ABSTRACT
The Popular Front strategy entailed ideological concessions in relation to unemployment. Its economic philosophy was under-consumptionism, and therefore reformist, suggesting that the capitalist state could stimulate popular spending to overcome mass unemployment. The adoption of Popular Front perspectives coincided with the bottom of the economic cycle and the most active phase of the unemployed movement. Internationally, the Popular Front transformed the Comintern's attitude to the unemployed. In the Third Period, for a short while at least work amongst the unemployed had been obligatory. Brittany – with its mix of agriculture, fishing, and luxury trades like lace and earthenware, as well as its conservative and separatist traditions – was not the typical site of unemployed protest. In Seine-Inferieuree a regional movement of unemployed committees had existed since 1932. On 20 April 1935, the unemployed of Seine-Inferieure staged a hunger march in the face of another prefectoral ban.
