Léo Lagrange (; 28 November 1900, in Bourg – 9 June 1940, in Évergnicourt) was a French Socialist, member of the SFIO, named secretary of State in the Popular Front government of Léon Blum.
Biography
As a child, Lagrange was registered with the Éclaireurs de France, a scouting movement which had no religious affiliation. At the end of his studies at the Lycée Henri-IV, in August 1917, Lagrange joined the army. On his return, Lagrange was registered in the Faculty of Law and at the Institute of political sciences. Shortly after the Tours Congress (December 1920), he joined the SFIO, directed by Paul Faure, Jean Longuet and Léon Blum and joined the Socialist students' organisation.
Having obtained his law degree, Lagrange registered in 1922 at the bar of Paris. Affected by the horrors of World War I, Lagrange reserved in particular his services to victims of tuberculosis, of lung diseases and of poison gas. He married Madeleine Veiller in 1925. The following year, Lagrange met André Malraux and Jean Prévost. Lagrange mixed then with the intellectual movement of the 1930s, being linked with a number of writers, historians, artists and scientists. Lagrange became a writer with the newspaper Le Populaire, the press organ of the SFIO, and held there a chronique on legal topics.
Lagrange stood in the legislative elections in 1928, in the XIe district of Paris but was defeated. At the time of the elections of May 1932, Lagrange was designated as a socialist candidate looking to win back the first district of Avesnes-sur-Helpe, in the Nord. At the public meetings, Lagrange stressed the need, for the working class, to be informed and organized if it wanted to lead one day. After the 6 February 1934 riots organised by far-right leagues, the Cartel des gauches was toppled. For the first time in the history of the Third Republic (1871-1940), threats of a right-wing coup d'état had been enough to overthrow a democratically elected government. Following this event, many people on the left believed in a fascist conspiracy to topple the Republic. Thus, they started organising in anti-fascist groups, preparing in advance the Comintern's Popular Front strategy.
Following the victory of the Popular Front at the 1936 legislative elections, Lagrange was then named under-secretary of State for Sport and given responsibility for the organisation of Leisure, under the authority of the Minister for Public Health Henri Sellier. It was the first time that France had such a state secretary, and the Popular Front enacted the first paid holidays (2 weeks), among other social reforms.
His mandate was not addressed exclusively to youth but to all of society. Lagrange was focused nevertheless on the young because they constituted the future of society. Lagrange strongly opposed the fascist model of sport, which transformed it into a substitute for belligerent activities and instrumentalized it in a militarist manner. To the contrary, Lagrange advocated a conception of sports based on anti-militarism and on the fulfillment of individual personality: “… It cannot be a question in a democratic country of militarizing the distractions and the pleasures of the masses and of transforming the joy skillfully distributed into a means of not thinking.”
Lagrange dedicated himself in developing sporting, tourist and cultural leisure, but opposed the professionalisation of sports, creating an elitist caste of sportsmen, and was against their development in France. Lagrange was at the origin of the creation of the popular leisure pass which grants 40% of reduction on rail-bound transports, while he encouraged and impelled the movement of youth hostels. 1936 in France was witness, under the Popular Front, to the first departures towards snow resorts with special trains and reduced fares on the cable cars; popular cruises were also later introduced.
Lagrange also played a major role in the co-organisation of the People's Olympiad in Barcelona with the Spanish Second Republic. Nazi Germany had managed to gain the right to organise the Olympic Games in Berlin, against Barcelona, but anti-fascists refused to participate in these Games and went on with their own project. The trials for these popular Olympiads proceeded on 4 July 1936 in the Pershing stadium in Paris, which had been built in June 1919. Lagrange chaired these days in person, along with Minister of Transport Pierre Cot, André Malraux, who later fought in the International Brigades, and other figures of the Popular Front. Through their club, the FSGT, or individually, 1.200 French athletes were registered with these anti-fascist Olympiads.