Source
by Richard Parry
ON THE EVE of World War One a number of young anarchists came together in Paris determined to settle scores with bourgeois society.
Their exploits were to become legendary.
The French press dubbed them 'The Bonnot Gang' after the oldest 'member', Jules Bonnot, a thirty-one year-old mechanic and professional crook who had recently arrived from Lyon.
The other main characters, Octave Garnier, Raymond Callemin, René Valet, Elie Monier and André Soudy were all in their very early twenties.
A host of other comrades (i.e. those of an anarchist persuasion) played roles that were relevant to the main story, and I apologize in advance for the plethora of names with which the narrative abounds.
The so-called 'gang', however, had neither a name nor leaders, although it seems that Bonnot and Garnier played the principal motivating roles.
They were not a close-knit criminal band in the classical style, but rather a union of egoists associated for a common purpose.
Amongst comrades they were known as 'illegalists', which signified more than the simple fact that they carried out illegal acts.
Illegal activity has always been part of the anarchist tradition, especially in France, and so the story begins with a brief sketch of the theory and practice of illegality within the movement before the turn of the century.
The illegalists in this study, however, differed from the activists of previous years in that they had a quite different conception of the purpose of illegal activity.
As anarchist individualists, they came from a milieu whose most important theoretical inspiration was undoubtedly Max Stirner — whose work The Ego and
Its Own remains the most powerful negation of the State, and affirmation of the individual, to date.
Young anarchists took up Stirner's ideas with relish, and the hybrid 'anarchist-individualism' was born as a new and vigorous current within the anarchist movement.
In Paris, this milieu was centred on the weekly paper l'anarchie and the Causeries Populaires (regular discussion groups meeting in several different locations in and around the capital each week), both of which were founded by Albert Libertad and his associates.
It was here that 'illegalism' found fertile soil and took root, such that the subsequent history of the illegalists is closely bound up with the history of l'anarchie.
One of the editors of this weekly was Victor Kibalchich, later to be better known as Victor Serge, the pro-Bolshevik writer and opponent of Stalinism.
At the time of this story, however, he was not just a close associate of several 'illegalists' but was also one of the most outspoken of the anarchist-individualists, and editor of l'anarchie to boot.
As such, his early career as a revolutionary is a central thread in the story of the Bonnot Gang, although this period of his life was glossed over by Serge himself and has been subsequently ignored by contemporary political writers who wish to keep him as 'their own'.
It therefore seems more fitting for the purposes of this narrative to use his nom de plume, Le Rétif, or his real name, Kibalchich, rather than 'Serge', a pseudonym he did not adopt until five years after he found himself fighting for his life as a defendant in the mass trial of 1913.
Despite their sanguinary exploits, the 'Bonnot Gang' remain as much a chapter in the history of anarchism as the activities of Ravachol in France or the Durruti Column in Spain.
To push their story to one side, or to treat it as a 'dark side' of anarchism to be glossed over or ignored, is to be unfaithful to the history of anarchism as a whole.
On the other hand, however, those who would glamorize or make heroes of the illegalists are failing to see that they were not at all extraordinary people or anarchist supermen.
What is remarkable about them is that although as young sons of toil their lives could easily have led to the slavery of the factory or the trenches, they chose not to resign themselves to such a fate.
This book is not a novel; the novelist's approach certainly adds dramatic tension and vigour, but I would not like to be guilty of spurious characterizations.
In any case, I certainly could not have done better than Malcolm Menzies' book En Exil Chez Les Hommes (unfortunately only available in French) and so have written what I hope will pass as a 'history'.
Here, the question of 'historical truth' rears its ugly head: some of the story remains very obscure for several reasons.
To begin with, none of the surviving participants admitted their guilt, at least until after the end of the subsequent mass trial.
It was part of the anarchist code never to admit to anything or give information to the authorities.
Equally, it was almost a duty to help other comrades in need, and if this meant perjury to save them from bourgeois justice, then so be it.
Hence the difficulty in knowing who was telling 'the truth'.
Those who afterwards wrote short 'memoirs' often glamorized or ridiculed persons or events, partly to satisfy their own egos and partly at the behest of gutter-press sub-editors.
In the trial itself there were over two hundred witnesses, mainly anarchists for the defence, and presumably law-abiding citizens for the prosecution.
Much evidence from the latter was contradictory.
While most were probably telling the truth as far as they could remember, others had told an inaccurate version so many times that either they believed it themselves, or, under police pressure, they found it too late and too embarrassing to withdraw it.
A few were certainly motivated either by private, or a sense of social, revenge.
Then of course there was the evidence of the police who, it was revealed during the course of the trial, had pressurized witnesses and fabricated evidence in order to make the case appear neat and tidy and secure easy convictions.
Some policemen in their reports either lied to conceal their blunders, or exaggerated the importance of their role in order to promote their careers.
Lastly, there was the press, that guardian of bourgeois morality, though not averse to sniping at the police, depending on which administration was in power.
Some newspapers gave space to the auto-bandits almost daily for six months, yet they were usually forced to rely on police reports which often withheld news or supplied deliberate misinformation.
This, coupled with that normal journalistic practice of creating stories out of nothing, meant that many articles which appeared were confused, exaggerated or fictitious.
In other words, I have had to select my material and make a judicious melange from conflicting sources.
In the good old tradition of liberal historiography the story that follows is very much my own.
Richard Parry
London, 1986
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.
