France, Alternative Libertaire AL - tribute: Serge Torrano
will grow more rants (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
We have learned with shock and great sadness the death of Serge Torrano, March 30, 2015,
in Agen hospital. Serge was a SUD-Rail union of the first hour, a libertarian communist
militant "historic" and a Libertarian Alternative companion. ---- The war in Spain, May
68. These two major events have marked the entire trajectory of Serge Torrano. ---- Coming
from a Spanish family refuge in France after Franco's victory, he was 18 in 1968, and
worked as a welder in a factory of the Pyrénées-Orientales, where he was born. He had
lived there his first strike, the first of a long series. Then had his bags for Paris,
where the barricades had briefly flourished. ---- SNCF hired in 1969 as caleur triage
Juvisy, it then became switchman on the region of Paris-Left Bank (Austerlitz station).
There he was to deploy most of its militant activity during the next forty years.
Antibureaucrate par excellence, brought to activism, to rant, but also laughter,
deliciously cunning, it was a charming personality and a strong and reliable friend. Not
doctrinaire, he never became an "old fart" preachy and always had the easy contact with
young activists.
In the demo,
September 22, 2010. © Sébastien / AL northeast Paris
In 1971, it was the powerful strike from June to SNCF imprint of radicalism May 68. In the
months that followed, Serge was excluded from the CGT, which he sharply criticized the
weakness during the strike and joined the CFDT. That same year, 1971, he joined the
anarchist Revolutionary Organization (ORA ancestor AL). In it, he participated in the
launch of a corporate newsletter, The chained Rail, which existed for several years.
With the majority of the ORA, it evolved, however, from 1974 to the ultra-left positions.
At the April 1976 conference, it was the majority that excludes dissenting trend of the
Libertarian Communists Workers Union (UTCL), and is renamed Libertarian Communist
Organisation (OCL). In 1977, won union busting, he slammed the door of the CFDT and with
the majority of the Parisian OCL, engaged in the movement "autonomous" in full bloom.
It was ultimately unsuccessful, and in 1979, Serge Torrano abandoned the OCL and
"autonomous" movement to become the union of shock that he should not cease to be.
With Kaddour Hadadi,
HK singer and Saltimbanks, May 2, 2011. We see Serge appear in the video for the song is
loose anything. © Sébastien / AL northeast Paris
During the winter of 1986-1987, he was a leader and leading large SNCF strike that, for
the first time, saw the emergence of coordination of strikers, direct expression of the
workers in struggle. During the movement, he supported the creation of a "National
Coordination intercatégorielle" which was highly contested. Many voices - including that
of UTCL - reproached him indeed to be manipulated by Workers Struggle [ 1 ].
Generous and unifying personality, Serge was unanimously elected secretary of the CFDT
union-Paris Left Bank in 1989. From there he took part in the animation of the strike in
December 1995 against breakage of pensions by the Juppé plan. Breaking with the direction
CFDT confederation who had betrayed the movement, he was among those who founded SUD-Rail
in early 1996, he assumed the secretariat of the union from Paris Left Bank for several years.
Retired in 2005, at age 55, Serge continued to deploy its action with her union but also,
increasingly, to interpro. We could see him on the street, alongside youth in struggle in
2006 against the First Job Contract (CPE) but especially in the struggles for housing,
with the Black Thursday associations, Housing and Macaq. It was at this time that he began
to subscribe to Ami.es of Alternative libertarian.
In 2014, he left Paris to return to the South, which he had always kept the focus. Based
in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne), it was immediately joined the action with United and Alternative
libertarian, taking little time its place within the local extreme left.
It has been a hard blow for everyone when, on March 13, it was learned that he had been
rushed to hospital following a heart attack and lung edema. After nearly died, her
condition had improved and he laughed again with family, friends and comrades who visited
him: "Getting to race by the cops, it's over for me! " he joked. The respite was
short-lived. So we expected an early end to the hospital, Serge died suddenly.
Alternative libertarian, especially the comrades who knew him in Paris and Agen, direct
their thoughts solidarity to his family and friends. For everyone, it is a very heavy loss.
Guillaume Davranche (AL Montreuil), Rodolphe Larmagnac (AL Agen), Claude Beaugrand (AL
Paris-Sud)
Goodbye Serge!
In protest September 21, 2009 in Paris. © Sébastien / AL northeast Paris
[ 1 ] On this quarrel, read "December 1986: The coordination of strikers open a new era"
in Alternative libertarian December 2006.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Serge-Torrano-ne-poussera-plus-de
