Auguste Mudry

Auguste Mudry (born June 22, 1913 in Bellentre , Département Savoie , † May 6, 1973 ibid) was a French politician of the PCF . From 1946 to 1951 and from 1956 to 1958 he was a member of the National Assembly .

Life and career

Early life

Mudry grew up as the son of smallholders from the French Alps and after attending school first worked as an unskilled worker in a mine before learning to be an electrical installer in Aime , near his home town of Bellentre. In 1934 he joined the communist party PCF and three years later became chairman of the local group of the Tarentaise countryside . Also in 1937 he made his first national appearance when he attended his party's national congress in Arles . His ascent within the party continued in 1938 when he moved into the governing body of the Savoie department. Due to a parallel activity as secretary of the Confédération Générale du travail union , he lost his job following a nationwide strike on November 30, 1938.

Second World War

A few weeks after the start of the Second World War , a house search was carried out near Mudry on September 29, 1939. He was brought before a tribunal and charged with membership of the Communist Party and defeatist propaganda accused of him. The ruling of March 20, 1940 provided for a one-year prison sentence, a fine of one hundred francs and a five-year disfranchisement. He appealed and temporarily escaped prison before being arrested on January 20, 1941. He spent his imprisonment in Chambéry and Barraux until he came to Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe . In June 1942, various groups from Mudry's homeland tried to get his release, but this was refused on the grounds that he had announced in court that his political views would be maintained. When his son had to undergo an operation in March 1943, he used the authorized visit to his child as an opportunity to escape from prison. On May 4th of the same year, however, he was arrested again and on June 10th the communist was sentenced to four months in prison. Four days later he was supposed to be deported to Germany, but he managed to escape again at the Lyon-Brotteaux train station .

After his first escape, he had already belonged to the resistance movement against the German occupation , which he joined again after his second escape. Within the Maquis partisan group he achieved a rapid rise, so that on March 15, 1944, he was appointed commander of the Savoie and Haute-Savoie departments. In the same year he witnessed the liberation of France and went from underground fighter to official soldier. On November 1, 1944, he was released from his military duties. For his services in the resistance, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor and also awarded the Croix de guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance .

Career in political office

As chairman of the communists in the Savoie department, the then 32-year-old Mudry took part in the elections for the second constituent national assembly on June 2, 1946. He was in second position on the joint list of the political left in the Savoie department and made it into parliament, as the list won two seats. In November 1946 the first regular elections took place, the list was able to improve to a share of the vote of 46.1 percent and Mudry was accordingly re-elected without any problems. In Parliament, he was a member of the National Defense Commission for one year and was also a member of the Industrial Production Commission, to which he remained for the entire legislative period. On December 27, 1946 he was elected to the Haute Cour de justice , which had to decide on the possible removal of the president. Not only in the Paris National Assembly he took care of the concerns of his region, but also locally, which is why he was elected mayor of his home town of Bellentre in 1947. In 1951 he tried to extend his mandate in the parliamentary elections and took first place on the communist list, but due to a peculiarity of the electoral law it did not get a single seat despite a 31.8 percent share of the vote. The reason for this was that another list had an absolute majority had reached and thereby got all seats awarded.

Since he had left parliament in the same year, he applied for a seat in the General Council of the Savoie department in 1951 . He managed to move into the committee in which he was represented until 1970. In the parliamentary elections in 1956, he was again first on the list of communists. Although the list suffered significant losses with 26.7 percent, it was enough for his return to the National Assembly, as no other list could book an absolute majority. In Paris, as before, he was a member of the Commission for Industrial Production and also worked on the Commission for the French Overseas Territories. In 1958 he voted like the other members against the authorization of Charles de Gaulle , which ultimately led to the establishment of the Fifth Republic . In the resulting parliamentary elections in the same year, he had to run in a constituency and failed there because of re-election. Several further attempts in the 1960s were unsuccessful. In March 1973 he refused to run again and died on May 6 of the same year at the age of 59. The father of three remained mayor of his home town of Bellentre until his death, which means that he has held this office for 26 years.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Base de données historique des anciens députés , assemblee-nationale.fr