TheInitiative and Liberty Movement (French:Mouvement initiative et liberté, MIL) is a FrenchGaullist politicalassociation.
First called GIL (Initiative and Liberty Groups), it was established in March 1981 and became the Initiative and Liberty Movement on November 17, 1981. It was chaired by Jacques Rougeot, who was close to theRally for the Republic (RPR) and president of theNational Inter-University Union (UNI). GeneralAlain de Boissieu,Pierre Messmer andJacques Foccart also participated in its establishment.
The MIL was born before the victory of the left in 1981. It tried "to prevent that, after having seized political power, the socialist-communists definitely put their hands on and minds on the structures of France", according to its terms.
As Pierre Debizet said on TF1 on July 25, 1985, the MIL does not consider itself officially as a "resurgence" of theService d'Action Civique (SAC).
From 1986 on, its new cause was to liberate France from the "socialist stagnation". Pierre Debizet compared, in 1985, socialism toAIDS.
However, the MIL struggled to take off, though it had several thousand members, includingAlain Peyrefitte and the former Chief of Staff of the Army, GeneralJean Delaunay. Yet one thing was certain: despite low name recognition, everybody on the right knew the MIL.
About the ideas of MIL in the 1980s, the historian François Audigier said: "The MIL is a kind of ideological laboratory, which crossed the diverse influences of theliberal right, a reactionary Catholicism and a rigidGaullism. It used ananti-immigration,pro-life, defense ofprivate schools and the rejection of left-wing values, a package that had nothing to envy to theNational Front's program".[1]
The MIL, now chaired by Christian Labrousse, who claims to be on the "civic right" a Gaullist and a patriot. Its emblem is theCross of Lorraine. This movement is associated to theUnion for a Popular Movement (UMP). It is part of the UMP's right-wing and is a "Gaullist loyalist" organization as opposed to neo-Gaullism, which integratesneoliberalism and moderate centre-right ideas.
The MIL is a "movement of thought" out of defending the common civic values (primacy of individual freedom, responsibility, duty and cohesion of society). Gaullism is for the MIL an inspiration.
He considers thatcommunitarianism,immigration andIslamism threaten the national identity of France, and that resistance is a civic duty.
Pierre Clostermann, aCompanion of the Liberation;Jacques Foccart, former head ofFree France network and former General Secretary of the Presidency of the Republic between 1959 and 1974;Michel Habib-Deloncle, former minister of General de Gaulle;Pierre Messmer, aCompanion of the Liberation and formerPrime Minister andMaurice Schumann, a former minister and aCompanion of the Liberation, now dead, were members of its honorary committee.
Are also members of the honorary committee of the MIL
In the1995 French presidential election it supportedJacques Chirac to "escape from socialism" and repeated its support for Chirac in the2002 election ("Chirac, the true Gaullist") and it supportedNicolas Sarkozy in the2007 election. It opposed theTreaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in 2005.
