Marie Guillot
| Marie Guillot | |
|---|---|
Marie Guillot
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| Born |
9 September 1880 Damerey, Saône-et-Loire, France |
| Died | 5 March 1934 (aged 53) Lyon, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Teacher |
| Known for | Women's rights activism |
Marie Guillot (9 September 1880 – 5 March 1934) was a teacher in Saône-et-Loire and a pioneer of trade unionism in primary education. She associated the social emancipation that syndicalism would bring with the empowerment of women. An anarcho-syndicalist, she was a member of the national leadership of the Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU – General Confederation of Trade Unions) in 1922–1923. She was active in the struggle of the anarchists, who believed in a decentralized or federal organization of workers' syndicates, against the communists who believed in a central organization.
Marie Guillot was born in September 1880 at Damerey, in the Bresse region of the department of Saône-et-Loire, where her family was rooted. For the rest of her life Marie Guillot kept strong ties to this area of southern Burgundy. Her father, an agricultural day laborer, died when she was only three years old. To feed Marie and her sister, her mother left the Bresse countryside to work in the nearest town, Chalon-sur-Saône, where she found employment as a daily washerwoman. Marie was a good student at school, instructed by a lay teacher. She gained the Brevet supérieur, the qualification needed for minor public service.
In 1899 Marie Guillot became a primary school teacher, and was able to support her mother. After several years as a substitute teacher, and positions in schools in Mâcon, the Autun region and Bresse, she gained tenure in a school in a small village in the Côte Chalonnaise. She taught from 1904 to 1921. She remained single, sharing her energies between teaching and trade union activities. Around 1910 she founded the Saône-et-Loire section of the Fédération des syndicats d'instituteurs (Federation of teachers unions), and assumed the secretariat in a hostile administrative environment.
The harsh life of Guillot's parents, her own living conditions, and harassment by the administrative hierarchy convinced her of the need for unions. These factors also made her an adherent of the Socialist Party, probably under the influence of another teacher from Saône-et-Loire, Théo Bretin. She agreed with the anarcho-syndicalists that future society would be organized into syndicates. She was among the subscribers to the small journal La Vie ouvrière (Worker's Life) published by the Confédération générale du travail (CGT: General confederation of labor). In 1913 she began a long-lasting correspondence with Pierre Monatte, the editor. Some of her letters were published by Colette Chambelland and Jean Maitron in Syndicalisme révolutionnaire et Communisme. In July 1913 La Vie ouvrière published an article signed "Marie Guillot". She wrote as an experienced activist.
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