page_title: Ernest Roche
section_title: Industrial action
hierarchical_section_title: Ernest Roche / Industrial action
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: "Réintégré... au nom de la radicanaillerie".
context_page_description: Ernest Jean Roche was a French engraver and socialist politician. He was of working class origin, and became involved in trade union activity while young. He was a supporter of the revolutionary socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui. He was imprisoned for his role in a strike of coal miners in 1886. He was elected to the national legislature in 1889, holding office until 1906, and was reelected from 1910–14. He always supported workers and people who were suppressed for their views or political activities. Later he moved towards antisemitism and a more nationalistic form of socialism.
context_section_description: A strike began on 26 January 1886 in Decazeville, Aveyron department. among the workers of the Société des Houllères et Fonderies de l'Aveyron. It lasted 108 days and drew national attention. The engineer Watrin was thrown out of a window and died. Duc-Quercy went to Decazeville to support the strike and to draw national attention to the social issues in his Cri de peuple. Ernest Roche also went, as did the socialist politicians Zéphyrin Camélinat, Clovis Hugues and Antide Boyer. Duc-Quercy and Ernest Roche were charged by the police. The North American Review printed Henri Rochefort's account of the events,
  Irritated by the continuance of this strike, which was injuring their interests, certain influential financiers persuaded the Ministry that it would suffice to make the miners resume their work immediately if Roche and Quercy were removed. One morning both journalists were brutally arrested and dragged in chains through the whole town. Some days afterward, in contempt of the most formal processes of law, a servile tribunal condemned MM. Roche and Quercy, contrary to all law and all justice, to fifteen months imprisonment, under the pretext that they had made an attack upon liberty to labor. This unique sentence, which was applauded by the Opportunists and the Monarchists, aroused among the Radicals (even among those who, like M. Clemenceau, had never approved the attitude of MM. Roche and Quercy) a general indignation.
  A different viewpoint was given in The Living Age,
  M. Roche and M. Duc Quercy were arrested on the charge of having wittingly disseminated false information for the purpose of stirring up the workmen. Alter a scandalous trial, in the course of which M. Laguerre, a deputy, and the reporter of the Budget for Justice, insulted the procurator of the republic in open court, the accused were sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment. The initial result of the sentence was to make M. Roche a candidate at the Parliamentary election of the 2nd of May; and the government was summoned to release him from prison in order that he might appear on the hustings. The government showed its usual want of resolution. It sent a magistrate to entreat the prisoner to take the necessary steps in order to his being thus provisionally set at liberty. The election gave melancholy proof of the level to which universal suffrage has fallen in the capital. No respectable candidate, no one of any sort of standing. ventured to present himself ; and the contest was limited to two journalists of the twelfth rank, and of almost equally extravagant opinions, M. Gaulier and M. Roche. M. Gaulier was elected ...
  Roche was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for participating in the organization of miner's strikes in Anzin, and particularly Decazeville. Henri Rochefort resigned from his seat as a deputy, triggering a by-election in which the socialists combined to nominate Roche as their candidate. Clemenceau decided not to support Roche, and instead sponsored Alfred Gaulier as the Radical candidate. Roche received over 100,000 votes, but Gaulier won the election. After the election Roche was returned to prison. He was pardoned after 6 months.
caption: Duc-quercy and Ernest Roche Réintégré... au nom de la radicanaillerie. From La Cravache illustrée, 10 May 1886
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "2110", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}