Charles Gagnon

Front de libération du Québec
Flag of the FLQ
Country	Canada
Foundation	1963
Dissolved	1970
Preceded by	Réseaux de résistance
Motives	Creation of an independent socialist Quebec state
Active region(s)	Quebec
Ideology	Québécois nationalism Left wing nationalism Socialism Marxism-Leninism
Notable attacks	Montreal Stock Exchange Bombing, Two kidnappings of government officials, various others
Status	Inactive
Means of revenue	Bank robbery

The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ; "Quebec Liberation Front"; French pronunciation: ​[fʁɔ̃ də libeʁasjɔ̃ dy kebɛk]) was a separatist and Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group in Quebec. Founded in the early 1960s, it was a militant part of the Quebec sovereignty movement. It conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970, which totalled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more. These attacks culminated with the bombing of the in 1969, and with the October Crisis in 1970, which began with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. Public outcry and a federal crackdown subsequently ended the crisis and resulted in a drastic loss of support, with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba.

FLQ members practised propaganda of the deed and issued declarations that called for a socialist insurrection against oppressors identified with "Anglo-Saxon" imperialism, the overthrow of the Quebec government, the independence of Quebec from Canada and the establishment of a French-speaking Quebecer "workers' society". It gained the support of many left-leaning students, teachers and academics up to 1970, who engaged in public strikes in solidarity with FLQ during the October crisis. After the kidnapping of Cross, nearly 1,000 students at Université de Montréal signed a petition supporting the FLQ manifesto. This public support largely ended after the group announced they had executed Laporte, in a public communique that ended with an insult of the victim. Nonetheless, they continued to receive the support of other far-left organizations such as the Communist Party of Canada and the League for Socialist Action. The KGB, which had established contact with the FLQ before 1970, later forged documents to portray them as a CIA false flag operation, a story that gained limited traction among academic sources before declassified Soviet archives revealed the ruse. By the early 1980s, most of the imprisoned FLQ members had been paroled or released.