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Popular Liberal Action Action libérale populaire | |
|---|---|
| President | Jacques Piou |
| Deputy President | Adrien Albert Marie de Mun |
| Founded | 1901 (1901) |
| Dissolved | 1919 (1919) |
| Merged into | Republican Federation |
| Headquarters | Paris |
| Membership(1914) | 250,000 |
| Ideology | Liberal conservatism Christian democracy Liberal Catholicism Social Catholicism |
| Political position | Centre-right |
| National affiliation | Sacred Union (1914–1918) |
| Colours | Light blue |
ThePopular Liberal Action (French:Action libérale populaire,ALP), simply calledLiberal Action (Action libérale), was apolitical party that representedCatholic supporters of theFrench Third Republic. It operated in thecenter-right, primarily to oppose the left-wing Republican coalition led byPierre Waldeck-Rousseau andÉmile Combes who pursued ananti-clerical agenda designed to weaken the Catholic Church, especially its role in education. The ALP between 1901-1914 had its best election in 1902, with 78 deputies. It built a nationwide newspaper and propaganda network, had excellent funding. There were 1200 local committees, with 200,000 dues paying members in 1906.
The Liberal Action was founded in 1901 byJacques Piou andAlbert de Mun, former monarchists who switched to republicanism at the request of PopeLeo XIII. From the Churches perspective, its mission was to express the political ideals and new social doctrines embodied in Leo's 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum".
Action libérale was the parliamentary group from which the political party emerged, adding the wordpopulaire ("popular") to signify this expansion.
Membership was open to everyone, not just Catholics. 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, andIntegrists. In the end, it recruited mostly among theliberal-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. It defended the Church in the name of liberty and common law. Fiercely fought by theAction 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.
In 1919, theAction libérale populaire joined theBloc national. After that, it sought to regroup, most notably in 1923 and 1927, but to no avail.
TheAction libérale populaire played an important historical role by integrating into political life theCatholiques ralliés and by being the first political party, right of center, to organize itself under a "modern" scheme. A new attempt started in 1924 with thePopular Democratic Party.
| Chamber of Deputies | |||||
| Election year | # of overall votes | % of overall vote | # of overall seats won | +/– | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1902 | 1,350,581 (#3) | 16.00 | 85 / 589 | – | |
| 1906 | 1,238,048 (#3) | 14.05 | 66 / 585 |  19 | |
| 1910 | 737,616 (#6) | 8.65 | 30 / 595 | 36 | |
| 1914 | 956,261 (#4) | 11.34 | 23 / 601 | 7 | |
