My Life as a Militant

127 Pages·1974·5.472 MB·English

by  Arlette LAGUILLER

MY LIFE AS A MILITANT
L My Start in L1f e
My parents used to live in the town of Les Lilas.
I was born there and lived there with them until I
was twenty-three years old.
Our housing project, which was called "The Gar
dens," overlooked Romainville Street. It has since
been demolished. At the time, it was mostly made up
of little houses surrounded by individual gatdens. In
the middle there was a big three-story house that
looked like an apartment block to us. All of the resi
dents of the project workers, but the most de
w~re
prived families could be found in the three-story
house all bunched in together under one roof. Nine
families ·were piled in on top of each other. The five
of us lived there in a kitchen-aparbnent.
We always lmew hard times at home. My father,
who had been a prisoner of war, came home ill and
could never take up normal activities again. He
didn't have a trade and did manual labor. He didn't
last long at a.."':.y job and was unemployed more often
than not because his health didn't allow hlm to stay
on physically-demanding jobs for very long. My
mother, who '"'"as also ill, didn't work. She had been
deeply upset by the war and the bombardments, and
she never got over the death of one of her children in ·
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1945. She had long since stopped working outside the
home.
For a working family with three children, life
wasn't easy •. We were on relief and got assistance
from the city, and we were really poor.
Even so, this situation was the normal thing in
"the house" where mostly "problem" families lived.
People drank, fought, and made terrible scenes. No
one had any money, and they all lived like we did in
kitchen-apartments, sometimes with two families in
one apartment, in incredible cramped conditions.
That's why the children of the house lived outdoors
most of the time, not in the street, but on a narrow
strip of lawn which went all the way around the
"aparbnent block. " For us it was paradise I
Today, there is nothing left of "Tne Gardens" pro
ject, with its lawn and its streets named after flow
ers. It was completely demolished to make way for a
new big housing project. My mother, now a widow,
lives on the thirteenth floor of a concrete world from
which every bit of green has disappeared. She enjoys
the luxury of a bathroom, central heating and other
"conveniences," but she, like most of the other ten
ants, longs for the old project with its gardens and
fruit trees.
And it is true that we used to love our project.
Even for the children of the "house," who didn't have
gardens, there was that irreplaceable lawn of sparse
grass where we were happy to play. Without it, we
would have been even poorer. It was our refuge and
our domain. When things got too tense at home, when
arguments and scenes burst out, or when we just
needed to breathe, to be free and to escape the wretch
edness of our over-crowded quarters, we went out on
the lawn. We would spend hours there, and we had to
be called many times to in because we didn't
~ome
have the heart to go back in the "house" which was so
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inhospitable.
Like many children, we would stake a claim on our'
own territory. And on that bit of lawn that belonged
to us, we would organize celebrations, throw "dinner
parties," and put on plays. We would sometimes
invite other kids from the neighborhood, who would
have to pay for admission with lumps of sugar or
chocolate. We were very strict about who we let in.
We loved to dress up, and my mother, who was very
• helpful, gave us old scraps of cloth and helped us get
made up. This little imaginary world, where each
one brought their ideas, their discoveries, and their
laughter, provided the necessary counterweight to
our family lives.
a
My mother, Catholic and very respectful of cer
tain things, spoke little and shut herself into her role
as a house-wife. My father, on the other hand, was
quite vocal. He called himself an anarchist. In fact
he really wasn't, but he liked to think he was. At
home, they read Liooration (a newspaper edited by
supporters of the French Communist Party),
L' Humanite (the morning Communist Party news
paper) and Ce Soir (which, at the time, was the Com
munist evening newspaper), and sometimes Le Can
ard Enchaine (a liberal paper). So, through news
papers and taLl{s with my father, I got my first polit
ical ideas. At the high school in Lilas, in class
~s
discussions with my teachers, I would express opin
ions in terms of what I had heard at home; often
without under standing them very well!
I used to have long conversations with my father.
Undoubtedly, ·it was from him that I acquired the
taste for reading, that has never left me. My class
mates, too, appreciated him very much when they
visited the house. In spite of our youth, he took the
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trouble to explain a lot of things to us. He posses.sed ,
a certain level of culture and had an excellent mem-
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ory. Even though he came from a very simple family,
he had studied some and had even spent a year at a
seminary before making a complete break with relig
ion. But the war and his illness had broken him. Still,
he had a real influence on me. :
· My taste for reading was known by all my relatives.
All the gifts I ever received were books. I borrowed
books too, and from the time I was able to work, I
bought them myself.
I read, first of all, the works that my father loved:
Anatole France, Balzac, and above all, Zola, who
made the biggest impression on me. But I also appre
ciated Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand • • . • In fact, I
devoured all the reading material I could find. It was
a refuge for me,· an escape. I sat in the window read
ing for hours. Today, my militant activity has shown
me that reading wasn't just a refuge and a flight from
reality, but, on the contrary, a way of knowing other
realities and of enlarging my experience, of living
other situations and knowing the history of people and
their lives. Today I encourage people around me to
read, my friends, the people I work with; and I am
convinced that it for ms a part of my political activity.
There are books that go beyond the differences be
tween countries, languages or periods of time, that
help us to understand society and people. I believe
that no one can be a socialist or a militant if they don't
have the desire to link themselves to humanity and
history; reading is one way of doing this.
Of course, when I was a child, I didn't raise so
many questions about what I read -- I just liked to
read. I even thought of playing hooky to stay at home
with a book. I invented sore throats, and my mother
believed it.
However, I liked to go to school very much, and I
was a good student. But while I really liked some
subjects -- such as French or Natural Science -- I
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had an equally strong dislike for Math courses. I liked
my teachers very much, and I don't remember ever
feeling what nowadays is called "student repression."
Besides, they were always helpful to me -- under
standing my humble background -- and they pushed
me further in my studies by encouraging me to pre
pare for the entrance exam for teacher's college. My
failure at this exam forced me to look for a job, be
cause it was out of the question for me to repeat a
year's studies.
It was absolutely necessary for me to work; we
needed an income at home. I had some regrets at
leaving school, but they were mixed with the joy of
finally earning my own living and making the load on
my family lighter. Even when I was in school, it
wasn't the education I received that hurt me, but the
humiliation of being "on wellare." Because we were
poor, the town gave us packages, medical assistance
and free lunches. It was a good thing,· but it was hu
miliating to be the only one in the whole class to get
free lunch. I would rather have gone without eating.
Nevertheless, there weren't any "rich kids" at
Les Lilas. There were some shopkeepers' daughters
who would come to class in nylons -- at a time when
the rest of us still wore socks and big shoes -- but
there weren't many of them, and they didn't impress
us much. "'We •.:..·ould take our revenge on an intellect
ual level. Sat:irday or Sunday they could go to the
movies when t:.he rest of us didn't have enough money,
but in class, as in the schoolyard, we were equals.
Even so, this lack of money was a sore spot with me.
I suffered the most from it at the age when people
started dating. But it didn't upset me because there
were enough guys and girls in the same position,
which made it easier to feel less alone.
Of course, there were the vacations. Since we
didn't have much money, we never went anywhere. Or
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almost never. When I was really young, I went sev
eral times to stay a month with my mother's family
in the Olse Region, north of Paris. During the war,
I stayed there two years. I remember an old lady
who lived up above my godmother who was terrified
of the bombings. She made us stand under the arched
roof of the house, thinking that nothing would happen
to us there. We would stay there during the air-raid
alerts, then we would go to collect shell fragments
in the garden from the anti-aircraft guns. Those
were my first memories of vacationing in the country.
Later, I gradually stopped going there. In spite of
their kindness, my parents and I weren't overly eager
to go there often. We really didn't have that much in
common. Living in poverty, my father withdrew into
himself and didn't really enjoy discussing the story
of his life with others.
My best memories of the country are still of the
summer camp that I attended. For two years, my
friends and I went "camping" with the parish priest
from the Florea! housing project. He was a "red"
priest. It was well known that he had taken part in
the Resistance movement against the Nazis along with
a woman companion, and that they had been more than
just friends. b his camp, when someone didn't have
money, they didn't pay. Several high-society women
privately financed his work, and distributed toys at
Christmas. '\ve made fun of them a little; as we were
conscious of social injustice, charity was humiliating
to us, even in the form of toys. But the camp, that
was something else! We lived in an old, run-down
mansion, with very few counselors. So we had prac
tically no supervision. The older ones looked after
the younger o:ies, and we played with extraordinary
freedom. A huge park surrounded the mansion, and
we played Robinson Crusoe, eating potatoes we had
baked in the ashes. It was terrific.
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Since then, I believe that tne priest was defrocked.
According to some people, he looks after the boarders
in an old people's home. They also say that he wound
up getting married. In any case, we didn't go to the
chapel any more after he left. In the meantime, my
mother pushed me into making my first communion.
My father, who was a liberal and did not attend church,
didn't care one way or the other. But I must have
been a real pest in catechism, because I was extreme
ly skeptical about what they told us. And on that level
I have never really had a problem with my conscience.
In addition, as an adolescent I was already fully
aware of the problems of love and having children.
This came partly because I had read so much, es
pecially Zola (who shocked the other girls), and partly
because my mother had never hidden the truth from
me.
During this whole period, I never felt resentful
towards my parents. I understood that if it had not
been for the war, my father and mother would have
been different and life would have been much easier.
I left school when I was sixteen, furnished with my
diploma. It wasn't very hard to find work. The Em -
ployment Office to which I had written referred me to
banks which were accepting applications. I started
working at th-2 Credit Lyonnais, which was the first to
accept me. r 11 never forget my first day there: I
didn't have anything appropriate to wear, and a neigh
bor lent me a red raincoat and some shoes. It was
really the limit!
To tell the truth, I was happy to work, almost re
lieved. I had had enough of buying on credit, of being
in debt to the baker and the grocer, of having to go out
of my way to avoid their shops and their remarks. All
of that undoubtedly contributed to a certain feeling of
rebelliousness in me, even though things weren't
quite that simple. But the very fact that I was working
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was a real relief for me at the beginning. I could
bring home a little money and was able, from time to
time, to give myself a treat. I must surely have
seemed like a second mother to my family, especially
my brothers, who were seven and nine years younger
than L Maybe that is what has given me a sense of re
sponsibility.
At first, I was on probation for three months at the
Cr~dit Lyonnais. They taught me to type, and some of
the basics of banking. Then they sent me to a branch
office. It was just a small one in Jules-Joffrin Square,
across from the town hall of the Eighteenth District of
Paris. About twenty people worked there. Right away
I found myself working as a copier, which had nothing
to do with my training on the typewriter. But I had a
job, and that in itself was great.
No, working wasn't revolting to me. Coming from
my background, it was the normal thing to expect. I
didn't even join a union in the beginning. That is a
common attitude for many young people. To join a
union,· to become active at your workplace, is in some
ways to accept in advance a lifetime of work that, at
the age of sLxteen, you would really prefer to consider
temporary. Many young people say, "It's just not pos
sible; you can't spend your whole life in this jail, com
ing in every day at the same time and doing the same
work every day. " And most of them add, "In six
rm
months, going to get out of here -- in a year at
the most." But in reality,-the majority of them stay.
At most, one or two out of ten will get out. Quite of
ten, when you meet them later, they admit that they
are once again doing the same kind of job. It's be
cause they don't, in fact, have a choice. And their
wish to "get out," to work at something more interest
ing, with more pay and freedom, is nothing but a
dream. 'I!ley feel it from the beginning, but don't
,want to recognize it, simply because they are young
and aren't ready to accept it
When I started working at the branch office, I ex
perienced exactly this feeling. And I didn't feel that
union questions concerned me. I was not involved in
the big strike in 1957, which lasted three weeks. I
should also say that at the office there were several
of us young people who were newly hired, and the strik
ers had warned us: "You happen to be new here, you
are still only on probation; it would be better that you
don't strike. They would fire you right off." Every
morning, the strikers gathered in front of the door of
the office, discussing things and then going off to the
central meeting. There were only three or four of us
young people who stayed in the office with the assist
ant director and several other big shots, but we
watched for the arrival of the strikers and didn't work
very much. The atmosphere was pretty extraordinary
and very congenial.
At that time, I was more preoccupied with the
events in Algeria. A certain number of books began to
circulate about the tortures in Algeria, like "La Ques
tion" (Torture) by Alleg. That such things existed;
that their existence was denied so peacefully by those
who were responsible; that so many people who knew
what was going on allowed themselves to keep silent -
all this is what moved me so deeply to revolt! I felt a
need to do something, to act, and very quickly, be
cause the sit.:ation seemed so totally intolerable to me.
Finally, u!1ion involvement came after my polit
~y
ical invoh"ement. This isn't unusual: during the ten or
twelve year.s that I have been active, I have noticed
very often that young people are more disturbed, more
interested, and even more stirred up by prob
po~itical
lems, or simply human problems, than by material
difficulties. That's comforting and very normal: young
people aren't broken yet and haven't been made selfish.
So they are capable of suffering and of being shocked
by injustices that don't touch them directly, but which
go against the human values in which they believe.
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My first political discussions at the off ice dealt
with Hungary, Algeria and racism. I was reading
L' Humanite then, and on the question of Hungary, for
a long time I thought like the French Communist
Party. For me, if the bourgeois paper Le Figar0
defended the insurgents, it was because they were on
the same side. It was simplistic reasoning that didn't
entirely satisfy me, but if I had any doubts, I didn't
express them. In front of others, especially in front
of my office friends, I def ended the positions of the
French C. P. But it was about Algeria and racism
that we got hung up the most. For most of the people
who worked with me, the war was first of all the
fault of those "dirty Algerians that were killing our
young French soldiers." I thought it was normal
and just that the Algerians would try to liberate them
selves, and I was ashamed of this war that the French
soldiers were fighting. Besides, I was horrified by
the racism that existed in the Eighteenth District
where "my" office was located. We were not far
from the Goutte d'Or district, the real Algerian sec
tion in Paris, where police raids, beatings, tor
tures and sometimes shootings occurred daily.
Racism was something I did not feel personally; I dis
covered its violence and complexity through the preju
dices of those around me.
Nevertheless, I didn't become active yet. I was
said to have a leftist frame of mind because of the
ideas I def ended, but that was all. Moreover, there
weren't any C. P. members in my office to encourage
me to join the Party. Whether it was because of Hun
gary or because of Algeria, I expressed a certain
number of ,·ague but conscious reservations that pre
vented me from joining. But I continued to read
L' Humanite and it was through the eyes of that paper
that I saw the events of May 13, 1958. For me,
deGaulle meant Hitler and fascism. However, I didn't
go to the big popular demonstration on May 28, 1958.
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