Benoît Broutchoux
Encyclopedia
Émile Basly
Émile Basly is one of the great figures of trade unionism in mining in the mineral field of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, along with Arthur Lamendin. He is primarily known for his participation in the strike of 1884, when he became known as "the untameable miner" and "the tsar of Lens"...
during a strike in the north of France, in 1902.
Biography
He was born in EssertenneEssertenne
Essertenne is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.-References:*...
, Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire is a French department, named after the Saône and the Loire rivers between which it lies.-History:When it was formed during the French Revolution, as of March 4, 1790 in fulfillment of the law of December 22, 1789, the new department combined parts of the provinces of southern...
, not far from Montceau-les-Mines
Montceau-les-Mines
Montceau-les-Mines is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.It is the second-largest commune of the metropolitan Communauté urbaine Creusot-Montceau, which lies southwest of the city of Dijon....
, the eldest of eight children. His father was Sébastien Broutchoux, a steelworker.
He began farming at a young age and at fourteen, he was a juvenile at Monceau-les-Mines. In 1898 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, on a road construction site called Subway, he began to attend circles of unionists and anarchists.
He returned to Monceau-les-Mines in spring 1900 and continued to advocate for the anarcho-unionist movement. On June 2, 1900, after the death of a steelworker striker named Fog who was killed by the police, he declared, in a violent speech at the funeral: that Fog was arrested and convicted for "excitation murder and looting, insult to the Army and offensive words in parliamentary government. "
In 1902 he was hired under a false name in Lens
Lens, Pas-de-Calais
Lens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
. In October of that year a strike broke out for 8 hours. He opposed the "old" reformist miners' union controlled by Emile Basly
Émile Basly
Émile Basly is one of the great figures of trade unionism in mining in the mineral field of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, along with Arthur Lamendin. He is primarily known for his participation in the strike of 1884, when he became known as "the untameable miner" and "the tsar of Lens"...
. He was again sentenced for "infringement of the freedom to work" and "identity theft".
He was released from prison in 1903 and then became involved in the Jeune Syndicat, edited the newspaper "Le Réveil syndical" and L'Action syndicale. Supporting revolutionary general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
, he also advocated free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
following the American anarchist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, and was condemned for immorality (outrage aux bonnes mœurs).
On March 10, 1906, the Courrières mine disaster
Courrières mine disaster
The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst mining accident, caused the death of 1,099 miners in Northern France on 10 March 1906. This disaster was surpassed only by the Benxihu Colliery accident in China on April 26, 1942, which killed 1,549 miners...
made 1,101 victims. The strike swept the entire basin and Benoit was arrested while marching with 2,000 strikers on the mayor of Lens.
He was discharged at the end of May, and continued to edit the "action association" with a small printing press.
In 1906 he took part to the Congress of Amiens of the Confédération générale du travail
Confédération générale du travail
The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...
(CGT) trade union with Georges Dumoulin and Pierre Monatte
Pierre Monatte
Pierre Monatte was a French trade unionist who worked in the printing industry . He was the responsible of the Confédération générale du travail at the beginning of the 20th century, and founded its journal La Vie ouvrière on 5 October 1909...
. The anarcho-syndicalist current had undermined the Guesdist
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
minority. The Charter of Amiens
Charter of Amiens
The Charter of Amiens was adopted at the 9th Congress of the Confédération générale du travail French trade-union, which took place in Amiens in October 1906. Its main proposal was the separation between the union movement and the political parties...
set the basis for the French trade-unionist movement, adopting a stance of independence between political parties and trade unions. This charter is still claimed by the CGT and other unions.
In August 1907, he took part in the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam
International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam
The International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam took place from 24 August to 31 August 1907. It gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which important figures of the anarchist movement, including Errico Malatesta, Luigi Fabbri, Benoît Broutchoux, Pierre Monatte, Amédée Dunois, Emma...
. The congress focused on the relationship between unionism and anarchism. He witnessed a strong opposition between Monate and Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
: Monate defended revolutionary trade unionism, on one hand, while Malatesta, on the other hand, thought unionism could only be reformist.
Shortly before the Congress, he escaped the police following a meeting, which was organized to protest against the arrest of his friend André Lorulot. In January 1912, he was sentenced to a year in prison after escaping from the penal colony, amnestied in July of that year.
In 1914, recorded in the Livret B (an illegal list, by the police, of people tied to the anarchist movement), he was arrested and sent to the military front. In 1916, he was gassed during a German attack. He was then hired as a taxi driver in the Compagnie générale des taxis. He worked at Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure was a French anarchist . He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism.- Biography :Before becoming a free-thinker, he was a seminarist...
's antimilitarist newspaper CQFD, and then in Le Libertaire.
He took part in the 1921 Lille Congress of the CGT, which followed the Tours Congress
Tours Congress
The Tours Congress was the 18th National Congress of the French Section of the Workers' International, or SFIO, which took place in Tours on 25—30 December 1920...
of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), during which the Socialist Party split following the creation of the Third International, and was shot by a fellow reformist .
In 1925 his health deteriorated and in 1931, his son, Germinal, was killed by the police at the age of 26.
In 1940, poor and ill, he took refuge in Villeneuve-sur-Lot
Villeneuve-sur-Lot
Villeneuve-sur-Lot is a town and commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France. The commune was formerly named Villeneuve-d'Agen....
and died on June 2, 1944.