President Jacques Piou Dissolved 1919 (1919) Headquarters Paris | Founded 1901 (1901) Merged into Republican Federation | |
Deputy President Adrien Albert Marie de Mun | ||
The People's Liberal Action (French: Action libérale populaire, ALP), simply called Liberal Action (French: Action libérale), was a French political party during the French Third Republic that represented Catholic supporters of the Republic.
Contents
History
The Liberal Action was founded in 1901 by Jacques Piou and Albert de Mun, former monarchists who switched to republicanism at the request of Pope Leo XIII.
Action Libérale was the parliamentary group from which the political party emerged, adding the word populaire ("popular") to signify this expansion.
Non-confessional, it sought to gather all the "honest people" and to be the melting pot sought by Leo XIII where Catholics and moderate Republicans would unite to support a policy of tolerance and social progress. Its motto summarized its program: "Liberty for all; equality before the law; better conditions for the workers." However, the "old republicans" were few, and it did not manage to regroup all Catholics, as it was shunned by monarchists, Christian democrats, and Integrists. In the end, it recruited mostly among the liberal-Catholics (Jacques Piou) and the Social Catholics (Albert de Mun).
The party was drawn into battle from its very beginnings (its first steps coincided with the beginning of the Combes ministry and its anticlerical combat policy), as religious matters were at the heart of its preoccupations. Defending the Church in the name of liberty and common law, it positioned itself as a right-of-centre party and, at its peak, had 70 deputies, 250,000 paying members, and 2,500 committees scattered through France. Fiercely fought by the Action française, the movement declined from 1908, when it lost the support of Rome. Nevertheless, the ALP remained until 1914 the most important party on the right.
All but forgotten during World War I because of the Union sacrée, it emerged in 1919, with only its administrators, but still exerting an important moral influence on the Catholic electors. In 1919, the Action Libérale Populaire joined the Bloc National. After that, it sought to regroup, most notably in 1923 and 1927, but to no avail.
The Action Libérale Populaire played an important historical role by integrating into political life the Catholiques ralliés and by being the first political party, right of center, to organize itself under a "modern" scheme.