The sociologist Anne Steiner gives flesh to a little-known part of the history of the workers’ movement: this pre-century of the “ Belle Epoque » where, despite universal suffrage and the right to strike, distrust of republican institutions results in continued violence.
At the end of the Commune, during which the people reappropriated the Haussmannian Paris from which they had wanted to exclude them, urban space remained an issue of power. The Republic may rename many streets, inscribing moral order on the very walls of the capital, but the small merchant, the craftsman, the demonstrator, the prowler and the prostitute continue to assert that the street belongs to them. It is still the Republic which, under a radical exterior, bloodily crushes the great strikes and popular mobilizations of the “ Belle Epoque “. Forgotten struggles, to which sociologist Anne Steiner brings new life in The Taste of Riot, recently published by L’Échappée.
Written in a tasty language, which promotes immersion, the work shows that the myth of “ Belle Epoque » was built at the cost of continual violence involving both the working classes and representatives of the State. If it marks the triumph of employers and notables, the period envisaged also consecrates direct action and the organization of the masses: at the end of the Great Depression, a lively anti-parliamentarism thus fuels the belief in a general strike which would cement worker solidarity . In this respect, the pre-war period studied here forms the navel of a new social era which deserves the title of the first twentieth century. Paradoxical threshold, since the emergence of an organized practice of demonstration seals, with the disappearance of revolutionary trade unionism, the rarefaction of riots which had given non-partisan mobilizations an unprecedented intensity and longevity (the statistics attached in the appendix indicate the figures -record of 438,466 strikers in 1906, 1502 strikes in 1910).
The illustrated volume that today houses the collection “ In the heat of the moment » extends the reflection on urban violence that A. Steiner had previously engaged in this, through a study of the Red Army Faction, then a lively history of individualist anarchism. Returning to the social effervescence of La Belle-Époque, which served as a backdrop to her analysis of illegalism, the author brings to light an unavoidable tension: in the France of suffrage “ universal », where the exercise of the strike is guaranteed, the public force represses popular demonstrations in complete legality ; how can we judge the latter illegitimate, however, when suffrage excludes women, when institutions inspire distrust among disenchanted workers, when the Republic deprives its citizens of a right of demonstration that even the Belgian and English monarchies have granted ?
Ladder set
Five removed chapters lead from the repression of the diggers of Draveil-Vigneux and the revolt of the buttonmakers of Méru (1908 ; 1909) to the funeral of an anarchist cabinetmaker from Faubourg Saint-Antoine (1910), through the Ferrer and Liabeuf affairs (1909 ; 1910). Of the events recounted, only the Ferrer affair is not directly anchored in the working world, although it stirs up the masses. Everywhere else, wage demands, strike and sabotage slogans, and the refusal of industrial rates and discipline by craftsmen hitherto paid by the task dominate. Significant fact: when Jean-Jacques Liabeuf is wrongfully accused of pimping, his shoemaker’s tools appear to him to be the weapon best suited to avenge police injustice. He thereby reaffirms his belonging to a corporation which produced a number of communards (Dereure, Trinquet, Clément, Roullier), anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists (Grave, Griffuelhes). From this point of view, the workers’ movement benefits from being described by a sociologist.
The different stories that A. Steiner unfolds shed light on a part of History caught between better documented periods: on the one hand, that which runs from the Commune to Boulangism, to which Michelle Perrot had devoted a pioneering sum ; on the other, the post-war period, on which Danièle Tartakowsky opened her own thesis. Starting from 1er May 1906, which launched the public mobilization in favor of the eight-hour day, A. Steiner connects, to better put them into perspective, episodes unevenly covered by criticism. The examination of memoirs, archives, statistics, combined with the analysis of the main periodicals of the moment as well as the libertarian press (no doubt over-represented, but largely unknown) allows the author to retrace day by day, even hour by time, facts of which it embraces the social, political, economic and cultural dimension. In doing so, she fills in certain gray areas: here, she completes the historiography of the Francisco Ferrer affair, focusing on the riot which preceded the demonstration in tribute to the Spanish anarchist arbitrarily killed ; there, she highlights the chronology, recalling that Liabeuf was executed barely a week after the funeral of Henri Cler, a lesser-known figure of popular resistance.
Using a clever play of scales, A. Steiner modulates his history of popular mobilizations. It is thus from Paris that she observes the effect of the Catalan riots born of resistance to the Spanish colonization of the Rif. However localized they appear, social dominations are in reality part of a broader framework of domination: the mobilization against the execution of Liabeuf is nourished by the denunciation of the disciplinary penal camps of North Africa, where the unfortunate man stayed. ; As for the demands of the Meruvians, they are particularly motivated by Japanese competition in the exploitation of trochus, a shellfish that the French import from New Caledonia. If the struggles often struggle to converge – after the Liabeuf affair, the link it had forged between the workers and the “ apache » unravels -, local mobilizations still find an echo beyond national borders. The support shown for Ferrer throughout Europe, but also in Latin America, would be enough to demonstrate this. The analysis of A. Steiner therefore goes beyond these Parisian margins that we imagine to be seditious, to be fully part of the history of globalization.
The flesh of struggles
That we do not seek in The Taste of Riot neither a theory of urban violence, nor a typology of its forms. A. Steiner in fact neglects existing categorizations: it matters little to him to establish whether a given demonstration is insurrectional, petitionary or festive, because his ambition is to show – to experience, even – different forms of resistant gathering, of burial — “ unofficial demonstration » which often offers the “ opportunity to challenge power ” – to the “ jacquerie » (p. 69), from strike to riot.
The use of period testimonies, the use of direct speech, the skillful dramatization of the story thus transport to the heart of the conflict: a “ strong smell of glue, varnish, polish, walnut husk » (p. 120) permeates the chapter devoted to the cabinetmakers of Faubourg Saint-Antoine, while another noise of a Carmagnole anticlerical. The reader is as much struck by the violence, described in all its crudeness, without complacency or pathos, as by the astonishment of the inhabitants of Saint-Crépin discovering the “ unusual spectacle of the first rays of sun reflecting on a pearly expanse » of buttons (p. 74) or the lightness – disconcerting, in full riot – of a replica of The sprinkler watered : the water supposed to disperse the crowd of Parisians revolted by the execution of Ferrer only springs when the demonstrators direct the lance towards the police.
The demonstration takes advantage of the riot as the idea takes hold that the organization of forces offers the best response to government violence. The stormy gathering of October 13, 1909 was followed by a peaceful parade, the route of which was negotiated by a political organization – the Seine Socialist Federation – which was supervised by a security service made up of demonstrators. Doubly unprecedented decision: “ from now on it will no longer be the degree of radicalism but the number of participants that will make the strength of street rallies » (p. 116). At the same time, solidarity is being organized ; the violence is counterbalanced by various initiatives: communist soups, aid funds, welcoming the offspring of the strikers… Activist periodicals systematically launch subscriptions intended to support the mobilizations which last.
Faces of the crowd
The press, which created the myth of “ apache » — young marauder who is said to be resistant to work —, criminalizing popular revolts to maintain the feeling of insecurity also knows how to act as vigilante. The investigations denouncing the repression inaugurate a form of investigative journalism which has a bright future ahead of it: after the funeral of Henri Cler, “ Humanity launches an appeal to all people who had been injured by the police or soldiers to send the newspaper their name and address » (p. 144). A figure stands out: that of the anarchist journalist Miguel Almeyreda (real name Eugène Bonaventure de Vigo, father of the filmmaker Jean Vigo), who proved that Liabeuf had never been a pimp, then revealed that the trade unionist Luc Métivier, active in the strikes de Draveil and Clichy, was only an agent provocateur in the service of the State.
From this book, which helps to nuance the virilist approach to street demonstrations, several female figures also stand out, including that of Marie Auclaire who, despite her pregnancy, was the last to leave the prison after the events in Draveil. Symbol of the flaws of so-called universal suffrage, women, represented from the threshold of the volume by a rich iconography, are often at the forefront: it is they who kick off the Catalan riots serving as a framework for the Ferrer affair. And we know how much the struggle of Méru, which Clemenceau, then President of the Council, had accused of “ good women’s strike » (p. 67), gave him a hard time !
By reincarnating the struggles that preceded the Great War, The Taste of Riot not only gives justice to the vanquished ; it sheds light on a little-studied part of the history of the labor movement, even though it constitutes a tipping point: these years of disillusionment, where distrust of republican institutions took root. Never has a room been so far to the left since the Commune, and yet we have never been more slashed ! It was also during this period that revolutionary trade unionism, although conquering, was going through a crisis which would lead to its disappearance: in a context where, to compete with the recently united socialists, moderation seemed essential, the riots turned into demonstrations, often under the umbrella of by a party. Anne Steiner’s sensitive descriptions show that, in violence, solidarity is also organized. Whatever their outcome, urban struggles thus contribute to forging a proletarian consciousness, by bringing together the generations, the sexes, the trades that the new forms of industrial organization tended to separate.