The Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (; CGT-SR) was a French national trade union centre. It emerged out of the libertarian faction of the Unitary General Confederation of Labour (CGTU) and split away after it came under the control of the French Communist Party (PCF). The CGT-SR was established in 1926, largely on the basis of artisanal unions in southern France, and became the country's third and smallest trade union confederation. Its driving ideology was revolutionary syndicalism, which rejected political parties and upheld decentralisation as an organisational model.

From its foundation, the CGT-SR was a stagnant and isolated organisation. Its exclusionary ideology and political sectarianism alienated many workers, who preferred to instead join the communist-led CGTU, the reformist CGT, or unaffiliated autonomous unions. The CGT-SR rejected collaboration with non-anarchist groups and, following the reunification of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) in 1936, it refused to merge into it. The CGT-SR received a boost in membership following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and took a leading role in organising solidarity campaigns for the Spanish anarchists. But it soon came into conflict with other anarchist groups, including the Spanish CNT, which it publicly criticised for joining the government of Spain. By the end of the war, the CGT-SR had isolated itself from others in the anarchist movement, compounding its pre-existing isolation from the labour movement. Following the Liberation of France, it was reorganised into the National Confederation of Labour.

Background By the outbreak of World War I, the French labour movement had moved away from revolutionary syndicalism and towards reformism. Under the influence of the Socialist Party (SFIO), French trade unions supported the Sacred Union and collaborated with the government of France throughout the war. As the war dragged on, the living and working conditions of the French working class deteriorated, leading to a resurgence of strike actions. Although the French victory in 1918 briefly tempered the labour movement's revolutionary tendencies, when material conditions failed to improve, far-left politics experienced a revival. Before long, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), the country's main national trade union centre, had split. Revolutionary members of the rank-and-file criticised the union's leadership for centralisation, bureaucracy and anti-democratic practices. Many in the far-left of the CGT joined the nascent French Communist Party (PCF) and called for the union's affiliation to the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU). Anarcho-syndicalism, which called for trade unions to remain independent of all political parties, whether socialist or communist, also experienced a revival within the CGT during this period. As they remained in the minority in the CGT, the communist and syndicalist factions broke away and established the Unitary General Confederation of Labour (CGTU). A power struggle between the two factions soon broke out in the new organisation, with the communists ultimately consolidating control over both local and national leadership positions.

In 1921, the anarcho-syndicalist railroad union leader Pierre Besnard succeeded Pierre Monatte as general secretary of the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees (CSR). Monatte was critical of Besnard, who he described as "the stereotypical utopian, doctrinaire, isolated, and bent on building his own personal organization". Besnard and other French anarcho-syndicalists sought to preserve the autonomy of trade unions from political parties and aimed to increase the influence of libertarianism in the CSR and CGT. They declared that they would pursue these aims "by every means" necessary, even if it meant splitting away. As head of the CSR, Besnard spoke in favour of establishing workers' control over the economy and called for trade unions to adopt a revolutionary programme. These views were shared by many members of the PCF, which published Besnard's works in L'Humanité. Besnard upheld the Amiens Charter, declaring that trade unions ought to remain "self-sufficient" and detached from political parties. He rejected both the reformist International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) and the communist Red International of Labour Unions (RILU); he instead resolved to establish an anarcho-syndicalist international, the International Workers' Association (IWA), which held that "the emancipation of the workers will be achieved by the workers themselves". From mid-1923 onwards, Besnard held the position of general secretary of the IWA.

Establishment Besnard led the anti-statist faction of the CGTU, with the support of the railroad workers' and ceramicists' unions in Limoges, but his libertarian resolutions were ultimately defeated at the organisation's congress in Saint-Etienne. Besnard subsequently established a Syndicalist Defense Committee (CDS), through which he aimed to combat the Bolshevisation of the CGTU and reassert the influence of syndicalism in the organisation. Anarchist-led unions in Saint-Etienne itself, including some that were not affiliated with the CGTU, joined the CDS in its struggle against Bolshevisation. Some syndicalists who were themselves members of the PCF left the party and joined the CDS, in protest against the CGTU's decision to allow party officials to hold leadership positions in trade unions. In March 1923, the CGTU joined the RILU, a decision that was opposed by the CDS, which favoured the IWA. At the CGTU's Bourges congress in November 1923, resolutions by the CDS were defeated by the pro-communist majority. The consolidation of communist control over the CGTU provoked a number of unions in Limoges to disaffiliate from the organisation; the cabinet makers' and metal polishers' unions sided with the libertarians.

Among the revolutionary syndicalist tendencies that opposed the new direction of the CGTU were the Ligue Syndicaliste, which continued on within the CGTU as its syndicalist minority faction, and a number of autonomous unions, which left the CGTU and refused to affiliate with any other existing trade union centre. In November 1924, these autonomous unions formed their own trade union federation, the Federative Union of Autonomous Trade Unions (; UFSA), which upheld the syndicalist orientation of the pre-war CGT and its Amiens Charter. Meanwhile, the syndicalist minority that had remained within the CGTU diminished in strength. Besnard's faction saw its vote share at congresses drop from 391 out of 1,189 in 1922, to 208 out of 1,271 in 1923, to only 22 out of 1,365 in 1925. By the following congress, although the CGTU formally adopted proportional representation for its constituent unions, the syndicalist minority was frozen out of official vote tallies. Syndicalists were left unable to muster more than 3% of votes at CGTU congresses.

The UFSA hoped that the union defections to its ranks would compel the CGT and CGTU to reunite the labour movement around antipoliticism, but neither union centre lost a substantial number of members, while the loosely-organised UFSA itself declined in influence. By August 1926, members of the UFSA began to express the view that the desire to maintain working-class unity was harming the syndicalist movement. In October, anarchist-led autonomous unions in Rhône called for the establishment of a third trade union confederation, which would rival both the CGT and CGTU. The UFSA, together with autonomous construction workers' and barbers' unions, called for a workers' conference to be held in Lyon. In mid-November 1926, 69 delegates representing 89 autonomous unions attended the congress; 84 unions voted to establish a new confederation, while 3 unions opposed and 2 abstained. As a result, the Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (; CGT-SR) was established. It affiliated itself with the IWA, and based its headquarters in Lyon. Lucien Huart drew up the statutes of the CGT-SR, which outlined limitations on the power of union officials, including single term limits and the prohibition of holding concurrent offices. Huart would serve as the organisation's first general secretary, while Pierre Besnard acted as its chief spokesperson.

Organisation Having based itself on the existing structures of the UFSA, the CGT-SR recruited a number of autonomous unions into its ranks; 80 unions joined the CGT-SR at its inception. For skilled workers, whose concerns about job control had been neglected in the CGT's push for economic rationalisation, the revolutionary syndicalism of the CGT-SR seemed to be a preferable alternative. The CGT-SR was largely supported by artisans, for whom collective bargaining was less attractive than revolutionary activism. Its membership was drawn largely from artisanal workers in small self-managed workplaces, particularly construction workers and metallurgists, but also leather workers, garment workers, barbers and transportation workers. Most of its members were based in the Île-de-France, although its most important centres were in the southern provinces, with influential union sections in Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Lyon, Marseille, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse and Trelaze. It was most influential in the Loire and Rhône departments and their respective capitals of Saint-Etienne and Lyon. Among its founding union leaders were Jean Aigueperse, of the Saint-Etienne leather-workers' union; Marius Boisson, of the Lyon construction workers' union; Boudoux, of the Paris construction workers' union; Edouard Demonsais, of the Toulon municipal workers' union; Henri Fourcade, of the Rhône departamental union; Garros of the Lyon electrians' union; Lucien Huart, of the Paris shoemakers' union; Georges Leroy, of the Paris hairdressers' union; Raitzon, of the Lyon metalworkers' union; and Clément Snappe, of the Saint-Claude pipe-makers union.

Some autonomous unions in Limoges, representing shoemakers, garment workers, ceramicists and municipal employees, broke away from the CGTU in protest against its Bolshevisation, including. The autonomous unions soon became the most powerful union force in Limoges, but only the shoemakers' union supported the CGT-SR, while the rest preferred ad hoc collaboration. The CGT-SR also gained support from dissident syndicalists in Saint-Etienne, where small cabinet makers', textile dyers' and metal polishers' unions affiliated themselves with the new organisation. Apart from the shoemakers in Limoges and the metalworkers in Loire, both of which worked in industries that had undergone relatively few technological changes, the CGT-SR ultimately failed to attract any mass support. The union confederation thus remained a largely artisanal organisation.

In April 1927, the IWA ceded control of Le Voix du Travail to the CGT-SR. The following year, the CGT-SR began publication of its official organ, Le Combat Syndicaliste; it circulated roughly 6,000 copies, with its actual readership estimated to have been two or three times higher.

Ideology

The CGT-SR identified itself with revolutionary syndicalism, which upheld a federalist and anti-political conception of trade unionism. The CGT-SR opposed trade union affiliation with political parties and saw trade unions as taking the leading role in revolutionary action. The CGT-SR explicitly described itself as a revolutionary organisation, in order to counter PCF claims that rejection of the party leadership was counterrevolutionary. Through most of the organisation's history, it did not refer to itself as "anarcho-syndicalist", a term which was introduced in France as a pejorative term for syndicalists that opposed communist control of trade unions. Pierre Besnard first used the term himself in 1937, in order to describe the synthesis of anarchist ideology with syndicalist organisational methods.