Adrian Thomas Adrian Thomas is a historian of Belgian trade unionism and a frequent contributor to the Dictionnaire du mouvement ouvrier (Le Maitron), Lava, and the Centre for Communist Archives in Belgium. He is author of Robert Dussart, une histoire ouvrière des ACEC de Charleroi.
The Belgian Communist leader Julien Lahaut was murdered on this day in 1950. The circumstances of his assassination were hushed up for decades — but it was quickly clear that he was killed because he was a powerful leader for his class.
José Gotovitch, who died last week, was one of Belgium’s leading historians. In a recent interview, he discussed his final book on the interwar Belgian Communists, and the youth who filled the ranks of the Resistance against Nazism.
Karl Marx famously wrote that “the workers have no country” — but he immediately added that they had to become “the leading class in the nation.” For over a century, the Left has struggled to reconcile the two ideas.