Ludovic Ménard

French anarchist, syndicalist and founder of the slate workers union, born. Signatory of the Charter of Amiens, adopted by the Confédération Générale du Travail in 1906. His efforts on behalf of his fellow slate workers won them the same standing as miners. The inscription on a monument to him in Trélazé reads: "Syndicaliste pacifiste, fondateur des syndicats ardoisiers. Sa vie au service des travailleurs fut un combat permanent pour la justice sociale et la paix." (Pacifist unionist, founder of slate workers unions. His life in the service of workers was a constant struggle for social justice and peace.)

Son of a factory dayman, Ludovic Ménard knew, in his childhood in Saumur, then in Angers, finally in Trélazé the extreme poverty; he attended the primary school with the greatest profit, but left it at the age of eleven, his parents having had to place him at the Ardosières de Trélazé as an apprentice slate splitter. Around the age of 17, he met a health officer who, struck by his thirst for his education, advised him to take the evening classes for adults given to Angers; at the same time he opened his library and made him read the classics of the 17th century, the philosophers of the 18th, the revolutionary and socialist writers of the 19th. Thus, the young man, by hard work, adopted a vast culture, quite exceptional at that time for a worker. His readings, as well as the lessons of daily labor, inspired him very early on a great thirst for equality, justice and freedom, the desire for a well-being for his fellow workers. These aspirations were also strengthened by the revolutionary traditions of the workers of Trélazé (insurrection of 1855, in particular). Aware, in 1882, of the struggle to be resumed and carried out, Ménard hesitated, however, between political socialism and corporate syndicalism: before becoming, from 1890, the very type of trade unionist, he first tried to place his fight on the political ground.

In 1884, at the instigation of Germany who had come to Angers several times, Ménard was, together with André Bahonneau, a split-worker like him, one of the founders of the Angevin section of the “Federation of Socialist Workers”. It was at this time that a conference for the Germanist party in Trélazé came to make a conference in Trélazé, “Tortelier had been won over to anarchist ideas... the companions of this old revolutionary home had undertaken it for a whole night and had conquered it” (cf. article by P. Monatte, The Proletarian Revolution, February 1926). In October 1885, he ran in the legislative elections on the socialist list, but obtained at the top of his list only 1 127 votes (the Conservatives, all elected, obtained about 70,000 votes each, the Republicans 45 000); in 1887, the only “republican” candidate in front of the conservative Bodinier, for a seat on the general council in the canton of Angers S-E, he obtained 1,390 votes, while he obtained 1,390 votes, In 1888 he collaborated with a local socialist weekly, The Worker.

In 1889, the arrival of the anarchist Tortelier in Trelazé marked a turning point in Ménard’s life. The success of Tortelier in Trelaze was immense and Ménard himself was won over to anarchism, from which he retained above all, alongside electoral abstentionism and anti-militarism, the importance of education and cooperation. At the same time, electoral disillusionment, the divisions of the socialist parties generating powerlessness had gradually diverted him from political socialism; henceforth, trade union action, based on libertarian ideology, would occupy his entire life.

In July 1889, he asked the editorial staff of the newspaper L’Attaque (Paris) de Gegout, to send him 2,000 (sic, probably 200) copies to the station of Angers in order to broadcast them in the region.

In 1890, during the strike of the carriages of the Pont Malembert (Trélazé), he had been mandated to carry out a tour of solidarity and conferences (Cholet, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Rennes, Le Mans, Tours, Chateauroux and Poitiers).

In 1891, then in 1894, successive mergers resulted in the formation of two major companies in Angers, concentrating all the slate activity of the Angevin region: the Commission des Ardosières d’Angers and the Société Ardoisière de l’Anjou. The first, chaired by Aimé-Étienne Blavier, senator of Maine-et-Loire, grouped most of the careers of Trélazé; the second included, in addition to the careers of the Grand’Maison in Trélazé, those of Misengrain in Noyant-la-Gravovoiere (Maine-et-Loire) and those of Renazé (Mayenne). The exceptional prosperity that resulted, in large part, from this effort of concentration, explains all the better the harshness of workers’ demands. Certainly, the fate of the split-up workers (freer, better paid) was more enviable than that of the workers of the bottom and especially that of the daykeepers; but the fact remained that all the slate workers, the “perrayed”, considered the working day too long, certain conditions of work too dangerous, the fate of the old or sick worker too precarious (despite some social achievements of employer origin). By 1880, Bahonneau had founded a “Slate Workers’ Union Chamber”; but this, which was not authorized, was only tolerated and had very little influence. In 1890, however, Ménard decided to reconstitute the union under the 1884 Act, which was done on 15 November.

In March 1891 the first great strike of Trélazé broke out. The daily workers of the bottom of one of the Commission’s careers having ceased work for a question of wages, the strike soon extended, at the instigation of Ménard and union leaders (in particular the secretary Georget), to all the categories of workers and to all the careers of the Commission, thus affecting 2 000 workers; a test of strength between the union and the Commission of the Ardosières, between Ludovic Ménard and the President. After six weeks, the work resumed without the workers having obtained satisfaction, but, if the strike was a failure in terms of material demands, it was a great moral success for the union and for Ménard whose controversy with President Blavier, in the local press, had had a deep impact.

From 1892, the beginning of the anarchist attacks in France, Ménard was under the close surveillance of the police: described in a report as “dangerous and prudent leader, undisputed leader of the anarchist sect in Trélazé”, he worked his best to avoid the incidents; reproving “propaganda by the bomb”, he advised his comrades the most extreme caution in order not to give in to provocations. He did not deny anything of his libertarian faith, bringing to Angers and Trélazé the great anarchist orators (in particular Sébastien Faure), always advocating electoral abstentionism, refusing to register for the new “Group of Independent Socialists” that was created in Angers.

Meanwhile, the union, very monitored because of the well-known anarchism of its members, was going through a serious crisis: the number of members – more than a thousand in 1891 – did not exceed ten around 1898. But Ménard was too lucid not to understand that it would take a long time for his fellow workers to be born in a real union consciousness; moreover, he shared Pouget’s point of view on “the union, active minority” imprinting, when the time comes, his impulse to the mass.

In the early 1900's, he was with H. Mercier, one of the local correspondents of Jean Grave’s New Times.

It was around 1900 that he became aware of the enormous advantage that the slate trees could derive from their legal assimilation to miners (the law of 1894 had made mandatory in the Mining Companies the creation of Pension Funds; the 1905 law will establish the eight-hour day in the mines). But, in order to try to obtain from the public authorities this assimilation, it was first necessary that all the slate workers of France unionize, then group their various unions into a powerful National Federation, finally that it merges with the Federation of Minors. To this crucial task, Ménard, helped mainly by Bahonneau and Georget, was to devote themselves from 1902, deploying for this purpose an extraordinary activity during the twelve years preceding the First World War and which are the most important of his life.

In March 1902, the result of a long work in depth, the slate union of Trélazé was again alive (in 1904, it will comprise 3 000 members) and asked for its inscription on the Bourse du Travail d’Angers. In 1902 and 1903, Ménard, following multiple visits, managed to lay the foundations of trade union sections in Noyant, Combrée, Renazé, despite the first hostile attitude of all the workers and thanks to the intelligence and courage of the few (such as Pierre Gémin in Renazé): on August 21, 1904, in Trélazé, was decided the constitution of the National Federation of the To justify the label of the “national” Federation, it remained to reach the slate centers outside the Anjou: at the end of 1904, the small Breton center of Rochefort-en-Terre, after that of Coësmes, was a union that requested its membership. In July 1905, Ménard visited the centres of Flumet (Savoie) and Labassère (Hautes-Pyrénées), laying the groundwork for trade union sections and preparing for membership in the Federation; in October 1907, he went to the Ardennes, the great French slate region after Anjou: there, he made contact with the already existing slate union and with his dynamic secretary Martin-Coupaye. In December the union of Fumay joined the Federation, soon imitated by the unions of Haybes and Rimogne.

However, the vitality and combativity of the Federation, and especially of the trade union of Trélazé, were manifested in the many strikes, sometimes several weeks long, which supported, most often victoriously, the demands (wages, working conditions) presented to the companies. This combativeness explains the influence of the Federation of Ardosiers and allowed Ménard to negotiate with the National Federation of Minors the merger of the two federations, in accordance with the general guidelines of the congress of the CGT in 1908. This merger was finally done on March 13, 1910, at the Albi Congress which saw the constitution of the “National Federation of Subsoil Workers and Similar” (Secretary General, Cordier, then Bartuel; Treasurer, Georget). For Ménard, this merger was only a step towards the recognition by the public authorities of the assimilation of slates to minors: did not the former now work in galleries and therefore in conditions very close to those of the latter? However, despite the favourable opinion of the Council of State, despite the efforts of Viviani (who, Minister of Labour, had received Ménard in May 1908), Albert Thomas, of Jaurès, and in part because of the hostility of the Angevin slate companies, the bill was rejected by the Chambers in November 1913.

In the autumn of 1912, Ménard, who around 1906 had joined the Socialist Party, which had not been appreciated by his former companions, was the object of the Parisian group “Les Originaires de l’Anjou” and relayed by the activists of Trélazé Boulan and E. Hamelin, among other things, of a campaign in Le Libertaire accusing him during the 1905 strike in which 149 workers had been dismissed “to have received 250 francs from the special commissioner”, of having collaborated with the public authorities by negotiating layoffs, of having protected a lieutenant of gendarmerie, of having had “anti-revolutionary conduct”, Hamelin even claiming “that Ménard served for a long time” LibertaireLibertian, 2 November & 22 November 1912). To clear the case and close the rumors, an honorary jury was set up and summoned on December 28, 1912 in Paris. At the end of the contradictory session attended by more than 200 people, was published in La Bataille syndicaliste (11 January 1913) the following communiqué: “The undersigned, meeting on 28 December 1913 [...] to hear on the one hand the accusations made by the Group of the originants of Anjou against Ludovic Ménard and on the other hand the answers of the latter, declare that of this contradictory debate between the two parties, it is apparent from the two parties Léon Jouhaux, Georges Yvetot, Charles Marck, V. Griffuelhes, Pierre Monatte, Péricat, Charbonnier, Simonin, Coudert, Lemaître etc. »

The declaration of war was for Ménard a “immense heartbreak.” Yet, at the same time as the conflict meant the collapse of his internationalist beliefs, he brought to the thesis of assimilation an unexpected argument: in order to meet the needs of skilled labour in coal and iron mines, the government recalled from the front the slate trees who gave full satisfaction. However, in the aftermath of the war, it was necessary to have a threat of unlimited strike launched by the Federation of the subsoil for the passage of the law of 30 April 1920 equating the slatemen to minors: thus, Ménard finally saw the crowning of the work to which he had devoted his life.

Elected, in June 1919, general secretary of the Bourse du Travail d’Angers, he still deployed a great activity, despite a faltering health. From May 1919 to May 1920, he animated the great revolutionary push that was translated into Maine-et-Loire by numerous strikes. Always close to L. Jouhaux and rallied to reformism, he was then the object of harsh attacks by revolutionaries through the Revolutionary Trade Unionist Committees (CSR). But, from May 1920, the dissent within the CGT, which led to a weakening of the workers’ movement and preparing the split of December 1921, were for Ménard, aged, a hard ordeal. He retired as a split worker (he had started as an apprentice 53 years before), gave his resignation as secretary of the stock exchange on 22 July 1921 and abandoned all union activity.

After a serene old age in Trélazé, then in Angers, mourning however by the loss of his wife, he died at the hospice of the Ponts-de-Cé (Maine-et-Loire), on January 30, 1935.

Coming from the people, “Ludo”, as his friends called him, wanted to put at the service of his fellow workings his culture and his eloquence, his intelligence and his energy, his integrity and his generosity. In love with peace and justice, he enrolled, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, in the League of Human Rights, manifested in 1909 for Ferrer, was part of a Masonic lodge for some time. But it was really in 1890, under the influence of anarchism, that he found in revolutionary syndicalism a meaning in his life and his aspirations: he was in Amiens, in October 1906, at the 9th Congress of the CGT and signed the revolutionary syndicalist agenda presented by V. Griffuelhes approving the charter of French trade unionism, to which he remained faithful all his life, taking good care (apart from an unfortunate candidacy and quite inexplicable in the legislative elections of 1910) to separate his trade union action from his political option (he joined the SFIO in 1905). As the stele inaugurated in Trélazé on April 30, 1939, recalls, “his life, in the service of the workers, was a permanent struggle for social justice and peace.”