[The following article, which appeared under the headline "Adieu, Pierre," is taken from the May 4-10 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International.
[A full page of Rouge was devoted to the article and to photographs of the April 27 funeral ceremony. The photos showed scenes of the crowd, with clenched fists, at the Père- Lachaise cemetery: marchers carrying a large picture of Pierre Frank; and the front line of the procession, with a caption identifying most of those on it: André Calvès, A. Fichaut, Charles Michaloux, Alain Krivine, Marguerite Métayer, Ernest Mandel, Rodolphe Prager, Raymond Molinier, and Barry Sheppard.
(The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
"Pierre Frank's political biography merges with the history of the Fourth International," said Ernest Mandel in his final homage before Pierre's coffin.
brother, your memory will live on in the Fourth International with whose existence and construction your entire life was identified. The growth and transformation of our movement, leading to the future mass communist International, will enable us to keep that memory alive in the entire international working class.
The past and present history of the International, the history of Pierre Frank's battles, was strikingly symbolized by the cortege of 1,500 people that accompanied the coffin from the Place de la Nation to the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
Hundreds of members and sympathizers of the LCR in the Paris region took off work to be present. At their side were delegations from numerous sections of the International.
Also among the crowd were others who came bearing witness to important stages of the revolutionary struggle:
Vladi, son of Victor Serge, sprung from Stalin's jails in 1936 by an intense solidarity campaign, today a well-known painter in Mexico.
Mohamed Harbi, leader of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1958, when the Trotskyists were the first to raise the flag of the International on the side of the Algerian revolution.
Zbigniew Kowalewski, exiled leader of Solidarnosc, an activist who just a few days earlier was threatened with expulsion by the government and was kept in France by the strength of the solidarity movement.
Lautaro Sandino, leader of the Sandinista Youth, travelling in Europe with his comrade Alvaro Porta, whose wreath was placed on Pierre's coffin.
All were blended together in the parade that made its way to the cemetery, singing the old revolutionary songs of the workers movement under long columns of red flags.
Our comrades from Lutte Ouvrière also paid their respects with a very large delegation accompanying Arlette Laguiller and other leaders. All the Trotskyist groups also sent representatives.
Also seen within the crowd were former members who had long since diverged from our battle, and other representatives of the the proofreaders union. Also present was the cartoonist Wiaz.
In the first rank of all was Marguerite Métayer, Pierre's companion, a working-class militant since her youth, having joined the Trotskyist struggle in the darkest hours of the war. The International and the LCR once again pledged to her their militant solidarity.
Several leaders of our movement gave the final homage to Pierre before his cremation: Ernest Mandel, in the name of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International; José Iriarte Bikila, Basque leader of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR-LKI), who was imprisoned for several years in Spain during Franco's rule; Barry Sheppard, in the name of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States; Jakob Moneta, leader of the German section, former editor of the newspaper of the
The technocrat Rocard' has forgotten his past criticisms of the right. He explains to us that the small and medium producers are the ones who have to go out of business. They will be given a handful of banknotes so they can wait for their death, more or less the same method as in industry.
To the big producers he says: "You will eliminate several cows from herds of more than 50 head, you will feed them a little less imported protein, your needs will be kept in mind, and it is in your interests to lower your production costs."
And for the immense majority of producers (86 percent have between 20 and 50 cows): "You won't make it with costs that continually rise. You must lower your deliveries and improve quality. Only the best will make it."