It's been a time... '68 has been a magic time...
everything has been easy.
In '68, there's been a...
...a collapse of the walls!
It's been an extraordinary time, and I believe we all had...
...a hard time realising that...
'68 was over.
Henri's Friends
A story that didn't make career
From 1968, when the world was smaller-closer-larger than today, and
against the backdrop of the statues of 1871, 1917, 1936 et 1944, we
inherited a lot of ideas shaping vision and living of a global society.
Part of the youth of yore discovered this collective, communist dimension.
As did so the generations before, and after.
These friends of Henri: Christiane, Lola, Jackie, Frank, Henri's son Claude,
first have only had in common to know Henri, a shop floor militant
who, after having started out during a movement following a strike in 1955,
didn't let go ever since and scoured Marxist, anti-Stalinist groups-papers,
"Socialism or Barbarism", and in '68 "Workers' Information and Mail" (ICO),
and alongside the anarchist group "Black and Red",
Henri eventually founds "Exchange", a network-paper-core still alive today,
firmly scorning the term "militant", sticking to a "refuse career" concept.
Our story, then, is far left, and very rank and file.
She was 20 years old. In '68, I was 46 years old.
In '68 you had just arrived!
- Yea. - She didn't know Paris.
I didn't know Paris, I had just arrived a few months ago.
Not at all, hum?
You showed me the...
It's mostly been the city centre! - Yes, sure.
And, of course, political discussions.
I hadn't had these before, and then we discussed a lot. You...
You, with all your knowledge,
with all your active life, not to call it a militant's life.
And me, with all my experience
I had lived on this fallow land, for we lived on the edge of
some fallow land, and we didn't mix with others in school.
Later then, when I had met - and it was crucial! -
Bernard, you, and some male and female personalities,
who have been essential to me, and I was walking this road!
All this made me learn a lot,
and I told myself: Shyness is over!
Are over shyness and 20 years of silence!
During this youth movement of mine,
I was thirsty for life, there was '68,
there was a lot of motion! After all, it was extraordinary!
I remember having worked in insurance for three years,
one year working, one year unemployed, one year working, one year unemployed.
So, it's often said: One of the factors leading to '68 has been,
because unemployment among the workers increased...
Nowadays you barely see: You cannot compare at all!
We believed to live, after all, some very radiant years, because
there really was unemployment, but you found...
There's been unemployment, the same time there was work!
I know it for sure, nowadays and when we talk the old times,
we say: You see, how much it is difficult for our children?
...at times, they got their first job at 30, then they lose it.
Then, you could quit being sure to find work the very day you wanted to.
We scrammed in the same firm,
back in '68, it had still been quite smooth with discipline, etc.
In order to isolate me, I had been assigned an office,
which was completely segregated from the shop and had a street exit.
I took advantage of it, and she left. You could just leave!
Once, we watched a movie during working hours:
"A Very Curious Girl".
The tremendous success at the Venice Film Festival 1969!
"A Very Curious Girl", a film by Nelly Kaplan.
Obviously, it's about an emancipated girl, and
her being in conflict with a village.
And this is why she remembers the walks we were able to have,
by wangling the hours.
There were things possible, which are impossible today.
After all, there still had been quite loose control at work.
In May '68, then, I've been
in Marseille, above all. I was a student in Aix,
and told my parents in April I was leaving college, because
my parents weren't rich and suppor- ted me for being absent at university,
as simple as this! And I had read "On the Misery of Student Life,"
which comforted me very much in my opinion on university,
it matched my own observation, thus, I felt to have legitimation.
Then, all the summer of '68, I worked in the supermarkets,
my very first job! So, I spent May 68 with the shop assistants in the South!
I sold pastis and liquor, it was quite fun.
They all were totally euphoric, tal- ked about their strikes and struggles.
I was in Marseille and I wanted to move to Paris,
my friends, lots of my friends already were in Paris...
So, in September I moved.
It's been a time... '68 has been a magic time...
everything has been easy: to find a place, a meal,
some work for short time, as you liked.
In case of need, you worked: 8 days made you live 5 or 6 months!
Quite extraordinary. Thus, in this general euphoria we believed,
discovering all these movements, that tomorrow revolution will be!
There was discussion about the whole world.
I remember reading the newspapers like "Le Monde",
and on the US, even in "Le Monde", there was
a point of view I had never heard of: an outside point of view.
All the time there were things happening! We thought...
Suddenly, I was plunged into that world huge and rich,
where I understood things I had always felt, but
never anybody had tried and talk or explain to me, and
I hadn't read anything neither. Well, then all this changed.
It's been an extraordinary time, it's been that rich, and endured some time.
And... it's not been my case, but many friends and comrades,
they lived the minutes of these years like leading to the Great Crash,
literally: the order was sup- posed to crash at any moment...
There have been two...
Two elements, which hold me back. First, my wife was pregnant.
Second, I had been gifted some explosives to my cellar.
So, regarding militantism, I always advocated to separate the elements:
I say, if you do armed struggle, you don't do anything else.
And if you're a militant you don't do anything else, neither.
I mean, if you're a militant at papers like "Noir et Rouge" or "ICO",
you won't walk down the road with a rifle,
to defend some comrades who attack a bank. It's one or the other.
There have been different currents. I can't tell, but what I know.
Me, I've been in the most extreme everyday-life current:
We started to live in groups and tried to transform all way of doing.
At times, it was terrifying, it was forbidden to shit with door closed,
because this would prove you're not capable...
Everything! Like to hide for making love...
There's been an anarchist tradition, but then... after '68,
for our current, the thing was to transform yourself immediately!
In '68, there's been a...
...there's been a collapse of the walls!
...of moral prohibits. It was more like communication between people,
between professor and student, between worker and student, you see.
Paris, or rather the centre of Paris was
a kind of melting pot where all this merged.
And it's been a great feast, all the time!
I had a friend who was in another network, so to speak,
a Spanish-French network, that is neither "ICO" nor "Noir et Rouge."
And he occupied "his" shop for one month.
And as the weather was splendid, they've been on the roof,
on the shop's terraces laying in the sun, getting a tan!
And when they were asked, "what are your demands?,"
their demand was to continue getting a tan,
and the staff said, "We want to continue to don't do nothing!"
So, this has been a perfectly pragmatic vision of May '68,
and there's been a slogan: "Change the way of living!"
And it's been a great feast, all the time!
Of course, there've been demonstrations and all!
There were rather these groups with a structure.
I went, 'cause my friends went there. This was what the guys were doing.
But I didn't love the clashes,
first I had anxiety of getting to know a baton,
or a thrown cobblestone. And...
second, violence never seduced me.
From May '68 on, every time something happened, I was around!
I even joined the labour union CGT,
Henri Simon wasn't there anymore, and they called me his "spy".
Nonetheless, I joined the CGT...
They could not refuse, however, it didn't last for long.
By the way, I even got a slap by...
by a militant of the Communist party,
because I leafletted, well, I left from a CGT meeting, and
I was handing out leaflets we made with Simon,
of course, in order to denounce the collaborator's role, and
above all, the hindering and the troubling role that
the CGT played in all this conflict:
calling out for strike, and hindering at the same time.
Politically, we met very quickly,
for he immediately told me about ICO.
He was a militant,
a shop floor militant, this is how I got to know him, and
this is important to me, because...
I think, he had understood that we were equal, and that
we never cared about academics, and we never will!
He had been...
He probably had been waiting for such a moment for very long.
For him, it's been a second Popular Front, or something alike.
He spent his time with demonstrations, discussions, leaflets.
And me, I've been...
at some demonstrations, in a lot of discussions with...
students of both gender, flirting with the girls... and often in bed!
I remember a clandestine meeting we had at a college.
It was about to see... it was June then,
how to continue the movement?
So, at the meeting... I knew very well, what we gonna talk about,
about the many rallies at Flins, the Renault factory near Aubergenville,
quite harsh demonstrations... So, we talked, what to do in violence?
And before the meeting, knowing we gonna talk about violence,
knowing as well I gonna propose my two explosives,
like: "They are there. You wanna talk about violence? Go, get them!"
"Otherwise, you don't use them now..."
"I just gonna dump them. So, help yourself."
So, I was discussing at the entry, and I see somebody arriving...
I ask him: "Who are you?" - "Just want to attend the meeting."
- "Listen," I don't remember my exact words, "it's a private meeting."
"I don't know you, thus, you won't get in."
There I applied the concept of clandestinity, I used to know
at this moment, in Spain as well as in Bulgaria.
The fact that you understand the roots of your discomfort,
as you begin to understand...
the mechanisms in society...
then, I had the feeling of becoming a whole person, step by step.
When you're moved by...
by your belief that this society must disappear and be replaced by another,
this justifies a lot of suffering, even very private suffering of how...
how you live with yourself, and with your kids...
A lot of aspects! And it's only in this way that you possibly can...
begin to conceive yourself as a person.
There as well, I've always been perceived as: the friend of Simon.
Later in life, I met, from time to time...
Because, my development didn't conduct me on a militant's road,
say, I've been a personal militant, just by my way of life!
I met people again, and never they recognised me.
Although, in the old days, I've been at every and each meeting,
I was either in company of Bernard Bichon who had been...
my husband, so that I could leave home before having 21 years.
He worked in Paris public transport.
When I say, "but of course, I was wife of...", then: "Ah, sure!"
Or, "I was big friend with Simon", - "Ah, sure."
You need to face the fact, in those days,
at ICO though, and truly as everywhere as well,
women were considered as "the friend of...," or "the girl of..."
At ICO, when Bernard arrived...
At this moment, he worked at the Paris public transport, he...
he closed the doors, he has been conductor as well.
So the evening, he arrives at ICO,
and they were actually waiting for him, because...
They conceived themselves as the workers' world,
but they rather were employees, maybe coming from the workers' world,
but it was not the workers' world, after all.
So, Bernard, the metro driver...
he actually had put himself in front of his...
The depot he worked in, they had some difficulty to start the strike.
Thus, Bernard put himself in front of a starting train,
and he said he won't move, thus the guy was well forced to stop the train.
And his depot went on strike. So, he later arrives at ICO,
and he tells the story in a very simple way, saying
"Well, they went on strike, prevented that idiot to start..."
From my eternal point of observation, I look at them, and I still remember,
they were completely fascinated!
Fascinated by Bernard, by the fact they had a worker speaking.
Though, "ICO" means Workers' Information and Mail, right?
But after all, they've been somewhat removed.
I didn't miss this fact, not at all. Actually, this made me...
this made me a bit cheeky and self-confident, I told myself:
Yet another world I won't belong to!
I've been at a meeting with Henri present, that is
an ICO meeting, I think, which took place in university at Jussieu.
And it's been a huge hall, at least 200 people,
and instead of having a student talk,
the guy on the mic explained what's going on in his shop.
It really was... They gave a spontaneous speech, but
I remember, I have left as there was too much of expression!
Instead of saying: everybody has 20 minutes to speak,
so that with 200 people at least 20 to 30 may speak out.
But there was no rule at all! Quite astonishing to me.
And then, there were things... well, there were some guys, who
were very convinced of an idea, and thus were quite aggressive.
A student in architecture, who had a Spanish surname and
later became one of President Mitterand's many architects,
I forgot his name, but he basically said:
"It's me who knows what to do in respect to architecture,"
that is: I won't stand any different project.
See, it went off in any direction! This has been another aspect of '68.
In May '68, I've been in Aubagne, a city with a Communist mayor,
and we went to Marseille, which was Socialist. So, when demonstrating,
in front of us were the municipality workers, so the cops were friendly.
But in Aubagne as in Marseille, when we had to do with the dockers,
we got beaten-up by the CGT dockers.
Additionally, the Aubagne Action Committee, of which I was part,
and which was typical for these days in regions outside Paris,
there were all kinds of people, also children of CP municipality employees.
The clashes could end up with a father's slap to his son or daughter.
Quite funny. I remember, in Marseille in these days,
there were, of course a lot of radical lefties, as
due to the CP's influence, you had many CY people passing to the RCY.
Then you had a milieu of...
let's say, anarcho-situationists.
Then you had the "hyper-left," as we joked in these days,
that is council communism, Roland Simon, and all this.
I had never heard talking about Pannekoeck or Korsch or Ruehle or ...!
This was all completely foreign to me!
This kind of council communism is extremely contemplative, in my eyes:
You look how the labour movement evolves,
you analyse future evolutions and historical evolutions as well,
but that's all. To me, this seems insufficient.
And... they also hold this belief, that
everything done by the labour unions is negative.
Yet, everybody knows that as soon as there is...
a nascent movement or conflict in a company,
whether you have somebody, who enjoyed a union formation,
or somebody with a small union cell around.
Whether or not they follow the union's directive is another question.
I say, there a people with some knowledge, that is
how to speak, how to write, and how to handle a Roneo machine!
Well, formerly it was a Roneo, nowadays it's huge photocopiers!
This was a type of a critique by intellectuals!
Because up until '68, ICO consisted of only workers,
of workers who acted within their shop, but in their own way!
That is, they didn't act as an ICO propagandist,
they took action in their shop with respect to the situation, etc.
This was true for the most. Accusing them of "attentism" has no stand.
This only was important for the critics, and their concept
of a political group, which is supposed to grow.
This didn't make much sense. Now and then, we went see the struggles,
in order to get informed, not in order to say
"Here we are, we gonna help you."
That critique didn't work in each and every case.
Actually, when the students joined ICO in '68,
their vision was: the only "action is intervention."
In fact, in '68 and afterwards,
all who were radical lefties, what we'd call "us" ...
We suddenly discovered, we had ancestors!
Some discovered the situationists, others "Socialism or Barbarism."
We encountered a few people from the older generation in Marseille,
many had been militants against the war in Algeria.
The old left radicals, male and female,
they've been more serious people, in general.
Lefeuvre took a long time until confessing being homosexual.
The general atmosphere... the CP was extremely puritanical,
the RCY was extremely puritanical, the radical lefties were puritanical!
They always pretended there was possible blackmailing of somebody,
who's homosexual or whatever.
Bordiguists were still more dreadful, you wouldn't even smoke,
because a militant doesn't self-destroy!
And we lived that delirium of an ode to joy of '68,
for us it was to do revolution, and to fuck, drink and get stoned!
It's simply been more a thing of the youth.
The older people, they maybe joined head ahead,
but this wasn't that obvious.
I think, it's simply a generational issue.
And obviously, we smoked like hell,
we drank ever so, and we endlessly did provocation like fuck!
The overall atmosphere was too polite, after all.
My mother, she was... She always talked about '36.
Then, she had been a secretary at Citroen,
she talked about the CP, and 1936, and the hope of revolt.
Then, there was the war.
My friend, do you hear the dulled cries of our countries in chains?
Oh, friends, do you hear, workers, farmers, in your ears alarm bells ringing?
Tonight all our tears will be turned to tongues of flame in our blood singing!
And, we've been children of the post-war era.
We've known huge strikes, but...
when we were little, I'd say around 1953 or '54.
Very little, I remember being being stuck for reason of strikes
at some old people I was sent to on vacation in Grenoble.
We did not understand all this.
Then, there was the Algerian War and all.
Thus, '68 was a surprise like...
I belong to the millions of young, who haven't seen anything coming!
The generation of Henri could not have lived this the same way.
In general, these people have been quite serious.
And, we didn't wanna be serious, really and above all not serious.
We had many students, who created themselves some problems...
Thus, they founded - and I still don't get it - the "Non-group Group!"
In '68, starting from that vision of the non-group group,
they wanted "Noir et Rouge" to be a Roneo-made paper, really!
Above all, they didn't wanna write, because
writing means you separate yourself from the others,
"I am the one who writes, and the others don't have that privilege."
Thus, I stop writing!
Pragmatically spoken, it obviously seemed impossible
to work with a 25 heads team with a half not wanting to write.
Thus, a part of the group was... did exclude itself.
And then, after '68, "Noir et Rouge" had lost its reason of existence.
So, in 1970, we said "enough," and we closed down.
Having been a shop floor militant for years,
confers you a kind of sense for the perception of a reality
you're able to find through apparently meaningless utterances.
There you find signification, almost different from the speaker.
You see, this is relatively important to me.
Because having been active on the shop floor for 25 years,
confers you a kind of sense for the perception of things,
which now helps in understanding the struggles.
Even if these struggles change in nature,
there is still a number of reactions, which stay quite true to themselves.
Hello to all! ...all the networks and friends who helped realize this essay.
And, long live the Social Revolution!
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