WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #358 - History - Reissue: Syndicalists and Libertarians. A History of the UTCL (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The Union of Libertarian Communist Workers is one of the important roots

of today's UCL. Recounting its history, from the struggles of 1974 to
the emergence of strike coordination in 1986, offers a glimpse into the
history of the labor movement. In April 1976, a group of young workers
was expelled from the Anarchist Revolutionary Organization (ORA) and
founded the Union of Libertarian Communist Workers (UTCL). This was the
era of the "end of leftism," fueled by May 1968. The revolution was not
just around the corner: sloganeering could no longer be enough; a
medium-term revolutionary strategy was needed. Hence the increasingly
tense debates within the ORA about the direction to take. The majority,
renamed the Libertarian Communist Organization (OCL), opted for
anti-organizational spontaneity and experienced rapid decline. The UTCL
minority opted to invest in direct action unionism and found itself
involved in resisting the CFDT's refocusing.

Protest Coordination
While the decline in struggles in the 1980s was fatal to a section of
the far left, the UTCL survived by linking its destiny to this trade
union left, which, by focusing on collective struggles and embracing
self-management, would spawn the SUD unions in the following decade.

 From the major strikes of 1974 to the "yellow trucks" struggle in 1989,
through the emergence of strike coordination in 1986 at the SNCF, and
the protest clamor of ground mechanics in the airline sector, telling
the story of the UTCL is to have a slice of labor movement history as a
backdrop. It includes little-known debates and political coups-such as
the "unity" march on May 1, 1980-to enforce the need for worker unity at
the grassroots, despite the divisions between the CFDT and CGT union
bureaucracies of the time. The UTCL would eventually dissolve in 1991
into Alternative Libertaire, a new organization that sought to be
broader and, in particular, enabled generational renewal. The first
edition of this book, in 2013, was much larger[1]. In this revised and
summarized version by Théo Roumier, the appendices have been removed to
streamline the overall volume. They have been made freely available on
the UCL website, where you can find a photo album, two interviews-one on
the ORA and one with twelve UTCL alumni-and the UTCL's self-critical
assessment, adopted at its final congress in 1991[2].

It is both a historical document on an era-the 1980s-that was less
ungrateful than one might think in terms of struggles, and a useful
training and politicization tool for all revolutionaries.

Guillaume (UCL Montreuil)

Book: Théo Roumier, Syndicalists and Libertarians. A History of UTCL
(1974-1991), ed. Libertarian Alternative, 2025, 240 pages.

Validate

[1]Théo Roumier, Syndicalists and Libertarians. A History of the Union
of Libertarian Communist Workers (1974-1991), ed. Libertarian
Alternative, 2013, 316 pages.

[2]https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Syndicalistes-et-libertaires-Une-histoire-de-l-UTCL-1974-1991

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Reedition-Syndicalistes-et-libertaires-Une-histoire-de-l-UTCL
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