France: FSE Celebrates 100 Year Anniversary of the Founding of the UFE
Featured image: Photo collage celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the UFE. Source: La Cause du Peuple
The Fédération Syndicale Étudiante (FSE) has published a text on the 100 year anniversary of the founding of l’Union Fédérale des Étudiants (UFE), highlighting the importance of the UFE’s efforts to unite students with the proletarian class, and its role in the anti-imperialist and resistance movements of the 20th century.
“The UFE was founded on 14th of July, 1926, on the eve of a global economic crisis and during the interwar period, in a context where the university remained closed to the children of the proletariat. It then developed in a climate of increasing reactionary sentiment, training leaders who would become key figures in the anti-fascist resistance.” FSE writes.
The UFE was a member of the Anti-imperialist Youth, an organ of the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression, supported by the Communist International.
The UFE conducted work through several general unions, one of which (the UGEMPCD) was led by prominent resistance figure and union leader Danielle Casanova. The approach of the UFE, decided in 1929, was to prepare its members for workers unions, in collaboration with existing unions. “The message was clear: student unionism was not an end in itself, but a formative experience for the future leaders of the communist movement.” FSE writes.
“In 1940, when almost all student and communist organizations were dissolved, the activists of the former UFE did not cease the struggle: they joined the Resistance, notably within the Youth Brigades and the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP),” the FSE writes, concluding that “Yesterday, as today, we are driven by the same conviction: let us fight for our entire class. What they began, we will carry to victory. One hundred years after the UFE, their struggle continues through us!”
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