Timothée Esprit: Unity At the heart of the struggle Against repression!
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of an article from the Issue No. 78 published by La Cause du Peuple.
On May 21, 2024, Timothée Esprit, worker of the chemical factory of TORAY CARBON FIBERS was called to a prior interview with dismissal. Timothée is a union militant of combat, federal secretary of the National Federation of Chemical Industries of the CGT (FNIC-CGT), who has lead the struggle in his company for more than 12 years for workers’ dignity and against capitalist exploitation.
He is accused of having published photos, on his Facebook profile, of combatants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s the right excuse: the company’s management has long sought to get rid off the workers who risks their interests. TORAY has therefore the clear goal to break the union CGT of the company, because it is a thread led by Timothée, that obstacle in the capitalist machine is their greatest terror! Here what he stated: “My only crime, my comrades, constitutes a crime that you all share hear: the crime of being in solidarity, committed , trade unionist, the crime of demonstrating for Palestine, the crime of striking for our pensions, the crime of writing leaflets, the crime of pounding the pavement against injustices, the crime of being a decent man or woman and fierce, the crime of being a combatant for the cause of the working class.”
In the face of repression, the Ligue de la Jeunesse Révolutionnaire and theJeunes Révolutionnairesdecided to form a united front around the defense of the union leader. The observation is the next one: the current weakness of the trade union movement can be averted. The slogan is simple and open: “Support for Timothée Esprit, dismissed for having defended Palestine!” The campaign is the first of its kind, open to all supporters of the trade union cause, on a combative and class basis. One press release allows us to lay the ideological foundations of the logic of the campaign, reminding that Timothée Esprit, is unfortunately not an isolated case, and that it is the whole class struggle that sharpens:
“Troubled times are coming and it is not insignificant that more of 1,000 trade unionists have been harassed by the “justice” after the battle of pensions, that spooky actions take place against the trade unionists in struggle, that the media spread out on a daily basis an unbridledanti-unionism, that the trade union remains the last place of organization and solidarity of the working class. The CGT must once again become the powerful union of the self-conscious class. When the working class loses rights, the entire people is losing rights. On the contrary, when it is on the offensive, the bosses tremble, the course of things is reversed, social progress is spreading.”
A new campaign
The campaign quickly merged with the masses. Timothée Esprit is depicted in each action, tens of thousands of people become aware of his existence. First, a unitary gathering is organized in Pau, the culmination of several strikes in the factories of the Toray group by workers, in support of their leader; then the press release is offered to many organizations, which sometimes produce their own press release. A substantial list of organizations sign it: political organizations, student unions… These are also organizations advocating for democratic rights or support for Palestine, as Perspectives Musulmanes, Urgence Palestine, or the Campagne Unitaire pour la Libération de Georges Abdallah, who support Timothée Esprit.
This allows us to organize ourselves on the terrain. At Lyon, Toulouse, Paris, Saint Denis, at Aubervilliers, La Courneuve, Strasbourg, Limoges, Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes, Montpellier, Marseille or Lille, posters are put up by activists and sympathizers. Many flags were also deployed to make Timothée Esprit known, with the support of the masses.
In the working-class district of Kennedy-Villejean in Rennes, slogans are chanted by the neighbors for Timothée. During the Lyon Antifa Fest, a speech is made between two concerts by the Fosse aux Lyons, insisting on Georges Abdallah and Timothée Esprit. At Hérouville-Saint-Clair, a suburb of Caen, union leaders leading a hard strike move to an event of the Comité Palestine Hérouville, to affirm their support for the leader of the FNIC-CGT. At the heart of a wild demonstration for Palestine in Les Minguettes, one of the poorest neighborhoods of the metropolis of Lyon, several hundreds of inhabitants listen to a speech explaining the situation of Timothée Esprit before starting a march.
For decades, no support campaign for a union leader did advanced in that political way, carried out both by unions, striking workers and some masses of the working-class districts, carried to the numerous events, demonstrations, with a combative aspect.
That’s the heart of all of it. It’s not just the number of people mobilized, but the “quality” of the mobilization, that means, the combative nuclei developing in all the sectors of society: in the factory and in the neighborhood, in the union, in the universities, paving the way to much wider campaigns, promising numerous victories.