Spartacist English edition No. 61	Spring 2009

Gérard Le Méteil

1959–2007

Our comrade Gérard Le Méteil died in Dieppe, France on 3 September 2007 in unknown circumstances while in police custody. A close comrade of Gérard’s wrote, “The loss of Gérard is immensely painful for us all, for our party, and for each of us individually.... Everyone valued Gérard on both levels: as a comrade and as a friend. The party was his reason for living and he always put the party’s needs before his own personal options. He dedicated the best 25 years of his life to the party.”

Gérard joined the Ligue Trotskyste de France in April 1982 and was elected to the Central Committee at the LTF’s Eleventh National Conference in December 1989. In September 1996, he was again elected to the Central Committee, on which he continued to serve until his death.

Key issues in the recruitment of Gérard, who came from the periphery of the Communist Party, were the importance of the Leninist vanguard party and the Trotskyist position in defense of the Soviet Union. During the seven years following his recruitment, he became known as an extremely energetic and talented activist on the Rouen campus. This work meant daily political combat against our opponents on the left. Constantly seeking to win people over, trying to understand where they came from and finding the convincing arguments contributed to the political wisdom and depth for which he was known. Gérard later brought this experience to bear in his political education of our younger comrades, several of whom have become cadres in the LTF and other sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

Since Gérard had been won hard to the understanding that we are above all the party of the Russian Revolution, it was completely in character that he took time off work to throw himself into the ICL’s intervention into the nascent East German political revolution in 1989-90. An excellent military leader, he was often put in charge of our security squads at LTF demonstrations and interventions.

Gérard’s detailed knowledge of French politics and the workers movement extended to the former and current French colonies and in particular to the Algerian War; he understood that these crimes still animate the French bourgeoisie in its racist oppression of North African immigrants, their children and grandchildren.

It is with great sadness and with the determination to continue the combat to which he dedicated his life that we, his comrades and friends, bid him farewell.