In November 1924, 2,000 workers in the sardine canneries of Douarnenez (Finistère) engaged in an epic standoff, lasting six and a half weeks, with their bosses. This “beautiful women’s strike” still resonates in contemporary struggles.
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It all started on November 21, 1924, when around a hundred workers at the Carnaud metallurgical factory walked off the job and demanded immediate wage increases. The movement transformed into a general strike within a few days, quickly affecting the 26 factories in the area, including 21 sardine canneries. “It’s an unexpected and heroic strike”describes Anne Crignon, journalist and author of “A beautiful women’s strike. Les Penn Sardin Douarnenez 1924” (Libertalia, July 2023).
“They were almost sure to lose because everything told them to keep a low profile and return to the factory after a few days”she says. “And yet, they won.”
As of November 25, the police recorded more than 2,000 strikers, three-quarters of them women, in this town of around 11,000 inhabitants.
“Pemp real a vo!” (“1.25 francs it will be!”), they demand in Breton, between two revolutionary songs, while parading in clogs on the city's quays.
That's an increase of 45 cents per hour for these “Penn sardins” (“sardine heads”) who chase fish all day long, sometimes until the end of the night, singing to keep themselves awake. Entering the factory on their twelfth birthday, they often stay there until death.
“Atrocious conditions”summarizes Anne Crignon. “When they arrived at the factory, they didn't know when they were going to leave, in eight, ten or fifteen hours….”specifies the journalist, describing “from Germinal to the depths of Brittany”.
“What I had read by Zola came to my heart”says Charles Tillon, about the misery of the Breton sardine port. The future resistance fighter and communist minister, then a young regional representative of the CGTU union, arrived in Douarnenez shortly after the start of the strike which quickly received wide popular and militant support.
The new communist mayor Daniel Le Flanchec installs the strike committee in the town hall. And the trade unionist and feminist activist Lucie Colliard joined Charles Tillon to structure the mobilization, organize soup kitchens or care for the strikers' children.
The movement is even taking on a national scale with the launch of solidarity collections in the press. “All the newspapers in France began to report the poverty strike, even the right-wing newspapers which nevertheless saw Douarnenez as a den of Bolsheviks”relate Anne Crignon.
This women's strike, “it’s something that breaks with the norms of the time”, recognizes the historian Fanny Bugnon, lecturer at Rennes 2.
Joined by their fishermen husbands, the sardine boats parade every day under the hail, snow and storms of a freezing winter. But their pugnacity fails to make the bosses who refuse to meet them bend.
The mediation of Minister of Labor Justin Godart changes nothing. “Your bosses are brutes and savages”said the radical-socialist to the strikers. Intransigent, the employers' union went so far as to recruit strikebreakers in Paris. These big guys scoured the port bars to encourage people to return to work and precipitated the end of the strike by firing around ten shots into a bar in Douarnenez on January 1, 1925. Six people are injured, including the mayor, left for dead.
The incident turns into a riot and contributes to discrediting the bosses, who must give in: the sardine boats will be paid 1 franc per hour with an increase for overtime and night hours. “Worker victory in Douarnenez!”proclaimed the newspaper L'Humanité en Une on January 7, while 3,000 people celebrated the victory in the streets of the Breton port.
A century later, the songs of the Penn Sardin still resonate in Breton demonstrations. “It’s part of the city’s history.”says Françoise Pencalet, municipal councilor. “We still have a significant working population. By celebrating this memory, it is also them who we are putting back in the spotlight”.
