Jacques Pâris de Bollardière

Jacques Pâris de Bollardière (16 December 190722 February 1986) was a French Army general, known for his advocacy of non-violence during the 1960s.

Biography Early life Bollardière was born in 1907 in Brittany, into a family with a tradition of military service, particularly in the French colonial empire: he was part of the fourth generation of his family to enlist, alongside his brother, who was killed in the Rif War after their father had moved the family to Morocco in 1916. In 1927, Jacques enrolled at the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr; he graduated in 1930 and due to insubordination, it was only with the rank of sergeant. (Saint-Cyr cadets normally graduate as commissioned officers, with the rank of sous-lieutenant). He disliked the authoritarianism he encountered at Saint-Cyr: he later considered this attitude to be key to his decision to join the French Resistance whilst many of his former classmates served Vichy France. Bollardière was later assigned to French Equatorial Africa and Germany.

He resigned from the Army after the Algiers putsch, as he was not able to obtain a command in Algeria.

Retirement and pacifist activism Jacques de Bollardière (right) on the plateau of Larzac, protesting against the extension of the military camp in the 1970s. To his left, the non-violent philosophers Jean-Marie Muller and Lanza del Vasto. After his withdrawal from active service, Bollardière retired to his native Brittany, joining a naval construction firm in Lorient. After initially taking to his new work with enthusiasm, he quickly became disillusioned after witnessing the alienation of workers' labour, noting that whilst hierarchies in the army had not presented a barrier to good relationships between men of different ranks, in the industrial workplace relations between workers and management were characterised by class conflict. He was driven to study this topic, drawing on Catholic social teaching to consider how this could be remedied. However, despite attempts at reforming workplace relations, he left after two and a half years, convinced that the industrial environment was inherently dehumanising.

Bollardière became a pacifist after a talk by the writer Jean-Marie Muller in Lorient, on 23 October 1970. He subsequently co-founded the Movement for a Non-Violent Alternative, an organisation promoting the principles of non-violence. He was president of the association Logement et Promotion Sociale between 1968 and 1978, focusing on public housing with a particular concentration on immigrants from southern Europe and Africa. He was also involved in adult education and the Breton regionalist movement, believing that the decline of Breton culture and the area's economic underdevelopment were both linked to the centralisation of the French state. In July 1973, he was arrested by the French Navy during protests against nuclear trials in Mururoa, along with journalist Brice Lalonde, priest Jean Toulat and Jean-Marie Muller. The Council of Ministers, then headed by Georges Pompidou, removed him from the army as a disciplinary measure and gave him a pension - up to this point, he had still formally been a general, albeit not serving. The group responded to their detention by going on hunger strike: after five days, Bollardière started suffering from hypertension and was moved to hospital for treatment. Following the incident he returned his Legion of Honour to the French government in protest. He was also a supporter of the successful Fight for the Larzac, which protested against the expansion of a French army camp on the Larzac plateau, a project which was cancelled by François Mitterrand when he was elected President of France in 1981.

Jacques Paris Bollardière died on 22 February 1986 at his residence Vieux-Talhouët and was buried in Vannes, Brittany.

Honours Grand officer of the Légion d'honneur Companion of the Liberation (23 June 1941) Croix de guerre 1939-1945 (5 mentions in despatches) Croix de Guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieures with palm Médaille de la Résistance Croix de Guerre (Belgium) Officer of the Order of the Crown with palm (Belgium) Distinguished Service Order and Bar (UK)