Front Populaire Staggers over its Latest hurdle
Wednesday 1st
October 1936
The Bill devaluing
the French franc was finally passed after a legislative marathon. It had been
approved by the Chamber of Deputies after a debate of 25 hours but it had then
been blocked in the Senate, where the Front
Populaire government did not enjoy the same majority. It required significant
concessions by the government to reach a compromise in the Senate. On top of all this, the Paris waiters were striking.
The original
bill had included a number of social clauses, notably the reversal of the cuts
in pensions made by the Laval government. These were removed entirely. The bill
also gave the government power to control price increases made on the pretext
of the devaluation, but these had been severely diluted from the original
plans. Much was at stake for the government: its fall was actively contemplated
and only an emphatic statement from the Radical leader Camille Chautemps that
he would not displace Léon Blum defused this.
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