Original article via trotsky.net:
The term Popular Front (or People’s Front) was coined in the 1930s and referred to an alliance of the workers’ parties (Communist and Socialist) with so-called “progressive” bourgeois parties (Liberals, Republicans, Radicals, etc.). The two classic examples of this were in France and Spain. In 1931 and again in 1936, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) joined a coalition with bourgeois parties. The same happened in France in 1936. the Communist parties were also part of these Popular Fronts. Both the Communist and Socialist party leaderships played a treacherous role in holding back the revolutionary movement of the working class. This prepared the ground for the victory of reaction. In Spain it lead to the terrible defeat at the hands of Franco.