The Walloon Movement is an umbrella term for all Belgian political movements that either assert the existence of a Walloon identity or defend French culture and language within Belgium. The movement began as a defence of the primacy of French but later gained political and socio-economic objectives. In French, the pejorative terms wallingantisme and wallingants are used to describe the movement and its activists.
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The central theme of the Walloon Movement is the ideal of the French revolution, and a love of French language and culture. This francophilia gave rise to the Walloon Movement and Walloon militants' aim of growing closer to France and more distant from the Netherlands, as expressed in the Benelux policy:
In fact, the Walloon Movement is the first, and quasi the sole, to warn the public opinion against implications of the Benelux policy and to claim, on the other hand or in complement, an economic and cultural moving closer to France. […] Qualified as a modern version of orangism, the Benelux policy can serve a certain Flemish policy. According to George Dotreppe, member of the directory of "Wallonie Libre", Benelux, born out on English groung and turned towards Great Britain and the United States, supports the anti-French policy of Anglo-Saxons, which does not serve of anything Wallonia, sister of France.[1]
"Rattachism", the French irredentist trend in the Walloon Movement, is a good example of this love for French republic. Notably Albert du Bois who in his book "The Belgians or the French?" edited in 1903 "denounces the subjection of the Walloons to the Flemings : besides those who are only succeeding the Dutchmen, Austrians and Spaniards who occupied Wallonia. The French heart of the Walloons must carry them to want the return to "l'œuvre de Quatre-vingt-treize" [the work of 1793, the invasion of the Southern Netherlands by the French] and the destruction of the international agreements of 1814 and 1830. It develops the same thesis in the "Catechism of the Walloon", widely diffused in this same year 1903."[2]
The Walloon Movement was a left wing movement from its beginning. Started in liberal left societies, it quickly became a rallying cry for a liberal-socialist coalition against the conservatives of the Catholic Party whose power base was in the Flemish-speaking provinces. During the interbellum between World War I and World War II, many of the Christian left joined the Walloon Movement, notably the Abbé Mahieu, an anticlerical Catholic priest. The movement was the focus of several attempts to create left-wing party, for example the Walloon Democratic and Socialist Rally (Rassemblement démocratique et socialiste wallon) created during World War II.
Many Walloon militants consider their movement as an incarnation of the social struggle and a way to fight for the workers' cause.
The tension between the class struggle and Walloon empowerment brought forth two view points. One prioritised the class struggle and the other, Renardism (Fr "Fox-ism") saw both being achieved together. Jules Destrée in a speech on November 9, 1913 declared that the Walloon Movement is not, cannot be, as well as the Flemish Movement a cause of division of the worker class. On the contrary, each time that there will be only their interests of class, workers, all workers must find themselves united..[3]
Renardism is an ideology combining syndical struggle and Walloon militancy. Conceived by André Renard, he finely defined it :
They made us believe in the socialist opening in Flanders. Just look at numbers. For me, the combat remains whole, but I choose the best ground and the best weapons. For the moment, the best ground and the best weapons are in Wallonia, the best road passes by the defense of the Walloon interests. I am at the same time socialist and Walloon and I embrace the Walloon thesis's because they are socialist.[4]
The struggle was typified by the internecine strife between workers during the strike of 1960-61.
The Walloon Movement ideology with the arrival of socialists within it was subsumed by a proletarian internationalism, Jules Destrée considered that "the Walloon Movement is not in contradiction with internationalism. On the contrary, by creating a nation new, free and independent, it facilitates the creation of solid agreements between the nations, which is by definition internationalism".[5]
Walloon militants often regard Belgium as an invention of Bourgeoisie.
The defence of French as Belgium's sole official language was a historical campaign of the Walloon Movement.
Militants at that time were attached to the «Belgian contract» that, according to them, allowed only French to be used in Belgium's official life. Belgian revolutionaries in 1830 decided to prefer the French language. Firstly to reduce the Dutch influence from whom they had separated. Secondly because they were from the Francophile bourgeoisie - if not originating from France - and attached to principles of the French Revolution.
A Flemish Movement was quickly created to recognize the Dutch language. The first Walloon militants then set up a French-speaking and Walloon movement of defence to fight against the official recognition of Dutch. The militants were from the French-speaking areas joined by liberal bourgeoisie from Brussels and the Dutch-speaking provinces. These surprising allies joined the Francophiles because much of their work was in the bureaucracy where the introduction of another language would have been prejudicial to them.
This idea begins to quickly disappear after 1898, the year in which the Coremans-De Vriendt law was enacted, which recognized Flemish.
The defence of francophones and the French language started up after the failure to keep unilingual belgicism. Various organizations represented it, as the League against the Flemishisation of Brussels in the Thirties which fought for bilingualism in some communes of Brussels.
This trend become again more wide spread with the end of the linguistic censuses and fixing of the linguistic border in 1962–1963. At the elections of 1965, a party called Democratic Front of Francophones of Brussels (FDBF, now FDF) aroses and had three deputies and one senator.
The autonomist or separatist trend appeared on March 15, 1898 in "The Walloon Soul" ("L'Âme wallonne"). This propaganda paper of the Walloon League of Liege published on first page a plea in favour of the administrative separation of the country: "Let us take the offensive openly and continue as of today the obtention of a separatist regime, before they strip us and reduce more still".[6] Concepts of autonomy vary from federalism to confederalism within the Belgian framework according to autonomist activists but there are also separatists promoting autonomy within a European framework in the case of a "Europe of the Regions".
This trend inside the Walloon Movement is the youngest. It was born during the Second World War, in the Walloon Democratic and Socialist Rally ("Rassemblement démocratique et socialiste wallon" - RDSW), a group mainly from Liège which arose at the end of 1942. It grouped together politicians and Walloon militants. The RDSW's attempt to create a unique party for the left was without success. It also aimed to be a working group, in which the liberal Fernand Schreurs and the socialist Fernand Dehousse take part, on the future statute of Wallonia. The independence manifesto was written in November 1943, after the departure of the federalists, in the form of a draft Constitution for a Walloon republic. Its principle rests on "the formation of an independent Walloon State, suitable to be associated with a Flemish State and a State of Brussels, but integrated in the defensive system of France".[7]
The RDSW draft was presented at the Walloon nation congress in 1945 but only during the «sentimental vote»,[8] in which it received only 154 votes out of 1048 voters, or 14.6%. After the congress, this trend remained discrete until the sixties. During the general strike of 1960–1961 Renardism appeared, an independentist trend for a socialist and syndical Wallonia, but its failure after this strike forces this syndical enterprise to be folded back on the constitution of a federalistic lobbying group, the Walloon Popular Movement (Mouvement Populaire Wallon - MPW).
During the seventies and the 80s, several parties with an independentist programme were created, such as the Walloon Popular Rally (Rassemblement populaire wallon - RPW) and the Front for the Independence of Wallonia (Front pour l’Indépendance de la Wallonie - FIW) but after electoral failures, especially the European elections on June 17, 1984, they sank into oblivion. It is the Rattachist trend that today gathers the most enthusiasm of Walloon militants unhappy with the result of institutional reforms in favour of the autonomy of Wallonia within Belgium.
Rattachism, or Reunionism as their supportes prefer to call it, is a trend advocating joining Wallonia with France.
There have been rattachists since the independence of Belgium, like Alexandre Gendebien[9] but only in the 20th century did rattachism become an important aspect of the Walloon Movement with the Count Albert du Bois d'Enghien and his Catechism of the Walloon that affirms French identity of the Walloon. He participated in the newspaper Le Réveil wallon, clearly Francophile and rattachist.
This trend is currently represented by the party Rassemblement Wallonie-France
Historians agree that the Walloon political movement began in 1880 with the foundation of a Walloon and French-speaking defence movement following the first linguistic laws of the 1870s. It took the character of a movement asserting the existence of Wallonia and a Walloon identity without giving up the defence of French. Wallonia asserted timidly since 1898 but which becomes the principal claim since 1905 with a climax at the Walloon congress of 1912 and Jules Destrée's Letter to the King. The First World War and a reviving of Belgian patriotism applied a brake to the movement and it spin offs. Walloon militants banded together in 1930s under the patronage of the Walloon Concentration where the radical ideas of 1912 were born again bringing into existence the linguistic laws of 1932. During the Second World war, several activists distinguished themselves within Resistance by forming various clandestine groupings. This world war radicalised even more the movement which for the first time speaks about independence ideas, and which will lead to its active participation in the Royal Question in 1950. Then follows a lull long of a decade which ends with the 1960-1961 Winter General Strike with at its head André Renard who ally Walloon Movement claims and workers' claims.
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