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Jean-Marie Gaubert

    Gustave Massiah

    in Léo Matarasso, Seminario del 6 dicembre 2008, Cedetim, Parigi

    I would also like to say a few words about Jean-Marie Gaubert who was Secretary General of ELEC while Léo was its President and who left us at a very young age. I knew Jean-Marie when he joined the PSU as a young militant in 1970 or 1971. Very quickly, in 1973 or 1974, he was a permanent member of an association that we had created called “peuples et découvertes” (peoples and discoveries) and which organised trips to many countries to which militants had great pleasure in going because they thought they were participating in the construction of socialism. And then in 1980, we realized that the militants did not go any more in these countries, that is to say, Algeria, Yugoslavia, Albania, China and Cuba which were the principal destinations. The association stopped de facto. Jean-Marie, as a permanent member of this association, was in fact the first permanent member active in the rue de Nanteuil which preceded this house on rue Voltaire and in which there were all these international solidarity associations. At the time, we used to say: anti-imperialists. Then he found himself in the OCT (communist workers’ organisation) where he was part of the production team of the Etincelle, the OCT newspaper. Afterwards he created with some others a photocomposition workshop which was the first DTP workshop in Paris. It was a cooperative called “Italiques”. He then participated in a second cooperative called “Incidences”. He was very active as a cooperative activist. He explained very well the evolution of this movement with the big workers’ cooperatives, which, unlike in Italy where the movement is still very much alive, have almost all disappeared. On the other hand, with DTP (computer-assisted design), with computers, there remained a new movement, a new generation that invested in the cooperative movement in which Jean-Marie was still very active. Not forgetting the front cooperatives that serve as a screen for ambitious young entrepreneurs.

    Before the International League for Peoples’ Rights, Jean-Marie’s main commitment was to Palestine. In 1969 in Paris just before Black September, two clandestines among others named Mahmoud El Hamchari and Ezzedine Kalack arrived at the House of Morocco, which was occupied and whose director was François Della Sudda, who covered the occupation of the House. In 1973, Mahmoud became the first representative first of the FATH and then of the PLO in Paris. He was assassinated in 1977 and it was Ezzedine who succeeded him in 1977 and 1978 and who was assassinated in his turn. Jean-Marie was one of the people who put himself at the disposal of the Palestine office in Paris, where he was in charge of the office, the secretariat and the daily work. And finally, Jean-Marie was a fake discreet, he was discreet but we realized that he did a lot of things: he was in fact very present and very efficient.

    I remember very well an evening when he invited us to discuss with Mahmoud El Hamchari. He also invited Chaintron (one of the red prefects of the liberation), whom some people know, who had created a printing cooperative. The PLO asked if we could help in the creation of a PLO newspaper. And Chaintron said: “As Lenin said, the newspaper is 80% of the party but things have changed a lot, now it’s only 50%”. We had several months of work to set up this printing house which was to allow the publication of the PLO newspaper. Jean-Marie also participated in the creation of the Franco-Palestinian Medical Association with Professor Rivière. Then he became president of this association.

    He was also the secretary general of the League for the Rights of Peoples, of which he was the permanent member; he was the one who sent us the invitations and who said to us: “Léo thinks that something should be done”, because we were all very busy and it was Jean-Marie who called up the troops to maintain this association in spite of the difficulties in doing so, because the French section of the League was rather a club of people who were very convinced but who had their card, which some of them still keep! For us it was a bit of a mix: the League, the Tribunal, the Foundation. But Léo regularly called us to order by saying “no, it’s not quite the same thing”. For us it was not obvious because we were mobilizing for the whole.

    I wanted to say these few words to recall that Jean-Marie was a friend and a very generous activist who played a very important role.

    Massiah, Gustave

    in:

    <strong>Léo Matarasso,
    Seminario del 6 dicembre 2008, Cedetim, Parigi
    Milano, maggio 2009</strong>

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    Léo Matarasso