Gaston Monmousseau

Gaston Monmousseau
Monmousseau speaking in Birkelunden, Oslo, Norway (1938)
Born	(1883-01-17)17 January 1883 Luynes, Indre-et-Loire, France
Died	11 July 1960(1960-07-11) (aged 77) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Trade union leader and politician
Known for	Secretary-general of the CGTU

Gaston Monmousseau (17 January 1883 – 11 July 1960) was a French railway worker, trade union leader, politician and author, from a rural working-class background. He became an anarcho-syndicalist, then a communist, and played a leading role in the French Communist Party and in the national trade union movement both before and after World War II (1939–45).

Gaston Monmousseau was born on 17 January 1883 in Luynes, Indre-et-Loire. His parents were Jean and Marie-Silvine Monmousseau. In his autobiography he describes himself as coming from a family of serfs attached to the Duke of Luynes. His grandfather was a Republican during the Second French Empire and his father was a radical after the Paris Commune, then a socialist against the decay of radicalism, and then a communist against the decay of socialism. Gaston Monmousseau grew up in the village of Azay-sur-Cher. After leaving school he apprenticed with a carpenter in Luynes, then moved to Tours where he worked as a carpenter. Although he had no more than elementary education, he later managed to teach himself to write and speak effectively.

After his military service Monmousseau joined the state railway in Paris in 1910. He became an anarcho-syndicalist, and was active in the railway workers' union. In January 1913 he organized an anti-militarist rally in a hotel in Azay-sur-Cher. During World War I (1914–18) he worked on railway maintenance. He was enthusiastic about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. This gave him an enduring internationalist and pacifist outlook. He wrote later,

If someone had said to us at that moment, "You are blindly following Lenin," they would have been saying only the strict truth. But if they had added, "You are merely adoring the Leninist deity," we would have responded in all simplicity, "We do not know exactly what Leninism is, but we love and follow Lenin because he is the leader of the Socialist Revolution, and we are revolutionaries."

At the first postwar congress of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT: Confédération générale du travail), held in Lyon from 15–21 September 1919, Monmousseau was among the leaders of the minority, with Pierre Monatte, Raymond Péricat and Joseph Tommasi. This group denounced the CGT membership in the Amsterdam International of Labor Unions, and said the CGT majority had broken with the principles of syndicalism and lost faith in revolution by dealing with the government. The minority wanted the CGT to join the Communist International, seize power and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. They led a committee of 26 minority unions that was formed in October 1919, later named the Comité Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire (CST). In April 1920 Monmousseau was elected propaganda secretary for the railway workers federation and was arrested, along with Souvarine and Monatte, for plotting against state security. He was released in February 1921.