'AND SO WE TRANSFORM A PEOPLE': WOMEN'S SOCIAL ACTION AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF POLITICS ON THE RIGHT IN FRANCE, 1934–1947

Located in an abandoned factory on the rue Kleber, Saint-Ouen's Centre Kleber was the first in a series of six such centers that Antoinette de Preval, chief architect of the women's social action groups of the anti-parliamentary and ultra-nationalist Croix de Feu movement, would implant in the dreaded "red zone", those desperate shanty towns of tin and tar-paper shacks that stretched in concentric circles just beyond the city walls, in the recently demilitarized zone between Paris and its industrial suburbs. The Centre Kleber was the first outpost in the Croix de Feu's strategy of "social penetration" into the most impoverished neighboroods of Paris and Lyon. Here, Downs elaborates on the women's social action and the reconfiguration of politics on the right of France.