Édouard Herriot

Édouard Herriot (born July 5, 1872, Troyes, Fr.—died March 26, 1957, Lyon) was a French statesman and man of letters who was the longtime leader of the Radical Party; he served in nine different cabinets and was premier of France three times (1924–25, 1926, 1932).

The son of an army officer, Herriot was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, from which he graduated in 1894. He taught at the lycée of Nantes and then at Lyon, where he won a high reputation as a scholar and teacher. This reputation was enhanced by his study of Madame Récamier et ses amis (1904; “Madame Recamier and Her Friends”) and by the acute literary criticism in his Précis de l’histoire des lettres françaises (1905; “A Short History of French Letters”).

Herriot first entered politics through local government. He became a municipal councillor of Lyon in 1904 and mayor of that city in 1905. He remained mayor of Lyon for the rest of his life with the exception of one brief interruption during World War II. Under his administration, that growing industrial city developed many municipal services and amenities, and his local prestige became unshakable. In 1910 he became a member of the conseil général and in 1912 senator for the département of Rhône. He belonged throughout his career to the Radical Party.

Herriot first held ministerial office from December 1916 to March 1917 in Aristide Briand’s Cabinet. He showed political acumen and administrative ability in his reorganization of the essential services of supplies and transport in wartime. He gave up his seat in the national Senate in November 1919 and was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the département of Rhône. There he became leader of the Radical Party. He owed his rapid rise in Parliament to his gift for eloquent, persuasive oratory.

Herriot led the opposition to the postwar right-wing electoral coalition, the Bloc National. When the Cartel des Gauches, a left-wing coalition of Radicals and Socialists, was formed to fight the parliamentary elections of May 1924, it was led by Herriot, and its electoral triumph enabled him to form his first ministry in June 1924. He also took the ministry of foreign affairs. He forced the resignation of Alexandre Millerand, president of the republic, who had openly electioneered on behalf of the right-wing parties. He extended de jure recognition of the Soviet Union, which he had visited two years before. Under Herriot’s leadership, France accepted the Dawes Plan and agreed to evacuate from the Ruhr the troops that former premier Raymond Poincaré had sent in to enforce payment of reparations by Germany. In April 1925 Herriot’s ministry fell because of his financial policies, and in July 1926 his second ministry lasted only three days. He then joined the Cabinet of Raymond Poincaré as minister of education (1926–28). It was June 1932 before Herriot came back to power as premier and foreign minister. His ministry fell six months later when the Chamber of Deputies refused to pay the December installment of France’s war debts to the United States. Herriot served as vice-premier under Gaston Doumergue in 1934 and again under Pierre Étienne Flandin in 1934–35. In June 1936 he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies, an office that he held until France’s capitulation to Germany in June 1940 during World War II.

Herriot abstained from voting when on July 10, 1940, at Vichy, the National Assembly accorded full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain. When Pétain in August 1942 dissolved the permanent bureaus of the Chamber and Senate, Herriot joined with Jules Jeanneney, president of the Senate, in lodging a joint protest. For this he was arrested and was later deported to Germany. In April 1945 he was freed from his internment by Soviet troops. Having meanwhile been reelected mayor of Lyon, he returned there to resume his duties. He also resumed his place as president of the Radical Party and was elected to the constituent assemblies of 1945 and 1946. In 1946, too, he was elected a member of the Académie Française. The following year he was elected president of the new National Assembly of the Fourth Republic, retaining this office until his retirement in January 1954.

Herriot took part from 1948 onward in the Council of Europe. In 1952–54, however, he opposed the formation of a European Defense Community because he feared its consequence would be the rearmament of West Germany. Herriot clung throughout his life to liberal ideals of international cooperation. His intellectual gifts and honesty inspired respect and affection.