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The Story Of The French Illegalists by Richard Parry
On 13th October 1909 the world first heard the news of the death of Francisco Ferrer, the pacifist libertarian educationalist who had founded the Escuela Moderna in Barcelona, as well as the syndicalist journal Solidaridad Obrera.
Accused, despite being in England at the time, of having incited the popular uprising of the Settimana Tragica in Barcelona, he was executed in the moat of the Montjuich fortress.
In Paris, a spontaneous movement brought thousands of workers onto the streets, including Victor Kibalchich and René Valet, who met up in the Latin Quarter and followed the crowds as they headed for the Spanish Embassy in the VIIIth arrondissement.
Throughout the city, people were drawn to the Embassy to express their disgust with the Spanish Government, arguably the most appallingly brutal and reactionary regime in Europe.
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The Modern School
The Prefect of Police, Louis Lépine, had ordered the barricading of all the entrances to the boulevard Malesherbes, where the Embassy stood, and was there in person to supervize the disposition of his troops.
Push and shove soon turned to fighting, and subsequently into night-long rioting, in this prosperous district of banks and aristocratic residences.
Victor and René joined a mixed group of comrades from l'anarchie, Libertaire and Guerre Sociale, and at one point one of their group took a pot-shot with his revolver at Lépine, who was standing only a dozen yards away.[8]
The Radical Government, who had won their own fight against clerical militarism, which was still triumphant in Spain, happily authorized a legal demonstration which took place two days later, half a million strong, led by the Socialist Party leader, Jaurès.
[8] The devious nastiness of Lépine, the ex-Governor of Algiers, can be gauged from the fact that he once ordered policemen on strike duty to beat up pickets, intervening personally to stop it, in order to curry favour with workers.
Another Parisian riot took place in May 1910 over the fate of the young worker, Liabeuf, who had been condemned as a ponce simply because he had a loving relationship with a prostitute.
His officially-provided defence council did not bother "to turn up for the hearing, and the Judge quickly declared him guilty and sent him to prison.
On his release, humiliated and in search of vengeance, he put on some spiked wristbands, armed himself with a revolver, and went out and shot four policemen.
The Prefect of Police, Lépine, had demanded the death sentence, which was duly pronounced, but Miguel Almereyda appealed to the working people of Paris to stop the execution by force.
Hundreds of workers responded to the call, and gathered on the boulevard Arago outside the prison of La Santé.
Victor, Rirette and René Valet were all there; occasionally, René thrust his hand into his pocket and clutched his Browning revolver, but he did not make use of it.
As the wagon carrying the guillotine arrived, rioting erupted which lasted all night.
At dawn the blade fell, but in exchange for Liabeuf, the rioters had left one policeman dead.
These riots certainly testified to the combative, if desperate, mood of Parisian workers.
In his memoirs, Serge saw "working class attitudes, aggressive and anarchic, pulled in opposite directions by two antagonistic movements, the revolutionary syndicalism of the CGT and the shapeless activity of the anarchist groups".
Doubtless, many workers could quite happily accommodate both attitudes and actions, and even vote socialist as well.
The new CGT leadership, though consciously reformist, determined to carry on the militant tradition with an organized attack on the industrial front.
The revolutionary syndicalists, for all their ideas, did not have a monopoly when it came to the question of practical militancy.
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.