Travail, famille, patrie[a] was thetripartite motto ofVichy France duringWorld War II. It had replaced the republican mottoLiberté, égalité, fraternité of theThird French Republic.[b]
The Law of 10 July 1940 gaveMarshal Pétain full powers to draw up a constitution before being submitted to the Nation and guaranteeing "the rights of Labour, of the Family and of the Fatherland". That constitution was never promulgated.
In theRevue des deux Mondes (Two Worlds Magazine) of 15 September 1940, Marshal Pétain wrote this repudiation of the motto of the French Republic.Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité : When our young people […] approach adult life, we shall say to them […] that real liberty cannot be exercised except under the shelter of a guiding authority, which they must respect, which they must obey […]. We shall then tell them that equality [should] set itself within the framework of a hierarchy, founded on the diversity of office and merits. […] Finally, we shall tell them that there is no way of having true brotherhood except within those natural groups, the family, the town, the fatherland.[1]
The mottoTravail, Famille, Patrie was originally that of theCroix-de-Feu, then of theParti social français (PSF or French Social Party) founded byColonel de La Rocque.[2]
It has often been written that these three words express theRévolution nationale (RN), the National Revolution undertaken by the Vichy regime.
On 24 April 1941, Marshal Pétain officially inaugurated 1 May as thefête du Travail et de la Concorde sociale, the day on which labour and social harmony were celebrated.
The regime won over some trades unionists for the drawing up of aLabour Charter. In it, they declared themselves as being against bothcapitalism andMarxism. The regime advocated the finding of a third way.
On 14 March 1941 the Vichy Government set up a retirement system, the allowance for old, waged workers.[3][4][5] The new system renewed the old contribution-based retirement system, which had been devalued by inflation and extraordinary expenses.[6]
The regime wroteMothers’ Day into the calendar. With regard to the family, there had been continuity rather than a break with the family policy of the period of theDaladier government, which continued through the Pétain years and would later continue in theFourth Republic.[7]
Thenationalism of Pétain, who saw himself as maintaining the tradition of the victorious nationalism of 1918, did not stop his collaborating with theNazi regime. Until he died, he kept a certain degree of Germanophobia of the sort expressed byCharles Maurras. He had no pro-German or anti-British record from before the war. Several times, he restated that he regarded himself as the ally and friend ofGreat Britain. In his broadcast of 23 June 1940, he reproachedWinston Churchill for the speech made by Churchill on 22 June 1940, following the signing of thearmistice on that day.[8]
Some twenty-four bills had proposed old-age pensions since 1936, the latest of which had passed The Chamber on 14 March 1939 only to fail in the Senate. How much easier it was simply to issue an old-age pension law by government authority on 14 March 1941, with Marshal Pétain declaring that "we keep our promises, even those of others."