An Associated Press dispatch from read in part:
Rebellious [French] farmers, organized into a “Peasant Front,” pledged themselves to resist tax collection. Although only a small percentage of farmers were members, Premier [Pierre] Laval considered it such a dangerous idea that he raised it to a national problem by bringing it before the cabinet.
This led me to hunt up a bit more about the “Peasant Front.” It seems to have been a right-wing, semi-fascist league of agriculturalists. One article noted:
The campaign of refusal to pay taxes to a Government that is allegedly little concerned with peasant interests has created some difficulty for [Front leader Henri] Dorgeres himself, since it is a criminal offence to urge people not to pay taxes. M. Dorgeres served 27 days in prison for organising resistance to a foreclosure sale, and he was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and a fine, but he has appealed against the sentence. Nevertheless, he continues his campaign openly and defiantly.
This foreclosure sale involved Valentin Salvaudon who refused to pay a new social security tax for his farm workers at a time when the price of wheat was dropping to less than the cost of production.
According to Robert O. Paxton, in his book on the Dorgères movement and other manifestations of French fascism, the Peasant Front combined its tax strike with a consumer strike that was meant to hit the urban bourgeoisie as much as the government:
It was thus more an educational enterprise than massive civil disobedience, though it teetered on the brink of illegality. The French tax collectors understood it as the tax strike Dorgères had been threatening for some time.
The petition [which gave the government an ultimatum], accompanied by a draft text of the “command for action” [which would initiate the tax/consumer strike], was widely circulated. It appeared in most of the local agrarian press, and there are traces in many departmental archives. It was said to have been signed by 100,000 people in ten days, including 70,000 in the Finistère alone. In the Seine-Inférieure, 15,000 people were reported to have signed in the first few days. The Peasant Front implemented its “command for action” in slightly modified form (the tax strike became a “moratorium,” and the boycott of public officials was omitted) on The peasants’ purchasing and taxpaying strike was, however, a fizzle, and the CAP quietly went to sleep after its one bold initiative.
According to Paxton, in many areas the campaign was well-organized and had a lot of early enthusiasm, but no staying power. Farmers signed the petitions, but then for the most part failed to follow-through by withholding taxes. Some areas, though, showed more moxie:
Generally, enforcement of the tax moratorium depended on a supportive local mayor. Officials in the Seine-Inférieure reported that 90% of the villagers of Pierre Suplice’s commune of Bourg-Dun… did not pay their taxes in 1935.
The giant Office Central des Associations Agricoles du Finistère et des Côtes-du-Nord at Landerneau (Finistère) was reported to have been sent 92,209 unpaid tax forms, weighing a total of ninety-eight kilos. … Dorgères whipped 5000–6000 people into excitement at Quimper (Finistère) on to block the sale of Joseph Divanac’h’s cattle for unpaid taxes.…
But if the “command for action” had any measurable impact on the national level, we have not been able to find any evidence for it.
