René Cance

Louis René Pierre Cance (born April 19, 1895 in Laroquebrou , Cantal department , † July 30, 1982 in Draguignan , Var department ) was a French politician ( FKP ) and fighter in the Resistance . He was mayor of Le Havre and a member of the National Assembly .

Life

The father of René Cance was a clog maker , which the Radicals was close to. He left the Cantal department in 1900 to work as a waiter in a restaurant in Paris . His mother was a concierge in Montrouge . They later bought their own café on Rue du Bac . In 1908 the family returned to central France, to Biars-sur-Céré ( Département Lot ), where the father was later elected mayor.

René Cance attended the École primaire supérieur in Saint-Céré , where he obtained his certification . In 1913 he became an assistant teacher in Mayville near Le Havre. In August 1914 he was drafted into the 17th Infantry Regiment . He was wounded near Verdun and was taken prisoner by Germany on July 14, 1918 . He was imprisoned in the prisoner of war camp in Kassel and had to work in salt mines . After his release in February 1919, he joined the Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants (ARAC, German Republican Association of Former Frontline Fighters) and took up a position as a teacher again, later in Le Havre. In 1923 he married a colleague.

In the early 1930s he joined the Amis de l'Union soviétique (Friends of the Soviet Union) friendship society , of which he later became the local secretary. In February 1934 he joined the French Communist Party (FKP). As a member of the regional office of the FKP he became first secretary of the FKP section of Le Havre under the Popular Front . In 1935 he founded the local FKP newspaper, L'Avenir du Havre (The future of Le Havre), of which he also took over.

In October 1937 he was the first communist ever to be elected to the General Council of the Seine-Inférieure department for the canton of Le Havre-3 . Due to the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , his mandate was withdrawn in 1939. After the French declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, Cance was not drafted, but initially placed under the supervision of the authorities in Gournay-en-Bray .

During the German occupation, Cance took part in the FKP's illegal resistance struggle. Party missions took him to Touraine and the Somme department . He ran an illegal printing press in the XIV arrondissement of Paris . Due to denunciations, he was cut off from his contacts for a short time. Equipped with false papers, he was sent to the Lot and Corrèze. Here he was appointed Secretary of the National Front for Region 5 (Corrèze, Haute-Vienne , Dordogne ) and he was one of the leaders of the Maquis until 1944.

After the liberation, he stayed in the Corrèze for a while, where he ran the newspaper L'Avenir de la Corrèze . In February 1945 he returned to the Seine-Inférieure department and was secretary of the FKP departmental management in Rouen for several months .

Cance was elected a member of the First Constituent National Assembly on October 21, 1945 and then re-elected in June 1946 (Second Constituent National Assembly) and November 1946 (First National Assembly of the Fourth Republic ). In the parliamentary elections in 1951 he had to surrender to a list of the broad electoral alliance Troisième Force - consisting of socialists (SFIO), Christian Democrats (MRP) and radicals - but was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1956, 1958 and 1962. In April 1967 he left his seat to André Duroméa .

From 1945 to 1953, Cance was also a member of the General Council of the Seine-Inférieure department and its vice-president. In October 1947 he was elected for the first time to the municipal council of the city of Le Havre, to which he belonged until he retired from active politics in 1971. Cance was Mayor of Le Havre from 1956 to 1959 and from 1965 to 1971. After he had not run in the 1971 elections, he was appointed honorary mayor. His party friend, First Alderman André Duroméa, was elected as the new mayor.

Honors

Streets in Le Havre and Gonfreville-l'Orcher , a sports hall in Harfleur and a leisure center in Gonfreville-l'Orcher are named after Cance .

literature

• Marie-Paule Dhaille-Hervieu: Communistes au Havre. Histoire sociale, culturelle et politique (1930–1983). Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre (PURH), Mont-Saint-Aignan 2009, ISBN 978-2-87775-475-0 , passim.

Web links

• Entry: Cance, René on the website of the French National Assembly (French).
• Entry: Cance, Louis René Pierre . In: Maitron. Le Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement ouvrier (French).