Vincent Auriol
From Freepedia
| Term of office: | January 16, 1947 – January 16, 1954 |
| Preceded by: | Léon Blum |
| Succeeded by: | René Coty |
| Date of birth: | August 27, 1884 |
| Place of birth: | Revel, Haute-Garonne |
| Spouse: | Michelle Aucouturier |
| Political party: | SFIO |
Jules-Vincent Auriol (27 August 1884 - 1 January 1966) was a French politician who served as first President of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954.
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Early life and politics
Auriol was born in Revel, Haute-Garonne on August 27 1884, the son of a butcher. He earned a law degree at the Collège de Revel in 1904 and began his career as a lawyer in Toulouse. A committed socialist, Auriol co-founded the newspaper Le Midi Socialiste in 1908; he was head of the Association of Journalists in Toulouse at this time. Auriol entered the Chamber of Deputies as a socialist in 1914 as a representative for Muret; a year later he was elected mayor of Toulouse. After the breakup of the Parti Socialiste Unifé in 1920, Auriol became a founding member of the socialist SFIO party, opposed to the revolutionary rhetoric of the socialist party's left wing.
Auriol became the party's leading spokesman on financial issues. He chaired the Finance Committee in the Chamber of Deputies from 1924-1926. His first cabinet post was as Minister of Finance under Léon Blum, in which Auriol controversially devalued the French franc 30% against the dollar, leading to capital flight and greater economic unease. This and Blum's proposals for greater regulatory restrictions on industry led to Blum's resignation as Premier; in the next government, led by Camille Chautemps, Auriol was made Minister of Justice, then Minister of Coordination of Services of the Presidency of the Council in Blum's short-lived government in 1938. Édouard Daladier's conservative government formed in 10 April 1938 returned Auriol to the Chamber of Deputies.
Auriol voted against the extraordinary powers given to Prime Minister Philippe Pétain on July 10 1940 that brought about Vichy France. As a result, he was placed under house arrest until he escaped to the French resistance in October 1942, and fought with the resistance for a year. Auriol fled to London in October of 1943. He represented the Socialists at the Free French Consultative Assembly organized by Charles de Gaulle in Algiers later that year. In 1944, he represented France at the Bretton Woods conference. He was a Minister of State in de Gaulle's second provisional government.
Postwar life and presidency
After the war, Auriol presided over the constituent assemblies that drafted the constitution of the short-lived French Fourth Republic. He lobbied for a "third force" between the communists and Gaullists. He led the French delegation to the United Nations and was France's first representative on the United Nations Security Council in 1946. The National Assembly voted him the first President of the Fourth Republic on January 16, 1947 by a wide margin, giving Auriol 452 votes to 242 for the MRP candidate, Auguste Champetier de Ribes.
As president, Auriol pursued a relatively weak presidency as there had been under the Third Republic and attempted to reconcile political factions within France and warm relations between France and its allies. He was criticized for France's ailing economy and political turmoil in the postwar period, and the war in Indochina. A series of debilitating strikes were waged across France in 1947 led by the Confédération Générale du Travail. The strikes escalated into violence in November of that year that led, on November 28, to the government deploying 80,000 reservists to face the "insurrection." The communists, who often supported the strikes, were expelled from the legislature in early December. The strikes ended on December 10, but more would come in 1948, and again in 1953 in response to the Laniel government's austerity program.
Apart from the inconclusive war in Indochina, France's colonial empire decayed under Auriol's presidency. Clashes in Morocco, Madagascar, Algeria, and Tunisia became more frequent; the Algerian independence movement, the Front de Libération Nationale, was founded in 1951, in 1953 the French overthrew the Sultan of Morocco after he demanded greater autonomy. The French waged a brutal war of repression in Madagascar and imprisoned Tunisian independence leader Habib Bourguiba in 1952.
When his term as president expired, he did not run for a second. He was succeeded by René Coty as President of France on January 16, 1954. Auriol commented on leaving office, "The work was killing me; they called me out of bed at all hours of the night to receive resignations of prime ministers."[1] (There were eighteen different governments during his seven years as President.)
After his presidency, Auriol assumed the role of elder statesman and wrote articles on political topics. Auriol became a member of the Constitutional Council of France in 1958 at the establishment of the French Fifth Republic; he resigned from the SFIO in the same year. He unsuccessfully lobbied against the constitution in the 1958 national referendum. He resigned from his position on the Constitutional Council in 1960 to protest the growing power of Charles de Gaulle's presidency. In 1965, he endorsed François Mitterand for the Presidency. Auriol died at Muret, Haute-Garonne, on 1 January 1966.
External links
- World at war biography
- Timeline of Auriol's life (in French)
- Timeline of the Auriol government (in French)
See also
| Preceded by: Marcel Régnier | Minister of Finance 1936–1937 | Succeeded by: Georges Bonnet |
| Preceded by: Marc Rucart | Minister of Justice 1937–1938 | Succeeded by: César Campinchi |
| Preceded by: – | Minister of Coordination of Services of the Presidency of the Council 1938 | Succeeded by: – |
| Preceded by: Léon Blum (Chairman of the Provisional Government) | President of France 1947–1954 | Succeeded by: René Coty |
| Preceded by: Georges Bidault and Ramon Iglesias i Navarri | Co-Prince of Andorra 1947-1954 with Ramon Iglesias i Navarri | Succeeded by: René Coty and Ramon Iglesias i Navarri |
