On 2 June 1946, France held legislative elections to vote in the second post-war Constituent Assembly, which was designated to prepare a new constitution, since the previous one was rejected in May.
After the catastrophe of 1940, the constitution of the French Republic of 1875 was not formally abolished, but the republic de facto ceased to exist. Three political parties were the most popular after the liberation of France: the French Communist Party (PCF), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, a socialist party) and the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), a Christian Democratic party. They formed an interim government led by General Charles de Gaulle. General de Gaulle stood for a strong presidential government but the parties regarded parliamentary democracy as inseparable from the Republic and de Gaulle's project as “Bonapartist”.
In January 1946, de Gaulle resigned from the cabinet and was succeeded by the socialist Félix Gouin. The first draft constitution, which followed a template suggested by the Communists and Socialists, was approved by the National Assembly. It concentrated power in a unicameral parliament and abolished the French Senate. The Christian Democrats launched a “No” campaign jointly with de Gaulle and other opponents of constitutional change, and the red draft was rejected in a referendum. A new Constituent Assembly was then elected and the government of Socialist Félix Gouin resigned. The MRP had a majority in the new Assembly and the Christian democrat Georges Bidault became prime minister.
The draft constitution drawn up by the new Constituent Assembly declared France to be an “indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic”. The usual democratic rights and freedoms would be supplemented by the rights to work, to rest, to social security, to education, equality of rights between men and women, the right of workers to join trade unions and engage in political activity, as well as the right to strike “within the laws”. The bicameral parliament would be retained. France would undertake to avoid “any system of colonisation based on arbitrary rule” and “not engage in any wars of conquest and never use its forces against the freedom of any nation”.
The draft was adopted by referendum on 13 October 1946 by a vote of 52.3 percent of the electorate. The Constitution would remain in force until the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
Source:
Ernst Weisenfeld, “A History of France Since War: From de Gaulle to Mitterrand”, Beck, Munich, 1982.
