The strikes of autumn 1948 followed on from those of November 1947, in an increasingly tense national and international political context.
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In October 1947 Moscow recreates the IIIe International under the name of Kominform. In February 1948, it was the “ prague blow “. The last democracy in the East, Czechoslovakia, falls into the hands of the Communists. Stalin imposes the blockade of Berlin in June which will last until May 1949, the Greek civil war puts the country to fire and blood and in June 1948, Tito breaks with Stalin.
In France, the Communist Party has not digested its exclusion from the government in May 1947 and is putting sticks in the wheels of socialist, radical and Christian Democrat governments. The union break-up has been recorded since December 1947 and the foundation of the CGT-FO dates from April 1948.
At the end of the Second World War, against a background of poverty which in France painfully affects the working classes, social anger is expressed.
In 1947, more than three million workers went on strike. They will be 6.5 the following year. Rationing continues and inflation eats away at wages that are frozen. The popular classes have seen no improvement since 1940, despite the announcements of American economic aid as part of the Marshall Plan. Anger roars, fueled by the PC. In July 1948, the officials walked out, resulting in the fall of the Schuman government, replaced by the radical André Marie. At the beginning of September, the Renault agency, again, Snecma, Air-France and Edf-Gdf joined in, the employees asking for wage increases to get out of poverty.
Scared by the events of 1947, the government appointed in November of the same year a strong man at the head of the Ministry of the Interior, the socialist Jules Moch (1893-1985). A former resistance fighter, having joined the Naval Forces of Free France in London, he has been, since his trip to Russia in 1920, viscerally anti-Communist. On December 4, 1947, he suppressed the right to strike in the police and dissolved eleven CRS companies which included the presence of former communist resistance fighters.
The revolt of the miners
At the end of September 1948, railway workers, steelworkers and miners stopped working. It is the miners who will be at the forefront of this movement. The miners of the North had organized the first major strike against the Nazi occupiers at the end of 1940. Many minors were resistant to the FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans) and kept their weapons and ammunition at home. As for Les Houillères, they were nationalized in 1945, following the recommendations of the program of the National Council of the Resistance.
On September 25, the steelworkers and iron miners of Lorraine go on strike. From October 4 Jules Moch had the wells occupied by the gendarmes and the CRS, but he also took care to repatriate 60,000 soldiers from Germany with armored cars and armored vehicles. ! On October 8, a minor was massacred with a rifle butt by CRS in Merlebach. Work will resume on the 12th, the strikers having obtained a salary increase of 26%.
In the other mines, violent incidents took place such in Carmaux, on October 19. The next day, the miners block a CRS train in Albi. On the 22nd, the black faces of Montceau-les-Mines “ take prisoners »130 gendarmes. On the 26th, a minor was shot dead in Alès. Three days earlier Jules Moch had officially authorized the shooting !
It is in the North that the conflict will be the hardest. The strike was declared on September 28 and all wells stopped on October 4. It must be said that the Lacoste decree of September 18 had the effect of a red rag. It lowers the wages of the miners, makes compulsory the return to work for the miners suffering from silicosis, removes the monopoly of the Central Cooperative of the Personnel of the Mines which allowed them to improve the ordinary. On October 4, 84% of minors are on strike, ie 340,000 black faces. The young CGT-FO will join the strike in certain basins.
The clashes are violent. The army occupies the wells and settlements, the CRS destroy the barracks of North African miners. On October 21, the strikers arrested the sub-prefect of Béthune. The next day in Firminy, former FTPs shoot at the police, wounding three CRS, two minors are killed.
Moch describes the strikes “ insurgency “. The CGT will call for the resumption on November 29. The results of these days are catastrophic: little or no increase in salary, six deaths, 3,000 dismissed including 117 union delegates, 3,000 arrests resulting in 1,342 prison sentences.
In 2011, the Court of Appeal recognized the dismissals as illegal, a decision overturned in cassation at the request of Christine Lagarde. Finally in 2014 the last survivors will receive compensation.
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