ABSTRACT
MRP’S colonial policy was, as Domenach suggests, strangely contradictory. Louis Aujoulat’s Report at the 1945 Congress contained many advanced economic and social proposals for the French Union (the name soon to be adopted by the former empire); the Overseas Labour Code of 1952 owed much to MRP; Robert Buron and Jean-Jacques Juglas, both members of the progressive wing of MRP, were Mendès-France’s successive Ministers of Overseas France;1 another MRP liberal, Pierre-Henri Teitgen, was Minister of Overseas France in Edgar Faure’s Government, which conceded full independence to Tunisia and Morocco; MRP supported Defferre’s Loi Cadre of 1956 which led directly to the independence of Black Africa in 1960; almost the whole of MRP supported de Gaulle’s Algerian policy-indeed it was the only thing that kept them in the Government from 1960-62. And yet, Christian Democratic politicians, in the persons of Paul Coste-Floret and Jean Letourneau, cannot escape responsibility for dragging France further into the morass of Indo-China; Pierre de Chevigné ‘pacified’ Madagascar with a scorched earth policy which probably caused 100,000 deaths between 1947-492; and Georges Bidault, supported by Maurice Schumann, agreed to the deposition of the Sultan of Morocco in January 1953, an action which was as politically dishonourable as it was inept.
