Tribute to the heroes of the proletariat
This Saturday, February 28, many of us gathered to pay tribute to the heroes of the proletariat of France at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Revived in 2012 by La Cause du Peuple, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of our comrade Pierre Overney, “Pierrot,” the ceremony had, for the first time, brought together about ten people.
Fifty-four years after the death of our comrade, 250 people took part in the commemoration in the cemetery’s pathways, pausing at the grave of Colonel Fabien, near the Wall of the Federated. The call, signed by the Revolutionary Youth Organizations (LJR/JR), the Student Trade Union Federation (FSE), the Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union (UPML-ICOR), Partizan, as well as the Organizing Committee of the Anti-Imperialist League (France), resonated strongly this year. We then proceeded to Pierre Overney’s grave, where tribute speeches were read.
The songs of the revolutionary proletariat punctuated the commemoration, including “Les nouveaux Partisans,” which we take pleasure each year in singing with its first performer, Dominique Grange, former activist of the Proletarian Left and comrade of Pierrot. We share here the speech delivered on behalf of La Cause du Peuple:
Dear friends, dear comrades,
Once again this year, we gather at Pierre Overney’s grave, continuing the tributes to the heroes of the proletariat of France.
As every year, red flags are raised to honor his memory. Through this act, we celebrate centuries of struggles of the proletariat and the peoples, distinguishing those fighters who gave their lives for human emancipation.
Despite the decades of struggles, reversals, confusion, renunciations, and betrayals experienced by the revolutionary movement, we have never lost sight of the objective that guided Comrade Pierre Overney’s struggle when he was distributing leaflets in front of Renault: to organize the masses, fight the bourgeoisie, and denounce and overthrow revisionism and opportunism.
Pierre Overney was a communist militant, a member of the Proletarian Left. He fought in the storm that was the great uprising of May–June 1968. He first fought against those who had betrayed the proletariat, those who had laid down their arms and liquidated the glorious Communist Party of France. He fought against those who distorted Marxism only to sit at the boss’s table and sell him the dignity of the workers’ struggle.
As a distributor of our newspaper, La Cause du Peuple, and as an anti-revisionist militant, Pierre Overney was part of that generation which, under difficult conditions, chose to take up the torch of revolutionary struggle in the face of the betrayals of the communist parties following the capitulationist path of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Thus, in France, Pierre Overney contributed to the struggle against the most dangerous form of anti-communism: the one that develops within our class, draped in red.
At the four corners of the world, the great counteroffensive of Marxism was unfolding: in the urban centers and remote regions of People’s China (1966); in the maquis of Fizi, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in what is now the DRC (1967); in the countryside of West Bengal with the spark of Naxalbari (1967); in the heart of the Philippine archipelago (1969); in the Anatolian mountains (1972); in the Araguaia Valley in Brazil (1972); and finally, at the summit of the Andes Cordillera (1981).
When Pierre Overney was shot dead on February 25, 1972, he was distributing leaflets calling for the commemoration of the victims of the Charonne metro massacre ten years earlier. He was standing up to defend the memory of communist militants who were victims of repression under the Gaullist regime and its collaborationist-fascist prefect Maurice Papon, because they had risen against colonization in Algeria and the crimes of the OAS terrorists.
The one who killed him was Antoine Tramoni, an agent of the employer’s militia at the factory.
At the funeral of our comrade Pierre Overney, hundreds of thousands of proletarians, students and high school pupils, intellectuals, anti-opportunist, progressive, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary activists took to the streets in Paris. This great procession marched not only for the memory of our comrade but above all for the struggle he carried. The event was an immense anti-revisionist demonstration, at the head of which proudly floated the Red Flags of the international proletariat, alongside the beautiful flag of the Palestinian nation. It was the internationalist spirit of the oppressed of the entire world that expressed itself that day!
Comrades, we all know this history, and Père Lachaise Cemetery is an exceptional witness to it, from the Wall of the Federated to the tombs of the heroes of the anti-fascist War of National Liberation. There is an essential lesson to remember, something to display and put forward: these comrades took part in the struggle to the point of paying the ultimate price in service of the revolutionary cause.
We have entered a new era. Reactionary forces are advancing at full speed, imperialism commits genocides and wars of plunder and marches toward a third world war. Faced with this nightmarish society, only a mass movement under communist leadership can break the chains of the oppressed of the world. Only such a movement would be capable of dismissing war, fascism, and barbarism.
Everywhere, the masses are already fighting and are only waiting for the communists to give concrete form to the revolutionary struggle, all the way to victory, with ardor and dignity.
All the heroes we celebrate today never died in vain; on the contrary. The bourgeoisie and their reactionary dogs, in thinking they would make them disappear, made them immortal! These comrades live through our struggles and our actions. Our heroes are our pole stars, our compass, and it is in this spirit that we pay tribute to them.
Communists reject hollow ceremonies. We are not here out of duty of memory or folklore. We are here to swear that we will live up to our comrades who died in the fierce struggle for Communism!
We know that Communists are struck by the most beautiful of curses: we are condemned to win, and we will win, because we carry life, youth, and the future. Let us therefore approach our task with the greatest seriousness but above all with the greatest optimism!
Comrades, Pierre Overney lives in our struggles and in our fight!
Pierre Overney, hero of the Proletariat, present in the struggle!
Pierre Overney, Present!
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