Paul Lapeyre

Paul Lapeyre (28 May 1901 – 2 May 1991) was a militant anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist and free-thinker.

Biography Provenance and early years Paul Lapeyre was born in Monguilhem (Gers), a (very) small town in southwestern France. His father was a small-farmer who became a postman. The family was politically committed. He also contributed to "La Révolte", described as the "anarchist organ of the (French) southwest". During the 1930s he also came to the fore as a campaigner and activist, appearing as an effective speaker at numerous public meetings convened in support of the 1936 Spanish Revolution. He wrote for "SIA", the weekly publication of the French section of the "International antifascist solidarity" ("Solidarité internationale antifasciste") which had been founded and was headed up by Louis Lecoin and Nicolas Faucier as a further response to the unfolding tragedy in Spain. Lapeyre himself also made a number of further visits to Spain, mandated by the CGT-SR. It was presumably in the context of the German invasion of France, which took place during May and June 1940, that the regiment in which Lapeyre was serving found itself surrounded and obliged to surrender. Now German prisoners of war,

Between 25 and 27 December 1953 Paul Lapeyre took part in the congress at Paris which reconstructed the "Fédération anarchiste" (FA) on a more broadly based Synthesis anarchism basis, starting with those recently excluded from the federation and former militants who had simply left the old FA during the preceding years, alienated by what they saw as a continuing communist libertarian drift. The basic principals of the reconstructed federation were drawn to try and incorporate the largest number of anarchists, irrespective of the strands within the overall movement to which they adhered. It was in reality a challenging aspiration. Maurice Joyeux who had taken the initiative of setting up a replacement Anarchist Federation, found himself obliged to make compromises with individualistic anarchists which taken in aggregate led to an operating structure that Joyaux himself found "impossible". The requirement that decisions be adopted on a unanimous basis meant that each individual member enjoyed the right to veto any attempt to set a direction for the federation. 6 février 1935, Bordeaux, Éditions Lucifer, 1935. Jésus-Christ a-t-il existé ?, Bordeaux, Éditions Lucifer & Groupe de propagande par la brochure, n°167, novembre 1936. Ce qu’est le syndicalisme révolutionnaire., Paris, Éditions CGT-SR, mars 1937. Révolution et contre-révolution en Espagne : lueurs sur l’Espagne républicaine, février 1938, Paris, Éditions Spartacus & Éditions Terre libre, Nîmes, 1938. De Gaulle tout nu, Éditions CNT, 1946. with Marc Prévôtel, Cléricalisme moderne et mouvement ouvrier, Volonté anarchiste, 1983.