FRIDAY: THE MURDER. On February 25th 1972, Pierre Overney was shot dead at a Renault factory in Boulougne-Billancourt, just outside Paris. Renault is a state-owned industry and Overney's killer was a security guard employed by the factory. Overney had been a worker at the Billancourt plant and had been sacked for selling the paper of the Maoist organisation to which he belonged, La Cause du Peuple. Together with other sacked workers Overney was participating in a protest action co-ordinated by a Maoist. "commando squad". He was murdered in cold blood by the security guard.
This assassination is not an accident: for a long time now, the firm's management has been paying gorillas to maintain law and order" (in this specific instance this means preventing a revolutionary from distributing propaganda against redundancies). It is not an accident because one doesn't arm and pay killers unless one expects them to kill one day. Before this shot was fired there are incidents going back years which have involved systematic organisation of the repression in the factories, universities, high schools, etc. This murder is therefore meant as a warning to all revolutionaries, their organisations and their mobilisations and one which the entire working class movement must heed.
SATURDAY: THE CONSEQUENCES. An ordinary protest would not have been sufficient in reacting to this crime. What was needed was a show of force accusing the French government of murder and showing that the left could unite against the bourgeois state and challenge its right to maim and kill. It was also necessary to prove in an exemplary way that the defence of workers and revolutionary militants against the provocations by bodies of armed men in the pay of capital would be answered on the streets. Why? Because the propaganda for the self-defense of workers begins by the organisation and protection of their mass mobilisations:
It was under these circumstances that the first united front meeting took place as soon as the news of the death was confirmed. The Communist League (French Section of the Fourth International) proposed to the ten organisations who sent representatives, a common appeal for a demonstration on Monday evening at Charonne (an underground station where communist workers had been killed in 1962). The C.L. insisted that the demonstration had to be held whatever the obstacles: if a ban was imposed, it had to be defied. In the circumstances the government found it difficult to prevent a mobilisation as it was involved in the crime.
SUNDAY: THE ORGANISATION OF THE FIRST MARCH. Once it was clear that the demonstration would not be banned the organisation of it began in earnest. The Cause du Peuple asked for a large march of 'democrats" without stewards. The other organisations, including the C.L. rejected such demagogy. They explained that the organisers had to assume responsibility for the demonstration and protect the marchers. Finally a unanimous agreement was reached and all the organisations, which included the P.S.U., Lutte Ouvriere, A.J.S. (the supporters of Lambert, formerly the sister-organisation' of the SLL in Britain, now, alas, separated and on their own!), Revolution, agreed on the main objective: a large, powerful demonstration, but protected by a service d'ordre.
It was in relation to the conditions agreed on for the march that the other tradeunion and political organisations had to adjust their participation. In this sense the murder at Renault provides us with an image of the future: it anticipates in outline the real intentions of the bourgeoisie towards the working class and its combativity since May 1968, even though the timing of the Renault killing might appear clumsy to the more sophisticated bourgeois politicians.
The reactions from the traditional leadership of the workers were predictable. The The Red Mole 13 March 1972 Page 4 to denounce the 'ultra-lefts' as agents of the State.
C.P. and the C.G.T. (C.P. dominated Trade Union Federation) foamed at the mouth in a fit of reactionary hysteria. The Socialist Party of Mitterand and the C.F.D.T. abstained from taking a position. The S.P. is of course too scared to participate in a combative demonstration as it might endanger electoral victories in the future. It is prepared to participate in the funeral demonstration; prepared to commemorate the dead, but to combat the murderers? Surely not for after all weren't the latter synonymous with the bourgeois republic which the S.P. admires so much.
MONDAY: THE DEMONSTRATION. The pressure of the CT at Renault was too much for the CFDT to resist. They satisfied themselves with platonic protestations for this 'young lost life', etc. The revolutionaries, on the other hand, assembled in full force. 40,000 militants assembled at Charonne in what was the most important demonstration since May '68. "Yes, Marchais", mocked the demonstrators, "better than in May '68". This was in reply to a gibe from the C.P. leader that. "it" (i.e. May '68) would not start again. These chants were really too much for the CP bureaucrats to stomach. They denounced the demonstration as 'anti-communist, but few took this slander seriously.
The Charonne demo highlighted a permanent feature of French society which worries both the bourgeoisie and the French C.P.: the existence of a social and political base, coming from the youth and a layer of workers who have broken from the reformism of those who lead the workers' movement. Many of these militants do not see themselves as part of any extreme left organisation in particular, but mobilise themselves and respond to the appeals of the revolutionary left. Of course a lot has happened since the heady days of May 68. That same extreme left has reconstituted itself according to a new internai relationship of forces related to the activity of the revolutionary left and its implantation. Whatever the political differences (or political errors of some of them in general, a considerable force exists and it gathered at Charonne on Monday evening. To think that this could be organised on a permanent basis would be to deceive ourselves, but patrans nevertheless it is the embryo of a real force, which will educate itself through struggles and which will finally link up with one or the other of the existing revolutionary organisations. This is why our comrades of the Communist League did everything in their power to ensure the success of the demo. By developing this layer of militants they develop themselves.
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY: THE FUNERAL If Charonne was a success then the funeral demonstration was an even bigger one. 150,000 Special issue of Rouge, paper of the Communist League. workers, students, teachers and other layers marched to show the anger at the murder. The C.P. and the C.G.T. stayed away (for them there was one Maoist less) but its allies like the S.P. and even the left Christian Youth marched. Again the demonstration was disciplined and protected by a service d'ordre. A large bulk of it consisted of militants whom the bourgeoisie has every right to fear.
STOP PRESS News has just come in that the Maois ts have kidnapped the Chief of the Security Guards at RenaultBillancourt and are holding him captive until the sacked workers are re-instated. We will carry more information in the next issue of the paper, but one's immediate reflex is to remark on the existing social climate in France, which is not the same as in Latin America or Ireland, and while we are not in principle, opposed to kidnapping of this sort, it seems doubtful whether this particular one will be understood by the French working-class.
Georges Marchais, PCF Secretary de charonne RRE OVERNEY just as much subtlety as at the time of the Hitler-Trotsky witch-hunt.
PANIC IN COMMAND The PCF's attitude, by its very exaggeration, reveals the panic felt by the bureaucrats each time the perspective of being bypassed on the left looms up before them. The PCF leadership lives in terror of a second May '68: all the more so since the "Union of the Left' was progressing quite well. The 'united left' was heading-slowly but steadily-towards an electroral victory. Little by little it was gnawing away at the support for the Centre, votes so indispensable in making up a new majority. And suddenly everything collapsed. Using the legitimate popular discontent, the manipulated-by-the-government-ultra-lefts bypassed this careful tactic and sent back the moderates into the bourgeoisie's womb, thus undermining years of patient effort. Today, the same mishap threatens to take place again: the PCF leadership knows that its tactic is vulnerable. And with the working class at its present level of combativity, a swift by-passing is indeed possible, if the bosses are stubborn enough in their arrogance. And yet, until now everything was going rather well, and seemed to be going to get even better. After the Epinay Congress of the new socialist party, the Union of the left was back on the rails. The PCF had once again a credible political perspective. In the summer of 1971 it launched an offensive and began to accumulate successes. From campaigns to initiatives, it succeeded in moving quite forcibly to the forefront of the political scene. Its Campaign for a Programme of Popular Unity" especially, was a notable event. The revolutionary extreme-left seemed to be at the bottom of the wave. The impressionists of all sorts - and there are plenty of them in the leadership of the PCF-thought they were going to have a preMay situation again. Intoxicated by their own bluff, they started to consider as a real force their starved tentacles in the university and high school sectors. The "New Left' was nothing but a bad dream.
The FSIL mobilisations and then the students strike committees against the CFPM2, however, revived their worries. The numerous clashes between the PCF stewards and the FSl marches, in the provinces, on 13 January and the brutal attacks on the militants of the Ecole Emancipée (Liberated School) at the 26 February demonstration in Paris confirm this new anxiety. Even though he would deny it, it was once more Georges Marchais who spoke most clearly the mind of the PCF leadership: "It is not going to start again as in 1968", he said before a mesmerised audience. The PCF apparatus is indeed prepared to do everything it can to make sure "it" does not happen again.
A POLICE CONCEPTION OF HISTORY We are not in agreement with the political line of the Cause du Peuple group and we do not approve of the actions of the Committee for struggle' in Renault, which we consider to be essentially ultra-left. But after the murder of Pierre Overney, any workers' party worthy of the name would have reacted as we did, not by an hysterical antiultra-left campaign, but on the contraryand in spite of anything it might think of the Maoists-by a campaign against the into convey the impression that it is a Party of Government. What is certain is that its main leader already thinks of himself as Minister of Home Affairs. It is the conditions of existence and of work imposed by capitalism which engenders the workers' revolt, and by reaction, the bosses repres. sion.
As far as ultra-leftism is concerned-in the strict Leninist sense of the term-it is the direct result of the PC's opportunism: it is because hundreds of thousands of youth and workers do not recognise their revol: against the existing system reflected in the neo-reformist policies of the PCF, that they refuse to accept its leadership and try to or. ganise themselves independently for the struggle. Because the PCF tries to isolate this 'new extreme-left' by all means, it stimulates in sections of the latter a genuine ultra-leftism which theorises its isolation and the hostility of the official workers movement, in a desperate and impatient fashion. If the PCF was a revolutionary party, it would capture the revolutionary aspirations of the worker and student youth. But because it is a reformist party, a party of class collaboration, it sidetracks into the impasse of ultra-leftism part of the militant energies of the new generations. Ultra-leftism, said Lenin, is the price of the political opportunism of the workers parties. If the State feels that it can sometimes use the revolutionism of some currents in the extreme left, then it is you, M. Marchais, who are the first to be blamed. And it is not with the disgusting campaign which you have launched that you will be able to reduce the phenomenon. Rather the reverse.
The reaction of the PCF has been too exaggerated to be effective. The thesis of a "sta. ged performance" does not go down very well when one of the so-called accomplices is done in for good. The lack of any reaction-other then verbal-against the presence of the bosses' armed militia in the factories has shocked more than one militant. In a word, the PCF's attitude to be effective de manded a serious "campaign of explanation". all the more necessary since many PCF militants had lost faith. However, the apparatus did everything it could. Wherever this apparatus is powerful, in towns or big factories (especially Renault-Billancourt), the PCF ends up by getting its views accepted (though not without alienating many vanguard workers in the process). But where this apparatus is weak or non-existent the PCF version was greeted with an indignant scepticism. Its methods have removed the "good impression" which had been created in the minds of anti monopolist allies" by democratic declarations of faith in the "programme-campaign". F. Mitterand and some others have jumped at the opportunity to score a point; by announcing that they would participate in the funeral of Pierre Overney they dissociated themselves from the PCF "explanations". The latter found itself completely isolated on the day of the funeral. This is why the PCF attempted to reset its sights. On Ist March, the CGT Secretariat published its appeal, proposing (five days too late) a "common reaction to the measures of repression directed against the workers democratic movement". In this appeal, the denunciation of the forces of repression in the factories for once took pre-