The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution of 13 October 1946. Essentially a reestablishment and continuation of the Third Republic which governed from 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to 1940 during World War II, it suffered many of the same problems which led to its end.
Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France was a French politician who served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the Radical Party, he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists (RPF), moderate socialists (UDSR), Christian democrats (MRP) and liberal-conservatives (CNIP). His main priority was ending the Indochina War, which had already cost 92,000 lives, with 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured on the French side. Public opinion polls showed that, in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, Mendès France negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. He is considered one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Fourth Republic.
The Radical Party, officially the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, is a liberal and social-liberal political party in France. Since 1971, to prevent confusion with the Radical Party of the Left (PRG), it has also been referred to as Parti radical valoisien, after its headquarters on the rue de Valois. The party's name has been variously abbreviated to PRRRS, Rad, PR and PRV. Founded in 1901, the PR is the oldest active political party in France.
Raymond Marcellin was a French politician.
The Unified Socialist Party was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. It was originally led by Édouard Depreux.
Presidential elections were held in France in 1974, following the death of President Georges Pompidou. They went to a second round, and were won by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing by a margin of 1.6%. It is to date the closest presidential election in French history.
Presidential elections were held in France on 5 December 1965, with a second round on 19 December. They were the first direct presidential elections in the Fifth Republic and the first since the Second Republic in 1848. It had been widely expected that incumbent president Charles de Gaulle would be re-elected, but the election was notable for the unexpectedly strong performance of his left-wing challenger François Mitterrand.
Legislative elections were held in France on 16 March 1986 to elect the eighth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. Contrary to other legislative elections of the Fifth Republic, the electoral system used was that of party-list proportional representation.
Alain Savary was a French Socialist politician, deputy to the National Assembly of France during the Fourth and Fifth Republic, chairman of the Socialist Party (PS) and a government minister in the 1950s and in 1981–1984, when he was appointed by President François Mitterrand as Minister of National Education.
The Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance was a French political party founded after the liberation of France from German occupation, mainly active during the Fourth Republic (1947–58). It was a loosely organised "cadre party" without mass membership. Its ideology was vague, including a broad diversity of different political convictions, and it was variously described as left-wing, centrist, and even conservative. It was decidedly anti-communist and linked with the Paix et Liberté movement. The UDSR was a founding member of the Liberal International in 1947.
The Epinay Congress was the third national congress of the French Socialist Party, which took place on 11, 12 and 13 June 1971, in the town of Épinay-sur-Seine, in the northern suburbs of Paris. During this congress, not only did the party admit the Convention of Republican Institutions into its ranks, but the party leadership was also won by Mitterrand and his supporters. For the observers and the French Socialists themselves, the Epinay Congress was the real founding act of the current PS. It was also the turning point in Mitterrand's grand political plan, which led to the ascendancy of the French Left over the next quarter-century, and eventually, in 1981, to Mitterrand's election to the Presidency of France for two consecutive 7-year terms.
The Rally of Republican Lefts was an electoral alliance during the French Fourth Republic which contested elections from June 1946 to the 1956 French legislative election. It was composed of the Radical Party, the Independent Radicals, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR) and several conservative groups. Headed by Jean-Paul David, founder of the anti-Communist movement Paix et Liberté, it was in fact a right-of-center conservative coalition, which presented candidates to the June 1946, November 1946, and 1951 legislative elections.
The Republican Front was a centre-left coalition that won the 1956 French legislative election. In the context of the Algerian War, behind Pierre Mendès-France, it gathered the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the Radical Party, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, and the National Centre of Social Republicans, which came from a split of the Gaullist movement.
Events from the year 1956 in France.
Legislative elections were held in France on 17 June 1951 to elect the second National Assembly of the Fourth Republic.
Guy Alcide Mollet was a French politician. He led the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) from 1946 to 1969 and was the French Prime Minister from 1956 to 1957.
The Socialist Party is a centre-left to left-wing political party in France. It holds social democratic and pro-European views. The PS was for decades the largest party of the "French Left" and used to be one of the two major political parties under the Fifth Republic, along with the Union for a Popular Movement. It replaced the earlier French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1969 and is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and Socialist International.
The French Left refers to communist, socialist, and social-democratic political forces in France. The term originates from the National Assembly of 1789, where supporters of the revolution were seated on the left of the assembly. During the 1800s, left largely meant support for the Republic, whereas right largely meant support for the monarchy.
Léon Jean Martinaud-Déplat was a French lawyer and Radical politician who was a deputy in 1932–36 and in 1951–56. He was Minister of Justice in 1952–53 and then Minister of the Interior in 1953–54. He was violently anti-communist, and was opposed to granting autonomy or independence of the North African colonies. His hard-line views caused him to be expelled from his party in 1955, and he failed to be reelected the next year.
The French Section of the Workers' International was a political party in France that was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the modern-day Socialist Party. The SFIO was founded during the 1905 Globe Congress in Paris as a merger between the French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France in order to create the French section of the Second International, designated as the party of the workers' movement.
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