Socialist Municipalities and Communes in France

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I referred last week to the good work done by the Socialist Municipal Council of Lille in looking after the children of the town. In this connection it will interest JUSTICE readers – let us hope it may also encourage them – to know that after the municipal elections last May the Parti Ouvrier (Worker’s Party) scored such immense successes that it was decided to form a “Federation” of all “Mayors, Adjoints of Mayors (a kind of French aldermen) “and Municipal Councillors” pledged to the programme of the Parti Ouvrier, and to carrying out, so far as possible, the details of that programme. The municipalities that have “adhered to” – i.e., accepted, the Parti Ouvrier programme include such towns – among the most important industrial towns in France – as Marseilles, Bordeaux, Calais, Roubaix, Lille, Montlucon, Nantes, Narbonne, Agen, Aix, Roanne, La Ciotat, Grenoble, Rochefort, Perpignan, Ivry, Cette, Lyons, besides over two hundred other municipalities “rural and working class.” When it is borne in mind that the programme of the Parti Ouvrier is in all essentials identical with that of the Social-Democratic parties of Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Holland, &c., &c., the meaning of the influence of such a “Federation of Municipal Councillors” will be understood. Meantime the Socialiste, the central organ of the Party, is to publish a sort of official report of work done, or to be done, in order that these 200 odd Parti Onvriers, municipalities or communes may be constantly in touch one with another.

The Vorwärts announces the death – in this case welcome news – of poor John Neve the Anarchist. Neve was a man of absolute honesty, incorruptible, and a man of quite exceptional talent. The news of his death is “welcome” because Neve has for years been a hopeless lunatic, driven mad like the Irish prisoners in our English gaols. The story of his betrayal to the police by that trio of blackguards – Peukert, Trautner and Reuss (here better known as Charles Theodor) as told in the German press, I hope one of these days to tell in England. Meantime it is interesting to note that although Reuss (who for a long time was the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Chronicle) has been again and again denounced as a paid police spy, although Singer in the Reichstag declared it a disgrace that such a creature should be allowed to sit in the press seats, Herr Theodor Reuss remains a member of the press and of the Authors’ Club in Berlin. Neve has been done to death in a German prison. Reuss has recently had the “honour” to be photographed alongside of Herbert Bismarck. The workers of all countries should remember both these men. Our party also has its Christs and its Judases.

E.M.A.