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Sartre as prosecutor of occupational murder: notes from a People's Tribunal in a French mine (1970)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2021

Pascal Marichalar ,
Gerald Markowitz  and
David Rosner
Pascal Marichalar*
Affiliation:
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institut de recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS)
Gerald Markowitz
Affiliation:
John Jay College and City University Graduate Center, Department of History
David Rosner
Affiliation:
Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health, Departments of Sociomedical Sciences and History, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health
*
Corresponding author: Pascal Marichalar, E-mail: pascal.marichalar@cnrs.fr
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Extract

On February 4, 1970, in the Fouquières-lès-Lens coal mine in northern France, sixteen miners were killed in a gas explosion (“firedamp,” grisou in French). This was an accident like many others before it, yet with a relatively high number of fatalities. The public prosecutor concluded, as usual, that there was no case against the publicly owned mine. No investigation was to be carried out. The accident had been the work of fate, of bad luck.

Keywords

occupational fatalitiesworkplace hazardsFranceminingwageworker
Type
Main Article
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 99: Pandemic Roundtable; The Labor Movement As an Educational Movement; Gender, Race, and Migrant Labor in the “Domestic Frontier” of the Panama Canal Zone , Spring 2021 , pp. 167 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2021

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References

Notes

1. Bérard, Jean, “Tordre ou briser le bâton de la justice ?” Champ pénal/Penal field Vol. X, 2013Google Scholar; Codaccioni, Vanessa, « Justice populaire et mimétisme judiciaire. Les maoïstes dans et hors la Cour de sûreté de l'État », Droit et société 2015/1 (89): 17–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Reeve, Arthure B., “The Death Roll of Industry.” Charities and the Commons 17 (1907): 791Google Scholar.

3. Rosental, Paul-André, “Before asbestos, silicosis. Death from occupational disease in twentieth-century France.” Population and Societies 437 (2007)Google Scholar.

4. Rosner, David and Markowitz, Gerald, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

5. Behrent, Michael, “Accidents Happen: François Ewald, the “Antirevolutionary” Foucault, and the Intellectual Politics of the French Welfare State.” The Journal of Modern History 82 (3, 2010): 585–624CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Rosner, David, “When Does a Worker's Death Become Murder?” American Journal of Public Health 90 (April, 2000): 535–40Google ScholarPubMed.

7. Quoted in “The Responsibility is on All Citizens,” The Survey 26 (April 8, 1911): 85.

8. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Premier procès populaire à Lens,” Situations VIII, Gallimard, 1971: 319–31.

9. Sutherland, Edwin H., White-Collar Crime: The Uncut Version, Yale University Press, 1985Google Scholar.

10. Pascal Marichalar, “How to Judge Safety Crime: Lessons From the Eternit Asbestos Maxi-Trials,” New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 2019.