Part 1, Chapter 17 : The Anarcho-Communist Union and the Poincaré Government

CHAPTER XVII. The Anarcho-Communist Union and the Poincaré government

Louis Lecoin set out to do nothing less than crush French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré’s foreign policy. Louis Barthou—a faithful servant of the bourgeoisie—was the Minister of Justice—and the veteran socialist Aristides Briand occupied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The government called itself the “leftwing block” and had won the elections on May 4, 1924 under that name (against the “rightwing block”). The Socialists were well represented in the National Assembly, which had the Radical-Socialist Édouard Herriot as president. However, this leftwing government executed the policies of the right, both internationally as well as domestically. We can find proof of this in its conduct in Morocco, where it helped Alfonso XIII exterminate Abdel-Krim’s guerrillas. The culmination of the government’s friendly policy toward Spain was of course its reception of Alfonso XIII and Miguel Primo de Rivera in June and, as a final touch, its consent to Argentina’s extradition demand for Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover on October 26, 1926. Extraordinary reasons of state must have been at work for the French leftwing government to risk its electorate’s rage by satisfying Alfonso XIII via Buenos Aires. Where to open fire first? Lecoin decided that the best strategy would be to involve the League of the Rights of Man in the campaign and, toward that end, met with an elderly lady named Mrs. Severine, who had publicly defended the Spaniards and denounced Alfonso XIII and his regime on various occasions. As expected, Mrs. Severine reaffirmed her support for Spain’s radical workers and promised Lecoin that she would help him gain access to the League of the Rights of Man. While she did so, the Durruti-Ascaso-Jover Asylum Support Committee began its campaign with a rally on October 25 in “Les Societés Savantes de Paris.” The speakers at the event were: Cané, for the Social Defense Committee; Louis Huart, for the Union fédérative des syndicats autonomes (trans.: Federation of Autonomous Unions); Henry Berthon, one of the Spanish trio’s defense lawyers; Georges Pioch, a writer; Sebastián Faure, for the IADC; and a Spanish member of the League of the Rights of Man.

The rally was a success and Parisian newspapers commented upon it at length. Articles published in papers such as Le Populaire, L’Oeuvre, Era Nouvelle, Le Quotidien, and L’Humanité all suggested that this would be a dynamic campaign.

Meanwhile, bearing a recommendation from Mrs. Severine, Lecoin paid a visit to Mrs. Dorian Mesnard. Dorian then introduced him to the President of the League, Mr. Victor Basch. The meeting between Basch and Louis Lecoin was a disaster. Justice Minister Barthou had already warned Basch against getting mixed up in a common law criminal case and, as a result, Basch told Lecoin that all his efforts were in vain: the defendants were guilty and the League would not take part in campaigns of that nature. Lecoin undiplomatically spoke his mind to the president of the League and stormed out of the premises. He concluded that his attempt to enlist the League was a failure.

To his surprise, Lecoin received a telephone call later that afternoon from Mr. Guernut, the League’s secretary, who asked him for a complete file on the detained Spaniards. What caused Victor Basch to change his mind? It must have been Mrs. Severine or perhaps even Mrs. Dorian Mesnard. However it occurred, the important thing was that the League was going to take on the case. Lecoin realized that it wasn’t going to be easy to force Poincaré to capitulate, but new possibilities were emerging. [177]

On November 5, 1926, Le Libertaire commented on the French government’s willingness to deliver Durruti and his friends to Argentine police. “Will it dare send them to their deaths?” it asked. The following week Le Libertaire announced that there would be another protest rally in “Les Societés Savantes” on November 15 and that Sebastián Faure and writer Han Ryner would address the audience. It added: “Jover, Alamarcha, Durruti, and Ascaso could be handed over to the Argentine government at any moment. Workers of Paris, we will stop the extradition!” The same issue also contained a statement from the League of the Rights of Man protesting the extradition and a letter from Ascaso and Durruti to the Anarcho-Communist Union, which they had sent eight days earlier from the Conciergerie. They wrote:

Dear comrades: Even if the courts prove that we were going to kill Alfonso XIII, in hopes that his death would lead to a positive change in Spain, would that be enough reason for Republican France to take the side of our enemies and deliver us to their class vengeance?

And yet that is what is happening: we have been officially notified that we will be handed over to Argentine police.

While that news may surprise us, it doesn’t weaken our spirit. It was long ago that we offered our lives to our beautiful and just cause.

It is unfortunate that there is such a nasty campaign against us, and that we’re accused of acts for which we bear no responsibility, but we won’t flinch before the vengefulness of the Argentine and Spanish governments.

However, our comrade Jover has two children; one is three years old and the other only eighteen months. He loves both deeply and it’s imperative that he isn’t separated from them, either through execution or because he is sent to prison for life.

We hope that the French Republican government—which offers us so willingly to the Spanish tyrants—will think before it turns Jover’s children into orphans.

If we are extradited, so be it! But we ask for a new investigation of Jover’s case and that justice be declared without regard for diplomatic considerations.

Fraternally yours: F. Ascaso and B. Durruti.[178]

Le Libertaire commented on the letter:

We don’t know if this letter had any impact in governmental circles, but presumably it didn’t mitigate the “reasons of state.” However, large numbers of French proletarians that belong to the CGT pressured its general secretary Jouhaux, who was obliged to intervene directly in the government. If Ministers Briand and Barthou’s responses to Jouhaux were unsatisfactory, they did leave open the possibility that the trial might be reviewed.... Clearly the ministers in question are sensitive to the protests that have come to them from all quarters.... But police department superiors can change the situation: simply to please their Argentine colleagues, they could hand over Durruti and his friends without waiting for the French government’s decision. With respect to that possibility, defense lawyer Henry Torres just reminded the courts that his clients have made an appeal and that they expect French law to follow its normal course.[179]

The same day that he spoke with French legal authorities, Torres wrote the Argentine ambassador and set up a meeting with him, various lawyers, and several French deputies. The later group was on a list that Louis Lecoin was drawing up: he had set out to gather the support of more than fifty percent of National Assembly representatives and then to present the list of supporters to the Prime Minister with a statement demanding freedom for Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover. If Lecoin managed to collect these signatures, Poincaré would be obliged to release the Spaniards or resign. In either case, the antiparliamentarian Lecoin would defeat Prime Minister Poincaré.

The situation was desperate for the French government. On the one hand, it was under serious pressure from Spain, which passionately wanted Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover to be extradited, whether to Spain or Argentina. The result would be the same in either case, because the Spaniards would ultimately obtain their prisoners from Argentina if they were sent there. But, on the other hand, if the French government extradited them, it would be making a mockery of the Rights of Man—the foundation of the French Republic itself—and could outrage the French proletariat, which was well informed about the case. How could it extract itself from the impasse? Its solution was to secretly deliver one of the four defendants to the Spanish government: José Alamarcha. His delivery might have a remained a secret had it not been reported by Le Libertaire. The newspaper wrote:

When we learned that the French government had refused to hand over Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, we assumed that José Alamarcha would also be safe. There were no serious charges against him and he was the least “guilty” of the four. At the most, he might have faced expulsion.

But, then, eight days ago, Alamarcha’s jailers took him from his cell, saying that they were going to bring him to the Belgian border. And now we have found out that they delivered Alamarcha to the Spanish police. Shame on the French government, which kneels before the Spanish dictator! Shame on Poincaré’s false Republicans, who send an innocent man to the garrote just to please that bloodthirsty rascal Alfonso XIII! Now we fear for Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover. We cannot trust anything the authorities say.... Revolutionary comrades, we must save our comrades! Go to the rally on November 30, 1926![180]

Days later, on December 3, 1926, Le Libertaire printed the following note:

The French Government just informed the secretary of the League of the Rights of Man that Argentine police now acknowledge that the fingerprints that they gave French authorities were not taken at the scene of the robbery in San Martín. The Argentines admit that they received the fingerprints from a foreign government.

Why hasn’t the French Government released its three hostages? Will it continue to detain these men who rise above our poor humanity with their courage and moral energy? Will it do this for reasons of pride, when there is no legal justification whatsoever?

Despite everything, France stuck to its October 26 decision to extradite the anarchists, although it did not dare deliver the three men languishing in the Conciergerie to the Argentine policemen waiting for them in Paris. In the street, the Anarcho-Communist Union continued organizing rallies to galvanize public sentiment, adding the protests for the three Spaniards to those organized against the scheduled execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The campaigns were vigorous. The leftwing press played a role, but it was militants from the International Anarchist Defense Committee who bore most of the weight of the mobilization and who were the only ones who genuinely wanted to extract the five anarchists from the hands of the respective governments.

On December 10, Le Libertaire announced that another rally would be held four days later and printed a letter from Argentine comrades about the case. It said: “Our Argentine friends tell us that they are carrying out the same campaign in their country as the one that we’re carrying out in France. And they warn that if Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover are handed over to the Argentine police, that they will try to make them pay for all the terrorist acts attributed to Argentine anarchists in recent years. They haven’t forgiven the anarchists for the death of Police Chief Colonel Falcón.”

On November 21, 1926, Buenos Aires’s Crítica newspaper noted the contradictions in the French government’s position and also that Argentine police never really thought that France would agree to extradite them. It wrote:

But the unthinkable occurred: France accepted the extradition request, although it really should have rejected it, since there were only suppositions against the defendants. Indeed, there was nothing more than a vague statement from a witness who said he recognized them after seeing their photograph.

Furthermore, anarchists are not bandits. Indeed, Argentine and French police have acknowledged on several occasions that Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover are militant anarchists. If they really are anarchists, as a leader of our country’s Security forces has also declared, they could not have committed common law offenses.

Revolutionaries do not carry out such crimes. Had Ascaso, Durruti, or Jover done so, their comrades would have been the first to eject them from their ranks.

These comments in Crítica reflected views expressed in a survey organized by the newspaper, in which numerous workers defended Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover as authentic revolutionaries with the right to struggle for freedom in Spain.

But public opinion and the press mattered little to Argentine police: for them the issue had become a matter of pride. The police defiantly continued to push Argentina’s President to secure the delivery of the three Spaniards. However, as the police were ready to seize their prey, Argentine anarchists were prepared to snatch them away from them. The Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover issue was the order of the day at workers’ meetings and rallies, which police did their best to stop. Osvaldo Bayer describes the spirited perseverance of the Argentine anarchists:

La Antorcha, the Social Prisoner Support Committee, and the autonomous unions of bakers, plasterers, painters, drivers, carpenters, shoe makers, car washers, bronze polishers, the Committee of Relations between the Italian Groups (which Severino di Giovanni and Aldo Aguzzi lead) and the Bulgarian Group, are not daunted by police threats and organize “lightning” rallies. In this respect, the anarchists are quite eccentric and use truly unusual methods. For example, they plan a meeting in Once Plaza and then announce it publicly. Authorities order the mounted police to surround the site and disperse the small group there. Then an anarchist comes out of the subway and leans on the railing of the tunnel exit that opens into the plaza, while another two, from the staircase, immediately chain him to the railing.[181] They bind their comrade to the rails and then he begins to speak with one of those booming voices that has been exercised at hundreds of assemblies and meetings where neither amplifiers nor electric systems are used:

“Here, come listen! Here we are! The anarchists! Shouting the truth about comrades Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover!”

The police run toward his voice and discover the incredible spectacle of a man crucified with chains and speaking rapid-fire. While they react, asking for orders and talking among themselves, the anarchist delivers a lengthy sermon to pedestrians, whose responses range from fear to stupefaction.

At first the police try to shut him up with a club blow, but the anarchist continues speechifying and the event becomes even more of a spectacle. Clearly that strategy would not work: hitting a tied up, defenseless man turns anyone’s stomach. Then they try to cover his mouth, but that doesn’t work either, because the anarchist pushes the gag aside and chokes out more words, which only heightens the grotesqueness of the scene. More curious bystanders gather around. Ultimately, the police have to hold back and wait for a locksmith from the Central Department, who takes about an hour to cut the chains. Of course, in the meantime, the orator gives three or four additional speeches that touch on every topic: Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, Sacco and Vanzetti, Radowitzky, the prisoners of Viedma, Alvear (whom the anarchist calls “the petty thief ” or “one hundred kilos of fat”), the police (“donkey kickers” and “savage soldiers”), Carlés (“the honorable swine”), members of the Patriotic League (“rich kids,” “homosexual reprobates”) ... communism (“authoritarian cretinism”), soldiers (“idiot orangutans”), etc. No one was spared![182]

While authorities continued wrestling with whether to give Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover to Buenos Aires, the issue, as well as Alamarcha’s delivery to Spain, created a deep strain in the French Parliament. Several Socialists began to reconsider the thorny matter.

“At the time, police had complete control over the destiny of any foreigner demanded by another government. They decided without hearing or appeal. Only the government could stop an extradition. The situation was particularly bleak with Poincaré as Prime Minister and Barthou in the Ministry of Justice. They simply had no heart.” [183]

France’s confusing stance on extradition demands became an issue in the Parliament and several parliamentarians proposed legislation on the topic that would end the police’s arbitrary control. The Senate approved the new legislation on December 9, 1926. Senator Vallier described it in these terms: “Previously we did not have clear laws on extraditions in France. This is surprising in a country that has made great efforts to secure individual liberty for more than a century.”

There was a clear need to prevent the police’s arbitrariness and abuse. From then on, the Supreme Court had to authorize extraditions and in each case would conduct an in-depth investigation of the matter, with the participation of the accused, their interpreters, and their lawyers. Furthermore, article 5, section 2 of the law specified that “extradition will not be granted when the crime is political in nature or results from political circumstances of the state soliciting the extradition.” [184]

This law’s only shortcoming for the case that concerns us was that it wasn’t retroactive and therefore would not apply to Durruti and his comrades. Nevertheless, the existence of this legislation was positive and their lawyers could lodge an appeal to make it retroactive.