Farewell to Pierre Frank
Pierre Frank was a revolutionary militant for sixty years.
Trotsky's Left Opposition and a founding member of the Fourth International, he remained an active leader of the Fourth International, and its French section, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, until
Funeral cortege proceeds to Pere Lachaise (DR) his last years. Philomena O'MALLEY
In this long life of revolutionary activity he met and inspired many, some who spent only a short time in the Trotskyist movement, others who, like Frank himself, made a lifelong commitment to it.
At his funeral at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris on April 27, 1,500 of these past and present comrades came to pay their last respects to Pierre Frank.
It was this aspect of the funeral that the French press particularly remarked, the ability of the Fourth International to bring together both the other Trotskyist groups in France, and former members of the movement whose subsequent development has taken them away from the revolutionary Marxist movement.
Thus, Le Monde, the top Paris daily, noted not only the presence of a large contingent of Lutte Ouvriere and a delegation of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste led by Pierre Lambert, but also a number of former Trotskyists now well-known in other fields. for example, a Trotskyist in the war years and now a retired Gaullist deputy, or Fred Zeller, Trotsky's secretary and envoy to Spain in the 1930s, who afterwards became the grand master of an order of freemasons.
Le Matin, the Socialist inclined daily, devoted a two-page spread to the funeral and the "Frank generation' of the Trotskyist movement. This report also highlighted the internationalism of Frank and the movement he spent his life building.
It noted the presence of Vlady, son of International Viewpoint 21 May 1984
A leader of Victor Serge, now a well-known painter in Mexico. Also present were Mohammed Harbi, leader of the Algerian National Liberation Front in France in the 1950s, and Zbigniew Kowalewski, exiled leader of Solidarnose in Poland.
Particularly noted was the presence of two leaders of the Sandinista youth of Nicaragua, presently touring Europe, whose offering of red roses was placed on the coffin. Other wreaths also gave an idea of the internationalism of this event, from the Vietnamese Trotskyists, sections of the Fourth International in Europe and North America and from
The hundreds of members of the LCR who had left work for the afternoon to come to pay their last tribute bore witness to the new breath of life the Trotskyist movement won from the radicalised youth of 1968 and the succeeding
Marguerite Metayer, Pierre Frank's companion for some forty years, was in the front ranks, accompanied by lead-
Also a political militant from her youth she was deported at the age of 20 to Ravensbruck.
The cortege was an impressive sight as it wound its way on a bright day from from Place de la Nation to the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Behind an immense portrait of Pierre Frank came a guard of honour with the red flags marked with the symbol of the Fourth International, followed by the international and other guests and then the large number of comrades and friends of the movement, many wearing red car-
Last respects (DR) nations, as it went came a soft slow singing, of the Russion 'Song of the martyrs' or "The Internationale' accompanied by a single trombone.
So impressive that Le Matin noted, 'not since the death of Trotsky has any leader of the Fourth International had such a funeral', and Le Monde paid tribute not only to the internationalism and continuity of the Trotskyist movement but the LCR's ability to impress with its symbols and imagination.
Before the cremation, Ernest Mandel on behalf of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, Jose Iriarte Bikila, Basque leader of the section in the Spanish state, Jakob Moneta of the German section, Barry Sheppard of the American Socialist Workers Party, Charlie van Gelderen of the British section, and Alain Krivine in the name of the LCR, paid their last tributes, recalling the political acuteness, the consistency, the internationalism and the humanity of this man who 'loved life and the revolution' in the words of Alain Krivine. And whose life, as Ernest Mandel said, is intertwined with the history of the Fourth International'.
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