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Henri Dorgères

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Henry Dorgères in 1937

Henri-Auguste d'Halluin (February 6, 1897, Wasquehal – January 22, 1985), known by the pseudonym Henri Dorgères, was a French political activist. He is best known for the Comités de Défense Paysanne which he set up in the interwar period.

Henri Dorgères was born in 1897, in Wasquehal, a small town in north of France. He was interred by the Germans during the First World War.[1] After passing his baccalaureate he studied law for two years. As a student he was an active royalist.[2] While working in public relations in Wasquehal, he married Cécile Cartigny in Lille on April 23, 1921.[3]

In 1921, he moved to Rennes, in Brittany, to work as a journalist. In 1925 he became the editor of the regional Catholic daily Le Nouvelliste de Bretagne and in 1928 became the editor in chief of the farming journal Progrès agricole de l'Ouest.[4] It was as a journalist in Rennes in 1929[5] that he founded his first Peasants' Defense Committee. These committees had action squads known as Greenshirts,[6] which became a general name for the organisation.

In 1934 he claimed that a system like Italian fascism would resolve a lot of problems in French agriculture.[7] There is an ongoing historical debate as to whether, or how far, Dorgeres could be seen as fascist.[8]

On March 31, 1935 he stood unsuccesfully in a by-election for the Blois constituency as a candidate for the Front paysan where he was narrowly defeated in the second round of voting by the Radical-Socialist candidate Émile Laurens.[9] in a constituency vacated by the former and future Prime Minister Camille Chautemps for a Senate seat.[10]

During this time he wrote the book "Haut les fourches" ("Raise the Pitchforks"), laying out an anti-Republican and anti-Parliamentary back to the land program.[2]

During the Vichy regime Dorgères became one of nine directors of the Peasant Corporation, the Vichy body that was designed to put into practice the corporatist ideas of interwar agrarian activsts.[8] He was also awarded the Ordre de la Francisque by Marshal Philippe Pétain for his work in the French right-wing.

Because of his work with the Vichy regime, Dorgères was imprisoned by the Allies during the liberation of France in 1944. He was released because of work he had done with the Resistance during the war. In 1956 he was elected as for the Poujadist Union for the Defense of Tradesmen and Artisans to the French National Assembly from the Breton Département of Ille-et-Vilaine; he remained in the Assembly until 1958 when he lost the newly created Ille-et-Vilaine's 4th constituency to Isidore Renouard.

In 1959 he published his memoir Au XXe siècle : 10 ans de jacquerie.[11]

References

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  1. ^ d'Appollonia 1998, p. 191.
  2. ^ a b Bernet 1979, p. 33.
  3. ^ "Promesses de marriage". Le Grand écho du Nord de la France. 26 April 1921.
  4. ^ Hubscher 1982, p. 96.
  5. ^ Ory 1975, p. 169.
  6. ^ Paxton 1997, pp. 3–4.
  7. ^ "Je crois au développement d'un mouvement de genre fasciste (...) Si vous saviez, paysans français, ce que Mussolini a fait pour les paysans italiens, vous demanderiez tous un Mussolini pour la France?" translated "I believe in the development of a movement, somewhat in the style of fascism (...) If only, peasants of France, you knew what Mussolini did for Italian peasants, you might want someone like Mussolini in France." from Progrès Agricole de l'Ouest, 4 March 1935, quoted in Ory, p 185
  8. ^ a b Irvine 1999.
  9. ^ "L'Œuvre". April 1935.
  10. ^ Ory 1975, pp. 169–170, Note 6.
  11. ^ Dorgères 1959.

Sources

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