Henri Bouyé

French florist and anarchist, who was instrumental in rebuilding and restoring the French anarchist movement after the Nazi occupation.

The last of a Protestant family of twelve children, Henri Bouyé, father’s orphan, was raised by one of his aunts and from the age of 12 in a community of Calvinist preachers where he received a florist training.

According to unpublished Memoirs, Henri Bouyé’s political conscience awakened at the reading of the Shipwrecked of Jules Verne’s “Jonathan”, and in reaction to the Sacco and Vanzetti Affair, in 1926-1927.

At the age of 16, he worked for a nurseryman in Rochefort-sur-Mer, then at the Daillières establishments in Tours, where he carried out his first claim action. He then worked at Truffaut, Versailles, and had an unfortunate first contact with the CGTU.

In 1929, on a trip to Valenciennes for the company Georges Moser of Versailles, he discovered Le Libertaire and, shortly thereafter, joined the Paris 20th group of the Revolutionary Communist Anarchist Union (UACR). He then worked in various establishments in the Landes, Gironde, and Paris, and then in 1932 left for military service at the 18th Infantry Regiment in Bayonne.

Back in Paris, he resumed his activism at the AU but, at odds with the working style printed by René Frémont in the organization, he approached the groups and individualities that were subsequently to form the French-speaking Anarchist Federation (FAF).

In June 1936, he worked in Paris 14th at Baumann, boulevard du Montparnasse. He led the strike and created a CGT union. Until the declaration of war, Henri Bouyé remained secretary (volunteer) of the Union of Employees and Florist Workers of the Seine.

In August 1936, when the FAF was formed, he joined the group of Paris 3rd and met Voline with whom he became friends.

Fired in 1938 from Baumann, known as a trade unionist, he found it difficult to find work as a florist, and lived a time of small work.

In 1939, Henri Bouyé was treasurer of the FAF, Robert Royo being the secretary, and Marcel Bligand the assistant treasurer. The FAF had its headquarters 12, city Dupetit-Thouars and, according to the police, gathered half a thousand members. Bouyé was then staying at 31 bis, boulevard Saint-Martin.

In September 1939, Henri Bouyé was mobilized in the 123rd Infantry Regiment and sent to the border. After surgery in December, he was placed in the auxiliary service and sent to the Italian border. The vagaries of the debacle led him to Dax, where he deserted. At the time of the armistice, he had already returned to Paris.

At the end of 1940, Henri Bouyé tried to regroup comrades from the Paris region and held clandestine meetings at the headquarters of the florists’ union on the labor stock exchange, and in the small florist shop he opened with his companion at 86, avenue de la République, in Paris 11th.

Bouyé, in a testimony addressed to the CIRA-Marseille, recounted: "At the end of 1942 at the beginning of 1943, clandestine was envisaged the reorganization of the French anarchist movement. It was at this time that we managed to be equipped to provide false documents... I was recently circulating under a false name, André Deval, postal profession; at the end of 1943 I had to change civil status again and I became André Vigne, profession of electrician. He also issued several Jewish refugees work certificates for a fictional clothing company, La Moutonnière.

At the beginning of the summer of 1943, under the guise of a country walk in the forest of Montmorency was organized a first meeting in which participated “thirty to thirty-five comrades, perhaps more... among which Georges Vincey, Rachel Lantier, Émile Babouot ... and comrades of the suburbs (Saint-Denis, Juvisy, Bretigny-sur-Orge, Arcueil, Palaiseau, Saint-Maur...). To overcome any surprise (possible police intervention always possible), we had printed cards of adherence to a ghost association — La Vie au grand air, a naturist home — of which each of us was a bearer and which could have tended to prove, if it had been necessary, that it was not any gathering, but simply naturists on a walk. The group convened by Bouyé, soon had a few dozen members, including Roger Caron, Louis Laurent, Renée Lamberet, André Senez, Marcel Guennec and Georges Gourdin.

The back and forth of customers in Henri Bouyé’s florist shop masked the reality of clandestine activities, but according to Bertale’s testimony in Le Monde libertaire of September 30, 1999, the gestapo came several times to the store: “Each time, it went well, but with fear in the stomach. Because in the cellar, there was equipment to make the false papers and hidden people in the process of smuggling into Spain, in particular. Thus several dozen Jews had life saved by the André Deval sector.”

At the shop were also stored stacks of Combat or Liberation North. After August 1943, there was Workers' Resistance, the bulletin published by the non-communist faction of the CGT, which at the Liberation will be renamed the Workers' Force. Bouyé and several others collaborated for some time in this newsletter but its progaullist content quickly diverted them. This did not prevent him from participating, very early, in the reconstruction of the trade union movement. Thus, on 14 January 1944, with Louis Laurent and Émile Babouot, he participated in a clandestine trade union meeting of the stockbrokers of Paris.

The clandestine anarchist group led by Henri Bouyé in the Paris region set out to prepare for the reconstruction of the post-war anarchist movement, which was to unify the former AU and the former FAF. Criticizing some individualism, he advocated a strong organizational approach. This led him to strong disagreements with Louis Louvet and Simonne Larcher, supported in the South by André Arru and Aristide Lapeyre.

From January 15, 1944, a draft charter of a “unified libertarian federation” with anti-capitalist and revolutionary content, was born and the first issues of a liaison bulletin, Le Lien, were published. In February and March 1944, Henri Bouyé, under his false identity, made a tour of the cities of the Midi to evoke the reconstruction of the libertarian movement. He passed by Toulouse (meeting with André Arru, Alphonse Tricheux ...), Nîmes (with Léopold Gros*), Narbonne (with Louis Estève), Villeneuve-sur-Lot (with François Deluret), Tarbes, Marseille (with Voline), etc.

In July 1944, at the time of the fighting for the liberation of Paris, Henri Bouyé’s group published in 4 000 copies a Manifesto of the Unified Libertarian Federation (reproduced in Bulletin du CIRA, n°23-25) and pasted posters on the walls of the capital, “Return to freedom”. With Giliane Berneri, Émile Babouot, Jean-Lou Lefèvre, Renée Lamberet and Roger Caron, Henri Bouyé then wrote a brochure, Les Anarchistes et le problem social, which outlined a social project. This text was to be published in March 1945, under the stamp of the Libertarian Movement.

On October 29 and 30, 1944, Henri Bouyé participated in the “pre-congress of Agen” convened by the anarchist network of the Midi. It was a question of trying to reconcile the organizational positions expressed in the draft charter of the Bouyé group and those, more “synthesists”, of Louvet, Arru and Lapeyre. Finally, the participants in the “pre-congress” agreed that the draft charter served as the basis for the future congress of refoundation of the French anarchist movement. Henri Bouyé was appointed secretary of the provisional administrative commission of the Libertarian Movement (the name was chosen on this occasion), and in charge of preparing this congress.

The Bouyé group then rented a small room at 10, rue de Lancry, in Paris 10th and, on December 27, 1944, the No. 1 of the Libertaire, “organ of the Libertarian Movement” was reappeared.

At the same time, Henri Bouyé was part of the provisional administrative commission of the Union of Trade Unions of the Seine (CGT) reconstituted. As part of the purification, he was given a mandate from the Paris Liberation Committee, which, according to him, he used mainly to avoid disproportionate sanctions on certain people.

At the anarchist congress of Paris, on October 6 and 7, 1945, Henri Bouyé and his supporters, gathered around the Libertarian, confronted Louis Louvet, who had founded the weekly What to say and was supported by the groups of the Midi (Lapeyre, Arru) and Asnières (Maurice Laisant). Finally, the draft charter presented by Henri Bouyé in Agen, had to be abandoned, and the congress gave birth to the Libertarian Movement, a simple coordination of four structures: the French Trade Union Federation of Pierre Besnard; the Mouvement Égalité de Louis Louvet; the Anarchist Federation of Henri Bouyé; the Libertarian Youth of Georges Fontenis. The Libertarian Movement actually only lived a few months before it died out.

The Anarchist Federation soon settled at 145, Quai de Valmy, in Paris 10th and appointed an administrative commission (AC) of 22 members. It included Henri Bouyé, (Secretary-General), Louis Laurent, Roger Caron, Renée Lamberet, Jean Boucher, Porcheron, Delpench, Marcel Guennec, Paul Chéry*, Georges Fontenis (Jeunesses libertaires), Suzy Chevet, Georges Vincey (Federal Treasurer), Solange Dumont, Giliane Berneri, Paul Champs, Gardebled*, Henri Oriol (International Relations), Decoudu, Louis Haas* (administrator du Libertaire), Maurice Joyeux et Robert Joulin.

In 1946, Henri Bouyé supported the constitution of the French CNT.

On 13 and 14 September 1946 at the Second Congress of the FA in Dijon, ulcerated by the critics to which he was the subject, notably from André Arru, Maurice Joyeux and Aristide Lapeyre, Henri Bouyé left the secretariat of the FA where he was replaced by Georges Fontenis, which he had somewhat sponsored until then.

He was a delegate to the 2nd Congress of the CNTF held in Toulouse on 24-26 September 1948.

Secretary of the Paris 13th group, he increasingly opposed the political evolution of the FA, and in particular the “3rd front” orientation and the trade union orientations. His role therefore continued to decline within the FA, from which he was to eventually resign after the Bordeaux congress in June 1952, the libertarian communists won the majority.

At the time, he refocused his activism on the CNT, of which he was a member of the Paris Employees’ Union. He was still living at 86, avenue de la République, in Paris 11th. At the congress of the CNT held in Marseille from 5 to 7 June 1954, he was elected to the confederal bureau as secretary of international relations (the secretary being Y. Prigent).

On 1 October 1967, Henri Bouyé participated in Lamotte-Beuvron (Loir-et-Cher), in a meeting that decided to form a new organization, the Anarchist Federal Union (UFA) and the revival of the Libertarian. This new series appeared from January 1968 to March 1972.

In 1991, now rather in favor of a humanist anarchism, he re-adhered to the FA., becoming his “Liaison Val de Loire”. If he no longer held any responsibility, he participated in various FA congresses including the one held in Rennes in May 1997, and spoke at the symposium held on March 23, 1996 in Saint-Denis for the centenary of the Libertaire.

Retired, he then lived in a village in Touraine, not far from the one where Georges Fontenis lived, and the two old activists, although still in political disagreement, renewed the bonds of friendship. After his death, Georges Fontenis wrote in his memory: “Henri loved life and all his joys. A great lover of classical music, he was also a literate and a good writer. Excellent gardener, he had lost in love with the Touraine, the valley of the Indroit, the forest of Loches and the ponds of the Brenne, not to mention his native Charente and the edges of the ocean where, a few years ago, he liked to bivouac."