THE Time magazine cover of March 26 1936 pictured the imminent first socialist premier of France, swathed in bandages after a vicious attack by a right-wing Parisian mob.

Here was “the wealthy No 1 socialist of France, that exquisitely cultivated Jew and famed rabble-rouser, M Leon Blum.

From rostrums as various as the curbstone of a Paris slum and the tribune of the Chamber, long-nosed, stringy-haired M Blum has clarioned: ‘Socialism is my religion!’”

Pierre Birnbaum’s biography of the politician who led the short-lived Popular Front, uniting the French left to confront the looming fascist threat, reveals a man far removed from that caricature echoing the virulent anti-semitic attacks spewed out by his country’s press.

Born into the assimilated Jewish society of the Parisian belle epoch, this cultured and aesthetic contemporary of Marcel Proust dabbled in the literary world, “threw himself into the quest for love” and even fought a duel, modelling himself on his romantic hero Stendhal.

The national trauma of the Dreyfus Affair helped transform Blum into the socialist who was to play a vital role in pre-WWII politics.

Blum was totally different from his Jewish contemporary, Alfred Dreyfus, that stoical military martyr framed by French hypocritical corruption. Influenced by Jean Juares, the renowned leader of the French Socialist Party assassinated in 1914, Blum devoted his life and energies to his definition of socialism — order and liberty for all.

A self-proclaimed Marxist, this highly principled man was in fact a reformist, believing that “a revolutionary act occurs … each time the working class achieves significant progress sooner than would have been the case in the normal course of events.”

The Popular Front’s 1936 electoral triumph saw Blum become prime minister. With his opponents describing him as “human detritus … fit to be shot,” this was a “messianic moment” for the working class, heralding the introduction of bargaining rights for trades unions, a 40-hour working week, two weeks’ paid annual vacations and a 20 per cent average wage increase.

With the fall of France, the Vichy government put Blum on trial where he used his legal skills to defend himself, shaming Petain’s fascist regime for putting the republic born of the French revolution on trial.

Hitler halted the charade and sent Blum to a strangely sheltered imprisonment outside Buchenwald.

After the war, resuming his political career, he devoted himself substantially to supporting the establishment of Israel, envisaging a “Jewish national home … where the great principles of tolerance and equity … will become an enduring reality.”

Moreover, he believed that “capitalism today no longer exerts mastery over the democratic state.”

History’s tragic irony betrayed the idealism of a man who has left no more than a thumb print on our modern world but, like many historical biographies, lessons are there for those busy remaking yesterday’s mistakes.

Review by Gordon Parsons