Memoirs from Paris

The Paris Commune lasted only from March 18 to May 28 1871, yet it inspired a range of anarchists, socialists and communists in the decades leading to the 1917 Russian revolution.

It became a source of ideas about the replacement of capitalist political structures and is celebrated as the first great workers' revolt to challenge the power of the state and form a workers' government.

Karl Marx followed events carefully and, days after the uprising, published The Civil War in France, where he suggested that the commune represented a new breakthrough in creating a workers' government, rather than one led by middle-class republicans.

The commune in French means local municipality, but, in 1871, it recalled the 1792 commune created during the French revolution.

On March 26 1871, in the wake of France's defeat by Prussia, over 229,000 citizens of Paris elected an 80-member municipal council. Most were supporters of the republican left.

Nearly a fifth were members of Marx's First International, while others were followers of the anarchist leader Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Also elected to the council was the fabric designer Eugene Pottier, author of the original French lyrics of The Internationale, which he wrote in prison after the collapse of the commune.

In its short life, the commune enacted a series of decrees to promote radical democracy - policies on security, democracy and economy that led to its celebration as the first workers' government.

Some are interesting in view of recent developments in France.

There was a decree ordering the removal of all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas and prayers from schools. "All that belongs to the spheres of the individual's conscience."

There was also a decree allowing people to form co-operatives and work in factories abandoned by owners fleeing the revolution.

It was a rebellion that struck fear in the occupying Prussian army as much as in the reactionary French Government of National Defence.
Adolphe Thiers got permission to rebuild the French army and then lay siege on Paris and the commune.

The Versailles troops - with the permission of the Prussian forces - entered Paris on May 21. There followed eight days of massacre of workers and civilians.

More than 20,000 were killed and 43,000 others arrested.

At the centre of the uprising and defending to the end the barricades in defence of the commune was the inspirational anarchist Louise Michel, a woman who described herself as being "in love with the revolution."

She had mobilised the women in support of the commune and, when she finally turned herself in, was deported along with other leaders to New Caledonia.

There, she took up the cause of the indigenous Kanak population when they rose up in protest against the theft of their land by French settlers.

She was eventually pardoned in 1880 and returned to France to agitate and continued to display her total contempt for authority.

She took up the cause of the Arabs in Algeria, travelled throughout Europe - she came to London a number of times - supporting women's rights, trade unionists, anti-colonialist struggles, anarchists and democrats facing police repression.

This book is a first-class introduction to anyone not familiar with the story of the Paris Commune and its heroine Louise Michel.

Nic Maclellan provides a comprehensive biography of her life.

The rest of the book consists of extracts from her own writing, mostly from her memoirs and from the writings of others about her and the commune.

These include a poem to her by Victor Hugo, an extract from Bertolt Brecht's play The Days of the Commune, an extract from Marx's The Civil War in France and extracts from Friedrich Engels's introduction to the same volume.

The book also includes extracts from the works of Lenin, Howard Zinn, Sheila Rowbotham, Paul Foot, William Morris and Emma Goldman.

GWYN GRIFFITHS