Comités de défense paysanne

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Peasant Defence Committee

Comités de Défense Paysanne
Successor	Action de Défense Paysanne
Formation	January 1929
Founder	Henri Dorgères
Founded at	Rennes, Brittany, France
Dissolved	1939
Type	Agrarian organization
Purpose	Peasant rights, opposition to social security reforms, direct action
Region served	Primarily northern France (Brittany, Normandy, etc.)
Official language	French
Youth Wing President	Modeste Legouez
Key people	Henri Dorgères
Main organ	Jeunesses Paysannes
Affiliations	Front Paysan, Union nationale des syndicats agricoles
Remarks	Known for direct action, anti-tax stance and paramilitary style uniforms

The Comités de Défense Paysanne or Peasant Defense Committees was a network of radical agrarian groups France founded in 1929.

There had previously been groups that espoused agrarian militancy such as the "Assault Sections" of the secretive Franc-Paysannerie movement.^[1][2]

It was originally founded by an agricultural editor Henri Dorgères in January 1929^[3] in Rennes, Brittany as the Comité de défense paysanne contre les assurances sociales,^[4][5] the promised extension^[6] of which was seen as unacceptably expensive to many small farms.^[7] Dorgères' credibility came from a popular service his newspaper offered to farmers which checked avertissements (land tax notices) for errors in the cadastral land surveys they were based on to reduce the taxes.^[8]

The historian Robert Paxton said there were three elements to the rise of militant right wing Peasant action in interwar France; an agricultural recession triggered by low farm prices, the Third Republic's cultural contempt for rural life and a lack of conventional political leadership for small farmers which meant that public policy was committed to cheap food for urban voters.^[9]

It had a youth section, the Jeunesses Paysannes, more commonly known as the Greenshirts^[10] which was how his general movement was often known. The Greenshirts got their name from a uniform, inspired by Joseph Bilger's Elsässischer Bauernbund in Alsace.^[1] They were involved in strikebreaking on farms (to “save the harvests”) and blocked seizures of property for nonpayment of taxes.^[11]

The first President of the Jeunesses Paysannes was Modeste Legouez,^[12] a future Senator for Eure^[13] who opposed the socialist leader Pierre Mendes France in the 1936 French legislative election.^[14]

A book written by Dorgeres during that time "Haut les fourches" ("Raise the Pitchforks") laid out an anti-Republican and anti-Parliamentary back to the land program.^[15] They were hostile to the agencies of the Third Republic, particularly teachers.^[16] The established links with anti-parliamentary groups such as the Fédération des contribuables and its leader Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil.^[17]

The Peasant Defense Committees were seen as differing from the more established and conservative Syndicats agricoles through a willingness to embrace direct action (including tax strikes^[18] and opposing foreclosure sales^[19]), a more egalitarian organisational structure that did not rely on aristocratic rural social hierarchies and the use of more militaristic attributes such as oaths and uniforms.^[20] Dorgères himself was regarded as a very skillful market day orator, in a rural culture where up until that point oratory had been overlooked.^[21]

In 1934 it would join up with the larger and more conservative Union nationale des syndicats agricoles and the politically eclectic French Agrarian and Peasant Party to form the Front paysan. This meant that the official stance of the Comités turned from calling for state support for agriculture to a more Corporatist stance where farmers would control the production and marketing of their produce.^[22]

Despite its common stance against the Popular Front government^[2] the front fell apart in 1936 due to differences in political strategy.^[23]

Although it was not listed among the far right leagues that the Popular Front government dissolved in 1936, the Minister of the Interior Roger Salengro did order prefects to keep close watch on the comités.^[24] During the previous election local activists had disrupted election meetings.^[25]

The Committees were far more widespread and popular in the North of France compared to the South of France. In the early years they were particularly strong in the Finistère region in the west of Brittany, but had quite a large presence in Brittany and Normandy.^[5] As well as the North West of France before the 1936 elections it also had some success in Algeria as well as parts of the Rhone, the Loire and the lower Pyrennes.

There was later success among market gardeners in Vaucluse and Var^[26] but no success in places such as the wine growing areas of the Midi.^[27] It kept out of other areas such as Alsace due to the presence of local groups such as the Elsässischer Bauernbund.^[28]

Its expansion stopped at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, although the organisation did manage to hold regional congresses that year.^[29] Dorgeres supported the National Revolution of Petain and was named the general delegate for organization and propaganda for the Peasant Corporation,^[30] a Vichy government organization that tried to embody the agrarian corporatism that the Comités and their allies embodied. He supported Petain from 1940^[30] but was suspicious of the Germans due to his internment in the First World War.^[31]

Dorgeres was detained after the war for his work with the Peasant Corporation, tried and sentenced to ten years of indignité nationale although he was immediately released for his work with the resistance.^[30] In 1953 Dorgeres regained his citizenship rights and started Action de Défense Paysanne which revived a lot of the themes of the Comités and were active in many of the same areas. They had a cooperative but tense relationship with Paul Antier's Parti Paysan and Pierre Poujade's UCDA, for which Dorgeres was elected as a deputy.^[32]