WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL - Interview, Patrice Spadoni and Thierry Renard: "There was a whole mythology surrounding the ORA" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Patrice Spadoni and Thierry Renard are among the co-founders of the

Union of Libertarian Communist Workers in 1976, of SUD-PTT in 1989, of
Libertarian Alternative in 1991, of Act against unemployment! in 1994...
It was in 1971, still high school students, that they took their first
steps in activism by joining the Anarchist Revolutionary Organization.
They provide a unique testimony on the last five years of this
organization, before they participated in the creation of UTCL. ---- The
Anarchist Revolutionary Organization (ORA), which existed from 1969 to
1976, is a relatively little-known organization, in which you cut your
political teeth. Could you tell us about it?

Patrice Spadoni: I joined the ORA in 1971. I was then a student at the
Claude-Bernard high school, in Paris 16th , a fairly bourgeois high
school, but very politicized, with its strike every spring. Coming from
a disadvantaged background, I was a little lost there ! In this high
school, the previous year there had been Michel Field, who two years
later would be one of the main leaders of the high school movement of
1973. An already brilliant boy, who came to high school in the car his
parents had bought him - which, it must be said, was quite disturbing
for me !

For my part, I was a political high school student, and I was trying to
organize myself. So I snooped around the Communist League. Fortunately,
the discovery of a book on Kronstadt made me "  decided  " about
Bolshevism, which I then completely rejected.

So there remained the libertarians. Basically, there were four "
tendencies  " visible in the anarchist movement at the time:
- those called the "  ploums  ", a movement in which I had fun for a
while, but politically it was quickly quite limited ;
- the Anarchist Federation, which we saw as a rather dusty museum ;
- a movement of local "  anar  " groups, quite heterogeneous ;
- and then there was the ORA: a young organization, very well known, and
surrounded (it is fair to say) by a sort of aura.

Thierry Renard (2008)
Thierry Renard: There was a whole mythology surrounding the ORA. How
many are there ? Who is actually running this ? From the outside, we
didn't imagine that it was only a few dozen guys, because the ORA
brought together huge processions in demonstrations, and there were lots
of things being said about its effectiveness, on the power of its
security service... These were fantasies maintained both by the
bourgeois press and by the activists of other organizations.

  However, three years after May 1968, in this climate considered
pre-revolutionary, " military " questions  were overvalued. And "
militarily speaking  ", for the high school students that we were,
fascinated to a certain extent by violence and demonstrations of force,
the ORA was a very impressive organization.

There were often demonstrations against the Vietnam War, very violent
and very organized. I particularly remember one time when, with a few
friends, we came to the meeting that the ORA had arranged for us, in a
street, for a demonstration against the American embassy. We arrive at
the meeting, and there: no one. So we walk around in circles a bit,
wondering if we haven't made a mistake... And suddenly, we see dozens of
guys - I say "  guys  " because there were really very few girls, which
corresponded to this military climate - coming down from the surrounding
buildings, with iron bars, taking out helmets that were hidden under
cars, and leaving in a demonstration immediately, with the Proletarian
Left arriving as reinforcements at the same time ! Amazing! We could
only be fascinated by this efficiency.


The ORA in demonstration
Without place or date.
Patrice Spadoni: So, in 1971, Olivier Sagette, a high school friend,
took me to the ORA headquarters, which was located at 33, rue des
Vignoles, in Paris.

Thierry Renard: The place belonged to the Spanish CNT in exile. She had
welcomed the ORA there when it had split from the FA in March 1970. It
was for the CNT a way of encouraging a revolutionary anarchist current
breaking with the FA, which they judged to have been non-existent in May
68. It must be remembered that at the time, the CNT-F barely existed.

Libertarian Front No. 4 (January 1971)
Patrice Spadoni: So we met the ORA activists who, on rue des Vignoles,
cohabited with quite a few veterans of the Spanish CNT in exile. " Exile
  " was a whole universe. All these very well dressed gentlemen, suits
and ties, in their fifties or sixties, workers (often in construction)
very dignified, even rigid - in terms of morals, we were very, very far
from May 68, women were relatively absent from the scene political, and
relegated to the kitchens. Some old Spaniards regularly came to rue des
Vignoles to have their hair cut, during sessions organized by the Unique
Union of Hairdressers of Barcelona !

"  The Exile  " was a considerable environment, with a very strong
identity: thousands of people, who still lived here, and who were only
inhabited by two ideas: Spain, and overthrowing Franco. They had no
political activity in France, but were capable of filling the large hall
of the Mutualité for anti-Franco meetings, or concerts by Paco Ibañez in
support of the cause.

Thierry Renard: In these meetings, all the old Spaniards lined up at the
cash register to put in their donation, intended to finance the "
internal resistance  ". In short, we can easily imagine the total
fascination that it could have been for us, high school students, to
spend time with anarchist workers, who had lived through the Spanish
Revolution !

Patrice Spadoni: Between these polite old anarchists and us, young
disheveled leftists, the cultural gap was total. The premises on rue des
Vignoles were impeccable, and when we left a mess - which happened often
- we got yelled at a lot !

Following our meeting with ORA activists in 1971, we decided to create a
Libertarian Front circle at our Claude-Bernard high school, which was
the reception structure, in a way, for new activists.

The Libertarian Front (CFL) circles were a way for the ORA to structure
a sympathetic movement, but it was completely different from what the
Friends of Libertarian Alternative are today for example, because the
CFL were active activist circles. In theory, the CFL should be made up
of sympathizers, but led by militant members of the ORA. In reality this
was not always possible, far from it. In certain cities there were CFLs
but no ORA activists to lead them. Consequently it was up to them to
manage...

For example, at our high school, there was no activist to follow our
CFL, which we had named Auteuil-Boulogne or something of the sort - we
had attached a name of a suburban town which sounded less bourgeois than
"Auteuil  "  ...

This ORA-Libertarian Front circles hierarchy was quickly resented by CFL
activists. It must be said that the situation was quite paradoxical: we
sold Libertarian Front, we campaigned, we participated in the ORA AGMs
on rue des Vignoles... but we were left out of the decisions, because
officially not members of the ORA.

There was therefore a fairly lively debate on the integration of CFL
activists within the ORA, and the CFL of our high school pushed hard on
this. We ended up winning our case: the CFL were integrated, somewhat
hastily, into the ORA.

At the same time I wanted to structure a high school sector of the ORA.
I even had to give me a title like "  secretary of the high school
sector  ". In reality everything had to be built. I emphasize that I did
this almost as a maverick, there was no follow-up from the ORA
facilitators. I did what I wanted.

And one of the things I did was to head towards the Michelet high
school, in Porte-de-Vanves, where there was a fairly large anarchist
group, and I said to myself that there was surely a way to get them to
the organization.

Libertarian Front No. 33 (April 1974).
Thierry Renard: For my part, I was a boarder at this Michelet high
school, where there was a very large anarchist group - 40 or 50 people,
with peaks of 70 per period. It was a very dynamic group who, without
telling each other, "  held  " the school. When, on strike, we occupied
the high school, when we said that we self-managed it, it was real: we
were at home, we organized maintenance, counter-courses, etc.

One of our main struggles was to have the beautiful Michelet high school
park open to residents of the surrounding working-class neighborhoods.
Although we were what we might call "  ploums  ", we had this form of
class consciousness. For example, one of our principles, which we held
very dear, was that the high school maintenance workers should never "
pay  " for our stupidities. When we made a mess in the canteen, we threw
up everything, but we cleaned up afterwards ourselves.

Michelet was a boys' high school, which adjoined a girls' high school,
which was an obvious source of disorder, because we were always trying
to bring down the girls' high school, any pretext was good. The
Jeunesses Communistes (JC) were quite established in the girls' high
school, unlike ours. It must be said that in Michelet there were two
political groups that we had banned: the FAFs and the JC. The JC was in
retaliation for the hostility of the PCF, which forbade us from sending
leaflets to the surrounding markets.

We participated in demonstrations, where Trotskyists and Maoists of all
kinds annoyed us quite a bit. As unbelievable as it may seem, they were
trying to line up the high school students to march ! They were
completely "  inhabited  " by Bolshevism, and the conviction that they
were going to lead the revolution !

Patrice Spadoni: The first time I met the anarchist group from the
Michelet high school in a demonstration and I wanted to talk to them, I
was assigned someone who was in charge of security, a big guy with long
hair, with Indian war paint (!) on his face: it was Thierry. (laughs)

Thierry Renard: As for the war paint, it's true. I was quite hooked by
this romanticism of violence. At the time, at the end of each
demonstration, there were always 500 to 1,000 people who gathered
together, without knowing each other, and who refused to disperse. We
were stuck with the cops responsible for dispersing us ; without any
particular objective, it was just like that, it was part of the
atmosphere of the time. I was always in these situations.

Today we would call them "  totos  ", but there has been a semantic
shift. In 1972 we called them "  ploums  ". The totos (the diminutive of
"  autonomous  ") were later, around 1977-1979, and the totos were much
more politicized and determined, with "  military  " objectives. Today
there are no more totos in the first sense in France, the young people
we call totos, would rather be plums, according to the criteria of the time.

To return to the Michelet high school, the anarchist group was really a
big problem for the school administration. It wasn't (just) a joke: the
repression was strong, and leftists were often excluded from high
schools. At Michelet, in final year, our group was thus dislocated. We
had to start from scratch. The four of us, masked, agitated with a
megaphone in the school corridors !

For the management there was a real challenge, for example, in "
maintaining  " the boarding school. Because at night we were always
going out, we were constantly inventing new shit - I remember one time
when we went up to the roof of the school to hang a black flag, and we
met some guys from the Proletarian Left, armed (!), who for their part
came to hang a flag of the GRP, the Provisional Revolutionary
Government, of North Vietnam !

It really went far. They went so far as to recruit security guards to
guard the boarding school corridor, and once it ended in a pitched
battle between security guards and high school students, with a
barricade in the corridor ! They had to call the cops, and we found
ourselves with CRS, in helmets, guarding the doors to prevent us from
leaving our rooms ! What a mess in the neighborhood, with CRS vans at
the entrance to the school ! The PCF condemned our actions by saying
that we were going to "  scare the workers  " as the elections approached !

Patrice Spadoni: It was during this fight in Michelet that I met Thierry
for the second time, when I was selling Libertarian Front to the
Convention metro station, and he was being chased by the cops who had
intervened in the high school. We both fled to the subway.

Thierry Renard: In 1972 we in turn formed a Libertarian Front circle at
the Michelet high school. We then published a local newspaper, which was
called La Météo libertaire.

ORA poster (between 1974 and 1976).
How did the ORA work ? Were there internal bulletins ? general meetings
? conferences ? a secretariat ?

Patrice Spadoni: Yes yes, of course, there was all that. The general
meetings, for Paris, were of course held on rue des Vignoles. They leave
me with the memory of great confusion. A great confusion which was due
to the general climate of ferment at the time, and to the absence of
political strategy of the ORA. It was going in all directions and - it
was the result of the confusion - there were few real collective
decisions. As a result, it was a very small "  management  " which, in
the end, was running the business.

Thierry Renard: In this "  direction  " we found Gérard Mélinand , Ramon
Finster , Claude Beaugrand , Michel Ravelli , "  Rolf  " , "  Ludo  "...
I especially remember those, who were fairly central activists.

Patrice Spadoni: These activists, for us, were "  old people  ", because
they had lived through May 68 and the break with the FA. In reality they
were 26 or 28 years old, but for us who were 18, they were old, very
experienced. We were completely in awe.

Gérard Mélinand, for example, was a very impressive person, with an
extraordinary patter. Someone who was completely political, from head to
toe. He was able to walk into a general meeting and, whatever the
subject, turn it around. He listened to one or two speeches, captured
the atmosphere, then took the floor, and made unexpected proposals which
disoriented the Maos, stunned the Liguards, and won the support of a
majority of the audience. It was quite impressive to see. On the other
hand, behind it, he didn't do any follow-up because it bothered him: the
revolution was imminent so no long-term strategy was envisaged.

Thierry Renard: On the debates at the ORA, in my memory, there were few
truly political debates, analyzes of the situation. We were nose to the
wheel of the struggles. On the other hand, there was a lot of debate
about the internal workings of the organization. So yes, there was, it
didn't stop ! Little real politics, but lots of chatter about the
internal workings.

Patrice Spadoni: It's a fairly classic fault among anars.

Thierry Renard: One of the important debates, for a moment, was the
abandonment of the black flag, and the choice of the red and black flag
as a replacement. It doesn't seem like anything because it's symbolic,
but behind the symbolism there are sometimes fundamental political
choices. In this case, it was a clarification for the ORA, which was
gradually breaking with traditional anarchism and clearly positioning
itself for libertarian communism.

Patrice Spadoni: Later, in 1979, when the UTCL merged with the
Organization Combat Anarchiste (OCA), there would be a whole similar
debate to make them abandon the circled A to which they were very
attached ! When we think about it now, it seems ridiculous but hey,
politics also involves this kind of thing...

Thierry Renard: There were also a certain number of unaddressed or
hidden debates. There was this famous affair of the exclusion of a group
of activists for "  Trotskyism  " at the end of 1972. Yet Trotskyism had
nothing to do with it ! In reality, the leader of this small, excluded
group had been unmasked as being an undercover Francoist agent. But the
ORA management had chosen to disguise the real causes of exclusion.

The consequence was that this group subsequently joined the Communist
League, which stupidly trumpeted in Rouge that "  25% of the ORA had
moved to the LC  ". Taking his responsibilities, one of the leaders of
the ORA, Claude Beaugrand, contacted the leaders of the LC to warn them
that in reality, the guy in question had not been excluded for
Trotskyism, but because he was very likely an agent provocateur.

Patrice Spadoni: They didn't listen to him. A few months later, I was
told, it was the same shady guy who stored firearms at the LC premises
which, discovered during a very timely search, would serve as a pretext
for the dissolution of the League by the Ministry of the Interior.

Thierry Renard: To return to the ideological confusion which
characterizes the ORA, we must understand that it is largely due to the
time. For the revolutionary anarchists of 1971-1972, the revolution is
for tomorrow, at worst the day after tomorrow. Research, theorizing, all
of this seems superfluous. Everything was over-activism, everything was
put at the service of movementism.

It must be added to this that, due to the climate of the time, forming a
revolutionary organization was relatively "  easy  ". It could
ultimately consist of sitting ass in your chair in your room, and
waiting for young people to come and knock on the door. You distributed
a leaflet, there were five people who joined you ! It maintained the
illusion that everything was going well, that the environment was
inexhaustible. What is the point of developing a political strategy in
these conditions ?

Patrice Spadoni: An important thing to also explain all this ideological
confusion is the absence of internal training at the ORA. There was
nothing followed up. Each individual was left to their own
resourcefulness. And we had to hang on ! Especially when you were in a
Libertarian Front circle and you did not have access to the internal
texts of the ORA. You literally had to harass the activists to know and
learn. Someone like Gérard Mélinand for example, you had to work on him
for him to give you something ! The "  old guys  " who ran the ORA
showed no desire to pass on their experience. You, a high school
student, could show up on rue des Vignoles, and no one was interested in
you! When you asked for a little content, a little training, you were
told that you had to "  read  " and you were shown a huge library at the
back of the premises... Obviously, you had absolutely no idea where to
start, and you were completely disoriented.

Thierry Renard: Here again, the idea of the imminence of the revolution
makes time short. We are not in the process of building an organization
for a long time, we are constantly keeping our noses to the wheel. So
the training goes completely ace !

Was there any international work by ORA ? There was an ORA in Italy, one
in Great Britain...

Thierry Renard: Yes yes, there was international work. It was Rolf who
took care of it, but I must admit that we didn't understand exactly what
he was doing. ORA's International Relations was something quite obscure.

Patrice Spadoni: I remember a national meeting of the ORA, in 1974 I
believe, near the Odéon, where we had the intervention of a red guard
who had fled from China, and who came to testify.

Thierry Renard: At the international level, we were very polarized by
the Vietnamese question, but especially by the Spanish question, due to
our cohabitation with the CNT in exile.

Libertarian Front No. 32 (March 1974)
I will always remember the night we were awaiting sentencing for Puig
Antich, an anarchist activist from the Iberian Liberation Movement (MIL)
who had been arrested by Franco's police. He was risking the tourniquet.
The old people of the CNT had explained to us copiously what the torture
of the garrote consisted of.

There was a vigil on rue des Vignoles, to await the verdict of the
trial. And when the death sentence was pronounced - I will always
remember it - all these old Spaniards were standing, stiff, silent, with
tears flowing. The atmosphere was electric. At that moment, one of the
cenetists took out an old typewriter from the storage room and said to
us: "  That one, comrades, has never been numbered. » You could type a
press release there without traceability.

Everything was said. In the days that followed, in retaliation for the
execution of Puig Antich, the ORA organized attacks against Spanish
interests in France - we can say this now, because there is a statute of
limitations. And so, the same night, five Spanish banks burned down in
Paris. The operation was well organized, and the ORA was never worried.

Patrice Spadoni: At the same time, the ORA wanted to organize a
demonstration towards the Spanish consulate, and made contacts with
other far-left organizations for this.

Thierry Renard: And that didn't go well at all. At the last moment, the
Communist League abandoned us, and placed its activists at the
surrounding metro exits to tell the people who were coming that the LC
was no longer calling for a demonstration ! And we found ourselves at
400. That day, the Trotskyists... we really, really wanted them.

ORA poster in support of soldiers' committees
December 1975.
Let's come to your "  establishment  " at the Paris-Brune postal sorting
center. How did this happen ?

Thierry Renard: The Libertarian Front circle at the Michelet high school
had invited "  comrade workers  " from the ORA to intervene with the
CFL. We wanted to impress our anarchist friends a little by showing them
"  real workers  ". They were employees of Dassault, in Gennevilliers.

And I must say that they played the role expected of them perfectly. To
begin with, they arrived in overalls ! And basically they explained to
us that during the summer we should go and work at the factory to see
how it worked.

Not far from there, there was the Paris-Brune postal sorting center. It
was par excellence the workers' bastion of the PTT. With 2,000
employees, it was the equivalent of Billancourt for metallurgy. And in
the summer, during school holidays, the sorting center hired young
people. So we went there. And we found ourselves there around thirty
anarchist high school students from Michelet.

Patrice Spadoni: For my part, I arrived at Paris-Brune a year after
Thierry, after a detour via the SNCF. We were both on night shifts. But
I wouldn't speak of an "  establishment  ": there was also the need to
earn a living, quite simply !

Thierry Renard: To understand a little of the atmosphere at Paris-Brune,
you once again have to put yourself back in time. It was a very
politicized environment. The PCF was hegemonic there, but there were
also almost all the far-left organizations in Creation. The PS was also
well established and controlled certain union sections at the CFDT, the
CGT or FO. And now there were us. But what were we ? What a shame. Big
mouths from the high school movement, landed in a working environment !

Libertarian Front No. 29 (July 1973)
 From the first week we arrived, there was a general assembly to discuss
Lip: 200 to 300 people. Me, not cold-hearted, I speak up to give my
point of view. And there the CFDT delegate comes at me in flames, with
astonishing know-how and bad faith: "  What you say is what is written
in the bourgeois press, this is what we can read in Minute  [1] ", etc.!
There I remained silent. It should be noted that at the time, accusing
political adversaries of being "cops  "  or fascists was commonplace.

For the following AGM, still on the same theme, I took my precautions. I
had dug up the Île-de-France regional bulletin from the CFDT, and
checked the conformity of what I wanted to say with what was written by
the CFDT. So when I got to the general meeting, I made another
intervention, and there the cedetist gave me the same one: "  What you
say is what we read in the bourgeois press ! » And I, taking out the
union bulletin: "  Ah no comrade, that's from the CFDT ! » The guy's
face ! Neither one nor two, the same day, just after the AGM, he came to
see me: "  Okay, will you take your card ? » (laughs)

Patrice Spadoni: This Paris-Brune sorting center was really quite an
atmosphere, particularly in the night shifts. These were somewhat shady
environments, with guys who were sometimes a little shady, who had
intriguing stories or pasts...

Thierry Renard: There is a novel that was written about it, Paris-Brune.
It has been criticized quite a bit on details, but overall it captures
the atmosphere well. The author, a former postal worker, used authentic
facts and characters. I appear in it under the name of Thierry
Leberther, FO union member ! [2]

Last summer, many of your friends returned to high school. Why did you
stay ?

Thierry Renard: Well when we arrived at 30, we acquired a certain weight
quite quickly. But the PCF guys said to us: "  So, you're having fun
there. You don't care what happens next. You are petty bourgeois. Either
way, come September, you're off. We stay. » That tickled me a little. I
told myself it was a shame to lose the benefit of what we had done. And
then I appreciated the political atmosphere in this working environment,
it still had some fun. So in the end, I stayed, and I gave up on taking
the baccalaureate.

This was what we called the "  establishment  ": the revolution being
close, it was necessary to enter the working world and prepare the
future Soviet of Paris-Brune ! Contrary to what has been said on this
subject, establishment for an indefinite period was very marginal at the
time. Most leftists spent at most a year in the factory. It's the fact
of staying that gave us a lot of credibility compared to other groups.

You have therefore stabilized a core of ORA activists on Paris-Brune. At
the end of 1973, you began publishing Le Postier franchi, the ORA
bulletin of the PTT.

Le Postier franchi n°2 (June 1974 ?)
Journal of the ORA at the PTT.
Thierry Renard: There have been several company bulletins: La Pause à
Paris-Brune and Le Postier franchi, bulletin of the PTT sector of the
ORA. We had a blast doing that one. We were able to spend crazy nights
composing this newsletter ! He had a good face. It was the first time
that we introduced the use of comics to say things in company newsletters.

Patrice Spadoni: We remained a core of 4 or 5 activists, very reactive.
As Thierry and I were in different night shifts, we sometimes managed to
pull off some nice shots. For example, several times there was a
particular problem in Thierry's brigade, while I was off duty. He called
me at home, I immediately prepared a leaflet, I mimeographed it during
the night, and I went to the exit of his brigade, in the early morning,
where I met a few comrades so that it could be distributed. As soon as a
problem had arisen, there was already an ORA leaflet about it when it
came out ! There the stalls were sawn. It took them at least three or
four days to complete a leaflet.

Union-wise, we joined the CFDT, because it seemed the most appropriate
framework for developing our ideas. I should point out that before
working, I was anti-union. I considered that the unions were by nature
counter-revolutionary... But hey, when you are confronted with the
concrete situation, you understand a little better that it is more
complicated than that, that unionism, in reality, is in permanent
tension between co-management and rupture... Everything depends on the
situation on the ground and the activists who lead the structure.

Our ORA team had a significant impact. For example, we were the only
ones, with the PCF, to postpone leaflets during break times, or even
during working hours. The other far-left organizations were much more
clandestine.

Thierry Renard: The LC was very poorly established in the sorting
center, for example. These were external activists who came to differ at
the exit. Workers' struggle, idem. There was also Le Postier
marxiste-leniniste , the newsletter of the PCR-ML maos. But it was above
all the PCF which was hegemonic, and which held the sorting center. Its
activists were extremely violent against "  leftists  ".

Patrice Spadoni: There was one in particular, who boasted of having
broken the arm of an LC activist who was distributing a leaflet at the
exit of the sorting center. A gigantic guy, with huge hands, each of his
fingers as big as a frankfurter. Once I was waiting at the exit of the
sorting center. He kindly showed me "  where I was allowed  ": on the
sidewalk, two meters away. But not in the entrance to the sorting center
! I complied without discussion and immediately took a step aside !

Thierry Renard: It's true that there was a total cultural gap ! For us,
the stalls were tough ones that were turning red. We had long hair and
we smoked firecrackers ! I played handball with some of them at the
Labor Sports and Gymnastics Federation, the FSGT  [3]. During a
downtime, they bring back a bucket (!) of rosé wine. We had to drink
from the bucket ! When it was time to return to the field, I was
completely stunned, in the middle of all the laughing stalls: "  So the
gaucho, can we stand on his pins anymore ? » (laughs)

So there was a form of camaraderie on the part of PCF activists towards
the "  young people  " of the ORA ?

Thierry Renard: There was a form of respect, because we were still
workers, like them. And they didn't attack us too much either because we
were quite different from other leftist groups. Whether it was the Maos,
the people of the League or the LO, they had practices that really made
small groups. They never showed themselves. It was external activists
who came to differ at the exit. The way people from LO did things, for
example, was to get their hands on a simpleton, and make him carry their
word in the general meetings. As in general it was to demand the
designation of a "  strike committee» - an archiclassic antiphon from
Lutte Ouvrière - everyone knew that behind him, it was LO who was
speaking. In short, it all felt a bit conspiratorial. They were just
looking to outbid the PCF, it was obvious and they didn't like it too
much. And, obviously, the result is that they never obtained the
designation of any "  strike committee  "...

Patrice Spadoni: By seeking above all to build their shop, the leftist
organizations were in the practice of 1+1: winning an activist here,
nibbling an activist there... They were in fact minorities who had
integrated the fact of being minorities. We at the ORA were... let's say
megalomaniacal mythomaniacs, who were in the minority but thought we
could be in the majority !!!

We did things in broad daylight: distribution of leaflets within the
sorting center, interventions in general meetings. And more than once we
were in the majority on our positions in the strikers' general meetings.
Particularly during the major strikes of 1974.

Thierry Renard: But we were working, eh ! Several times, we discreetly
recorded our interventions in GA. And after work, we would listen to the
tape and point out our mistakes. We worked and reworked our way of speaking.

In 1974, there was the big PTT strike, in which you participated. What
then was the role and influence of the ORA ?

Libertarian Front No. 37 (December 1974)
At the time of the great PTT strike.
Thierry Renard: During the 1974 strike, ORA activists from Paris-Brune
participated in the "  Cultural Action Committee», the CAC. Our idea was
to find a way to have influence at a mass level without supporting the
reformists who we knew would eventually betray, nor proclaiming before
that happened that the reformists would betray. It seemed to us that
there was a little room for the active and festive concept of the
strike. It is in this sense that the CAC was born, not against the
devices, nor in their hands. In fact, everyone accepted it, and the
committee brought together political and union activists from diverse
backgrounds. It was quite grandiose, with parties, comedians, concerts
of all types of music, including one with François Béranger, and another
with the distribution of instruments to the strikers at the end... There
were also debates, for example example with the women of postal checks,
on feminism.

After the strike, in the wake of this CAC, we organized an independent
workers group at the sorting center. It was always in the logic of the
ORA to bring together the "  working left  ", without it being in
opposition to the trade union organizations, to weigh in on the
struggles. This group, which had no name or organic link with Le Postier
franchi, was in a way the "  movement  " of the ORA - later the UTCL -
in the sorting center.

This autonomous group brought together between 60 and 80 people, and
allowed us to have more influence. I give an example, linked to the
strike of the Liberated Parisian : from March 1975 to August 1976, it
was the historic strike of the workers of the Liberated Parisian  [4].
It is a historic conflict because one of its challenges was to break the
omnipotence of the CGT Book Federation, which strongly regulated the sector.

To break the strike, Amaury, the boss, had the newspaper printed in
Belgium. At the PTT, the CGT and the CFDT called on postal workers to
refuse to process the arrivals of the liberated Parisian, taking
advantage of an old law prohibiting the distribution in France of
newspapers printed outside the national territory.

At Paris-Brune, we had links with the strikers at Le Parisien Libération
through the CGT Correctors union  [5], etc. We were therefore sometimes
more aware of what they were preparing than the CGT-PTT itself.

That's how we gave a few extra helping hands. We supported the Livre CGT
when it carried out commando operations at the sorting center. There
were a few of them - big, strong ones -, each grabbed two large bags of
newspapers printed in Belgium, and set off running again. Whole piles of
freed Parisians were thrown into the Seine by the strikers. The postal
workers covered the story.

Subsequently, the sorting center went on strike with occupation, in
solidarity with the workers of Le Parisien Libération, and refusal to
harm their struggle.

But not everyone was very keen. Some put political calculations before
worker solidarity ! Within the CFDT, the people of the PSU were choosy,
like: "  Yes but... They just have to restart Le Parisien liberated in
self-management...  ", this that... More cynical, the Lambertist
Trotskyists hoped that a defeat of the CGT Book would weaken the PCF:
they therefore refused to strike...

The autonomous group influenced by Le Postier franchi played a role at
this time ; he was the one who physically opposed the cops when they
attacked the sorting center.

How is that ?

Thierry Renard: We padlocked the doors and kidnapped the director. The
center was surrounded by the CRS, and at one point, they managed to
force entry - through my fault, moreover, because I was fooled by the
divisional commissioner.

He came as an emissary and asked to enter alone to speak with the
sequestered director, while promising that the police would not attack.
We parted the doors to let him in, and he immediately called his men. We
wanted to close it, but he blocked the doors with his shoulders - it was
a mountain of meat, the guy - and the riot police slipped inside.

The secretaries of the CGT and CFDT sections then called for a retreat
to the union premises. With the 80 guys from the autonomous group, we
started shouting: "  Treason ! Betrayal ! » - it resonated in the
center, it was impressive ! I then suggested that we go look for the
iron bars hidden in the locker rooms. Patrice whispered to me: "  Okay,
we're going to play it easy, rather. »

So at 80, we loaded the CRS. Stalls, West Indians, libertarians. It was
a curious alliance ! But for us there was a question of class solidarity
which came before everything.

 From 1974 the UTCL trend appeared within the ORA. Can we say that the
Postman franchi team was the hard core ?

Patrice Spadoni: Yes. This is a trend that gradually appeared after the
1974 strikes at the PTT, the rail and the banks. At that time, the " old
guys  " - Gérard Mélinand, Ramon Finster, etc. - which fascinated us
when we were high school students, no longer fascinated us at all.
Corporate activism, strikes, workers' general meetings, etc. all this
had opened our eyes to the limits of the "  leftism  " of the ORA. The
contradiction between the analysis of the proximity of the revolution
and the reality in companies became too strong. The ORA was increasingly
fascinated by the Italian autonomous movement, perceived as a mass
movement, and placed a lot of emphasis on the development of " networks"
.» alternatives in France. Very spontaneous theses attempted to give
theoretical coherence to this orientation. We ourselves had become
revolutionary trade unionists, and we were close, at the ORA, to certain
people who theorized that trade unionism and intermediate demands were
reformism, and counter-revolutionary ! The clashes were therefore very
harsh at the time, even if the debate subsequently became possible again
- I am thinking in particular of Gérard Mélinand who got closer to us
many years later, during the AL era.

We therefore wrote an orientation text which was submitted to the 1974
ORA congress, by the Paris 14th group , and entitled "  Polarize our
forces towards businesses  ". The text was adopted, I was even elected
to the ORA secretariat, but it had no impact on the practice of the
majority of the organization and the traditional leadership continued to
maintain control over the ORA. .

It was at that moment that we decided to form a tendency, which we
called the Union of Libertarian Communist Workers (UTCL), and which was
especially influential in the groups of Paris 14th and 18th .

Thierry Renard: To develop the UTCL trend, we had to be cunning. As the
ORA completely prohibited the right to trend, we normally did not even
have the right to meet between activists from different ORA groups. So
we created a bogus think tank, like "  What general mutual insurance for
the PTT ?"  ", which allowed us to use the ORA's logistics to mimeograph
and distribute a secret bulletin among the comrades who were beginning
to rally around our theses. The cover of the bulletin displayed "  Which
general mutual insurance for the PTT ?"  ", but the whole interior was UTCL.

Patrice Spadoni: These trends, we can try to ban them, they always end
up re-emerging in one way or another... The "  direction  " of the ORA
was also a de facto trend.

Thierry Renard: The dispute between UTCL and the rest of the ORA then
deepened, and crystallized on a fundamental political question. The
question was: what is the priority area of intervention ? Production or
consumption ? (today we could say: the social or the societal ?).

Libertarian Front No. 52 (May 1976)
At the time of the Orléans Congress, where the UTCL tendency was excluded.
We obviously answered "  production  ", while the management and the
majority of the ORA answered "  consumption  ". At this time the ORA
also began to organize direct food networks, with left-wing farmers who
came to deliver their products to rue des Vignoles. It was a sort of
Amap  [6]avant la lettre. Today it seems banal but at the time it was
quite innovative. The organization began to focus on struggles for the
living environment.

Patrice Spadoni: For us it was complete junk. We told them: "  Your
stuff is very nice, but who will it interest other than the middle
classes ? » They in return called us fanatical workerists.

In reality, "  production  " and "  consumption  " are not necessarily
opposed, but in the context of internal tension of the ORA at the time,
they had become irreconcilable positions ! We did tons of it, us in the
direction of workerism and ultra-organization, them in anti-unionism and
spontaneism. At the 1976 congress we even proposed the "  workers' vote
" to annoy them. This was a measure which gave an activist one vote for
his geographical group (for example Paris 14th ) and one vote for his
business group (for example Paris-Brune). Which amounted to giving two
votes to worker activists  [7].

Thierry Renard: The divide that tore the ORA apart was basically the
following: it was either "  unionism  " or "  neighborhood committees  " !

To this must be added, for their part, a spontaneist drift with
questioning of the need for organization. Thus Ramon Finster and the ORA
group of Paris 13th had launched Le Canard du XIIIe , a neighborhood
newspaper of "  counter-information  ", but without displaying the ORA
label, hoping that this newspaper would become a tool for the local
population. .

The UTCL tendency was excluded from the ORA at the Orléans congress in
1976. How is it possible to exclude a minority tendency in this way ?

Patrice Spadoni: It must be said that our relations, between the
majority and the minority, had become odious. They were very aggressive
with us, and we just made fun of them, we made fun of them. This
exclusion, we really sought it in reality. At the time of the congress,
we had already contacted a printer to bring out a new newspaper, the
title of which had already been chosen...

Thierry Renard: In fact, the congress had put on the agenda the change
of name of the organization. There were therefore two competing texts,
proposing different directions and names. The majority text proposed "
Libertarian Communist Revolutionary Organization (ORCL)  " ; ours was
entitled "  From ORA to UTCL  " and covered our orientations.

Patrice Spadoni: From the start of the congress, the UTCL text was
defeated. But afterwards, for each item on the agenda, we systematically
submitted our text as an amendment. It was a war of attrition. Which
meant that, during the night, an exasperated congressman, an activist
from Nîmes I believe, said: "  Since that's how it is, we just have to
exclude them, but let's put an end to it !" »And this is how UTCL found
itself excluded from the ORA.

As the trend was secret, they didn't really know who to exclude, so they
excluded everyone who defended our text, even Daniel Guérin ! But in his
case, he was reinstated quickly. He only joined UTCL a few years later...

After this, ORA eventually renamed itself OCL.

Thierry Renard: Excluding us, there were only 15 of us ! But in fact the
Collective for a UTCL grew quite quickly, while the OCL, caught up in
the Parisian autonomous movement, collapsed. Thus, paradoxically, after
two years, the numbers at UTCL and OCL had become equivalent, and there
were more ORA alumni at UTCL than at OCL.

Finally, everything will have ended with a reconciliation, since a few
years ago, before passing away, Gérard Mélinand - who had excluded us
from the ORA ! - told us that in the end there had been wrongs on both
sides. We readily acknowledge this. He had changed, so had we, and he
had expressed the wish to join Alternative Libertaire, in one way or
another, either through the Friends of AL, or by joining directly.

In retrospect, you don't regret having played the part of the breakup ?
You don't think that the UTCL theses could have become the majority at
the ORA ?

Patrice Spadoni: No, I think it wasn't possible. The ORA was not "
saveable  " at the stage it was at, and our breakup was a necessary
clarification.

Thierry Renard: It was a clarification that was very representative of
the time: 1975-1976 was the crisis of leftism ; clearly the revolution
was not for the next day, it was therefore necessary to find a long-term
strategy. The ORA-OCL was unable to understand this and embarked on a
headlong flight - with autonomy - where it self-liquidated. For us, it
was revolutionary unionism, with all the weight that it had in the
construction and evolution of the UTCL, then the AL.

Comments collected by Guillaume Davranche and Grégoire Mariman, June 18,
2005

On the ORA, also read the interview with Rolf Dupuy and Guy Malouvier: "
  Each of these words counted: organization ; revolutionary ; anarchist
" , Libertarian Alternative, May 2008.
On UTCL, read the interview with twelve veterans: "  UTCL, workerism
with a human face ! »

To validate

[1] Minute, far-right weekly.

[2] Maxime Privas, Paris-Brune, VO Éditions, 1993.

[3] Sports organization linked to the CGT.

[4] Le Parisien Libération, Île-de-France daily, which became Le
Parisien in 1985.

[5] Within the very Stalinist Book Federation, the Correctors' Union has
for decades been influenced by libertarians. In 1976, it was led by the
Syndicalist Alliance - René Berthier , Alain Pécunia, Thierry Porré ,
Pascal Nürnberg, Jacky Toublet ...

[6] Associations for the maintenance of peasant agriculture (Amap):
local partnerships between a farm and a group of consumers, to sell
fruits and vegetables directly.

[7] After an early debate, UTCL will not practice this method.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Patrice-Spadoni-et-Thierry-Renard-Il-y-avait-toute-une-mythologie-qui-entourait
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