Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

Clemenceau’s task was therefore an exceedingly hard one. He had ever in mind the old eighteenth-century watchword which, from his point of view, is the foundation of the French Republic—Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. And the greatest of these is liberty! He throughout forgot, or overlooked, that, even according to his own pronouncements, liberty in any real sense is impossible for the weaker—the majority who own no property—against the stronger—“Les Plus Forts,” the minority who own all the property. This triune fetish Clemenceau, with all his keenness of criticism, might be said to worship: yet to worship in a more or less reasonable way. He could not shut his eyes to the truth that, for men and women whose livelihood was at the mercy of capitalists, there could be no real liberty, dominated as the workers were by their daily compulsion to obtain the wherewithal for the necessaries of life. The only way by which even partial justice could be secured, under the system of payment of wages, was combination among the wage-earners. Hence he recognises the liberty to strike. But he was equally determined, as he puts it, to defend the liberty of those who would not strike. It was logical: it was in harmony with the law; but it was a virtual help to the employers none the less.

On the occasion of his second visit he enforced his view in his usual emphatic way. Three miners who would not join the strike were being paraded through the town by the strikers with an insulting placard hung around their necks: “Nous sommes des poires cuites; des faux frères.” Clemenceau insisted that they should be released, and succeeded in freeing them. The very fact, however, that it was possible for the strikers to act in this way, without protest, showed how small was the minority and how strong the feeling against these claimants of the liberty of taking the other side. Clemenceau likewise acted with vigour against all who were guilty of any violence. But the strikes still spread.

Speaking at Lyons on May 3rd, he explained the difficulties of the situation:—“My position is between the political demagogues of the Church, the clericals and the reactionaries on one side, who tried hard to hound on the troops I was forced to call in to fire upon the strikers, who greatly provoked them. This the ecclesiastics and restorationists did with the hope of fomenting a revolt against the Republic—a revolt supported by certain military chiefs, inspired by the clericals and their shameless lack of discipline.” The Separation of Church and State was being decided while all this was going on. “Their object was to bring about a massacre in the interest of the Catholic Church and the monarchy. This plot was frustrated. Butchery was avoided.

“On the other side, I am accused by the revolutionary Socialists of indulging in brutal military oppression because I suppress anarchist rioting. This though no striker was killed or wounded. I acted for tranquillity, while the monarchists fostered disturbances. They wanted a Government of the Republic which should rely for support solely on the Right. The anarchists helped the monarchists, who had agents throughout the perturbed districts, by denouncing the Republic and excusing mob violence. Yet how stood the case? Was it I who organised a campaign of panic? Was it I who was responsible for the original explosion and strike? Was it I who brought about the state of things which resulted in general disturbance and might have tended towards another coup d’état? Nothing of the sort. I was suddenly called upon to deal with unexpected troubles. I acted for the maintenance of the Republic, and kept the peace under the law.”

By taking office at the time when he did it was at once apparent that Clemenceau had brought himself into the full whirlpool of strike difficulties which then arose. He was called upon to solve in everyday life, as a man committed to a policy of justice to the workers, problems which, at critical moments, are almost insoluble under the capitalist system of wage-earning and production for profit. Has any section of the community the right to hold up the life of a nation or a great city in order to secure advantages for itself? At first sight the answer would undoubtedly be “No.” But if the conditions of existence for those who act in this way are admittedly such as ought not to continue in any civilised country, it is not possible to reply so confidently in the negative. Neither can the “No” be repeated with certainty when employers, or the State itself, are guilty of a direct breach of faith towards the workers, unless, by ceasing to carry out their duties, they actually imperil the welfare of the entire collectivity of which they form a part. In short, all depends upon the circumstances, which have to be considered most carefully in each case. It fell to Clemenceau’s lot to decide in what might almost be taken as the test incident—the strike of the electrical engineers and workers of Paris.

There seems to be something in M. Clemenceau’s horoscope which has decreed that his career shall be diversified and rendered interesting by a series of dramatic events. This strike of the electricians of Paris was certainly one of them.

Scene: Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior. The Minister, M. Clemenceau, at work at his desk and dictating to his secretary. Everything going on quite nicely. No sign of more than ordinary pressure. Electric light functioning as usual for the benefit of the Radical leader as well as for Parisians of every degree. Hey presto! Darkness falls upon the bureau of the Minister. Very provoking. What is the matter? Corridors and other bureaux suffering the like eclipse. Evidently something wrong at the main. Candles obtained, lamps got out from dusty cupboards, oil hunted up. Ancient forms of illumination applied. Darkness thus made visible. Telephones set going. All Paris obscured. A city of two or three millions of inhabitants suddenly deprived of light. What has happened? The entire electrical service disorganised until to-morrow by the sudden and unexpected strike of the whole of the skilled men in the electrical supply department. Lovers of darkness because their deeds are evil likely to have a good time. Business arrested, fathers and mothers of families perturbed. Dangers of every sort threatened. Apaches and other cut-throats preparing for action in the to them providential enactment of endless gloom.

Such is the baleful news borne over the telephone wires to the much troubled Minister of the Interior, with his wax tapers and old-world lamps glimmering around him. How preserve his Paris, his ville lumière, from the depredations of the miscreants engendered by the social system of the day, when light fails to disclose their approach? How protect the savings of the conscientious bourgeois and the diamonds of the high-placed horizontale from removal and conveyance under cover of the night? To surrender to the strikers is to admit their right as a few to blackmail the many. It is to sanctify the action of the despoiling minority above by giving way to the organised minority below. Immediate decision is essential. Night is upon us, when no man can work, save the man who communises movable property to his own use. Light is a necessary of security for property, nay, even for life. The State must come in to fulfil the functions which the Creator neglected to provide for when He divided the night from the day. The sapper is the man to supplement the deficiencies of Providence and to mitigate the social revolution by electrical engineers. Rien n’est sacré pour un sapeur! No sooner thought of but acted upon. M. Clemenceau, as Minister of the Interior and trustee for the well-being of the citizens of Paris, calls upon the State engineers under military control to light up Paris afresh. The thing is done. Paris sees more clearly and breathes more freely. Society itself has the right to live.

But stay a moment: here is M. Jaurès. He has a word to say. What are you doing, M. Clemenceau? You are outraging all your own principles. You are interfering with that very right to strike which you yourself have declared to be sacred. You are using the military discipline of the comrades of the men out on strike against the electrical companies, to render their protest nugatory, by employing the sappers against them. You have, in fact, called out the powers of the State to crush the workers in a particular industry. If you were true to yourself, you would convert the electrical supply of Paris now in the hands of greedy monopolists into a public service, and give the strikers every satisfaction. That is the only real solution of social anarchy.

To him Clemenceau: “But this was not merely a strike or a limited liability class war against employers. It was a bitter fight between two irreconcilable antagonists against inoffensive passers-by. The people of Paris, for whom I am concerned, had nothing to do with the matter. I myself knew nothing about the decision to strike till my own work was rendered impossible by the sudden infliction of darkness upon me by these resuscitated Joshuas. Not only was the general security threatened, as I have declared, but the lives of your own clients, Jaurès, were threatened by immersion in a flood below ground. The inundation of the Metropolitan (the Underground Railway) had already begun. The workers of Paris who used that means of communication in order to return to their work would most certainty have been drowned owing to the suspension of electrical pumps and lifts, had not the sappers and the firemen, both of them sets of public functionaries, rushed at once to the rescue. Were the workmen of Paris engaged in other departments to be allowed to perish, with the State standing by, wringing its hands in hopeless ineptitude, while the electrical engineers got the better of their masters in a dispute about wages? This was a practical question which I had to decide at once. I decided in favour of the inoffensive people of Paris and against the electrical engineers on strike.”