Zéphyrin Camélinat (variously spelled ''Zéphirin'', ''Zéphyrenne''; 5 March 1840 in Mailly-la-Ville,

Yonne Yonne (, in Burgundian: ''Ghienne'') is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the river Yonne, which flows through it, in the country's north-central part. One of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté's eight con ...

– 14 September 1932 in Paris) was a French politician, communard, socialist and communist.

Biography

Zéphyrin Rémy Camélinat was born into a poor peasant family and became a metal worker by trade. He was a friend of the anarchist writer and social critic P.-J. Proudhon. In 1864, Camélinat was one of the signatories of the 'Manifesto of the Sixty', together with Henri Tolain and other Proudhonists. It abandoned political abstentionism and called for elections of workers to the National Assembly, and for the establishment of economic as well as political democracy. Camélinat was instrumental in organising the French section of the

First International The International Workingmen's Association (IWA; 1864–1876), often called the First International, was a political international which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, social democratic, communist, and anarchist ...

and recruited

Benoît Malon Benoît Malon (23 June 1841 – 13 September 1893), was a French Socialist, writer, communard, and political leader. Biography Malon came from a poor peasant family. An opportunity to escape the life of a rural labourer presented itself wh ...

, among others. In 1871 Camélinat participated in the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

, serving as its treasurer. After the suppression of the Commune, he fled to England, where he remained until a general amnesty enabled him to return to France in 1880. From 1885 to 1889 he was a Socialist deputy in the Chamber of Deputies. Soon after the 1885 session opened

Antide Boyer Antide Boyer (26 October 1850 – 24 July 1918) was a French manual worker, Provençal dialect writer and journalist from the south of France who became a socialist deputy. He supported strikes and was involved in the fight for workers' rights aro ...

Émile Basly Émile Basly (29 March 1854 – 11 February 1928) is one of the great figures of trade unionism in mining in the mineral field of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, along with Arthur Lamendin. He is primarily known for his participation in the strike of 1 ...

, Camélinat and others formed the "workers' group", a small socialist group independent of the extreme left. The members of the workers' group summarized their demands in a manifesto on 12 March 1886: Camélinat defended compensation for work accidents, social assistance for the disabled, limiting child labor, separation of church and state and free justice. He was involved in the unification of the French Socialist party (

SFIO The C programming language provides many standard library functions for file input and output. These functions make up the bulk of the C standard library header . The functionality descends from a "portable I/O package" written by Mike Lesk at ...

) in 1905. During the First World War, Camélinat moved increasingly to the left of the Socialist Party and came to oppose its pro-war stance. In 1920 he became a founding member of the new

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...

(PCF), serving as its first presidential candidate in the French presidential election of 1924. Camélinat died on 14 September 1931, aged 91. His funeral was organized by FCP and according to ''

L'Humanité (; ) is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organisation of the SFIO, ''de facto'', and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, would not exist." History ...

'', it was attending by over 120,000 workers.

References

Sources

*Bruno Fuligni, ''La France rouge. Un siècle d’histoire dans les archives du PCF'', Les Arènes, 2011 * *''The Great Soviet Encyclopedia''. Moscow, 1979. {{DEFAULTSORT:Camelinat, Zephyrin Members of the International Workingmen's Association Communards French socialists French communists 1840 births 1932 deaths