Raymonde Tillon

Raymonde Tillon (nee Barbé , also known as Raymonde Nédelec ; born October 22, 1915 in Puteaux ; † July 17, 2016 ) was a French politician of the Parti communiste français (PCF). From 1945 to 1951 she was a member of the National Assembly .

Life

Early life and resistance

From the age of five, Raymonde Barbé grew up in a church children's home after the loss of her parents, before she left this before reaching the age of majority and moved to live with her brother near the southern French city of Arles . In 1935 she married in Arles Charles Nédelec, who was a member of the PCF and the communist trade union confederation Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire . The couple settled in the city of Marseille and Raymonde Nédelec also joined the communist party. In the second half of the 1930s, they actively supported the Front Populaire , which was an alliance of left parties as opposed to fascism. With the beginning of the Second World War , the ways of the spouses diverged, with her husband participating in the resistance against the German occupation and dying in the spring of 1944.

Raymonde Nédelec also joined the resistance movement at an early stage, was arrested on March 31, 1941 and sentenced to 20 years of forced labor by a court in Toulon . She was imprisoned in succession in Marseille, Toulon and Lyon before being extradited to the Germans in June 1944. The occupiers first deported them to Saarbrücken and then to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Brandenburg . In the final phase of the war, the French woman had to do forced labor in a military factory in Leipzig before she managed to escape on April 20, 1945 and return to Marseille.

Political career in the post-war years

Immediately after the end of the war and her return to Marseille, Nédelec worked for the CGT trade union and belonged to its organizational unit at the level of the Bouches-du-Rhône department . In particular, she was concerned with the concerns of women organized in the union. In September 1945 she entered the General Council of Bouches-du-Rhône for part of Marseille . A month later she stood on the list of the PCF for the constituent national assembly given in Bouches-du-Rhône by François Billoux . As the third party on the list, she was able to enter the first French post-war parliament, where she took up her mandate on October 21, 1945, one day before her 30th birthday. Since there had previously been no women suffrage in France , she was one of the first 33 women MPs in the country. Although the communists lost a lot of votes, they were also elected to the second constituent assembly in June 1946. In the two assemblies she belonged to the commissions for home affairs, administration and Algeria, which was then under French rule .

In the elections for the first regular post-war parliament in November 1946, she was again third in the list in the Bouches-du-Rhône department and was re-elected. Subsequently, she was a member of the Commission for Economic Affairs and, from 1950, the corresponding body for labor and social security. In addition, she belonged to the Haute Cour de Justice , which in exceptional cases could have decided on the dismissal of the President or ministers. In the late 1940s, Nédelec introduced a large number of draft laws and reports into parliament, some of which dealt with concerns of their department. In 1949 she sharply criticized the socialist interior minister Jules Moch in two sessions . When voting, she always followed the behavior of the communist faction. Since it was not re-established in the elections in June 1951, it resigned from the National Assembly that year.

Further life

The fact that she was not re-elected by her party in the 1951 elections was considered surprising and is seen in connection with the fact that she had married Charles Tillon, who also belonged to the PCF, that same year . In July 1970, the couple was expelled from the Communist Party because they had openly criticized the Soviet Union and, among other things, its intervention against the Prague Spring in reform-oriented Czechoslovakia . The couple later settled in Montjustin on the edge of the French Alps and then in Brittany . The former politician widowed her husband's death in 1993 and published the autobiographical work J'écris ton nom, Liberté in 2002 at an old age . In 2015, she celebrated her 100th birthday, at which time she was the last survivor of the first 33 female MPs in the National Assembly from 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Raymonde Tillon-Nédelec, mort d'une combattante . Les Nouvelles News, July 18, 2016, accessed July 23, 2016 (French).
2. ^ ^{A b} Charles-Louis Foulon: Raymonde Tillon a cent ans aujourd'hui . L'Humanité , October 22, 2015, accessed July 23, 2016 (French).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Base de données historique des anciens députés: Raymonde Nédelec Née Barbé, Épouse Tillon. National Assembly website , accessed 23 July 2016 (French).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Il ya soixante-dix ans, les 33 premières femmes entraient à l'Assemblée . Le Monde , October 21, 2015, accessed July 23, 2016 (French).