Jean-Baptiste Lebas

Jean-Baptiste Lebas

Jean-Baptiste Lebas (born October 24, 1878 in Roubaix , † March 1944 in Sonnenburg prison ), also Jean Lebas, was a French socialist politician and member of the Resistance in World War II .

Life

First political steps

Lebas is the son of Félicité Delattre and Jean-Hippolyte Lebas. He grew up in a politically left-wing working class family. His father was initially a staunch Republican during the Second Empire . He later joined the French Labor Party ( French Parti ouvrier français , POF) under Jules Guesde.

Lebas joined socialism at an early age and joined the POF at the age of 18. After the merger of the socialist parties of France and the establishment of the French section of the Workers' International ( French Section française de l'internationale ouvrière , SFIO) in 1906, he became deputy secretary of the SFIO association of the Northern Department . In 1908 he was appointed to the local council and in 1910 to the general council .

Mayor of Roubaix

The SFIO had lost the local elections in favor of industrialist Eugène Motte due to the alleged poor performance of his predecessor. In the elections in 1912, she put up Jean-Baptiste Lebas, who was known for his extreme hardship. Lebas was elected mayor.

After the outbreak of the First World War , Roubaix was occupied by German troops on October 14, 1914. Lebas was arrested by the city's military administration in 1915 because he refused to publish the list of all 18-year-old residents so that they could be sent to Germany for forced labor. His office was temporarily taken over by his deputy Henri Therin.

Lebas was taken to the fortress of Rastatt until he was released from prison for health reasons in January 1916 and released in the unoccupied areas of France. He was then made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor in October for his bravery .

Socialist leader and Minister of the Popular Front

Communal socialism and party politics

From 1916 he went into politics at national level and became a member of the permanent administrative commission ( French Commission administrative permanente , CAP; executive body of the SFIO until 1944) and from 1919 a member of parliament.

Lebas took over the office of mayor of Roubaix after the end of the First World War again on October 21, 1918 and implemented his ideas of communal socialism. He had new school buildings built: a school colony in 1920 and an open-air school in 1921 . In order to deal with the rampant diseases in working-class families, he set up an outpatient clinic for tuberculosis sufferers and a spa center. He also promoted vaccinations and medical examinations for school children.

Lebas was the first mayor of the city to build cheap housing estates for workers ( French Habitations à bon marché , HBM) - even before Louis Loucheur's legislative initiative in 1928. From 1923 to 1929 775 accommodations were built. Lebas also founded a municipal fund for the unemployed in 1921 and had the Parc des Sports and the city's swimming pool (which has housed the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie since 2001 ) expanded.

Despite the high expenses, the trained accountant did not lose sight of the community's finances. It was particularly important to him to show that the socialists can run and administer the city just as well as the conservative right or the radical party .

During the Congress in Tours in December 1920 Lebas stubbornly opposed the supporters of the Communist International and opposed communism with a democratic socialism. Although he supported the revolution of the working class, he urged not to lose sight of concrete reforms. From this point on Lebas was an opponent of communism and placed his criticism in the writings Sur l'ordre de Moscou. Comment les communistes ont brisé l'unité (1922) and Critique socialiste du parti communiste (1929).

As a locally and nationally elected leader of the strongest federation in the party, he took an active part in the reconstruction of the SFIO, which could only be achieved by splitting the party. He stood against the authoritarian and opportunistic neo-socialism, which was mainly represented by Marcel Déat .

Parliamentary work

Jean-Baptiste Lebas did not speak out in principle against a government coalition between the SFIO and the Radical Party, but he was convinced that this coalition must be led by the SFIO. Therefore, like Léon Blum , he spoke out in 1924 for supporting the Édouard Herriot government , but without participating in it.

Lebas concentrated his political commitment until 1936 on the parliamentary level. On May 21, 1920, he proposed the nationalization of the railway lines and on October 28, 1921 the introduction of a minimum wage . However, neither idea found a majority in the conservative-dominated chamber.

In 1926 he joined the Supreme Labor Council ( French Conseil supérieur du travail ) and reported there on all international agreements regulating work. These included the Washington Agreement on women's and child labor and unemployment, or the Geneva Agreement on the protection of seafarers, guest workers and weekly rest.

In the election campaign of 1932, he supported the implementation of emergency measures to cope with the economic and social hardship of the country as a result of the global economic crisis . These included government support for the unemployed, the reduction of weekly working hours to 40 hours and the expansion of social security laws (to be voted on in 1930). In 1936 he proposed the introduction of paid leave, the establishment of an office for grain and an office for artificial fertilizers, and - like many candidates from the Popular Front - the nationalization of the armaments industry .

Government work

Prime Minister Léon Blum made Jean-Baptiste his Minister of Labor. This gave him the difficult task of legally implementing the resolutions of the Social Plan of the Front Populaire . However, within a few weeks in the summer of 1936 he succeeded in enforcing the basic demands: 40-hour week, paid vacation, introduction of general social insurance, collective agreements (conventions collectives) , and the resolution of labor disputes through arbitration tribunals.

After the replacement of the government under Léon Blum by Camille Chautemps , Lebas was installed in his cabinet from June 1937 to January 1938 as Minister of Post and Telecommunications (French Postes, télégraphes et téléphones , PTT). After Blum took office again for a short time (March to April 1938), he retained this office. In this function he campaigned for the further development of radio and was interested in its connection with the theater.

Resistance

In June 1940, Jean-Baptiste Lebas fled, like many French, to the south from the approaching German troops. His first deputy, this time Fleuris Vanherpe, took over the post of mayor on a temporary basis until Fleuris was arrested and deported .

Lebas, however, soon returned to his hometown of Roubaix after he was removed from office by the Vichy regime . In a leaflet called Le socialisme continue! In August 1940 he called for resistance against the occupation forces. Towards the end of the summer he founded a resistance group called L'Homme libre (The Free Man) in occupied France. The group published a newspaper, first under the same name, then under the title La IVe République (The Fourth Republic). 300 socialist activists joined the mayor of Roubaix. According to the October 1940 edition of the Homme libre , "the rebuilding of the socialist party is not necessary because the socialist party was never dissolved".

In January 1941, the Resistance group's newspaper extended its publication area to Lille and Douai . In the same month Lebas, like Daniel Mayer three months later, founded a Comité d'action socialiste (CAS), under which the socialist resistance members were to be united. The committee joined the CAS of the Occupied Zone ( French zone occupée ), which had been founded shortly before. Due to its underground experience during the First World War and its membership strength, the resistance group, led by Lebas, developed into one of the most important in the north.

On May 21, 1941, Lebas was arrested by the Gestapo together with one of his sons and niece, who were also members of the resistance . From 1941 to 1942 they were transferred from one prison to another, first in France and finally to Berlin. After a four-hour questioning on April 21, 1942, Lebas was sentenced to three years of forced labor and transferred to the Sonnenburg prison. For two years he worked eleven and a half hours a day in a factory producing ropes and cords. The exact date of his death is not known, Lebas probably died in March 1944. It is also unclear whether he died or was executed as a result of the working and living conditions.

In memoriam

The avenue Jean-Lebas in Roubaix

His body was transported back to France in August 1951 and buried in the Roubaix cemetery. In 1949 a memorial was erected in Roubaix in his memory. In addition, the French Post issued a special postage stamp in honor of Lebas in the series Héros de la Résistance in 1957.

In Roubaix one of the most important traffic axes (the connection between the town hall and the train station), the avenue Jean-Lebas , and a school, the Collège Jean-Baptiste Lebas , are named after him.

There are streets that bear his name in many municipalities in the Nord department, including Seclin , Wavrin , Villeneuve-d'Ascq , Lys-lez-Lannoy , Gravelines and Ostricourt . In the city of Laon , too , Rue Jean-Baptiste Lebas commemorates the politician and resistance fighter.

literature

• Philippe Waret and Jean-Pierre Popelier: Roubaix de A à Z . Editions Alain Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2006, ISBN 2-84910-459-0 .
• Alain Guérin: Chronique de la Resistance . Omnibus 2000, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-25807-816-4
• Jean Piat: Jean Lebas: de la Belle Époque à la Resistance . Maison du livre, Roubaix 1994, ISBN 2-95087-110-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Julius Braunthal : History of the International . Vol. 3: 1943-1969 . JHW Dietz Nachf., Hannover 1971, ISBN 3-8012-1110-X , here p. 37.
2. ^ "Il n'est pas question de reconstitution du parti socialiste, puisque le parti socialiste n'est pas dissous." L'Homme libre. October 1940.