Jean Le Gall

The son of a daily newspaper, Jean Le Gall was a truck driver in Le Havre. Minority secretary of the truckers section of the dockers’ union of Le Havre, and influential member of the CSR, he quickly established himself as the main opponent of the majority, Senegal having failed to assert himself as secretary. A financial controller of the union at the end of 1921, he conducted with Gilles, the new secretary, an active propaganda in favor of joining the CGTU in early 1922. The latter having been voted, it was chosen on June 8 to accompany the secretary Hervieu to the congress of the Federation of Ports and Docks. On 29 December he presented at a meeting a motion in favour of the accession of the CGTU to Moscow International, subject to certain reservations. Supported by the majority of the local Union, he was elected secretary a few months later, after the resignation of Henri Quesnel. He organized a school of Youth Trade Unionists in 1923 and was delegated to the Second Congress of the CGTU, in Bourges in November 1923. But his position became difficult because of the transition to autonomy of the dockers’ union. In response to the attacks of the minority of communist tendency, he was summoned by the latter to take a position on the split of 1 November 1924 within the Building Federation. A delicate situation, skillfully exploited by Henri Gautier* and his friends, who saw the secretary of the UL unitary, a member of an autonomous union, put in a minority on 4 November. Jean Le Gall presented his defense on 28, proving that he was in fact secretary of the unitary truck drivers. Supported by the two delegates of the Building, Alliet and Van Peene, he asked the question of confidence and obtained the majority by twelve votes to nine to the Communists.

Replaced by Léon Lucheux on 7 June 1925, he provided interim service in September, the new secretary having been stripped for mismanagement. On 17 October he was re-elected with 14 votes to 7 to Henri Gautier. The latter having decided to create another unitary Union in 1926, the local Union of Le Havre of anarcho-syndicalist tendency naturally switched to autonomy, retaining the caisse of the organization and the buildings (in particular the printing house of the Union from which the monthly Truths came out). This journal developed anticlerical, anti-militarist and neo-Malthusian themes (conscious procreation).

In the midst of the union wave, when there were only 28 members on the platforms, Le Gall tried, in 1927, to animate a cartel of the professional workers of the port, a point of support for the renewal that intervened the following year, after a victorious strike. He was one of six workers’ signatories to the local convention of 18 July 1928.

Supporter of the unit, but determined to contain the influence of the “unitary” in the Federation of Ports and Docks, he approached the Unions trend in April 1937. The affair did not go without saying at a time when, in the wake of the victorious strikes, the flood of the new union members, seduced by the dynamism and effectiveness of the communist militants, pushed the physiognomy of a Federation spent in a few months from 18 000 to nearly 100 000 members. A federal leader, an excellent knowledge of port realities and an expert in negotiations, Jean Le Gall participated in the countless local or national meetings necessary for the development of conventions or the adaptation of the legislative and regulatory progress of the Popular Front to the specificities of the various federated professions. While he contributed to solidarity with the Spanish Republic, his pacifist convictions led him to support, in October 1938, the Manifesto for Trade Union Independence and Peace, a commitment reaffirmed in August 1939. However, this option did not have any consequences for the attitude of the workers of the ports after the declaration of war. Jean Le Gall proceeded without a state of mind to the elimination of the communists from the trade union organizations. Victims of this purification, Duhamel and Vaubaillon later accused him of having dismissed and threatened them, while Jeanne reported documents signed by Le Gall to accuse him of having seized the secretariat of the Departmental Union and of having remained there throughout the duration of the Occupation. In Le Havre itself, he initialled a document in May 1942 as secretary of the local Union. However, his Parisian activities quickly regained the upper hand. While his deputies, Hauguel and Vaillant watched with more or less happiness on the Le Havre trade union building, Le Gall retained his housing on rue Anatole France, but had to resolve to settle in an apartment in the capital, 18 rue du Château-d’Eau (Xe arr.), rented 3 000 francs per year. Remained, after the defeat, at the head of a very weakened and soon amputated Federation of the unions of the construction sites and coal factories as well as those of the river navigation, Jean Le Gall chose to sit in the organizations created by Vichy. This option, held for tactics and compatible with a trade unionist course of action, did not go without some acrobatics and concessions that weighed heavily on the Liberation. In concrete terms, if the activist was entitled to welcome the law of June 28, 1941, the founding text of a regulation of the employment of dockers, now with professional status and joint offices for the control of hirings, participation in the various structures of the Charter proved to be more compromising than fruitful. Signatory, on 6 June 1941, of the declaration by which certain organizations considered the project of dissolution of workers' federations and unions "unjust and erroneous", Jean Le Gall nevertheless sat on Commission 77. Sailor* later, heralty certified that the leader of the dockers, who had also helped him draw clandestine equipment and rescued him from an arrest, “kept him aware of what was going on there.” However, the Le Havre activist did not hesitate to put his name on a public call which, on May 1, 1942, expressed both his “attachement” to the Charter, addressed some criticisms and stressed the adherence of trade unionism to an inseparable freedom of “discipline” and “order”. The text further proclaimed the “pride” of the signatories towards the traditions of the workers’ movement, in particular its struggles in favor of the rapprochement of the peoples – against the Treaty of Versailles, for Munich ..., and then condemned “all the attacks and acts of violence that aim to cause trouble”, before wishing reconciliation “in a new and pacified Europe”.

At the Liberation, Jean Le Gall recounted how, gone to Sète, in 1941, to meet Jouhaux* and Vivier-Merle*, he had been worried some time following a denunciation. He argued that, under his leadership, the Federation of Ports and Docks had remained outside the most collaborative offices. He added that following his refusal to join the highly collaborationist Workers’ and Social Information Committee, a representative of the Occupation authorities had requested, in November 1942, his exclusion from the organizing committee of the Transport Family, step towards an impeachment of his federal responsibilities and his expedition to Germany. It was not, and John Le Gall did not come out of ambiguity. Under his responsibility, the Federation of Ports and Docks thus initialed the “warning” of August 1943 of a number of workers’ organizations dissatisfied with the delay in the publication of the text concerning the contributions, prior to the proper functioning of the single unions and the “complete realization” of the Charter to which the signatories reaffirmed their “attachment”. She repeated, in October, when she proclaimed the desire of her unions “to bring their fullest contribution to the construction of the Charter”. On the 24 of the same month, she endorsed, however, a statement of more critical tone, adopted at the end of the meeting of the union coordination committee and by which the delegates claimed to be the “only representatives of the ex-confedered trade union movement”, claimed their choice, made in 1940, of a “policy of presence in the most complete independence”, recalled the advantages maintained or obtained, considered to have “brought their loyal collaboration to the establishment of the “Without trade unionism, there would be no Charter,” they assured to better signify their refusal of the disappearance of the unions for the benefit of the social committees and advocated, in conclusion, a “reciprocal loyalty (...), so that the groups of order they represent will be able to draw up the dam that will oppose the elements of disorder.” No doubt, Jean Le Gall did not alone embody the entire Federation, but his role was pre-eminent while he remained the only permanent federal since 1941. President of the workers’ group in the National Social Committee of Transport, he used, according to his own words, “all [his] authority to find candidates” ready to enter the regional subcommittees. He assured the contrary to the Liberation arguing that his action had made it possible to reduce to three the number of regional structures constituted. Two of them were, however, in Le Havre, his stronghold, and in Rouen. During the installation of the first, on October 12, 1943, Jean Le Gall had welcomed the fact that the new organization, “bringing all the producers of the Nation closer together”, gathered “men of good will (...) under the sign of mutual understanding”...

Jean Le Gall explained, in 1946, that he did not claim to be a resistance, but certified to have issued “with circumspection” professional cards to nearly 800 refractories to the STO to which he had also provided, according to a police report after the Liberation, “clothing and means of subsistence”. The same source stressed his efforts to “curb the Chartist movement.” In a delicate handling, the minutes of the meetings of the committees and committees of the Charter reflect the ambivalent attitude of the Le Havre trade unionist. Favorable, during the meeting of the provisional committee of organization of the family of transport held on February 24, 1944, that we go “very quickly in the establishment of the organizations of the Charter”, he simultaneously defended the autonomy of the workers’ unions and was indignant about the veto power that the Marseille employers had arrogated to each other on the choice of the representative of the employees. It is as a convinced trade unionist that he also defended, before the National Social Committee of Transport, the principle of an increase in wages of 100%. “According to the decision we will make, he argued on November 5, 1943, our comrades will have or will not have confidence in the Charter organizations.” The case led to other sweet-sound exchanges, not conducive to the emergence of a consensus. Following this, the workers' delegation decided, on February 25, 1944, not to sit until the government had satisfied it on the issue of wages. Surprised, the executives, then the employers followed suit. A compromise negotiated directly, in the spring, with the Secretary of State for Labour – Marcel Déat – put an end to this bad-mooded demonstration that Jean Le Gall described, a year later, as a “strike of a new kind”. Rather than talking about double play, it seems better to insist on the contradictions of an activist who, overwhelmed by events and trapped in a prolonged “policy of presence” until the summer of 1944, entertained beyond reasonable the fiction of a summit trade unionism seemingly disconnected from the social, political and military realities of the period. At the risk of bitterness and worry when failure appeared inevitable. “We are committing suicide [...] the workers’ activists who put all their moral authority at the service of social peace,” he criticized, on January 21, 1944, his interlocutors of the employers and the administration.

The Liberation confirmed these sentiments. With the notable exception of Le Havre, most port unions eliminated leaders deemed compromised in Charter organizations. The purification favored the communists at the expense of the executives of the pre-war federal majority. Tempted to let the storm pass to preserve the future, Jean Le Gall did not let go of his post, but made the part of the fire by accepting the arrival by his side, by decision of Benoît Frachon*, of Désiré Brest*. Despite final maneuvers to delay the irresistible thrust of the former unitaries, Jean Le Gall and his last supporters continued to lose ground. Criticized, on 22 and 23 March 1945, on the occasion of the first meeting of the national federal committee, however, he remained in place pending the federal congress. The near future was, however, expected to be very dark. Fallen seriously ill, Jean Le Gall lost, for months, the control of the Federation for the benefit of Désiré Brest. When asked, both by the committee for the reconstruction of trade union organizations, about their activity within the organizations of the Charter, they passed the test successfully. Thanks to the testimonies of Saillant and Bometereau* who made him the portrait of a “resistant”, Le Gall escaped any sanction. By “insufficient evidence,” the commission said. Delegates to the March 1946 federal congress were less understanding. There, the most uncompromising of the communist trade unionists launched an attack in good standing against the outgoing leadership, without sparing, by the way, Désiré Brest, their party comrade, implicated for his role in the chartist bodies and his taste for compromise. The author of a moral report rejected by 222 votes to 127 and 12 abstentions, Jean Le Gall was the privileged target of an opposition now sure to win. The activist faced, feigning the surprise under the assaults of what he declared to live as a deplorable “interrogation.” When appointing the officials, the Nominating Committee was divided on the renewal of Jean Le Gall and Désiré Brest. Ready to recognize that the Federation “loses a lot by losing these two comrades”, his majority decided that in view of their contribution to the Charter, the two leaders “could no longer be included in the federal office.” On behalf of the important delegation of the Le Havre, Thomas proposed that Le Gall be kept at the Executive Board. Returning to the charge, while a reversal was sketched in favor of Désiré Brest, he asked that his comrade benefit from the same indulgence. He “may have made a mistake, but the biggest thing we have done is not to have agreed to go before a commission of honor,” he observed. As the case appeared to be heard, Le Gall withdrew his candidacy “so as not to waste time and for a purpose of unity.” Eliminated from the federal authorities, he ripped out, in extremis, on the intervention of Gaulard and given his state of health, to be appointed by the Federation for a few months. Gagnaire suggested a quarter. Confronted, twenty years later, with the protest of Marseilles and Dunkirk, Désiré Brest returned to this painful episode to reprove the "lightness" and "processes" used in order to "disembark a federal secretary, willy-nilly. Whether he deserved a lot or not, it didn’t matter. We had landed him and that’s all.”

Back in Le Havre, Jean Le Gall was warmly welcomed by the trade unionists of the port. At the time of the split, he thought of taking his revenge and was strongly solicited to put his skills at the service of the FO Federation of Ports and Docks. According to Brest and several local witnesses, he had already accepted the post of secretary general, when Thomas and his relatives strongly warned him that they would not follow him and condemn his defection. Gall bowed and took his card from the CGT. Despite a rumor that Thomas echoed, in Paris, in 1950, announcing the return of “the one who was insulted in 1946”, the former federal leader, definitively removed from the national trade union scene, assured the general secretariat of the inter-union committee of workers’ organizations of the port of Le Havre created for him. Disillusioned, the man had lost none of his know-how. In 1955, Robert Danjou, the secretary of the workers of the Magasins reunited from Le Havre, struggling with the delicate problem of the expiry of the concession granted to the Docks and Warehouses, evoked the help he had given him. “Luckily for me,” he said, “I have an old fox in Le Havre, which is called Le Gall, which helped me well, otherwise I was in a pitching bath number 1...”

Following his death on 3 September 1956, the organ of the Federation, L’Avenir des Ports, announced the disappearance of “Comrade Le Gall, former secretary general”. “For several years,” he explained, “he had returned to Le Havre where he was campaigning in the port organizations.” The newspaper also reported that on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the CGT, the Federation had awarded him a medal in tribute to his attachment to the union cause. The time of polemics and grips now belonged to a story on which the Federation threw a modest veil. In 1963, she renewed the gesture made eight years earlier and handed the medal reserved for the valiants of the old guard to the family in the years 1935-1936 to the family.

Jean Le Gall was married in Paris (Xe arr.) in 1947.