FRANCAISSecours populaire français - History
1950-1959
-1950-1952, Vietnam: the SPF starts campaigning in favour of Henri Martin, a seaman in the Navy. Appalled by the bombing on the inhabitants of Haiphong in 1946, Henri Martin had opposed the colonial repression and was jailed and condemned for sabotage in October 1950, then released in August 1952, after pressures from the SPF.
-From 1952, Greece: in a country where it had already intervened during the insurrection of 1947, the SPF tries to get a pardon for the leader of the communist opposition, Nikos Beloyannis, who is executed in April 1952. Then the SPF supports the opponents to the colonels’ dictatorship after 1966.
-June 1953, United States: the SPF gets mobilized in favour of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed after being accused of giving military confidential documents to the USSR.
-from 1956, Algeria: in February 1956, the SPF sends a boat to Alger despite the French military’s refusal to let it berth. It supplies the Casbah district thanks to Chérif Djemad, an underground member of the Algerian Secours Populaire. The SPF also asks to pardon the Arab prisoners sentenced to death as well as the French soldiers imprisoned for denouncing torture. In France, it provides legal aid to the victims of an Algerian demonstration in Charonne, Paris, in February 1962.
-1957, France: while organising its congress in Vénissieux, the SPF decides to provide legal aid to 47 young men who refuse to do their military service as Hans Speidel, a former Wehrmacht’s general in Paris during the Second World War, has just been promoted to command the NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which France will leave in 1966) land forces in Central Northern Europe. Those conscripts are all sons of Resistance martyrs and do not want to make their military service in French troops de facto under the orders of a German formerly serving Adolf Hitler. They are jailedand then freed following pressures from the SPF.
