Pierre Poujade

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Pierre Poujade (born December 1, 1920 in Saint-Céré , Département Lot , † August 27, 2003 in La Bastide-l'Évêque , Département Aveyron ) was a French representative of small traders and politicians . In the 1950s he founded the short-term successful Union de défense des commerçants et artisans (UDCA, "Union for the Defense of Traders and Craftsmen"), whose variety of populism is named after him Poujadism .

Life

Youth and wartime

Poujade grew up as the youngest of seven siblings in Aurillac ( Département Cantal ). His father was a farmer's son who had risen to become an architect and a supporter of right-wing extremist Action française . He died when Poujade was eight years old. At the age of 14, the sporty boy founded an athletics club. From the age of 16 he had to provide for his own living, completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter and hired himself as a harvest helper, port and road worker. A military career with the Air Force was denied to him for health reasons. He joined the youth organization of the Parti populaire français (PPF) led by Jacques Doriot , who had changed from communist to fascist in the mid-1930s. But the young Poujade also saw a political role model in Henri Dorgères and his far-right far-right “green shirts”.

During the Second World War, Poujade was a supporter of Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime , but strictly refused to collaborate with Nazi Germany. He took on a management position at the Compagnons de France , a youth organization in the unoccupied zone of France. After the Germans marched into them in November 1942, Poujade made his way to North Africa, where he wanted to join the Resistance and fight against Germany on the side of the Allies. There he met Yvette Seva, who was French from Algeria and a Communist daughter, whom he married in July 1944. Poujade briefly stayed in a Royal Air Force training camp in England, where he was to be trained as a pilot.

The war ended, however, and Poujade returned to his native Saint-Céré, where he started his own business as a publishing representative and started a family with Yvette (five children). He later opened a stationery store (hence his nickname "le papetier de Saint-Céré").

Political career with the UDCA

Poujade was elected to the local council of Saint-Céré in the local elections in the spring of 1953. On June 23, 1953, he organized a strike by local small traders against the tax office for the first time. Businessmen's dissatisfaction with the tax system, which was perceived as unjust, led to the founding of the Union de défense des commerçants et artisans (UDCA, Union for the Defense of Traders and Craftsmen) in 1955 , named after its founder and chairman, the Poujadist movement.

In addition to the fight against the “Fiscal Gestapo”, the party also campaigned for the Algerian-French and had no fear of contact with anti-Semites. In 1956 she achieved 11.6% of the vote and was able to send 52 members to the National Assembly, including Jean-Marie Le Pen . However, as early as 1957, Poujade broke with Le Pen, who wanted to take a more radical direction. After Charles de Gaulle's return in 1958, the party fell back into insignificance.

After the poujadism wave

Pierre Poujade headed the UDCA until 1983. From 1984 he was vice-president of the Confédération des syndicats producteurs de plantes alcooligènes (CAIPER).

Although he belongs to the political right, he has supported the eventual winner every time in presidential elections ( Charles de Gaulle , Georges Pompidou , Valéry Giscard d'Estaing , François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac ). The only exception was in 2002 when he campaigned for Jean-Pierre Chevènement . In view of the strong performance of Jean-Marie Le Pen in this election, Poujade declared it the greatest mistake of his life to have put him up as a candidate for his movement in 1956 and thus kicked off his political career.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Romain Souillac: Le mouvement Poujade. De la defense professionnelle au populisme nationaliste, 1953–1962. Presses de Sciences Po, Paris 2007, p. 32.
  2. ^ Douglas Johnson: Obituary - Pierre Poujade. Shooting star of a 1950s small traders' revolt. In: The Guardian (online), August 28, 2003.
  3. ↑ Karin Priester: Populism. Historical and current manifestations. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2007, pp. 144–145.
  4. ↑ Karin Priester: Populism. Historical and current manifestations. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2007, p. 145.
  5. ^ JG Shields: The Extreme Right in France. From Pétain to Le Pen. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2007, pp. 76-77.
  6. ^ Paul Webster: Le Pen's ex- mentor regrets rise of 'liar'. In: The Guardian , April 28, 2002.
personal data
SURNAME Poujade, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES le papetier de Saint-Céré (nickname); Robin Hood the Tax Victim (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Céré , Lot department
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 2003
Place of death La Bastide-l'Évêque , Aveyron department