Jean-Gabriel Goujon

French technical officer, bridge engineer, co-operativist and militant anarchist.

Jean-Gabriel Goujon was from a Protestant family, originally from Sainte-Foy-la-Grande (Gironde). His father, who had come to work in Paris as a laboratory boy, became a pharmacy preparer, then obtained a position of confidence at the Central Pharmacy, Jean-Gabriel spent his holidays in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande where he read the books of the library of a socialist uncle.
After being received at the Ecole Polytechnique, he made a career in the army. Anticlerical and Proushonian, he was mainly a co-operator activist.

In contact, in the exercise of his profession, with many workers, he understood their situation and tried to improve it. In his successive garrisons, he joined cooperative societies: in Versailles (Seine-et-Oise), to the local company on rue Saint-Martin, founded by Charles Robert; in Bordeaux, to the cooperative of “Families” whose main leader was Édouard Marty.

Mobilized during the First World War, he collaborated with the newspaper La Feuille (Paris, 61 issues from 3 August 1916 to 10 January 1918). He dealt with the European Crisis and Socialism. He was also a member at that time of the La Laborieuse de Troyes cooperative and the League for a League of Nations.

Admitted to the retreat after the war and set in Paris, he became one of the activists of the Union of Cooperators, member of a local circle and in charge of a mission to control social works. He was extremely vigilant and showed a surprising knowledge of cooperation and various social movements. In 1934, after the fall of the Bank for Cooperatives and on the occasion of the reorganization of the various institutions of the movement, he presented a report of great value.

He collaborated with the Anarchist Encyclopedia of Sébastien Faure (with which he became friends) and in several titles of the libertarian press including: Le Libertaire, weekly organ of the Union Anarchiste, Plus Loin (Paris, 1924-1939 of which he was a member of the editorial board), the journal of Dr. Marc Pierrot and La Voix Libertaire (Limoges, 1929-1939) animated by A. Perrissaguet and René Darsouze.

In 1929, he gave weekly lectures for the Circle of Studies and Documentation of the anarchist group of the 17th and 18th arrondissements, which was 48 rue Duhesme. At the same time, he gave in the groups of the Anarchist Youth conferences whose themes were: Free Exchange and Freedom and Organization. In July 1929, he remained 75 rue du Moulin des Prés (13th arrondissement). He was married and the father of two daughters.

Jean-Gabriel Goujon, who had worked for a time as an engineer for bridges and roads in Bordeaux and had campaigned at the Union anarchiste du sud-ouest, died on the night of August 11 to 12, 1935.