In the mid-1970s. the French left-wing radical movement has undergone significant changes. On the one hand, many participants in the famous student unrest in May 1968 began to gradually move away from radical views, on the other hand, armed groups focused on the "urban guerrilla" - guerrilla warfare on the streets of French cities appeared and rapidly gained activity. One of the most active groups in 1973-1977. there were the "International Brigades", which arose on the basis of a group that broke away from the "Proletarian Left", which had ceased to exist.
At the same time, in the early 1970s, the contacts of the French left radicals with the Spanish anarchists and "libertarian Marxists" who were fighting against the regime of Francisco Franco in Spain were strengthened. Catalonia became a hotbed of anti-Francoist resistance. The convenient location (close to the French border) allowed the revolutionaries to move from country to country, hiding from the Spanish special services in France and from the French in Spain. In 1971, the Iberian Liberation Movement (Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación) was formed. This organization advocated the power of workers' councils, but at the same time rejected any political parliamentary or trade union activity. The MIL believed that the only possible form of struggle for itself was armed propaganda among the working class in order to rouse it to a general strike. The backbone of the Iberian liberation movement was made up of the inhabitants of Barcelona. The most prominent figure in the MIL was Salvador Puig Antique (1948-1974, pictured).
The connection with France was originally established by Halo Sole, who lived in France for a long time and participated in the events of May 1968. It was Halo Sole who established contacts with French leftists, as a result of which it was possible to attract several French radicals to the actions of the Iberian liberation movement. MIL specialized in robbery attacks on bank branches in Spain, although the organization's militants made the first armed attacks in France - in Toulouse, where a printing house was robbed and printing equipment was taken from it. The group then moved to Barcelona, where its activity increased significantly, and the Spanish police leadership even had to create a special group to fight the Iberian liberation movement. Nevertheless, bank robberies continued, although the militants tried to get by with the expropriations without human casualties.
In the Iberian Liberation Movement, and began his path as a revolutionary militant Jean-Marc Rouyan - a man who later became "number one" in the famous French armed organization "Direct Action". Jean-Marc Rouillant was born on August 30, 1952 in Osh, in the historical region of Gascony. We can say that Jean Marc was a hereditary leftist - his father, a teacher by profession, participated in the activities of one of the socialist parties in France, and meetings of leftist activists were constantly held in his house. When large-scale student unrest broke out in France in May 1968, Jean-Marc Rouillant was a sixteen-year-old in his senior high school in Toulouse.
He joined the protest movement and joined the Lyceum Students Action Committee associated with student organizations. The May 1968 movement made a tremendous impression on Ruiyan. Rouyan met a group of Spanish refugees living in Toulouse. These were anti-fascist revolutionaries, and not only young people, but also older people who had experience of participating in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Under their influence, Ruyan became so sympathetic to the Spanish anti-Francoist movement that in 1971 he crossed the state border and joined the armed struggle against the Franco regime in Spain, joining the Iberian liberation movement. This is how his "path to guerrilla" began.
Over the next two years, from 1971 to 1973, Jean-Marc Rouillan was in Spain, in Barcelona, where he lived in an illegal situation and participated in the activities of the Iberian Liberation Movement. It was there that he received practical training, having mastered the skills necessary for urban guerrilla warfare. By the way, the ideological views of the members of the Iberian Liberation Movement were quite eclectic. Jean-Marc Rouyan himself later admitted that "we were Soviet communists, anarchists, guevarists, rebels, adherents of the permanent revolution, proletarians, voluntarists, adventurers."
However, in the end, the Spanish Civil Guard and the police managed to deal with the underground. On September 25, 1973, as a result of a shootout with the pursuing leftists, after another raid by the police, Salvador Puig Antique was captured. He was charged with the murder of a police officer and sentenced to death. The Iberian liberation movement was virtually defeated. Only a few of its members, among whom was Jean-Marc Rouilland, crossed the border and hid in France.
On the territory of France, a new armed organization was created - the Internationalist Groups of Revolutionary Action ((GARI, Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes). The GARI included the surviving members of the Iberian Liberation Movement and several new French activists. The "core" of the organization was Jean Marc Rouilland, Raymond Delgado, Floril Quadrado and several other militants. Forid Quadrado (born 1946), also a hereditary revolutionary who came from a family of militant Spanish anarchists, participated in the events of Red May 1968 in Paris, and then joined the Internationalist groups of revolutionary action and was responsible in this organizations for the creation of false documents During the 1970s and 1980s, Quadrado remained the largest producer of false documents in the French underground movement and supplied them not only to French leftists, but also to revolutionaries from other European states.
Unlike MIL, GARI was already a purely French organization, nevertheless, it established close ties with Catalan and Basque separatist organizations operating in Spain. The targets of the attacks were mainly objects connected in one way or another with Spain and the activities of the Spanish government. GARI members, impressed by the defeat of the Iberian liberation movement, wanted to take revenge on the Spanish authorities for the suppression of radical left organizations. For example, on May 3, 1974, the director of the Bank of Bilbao, Angel Baltasar Suarez, was kidnapped in Paris, and on July 28, 1974, the Spanish consulate in Toulouse was attacked, in which six people were wounded. During the year, GARI carried out a large number of terrorist attacks, including the expropriation of banks and bombings of banks and Spanish missions. In addition, GARI militants undertook acts of sabotage against transport infrastructure and power lines connecting France and Spain.
Basically, terrorist acts and expropriations took place in and around Toulouse. However, GARI gradually spread its activity beyond France, acting in neighboring Belgium (fortunately, the borders between the two countries were very transparent). For example, August 5, 1974explosions thundered at the Iberia airline and two branches of Bank Espanyol in Brussels.
Nevertheless, in the same 1974, the French police managed to detain in Paris Jean-Marc Rouillant and two more of his comrades - Raymond Delgado and Floril Quadrado. In the car of the underground, the police found weapons and explosives, as well as false documents. In January 1975, a trial took place in Paris. By the way, during the trial, Ruyan's comrades carried out two attacks on French judicial institutions in protest. On January 8, 1975, GARI members attacked the courthouse in Toulouse, and on January 15, 1975, the 14th courthouse in Paris. However, the French justice turned out to be quite liberal - Jean-Marc Rouyan was released already in 1977, having spent only two years in prison.
In 1977, another left-wing radical group was created, which became one of the sources of the formation of Direct Action. These were the "Armed Cells for Popular Autonomy" ((NAPAP, Noyaux Armés pour l'Autonomie Populaire) - a Maoist-spontaneist organization that arose on the basis of the "International Brigades" (which we talked about in the first part of the article). Frederic Oric (born 1953, pictured), a native of Valencia, Spain, who joined the Maoist Union of Young Communists (Marxist-Leninists) and the Vietnam Committee at the age of 14. In October 1970, Oric took part in protests against the trial of leader of the "Proletarian Left" Alain Geismar, and at the age of 19 he joined the Renault plant in Boulogne-Billancourt in 1973. Oric joined the International Brigades, and in 1976-1977 - the Armed Cells for People's Autonomy.
Another NAPAP leader was Christian Harbulot. He was born in 1952 in Verdun and studied at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. During his studies, Harbulot joined the Maoist Cause of the People group, and then joined the Armed Cells for people's autonomy. On March 23, 1977, militants of the Armed Cells for Popular Autonomy killed Jean Antoine Tremoni, a Renault security officer who had shot and killed a member of the Proletarian Left, Pierre Auvernais, at the factory entrance five years earlier. In May 1977, members of the Armed Cells for Popular Autonomy Frederic Oric, Michel Lapeyre and Jean Paul Gerard were arrested in Paris. In October 1978 they were sentenced to seven years in prison each. However, the group continued armed attacks. Its militants carried out several terrorist attacks, including an attack on the Palais de Justice in Paris and several acts of sabotage against Renault and Mercedes.
The internationalist revolutionary action groups and the Armed Cells for People's Autonomy were the immediate predecessors of what emerged at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. organization "Direct Action". However, the creation of the latter was not some kind of simultaneous and rapid act. In the period from 1978 to 1981. there was a gradual formation of "Direct Action" as an armed political organization focused on the revolutionary struggle against the entire French political system. At the same time, the heterogeneous groups that formed the "base" for the creation of "Direct Action" were transformed and modified, some of them were defeated by the police, while others moved away from the strategy of armed revolutionary struggle.
Released, Jean-Marc Rouyan treated the issues of organizing Direct Action very carefully. He wanted to avoid possible mistakes and failures, and for this it was necessary to staff the "Direct Action" with dedicated and reliable people to the cause of the revolution. Particular attention was paid to young people who are proficient in any kind of sports, especially extreme car driving and shooting. The backbone of Direct Action was formed by young autonomists who had previously participated in the activities of other radical organizations. All new members of Direct Action were required to be trained in extreme car driving and shooting.
Combat training in "Direct Action" was organized at a sufficiently high level, which favorably distinguished the French guerilleros from their like-minded people in other Western European countries. As for the gender, age and nationality of the organization's members, Direct Action consisted of almost only young people under 30, both men and women. There were both French and Arabs - immigrants from the former North African colonies of France.
Almost every European left-wing radical armed organization of the 1970s - 1980s. had her own "Valkyrie" or even several. The German RAF included Ulrika Meinhof and Gudrun Enslin, as well as a number of lesser-known girls and women. In the Italian Red Brigades - Margarita Cagol and Barbara Balcerani. There was a "woman's face" and "Direct Action". Natalie Menigon (pictured) was born in 1957 in the municipality of Angin-les-Bains into a working class family. Unlike people from elite families, she started her working career early. In 1975, 18-year-old Menigon took a job at CFDT Bank, but took part in an employee strike and was soon fired. At the same time, the girl became close to the French leftists, and in 1978, together with Jean Marc Rouillan, she organized "Direct Action".
Unlike Natalie Menigon, another girl, the Direct Action activist, Joel Obron (1959-2006), came from a fairly wealthy bourgeois family. Having met the activists of the ultra-left movement, Obron plunged headlong into a turbulent political life. She participated in the activities of the autonomist movement, and then joined the Direct Action group created by Ruiyan and Menigon. Menigon and Obron became the most "valuable personnel" in the organization "Direct Action" and took part in the most high-profile attacks.
