FSS was banned on May 27, 1941.^[5] Later, its parliamentarians were expelled from the National Council.^[5] The Swiss Socialist Party actively supported the banning of the FSS. The FSS continued to exist as an underground movement, though. It supported electoral candidatures of politicians wanting to repeal the ban on the party (such as Florian Delhorbe in Vaud in July 1942 and Professor William Rappard in Geneva in September 1941), and sought an alliance with the German-speaking Landesring of Gottlieb Duttweiler.^[1] In the 1943 parliamentary election, the FSS called for a boycott.^[5]

After the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, a unification process between the FSS and the Communist Party was initiated (within a 'Browderist' framework). There was a hope that the Socialist Party would join the merger, but this proposal was rejected at by the Socialist Party. The FSS and the Communist Party dissolved themselves. In 1944, the Swiss Party of Labour was founded, substituting the FSS and the Communist Party.^[5]