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Title: Louis Lecoin Author: May Picqueray Language: en Topics: Louis Lecoin Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/louis-lecoin-by-may-picqueray/
My enthusiasm for anarchism went in all directions. I was at risk of
becoming inefficient, spreading my energies too thin. Chance made me
cross paths with Louis Lecoin. It was in 1921 that I first met him. From
that moment on, I spent most of my time making war to war.
Louis Lecoin was just out from the prison of Albertville after an
eight-year sentence for antimilitarism. What stroke me first were his
blue eyes which glistened with intelligence, with a touch of
mischievousness, but also his goodness, his energy, and his courage. He
even courted me for a short while. But, at 20, I thought this great man
was too small. This did not stop us from being good friends all our
lives.
I was not disappointed, the legend about him seemed justified. I knew
him well from what Sébastien Faure, Pierre Le Meillour and other people
had told me, with such warmth, such love! I knew all the things for
which he had been imprisoned: his refusal, as a young soldier, to march
against train workers on strike, and to shoot at them, defying the
military machine of which he was a part. His campaign against the war,
in 1914, the thousand leaflets he had distributed, his long years in
jail, punctuated with hunger strikes to demand the reestablishment of
the status of political prisoners, and for it to be granted to the
anarchist comrade Jeanne Morand, injustly suspected of intelligence with
the enemy.
Louis Lecoin was to us, young libertarians, young syndicalists, an
example to follow. He had proven us that we could be at the same time
syndicalists, liertarians, and antimilitarists.
When he got out he became the administrator of Le Libertaire, the
newspaper of the Union Anarchiste, which did not prevent him from being
a militant in his union (the builders’ union) and to intervene
energetically and efficiently at the Lille congress in 1921 and Saint
Etienne in 1922.
Like most of us, he felt enthusiastic about the Russian revolution, from
which we expected great things, and which only brought us disillusions,
but he resisted being enrolled into the Communist Party, unlike some
other comrades.
In 1921, he led a campaign to avoid the extradition of three Spanish
men: Ascaso, Durruti, and Jover, sentenced in Argentina pretendingly for
some robbery, but in fact for being anarchists. Their extradition was
imminent: a cruiser was coming to get them. He reached out to the
highest political and judiciary figures, and, finally, won their case.
He also worked to avoid the deportations of Camille Berneri and Nestor
Makhno and managed to save them.
But his biggest case was the Sacco and Vanzetti affair.