Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

But the truth is, M. Thiers did not wish to make a peaceful settlement with the people of the capital of France. Conciliation itself was branded as a crime as much by the political leaders and military chiefs on his side as it was by the Communist extremists on the other. The Versaillais aimed at the conquest of Paris by force of arms: they did not desire to enter peacefully by force of agreement. And having won, Paris was treated by the Republican Government as a conquered city. All sorts of exceptional laws, such as Napoleon III himself never enacted, were registered against the liberties of her inhabitants, and she was deprived of her fair share of representation in the National Assembly. The capital of France was a criminal city.

Clemenceau on March 21st, 1871, had brought into the National Assembly at Versailles a measure which established the Municipal Council of Paris with 80 members. This was a valuable service to the capital and one of which the man himself was destined to take advantage. For, having failed to bring about a reasonable compromise between the Versailles chiefs and the leaders of the Commune, and having also lost his seat for Montmartre in the Assembly as well as the Mayoralty of that district, he gave up general politics and after the fall of the Commune accepted his election as Municipal Councillor for Clignancourt. He devoted the next five years of his life to his doctor’s work, giving gratuitous advice as before to her poor around him, and to constant attendance as a Municipal Councillor, where he was the leader of the radical section. He thus gained a knowledge of Parisian life and the needs of Parisians which no other experience could have given him.

As one of the municipal representatives he never ceased to protest against the shameful legislation which deprived Paris of its rights. But he did more. The man who is regarded by many, even to-day, as essentially a political destroyer with no idea of a constructive policy in any department made himself master of the details of municipal administration and was a most valued colleague of all who, acting on the extreme left of the Council, endeavoured, while upholding the dignity of the city against the repressive policy of the Government, to improve the management of city affairs in every department. In this he was as successful as the circumstances of the time permitted. He became in turn Secretary, Vice-President and President of the Council.

Though this portion of Clemenceau’s career is little known, the continuous unrecognised municipal service he rendered to Paris during those eventful years gave him a hold not only upon Montmartre but upon the whole city which has been of great service to him at other times. He had, in fact, become a thorough Parisian from the age of nineteen onwards, which can by no means always be said of men who have afterwards taken a leading part in French politics. It is very difficult to say what qualities are those which entitle a man to this distinguished appellation. I have myself known Frenchmen able, witty, brilliant and original, good speakers and clever writers, who somehow never seemed to be at home with Parisians and Parisian audiences. Critical and cynical, though at times enthusiastic and idealist, the Parisian crowd takes no man at his own valuation and is no less fickle than crowds in cities generally are. But Clemenceau has never failed to be on good terms with them. I attribute this to the fact that in addition to his other higher qualities, which impress all people of intelligence, Clemenceau has in him a vein of sheer humorous mischief that savours of the Parisian gamin rather than of the hard-working student from La Vendée. There is something in common between him and the young rogues of the Parisian streets who are not at all averse from enjoying life at the cost of poking fun at other people and even at themselves. This spirit of Paris early got hold of Clemenceau and he of it.

However this may be, on February 26th, 1876, he was again elected deputy to the National Assembly. He now began the active and continuous political life which had been broken off at its commencement by the second revolution followed by the gruesome tragedy just recounted.

That he had never lost his sympathy for the men and women of the Commune, little reason as he personally had for good feeling towards them, was, proved by his delivery of his speech in favour of the Amnesty of the Communists, some of whom had been so eager to get rid of him for good and all when they had been in power for a short time themselves. The speech at once put Clemenceau among the first Parliamentary orators of the day. At this time a man of such capacity was greatly needed on the extreme left. Others, who had lost much of their energy and fervour in the long struggle against repression, were little inclined to run further risks for the sake of a really democratic Republic, still less for a set of people who in their misguided efforts for complete freedom had endangered the establishment of any Republic at all. They were content with what they had done before and with the positions they occupied then. It was greatly to Clemenceau’s credit that he did not hesitate a moment as to the line he should take. Popular or unpopular, fair play and freedom for all were his watchwords.

When the Amnesty question came up again in 1879 Clemenceau’s speech in favour of the release of the indefatigable Communist Blanqui was, like his appeal for the amnesty of the members of the Commune generally, very creditable to him, for it was an unpopular move and gained him little useful political support from any party. Perhaps no man in the whole history of the revolutionary movement ever devoted himself so entirely and with such relentless determination to the spread of subversive doctrines as Auguste Blanqui. He began early and finished late. He was first imprisoned at the age of twenty-one and spent more than half of his seventy-six years of existence in gaol or exile. He was a strong believer in organised violence as a means of bringing about the realisation of his communist ideals. Insurrection against the successive French Governments he regarded as a duty. It was a duty which he faithfully fulfilled. In 1827 he was an active fighter in the insurrection of the Rue St. Denis. It was suppressed and Blanqui was wounded. He was one of the leaders of the successful rising against Charles X in 1830, in which he was again wounded. In the reign of Louis Philippe, which followed the failure to establish a Republic, he speedily went to work again. Insurrection, conspiracy, establishment of illegal societies, accumulation of weapons and explosives for organised attacks, attempts to constitute a communist republic, were followed by the usual penalties, and after his participation in the insurrection of the Montagnards, by condemnation to death commuted to imprisonment for life. Such was Blanqui’s career up to 1848. Then the revolution of that year set him free again. No sooner was he released than he began afresh, forming a revolutionary combination which led to another three days of insurrection, with the result that he was sentenced to a further ten years of imprisonment. In 1858, under the Second Empire, he returned to Paris, his birthplace, but was soon ejected and passed eight years more in exile. In 1870 and 1871 Blanqui took part in the overthrow of Napoleon III, and in the Commune which followed, was captured by the Versaillais troops and sentenced to transportation to New Caledonia, after the Communards had offered to exchange for him the Archbishop of Paris, then held by them as a hostage. Instead of being shipped off to New Caledonia he was imprisoned at Clairvaux, where he remained until 1880, when he was elected, while still in gaol, deputy for Bordeaux, was not allowed to take his seat but was released, and died in Paris in 1881.

This brief summary gives but a poor idea of Blanqui’s activities and sufferings. At the period when Clemenceau pleaded for his release he was still, at seventy-one, the most dangerous revolutionary leader in France. From the first and throughout he was absolutely uncompromising in his adherence to his communist theories, and, being at the same time of dictatorial tendencies, he was an extremely difficult man to work with. None the less Blanqui represented the highest type of educated anarchist. He never considered himself for a moment. So long as he was able to keep the flag of revolution flying, and thus to prepare the way, by constant attempts at direct action, for the period when the people would be strong enough and well-organised enough to achieve victory for themselves, he was satisfied. A leader of his knowledge and capacity must have known and did know that his views could not possibly be accepted and acted upon, even if scientifically correct for a later date, at the stage of evolution which France had reached in his day. But, like Raspail, Delescluze, Amilcare Cipriani, Sophie Perovskaia, and more than one of the French dynamitical anarchists, he deliberately sacrificed his whole career, as he also risked his life time after time, in desperate efforts to uplift the mass of the people from their state of economic and social degradation. Nothing daunted him. His courage was of that exceptional quality which is strengthened by defeat. Even his bitterest enemies respected his devotion to his cause, his disregard of danger and the spirit he maintained, in spite of years upon years of confinement. He hated and despised the bourgeoisie, with their capitalist wage-earning, profit-making system, even more than he did monarchy and aristocracy. He revolted against the slow processes of social evolution, as he did against the inherited wrongs of class repression. No weapon of agitation came amiss to him. Journalist, pamphleteer, author, orator, organiser, conspirator, he covered in his own person the whole of the ground open to a convinced revolutionist. The suppressive order of to-day must be smashed up to give an outlet to the liberative order of to-morrow. Such a programme was in direct opposition to the ideas of Clemenceau, who, individualist as he is, has always regarded political action and trade organisation of a peaceful nature as the best means of attaining thorough reform and social reconstruction without running the risk of provoking monarchist or imperialist repression. Blanqui to him was an idealist who, by his very honesty and singleness of purpose, played into the hands of reaction, when he spent so much of his life as he lived outside of a prison in one broken but relentless effort to overthrow the existing society of inequality and wage-slavery by the same forcible methods that capitalist society itself uses to maintain the system in being. On the other hand, the right to freedom of person and freedom of expression was erected by the Radical leader into something not far from an intellectual religion. On this ground, therefore, he argued strongly in favour of Blanqui’s release, though quite possibly, and indeed probably, Blanqui’s freedom, had it been secured, would have been vigorously used against Clemenceau and his party—whom the great Anarchist-Communist would have regarded as mere trimmers—to the advantage of the reactionists themselves. But in this case as in that of the amnesty to the Communists, the Clemenceau of the Rights of Man and Liberty, Equality and Fraternity overcame Clemenceau the practical politician. That he failed to get Blanqui out of prison could only have been expected, having regard to the character of the Assembly to which his appeal is addressed.

His Amnesty speech made a fine beginning for Clemenceau’s active Parliamentary life. It put him on a very different level from that occupied by the mere political adventurers and intriguers whose main objects were either to help on the reconstitution of some form of monarchy or to secure for themselves posts under the Republic of much the same kind as existed under the Empire. Men who but yesterday had been champions of a genuine Republic in which the interests of the majority of the French people should be considered first, foremost and all the time had now become mere plotters for reaction, or opportunists anxious never to find an opportunity. They were Republicans in name but not in spirit. They were convinced that the most important portion of their policy consisted henceforth not in organising the factor of democracy for general progress but in reassuring their conservative opponents and the propertied classes generally, from the plutocrat to the peasant proprietor, that the Republic meant only a convenient form of government, in which all classes should agree harmoniously together to stand at ease for the next few generations. Their arguments in favour of such a scheme of permanent repose were unfortunately only too striking. They had but to recall the downfall of the Commune and to point to the ruins of fine public buildings to appeal effectively to the feelings of a large and influential portion of the people. Enthusiasm had become suspect, idealism the antechamber to violent mania, even Radicalism a vain thing.