took on roles of a reformist, or Marxist, or strictly trade unionist character which presaged the CGT split. Rise of the PCF and decline of the Bourse The birth of the French Communist Party began the decline of the Bourse du Travail movement. The CGT, which had regrouped the individual organisations, was swept up in the ideological tumult of the post war years. It became, like much of the French left, dominated by the Communists ideological vision, which saw the loose federalism of Revolutionary Syndicalism as a reason for the failure of the 1918-1919 strike wave. In 1921, the CGT revised its structure, eliminating the local Bourses du Travail as constituent organisation of the Union, and replacing them with a network of Unions Locales. From here on, the CGT followed a British and American model of local trade specific unions, federated into a single national structure. A split, eventually into three federations, created a French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO)-dominated CGT, the United General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail - unitaire or CGTU), where communists cohabited with anarchists and revolutionary trade unionists, and the Revolutionary Trade Unionist General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail - syndicaliste révolutionnaire or CGTSR) in 1923 when the communists gained control of the CGTU. (The CGT and CGTU reunited in 1936, and remained close to the French Communist Party.) Predictably, these often bitter party divisions in the labor movement made the local and inclusive vision of the Bourses impossible. The Bourses du Travail survived, often as a single organisation union hall, while the history of splits in the French labour movement saw the buildings pass from one hand to another, revert to municipalities, or disappear entirely. Today Buildings and communities Bourse du Travail buildings and institutions remain in most large French cities. Many are headquarters of the local unions which are federated into the Confédération nationale du travail, or of other unions which split from the French Communist Party. Many bourses were central as places of organizing and resistance during May 1968. In some places municipal governments have retained ownership, or community and radical groups have taken them over. Some have simply been sold off for office space or torn down. In Lille, one of the earliest bourses remains as the home of five unions and a radical community center, and came center stage in the resistance to the deportation of