Action Française

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Right-wing political movement founded in 1899, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, by Vaugeois and Pujo. Maurras swiftly took control, making it royalist and (though he was an agnostic) supportive of the Church as a force for order and stability. In 1908 the daily L'Action française was founded, under the enthusiastic editorship of Léon Daudet. The movement was strongly nationalistic, and implacably opposed to the Third Republic and to ‘the enemy within’ (Jews, freemasons, Protestants, ‘métèques’). In Church matters, it strongly opposed all forms of modernism. During World War I, attacks on the Republic were suspended in the national interest, and Action Française rode on a wave of popular approval. In the inter-war period, however, the movement gradually declined as an active force (Papal condemnation in 1926 and repudiation by the royalist pretender in 1937 did not help; nor did the rise of more energetic extra-parliamentary movements on the Fascist model). It retained influence in traditionalist circles, however, and there was a strong Action Française tinge to the Vichy government of 1940-4 [see Occupation And Resistance]. Many French authors, critics, and historians were supporters, at one time or other, of Action Française, the most prominent being Bernanos and Maritain. [See Nationalism.]

[Richard Griffiths]