Julien Lahaut

Julien-Victor Lahaut (6 September 1884 – 18 August 1950) was a Belgian politician and trade unionist who served as chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium from 1945 to 1950. An important figure during the German occupation of 1940–44, he became a vocal advocate for the abolition of the Belgian monarchy during the post-war Royal Question. His assassination in August 1950, at the height of the crisis, was linked to anti-communist and royalist elements inside the Belgian intelligence services by a team of historians in 2015; however, the murder remains officially unsolved.

Biography Lahaut was born into a working-class family in Seraing, and took up work as a boilermaker at age fourteen. At eighteen years old, he participated in a strike in support of universal suffrage, for which he was dismissed; after finding employment again in 1908, Lahaut became secretary of a metalworkers' union, and also joined the Belgian Labour Party.

During the First World War, Lahaut volunteered to serve in the Belgian army and was part of the Belgian Expeditionary Corps in Russia, fighting on the Eastern Front along with Imperial Russian forces. He returned to Belgium in 1919. In March 1921, Lahaut led a strike at Ougrée-Marihaye which lasted throughout the year; he was arrested after seven months, after which the strike was ended by the Union of Belgian Metalworkers.

Identification of the perpetrators François Goossens, an insurance agent with Leopoldist leanings from Halle, was later identified as one of the murderers, although it remained uncertain whether he fired the actual shots. Goossens was tracked and anonymously implied in a 1985 research work by and of the CegeSoma. In 2002, senator Vincent Van Quickenborne publicly revealed the true identity of Goossens. On 17 August 2012, the minister Paul Magnette announced a federal contribution of €320,000 to the study.

Involvement of André Moyen In 2015, another team of historians at the CegeSoma (this time under the supervision of ) linked the murder to anti-communist and royalist elements inside the General Information and Security Service. While agreeing that Goossens, the Devillé brothers and Hamelrijck were the direct perpetrators, they pointed to André Moyen as a key figure in the stay-behind network that Goossens and his accomplices worked for. This clandestine intelligence group had direct ties to the official police services. Moyen was furthermore supported by prominent Belgian corporations and financial institutions including the Société Générale, the Union Minière and .

The left-wing playwright Jean Louvet authored a play about Lahaut's assassination entitled L'homme qui avait le soleil dans sa poche which was published in 1982.

A similar incident to Lahaut's 1950 intervention happened in 1993 when Baudouin’s brother and successor Albert II took the oath: libertarian politician Jean-Pierre Van Rossem shouted “” (“Long live the republic of Europe, long live Julien Lahaut!”).