“Jacques Delors’ Christian commitment allowed him to build the networks that supported his action”

2023-12-28 11:00:10

Deeply secular, Jacques Delors has always dissociated his faith from his political commitment. But he never denied what he owed to his Catholic affiliation. Born in 1925, raised by a practicing mother, it was through patronage that he discovered football, basketball and summer camps, before becoming active, from the age of 14, in the Christian Workers’ Youth. He belongs to a generation formed by popular Catholic education – we then spoke of specialized Catholic Action – with its different movements, workers, peasants and students, to which he remained attached throughout his life.

This is evidenced, for example, by his lasting friendship with Michel Debatisse, former leader of the Catholic Agricultural Youth who subsequently became a central figure in agricultural unionism and the right. Jacques Delors built his itinerary at the meeting between social Catholicism, from which he came, and social democracy, which he discovered on the French and European soil.

It is to Christian trade unionism that he owes his training in public action. Employed at the Bank of France, he joined the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC) in 1950. From 1952, he was a member of the Reconstruction minority group, organized around the philosopher Paul Vignaux, founder of the General Union of National Education , metalworker Charles Savouillan and Albert Detraz, head of the Building Federation. Reconstruction campaigned for the deconfessionalization of the CFTC, that is to say for autonomy with regard to the Church and the opening of the union to non-Christians. It is this current which, which became the majority in 1961 under the leadership of Eugène Descamps, was at the origin of the transformation of the CFTC into CFDT in 1964.

Also read the obituary: Article reserved for our subscribers The death of Jacques Delors, a great European

A member of the CFTC Design Office from 1957, Delors experienced this process up close. From his union experience, he kept networks which were precious to him, but also a certain conception of reform, social justice and the refusal of ideological postures. Reconstruction was notably one of the first places where we attempted to think about the role of social dialogue in business reform, and that of technological progress in the transformation of society and the relationship with work.

Union adventure

Jacques Delors could therefore have had a career as a trade unionist. Entering the Popular Republican Movement (MRP) in 1945, he left it after a few months, disappointed by the rapid right-wing of the movement and by a culture that he considered too confessional. Two experiences then brought him back to politics. The first was his membership, in 1953, of La Jeune République. Founded in 1912 by Marc Sangnier, this small party carried a secular conception of Christian commitment to the center left.

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