A short biography of Gérard Lagorce, French anarchist communist militant, active in the 1968 events and in the struggles of the Longwy steel workers.
“Gérard was not a trade unionist, neither in soul nor in thought, but rather a lucid supporter of a possible workers' autonomy, with a good dose of pragmatism. And if he used the trade union tool like other instruments, it was, for want of anything better, above all to make possible a type of workers' organization at an interprofessional level that he favoured above all and that he considered the elementary basis of the class struggle. For him, this participated in some way in the formation of workers' communities in struggle on a territorial basis, where everyone mixed, mingled and made solidarity a concrete attitude, a permanent and almost instinctive way of being; industrial workers, railway workers, temporary workers, the unemployed, the precarious, more secure workers in public services, teachers, etc., natives of Lorraine and immigrants from all latitudes and all generations, very numerous in the basin...” Gérard’s comrade JF reminiscing about him- see here: https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3675
Born in the Paris region, Gérard Lagorce joined the Nanterre Anarchist Group as a high school student. He then obtained his baccalaureate and continued being active in that group, as a student in the psychology faculty of Nanterre University. One of the most Nanterre-based of the group, he was one of the leading lights of the Liaison des étudiants anarchistes (LEA) -Anarchist Students Liaison- which was one of the indications of the coming student revolt and of the events of 1968.
He was one of the 142 who occupied the administrative tower at Nanterre University and founded the Le Mouvement du 22 Mars (March 22nd Movement), and was a significant actor in the May-June events in Paris.
After the events of May-June 1968, he took an active part in the struggle against the Franco dictatorship.
Having become a psychologist, in 1975 he was transferred to a medical-psychological centre in Longwy in Lorraine. There, where he worked right up until retirement, he became immersed in the working class world, as he was in contact with working class families on a daily basis and acquired a detailed knowledge of the iron and steel industries. He joined the CFDT union and was an important figure in defending the steelworkers against capitalist restructuring. He took part in the actions against sackings at Denain and Longwy in 1979, when the Davignon Plan proposed the cutting of 21,500 jobs over 18 months, mainly in these two basins of the national steel industry.
He took an active part in the pirate radio stations Lorraine cœur d'Acier (CGT) and SOS-Emploi (CFDT) and the direct actions of the workers' movement. He left the CFDT union as it shifted rightwards, with dozens of forming the autonomous group that existed between 1979 and 1984 in the Longwy basin, and which assembled union (from both the CFDT and CGT) and non-union members. This carried out a number of actions, including the ransacking of the office of the local socialist MP and the attack on the communist town hall of Longwy.
After this he joined the CGT and in the local union fought against Daewoo, who had acquired public subsidies for the conversion of the steel industry, and then abruptly decided to close down the local factory at Mont Saint-Martin, and relocate elsewhere. He was one of the linchpins of the Support Committee for Kamel Belkhadi, then incriminated for the fire at the Daewoo factory.
In the 1980s he joined the Organisation Communist Libertaire (OCL) and supplied articles for its paper Courant Alternatif on the struggles at Longwy, as well as writing a book put out by the OCL publishing house Acratie in 1990, Longwy 82-88, worker autonomy and unionism, under his main pseudonym Hagar Dunor, (after the genial Viking comic character) which he also used in the columns of Courant Alternatif.
He was not just involved in industrial struggles but in immigrant solidarity and in anti-nuclear struggles. He supported the anti-nuclear actions at Bure, in the neighbouring department of Meuse, where radioactive waste was due to be buried, and was concerned to bring revolutionary struggle and anti-nuclear struggle together.
In February 1991 he was one of the signatories of the Manifesto War Against War calling for civil and military disobedience to the Gulf War, which appeared in the pages of Courant Alternatif.
In recent years, as his health deteriorated, he was still active in many social struggles, including against the pension reforms.
He died on 30th March 2023.
Nick Heath
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