The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 2/The Political Game of the Police in France

by Paul Lafargue

THE POLITICAL GAME OF THE POLICE IN FRANCE.

The police are preparing and contriving plots just as if the Republic and the Monarchy were one and the same thing. It is the Gambettists who have lately in France driven the police into the profession of conspirators. Their first stroke was a master-stroke. The International was suppressed here by the law of the strongest; but the police re-established an imaginary International. They published in the Gambettist journal, the Paris, lists of adherents, rules, etc., which enabled them to arrest Krapotkine, Bernard, and other Anarchists. On the Anarchist journal of Lyons, the Droit Social, they then placed one of their own men, and it was his articles, that breathed nothing but blood and thunder which, read at the trials, contributed to the condemnation of the accused Anarchists, many of whom were sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Proud of their success, they thought they would succeed in insinuating members into Socialist organisations, so as to catch them in its snares. In point of fact they have succeeded in getting agents into all the organisations, men who have had to limit themselves to the simple rôle of informers, having never acquired enough influence to provoke any overt action. It is only in the Anarchist party that these agents can get any influence, as is proved by the case of the policeman Druelle, denounced and exposed publicly some weeks ago: he was one of the Anarchist leaders, and was amongst those who openly preached riot and the pillaging of shops.

But an event has happened which shows that the police no longer hope to reckon on the Anarchists, but intend to get up plots themselves. On very vague information an agent of the police named Br*** was sent to Montceau-les-Mines to discover there a plot which would have just suited the Government for the coming elections. After a week's inquiries on the spot, the policeman was clear that there was no plot. But as they had promised him 5000 frames reward for the discovery of a plot, he found nothing simpler than to organise a plot himself, that he might have the merit of denouncing it. The procured dynamite, daggers and revolvers, enrolled some simple miners, blew up a chapel, and killed a gendarme with a revolver-shot. Twenty-seven persons were arrested on the denunciation of this police conspirator; but he had not taken his measures cleverly enough to escape suspicion of guilt, and Justice had him arrested. Then the police claimed their man. Even the Minister of the Interior, Waldeck-Rousseau, came forward to have him released in the interests of order and the police. But the matter was so serious that the Minister of Justice, Martin Feuilet, had to refuse this satisfaction to his colleague, declaring to him that if the policeman were released it would be impossible to keep under arrest the duped fellow-conspirators of the policeman. So that the man of the police will pay dearly for his plot, to the great despair of the whole French police, which for some time past has seen all its infamies laid bare by the Socialists. Our new Minister of War, General Lewal, who seems, happily, to have had more to do with leaden soldiers than soldiers of flesh and blood, did, however, utter a great truth in his maiden speech. He said that the army could not be kept inactive, and that for this good reason it was absolutely necessary from time to time to make little spurts of war. The police take just the same view as the general: it organises plots from time to time to show that the police is indispensable. If this goes on, the bourgeois order will be menaced not by the revolutionists, but by the official defenders of order themselves. Thus people are beginning seriously to ask if it would not be very useful to organise a counter-police.

Paul Lafargue.