Draft:The Affaire Lip

The Affaire Lip refers to the course and actions of a strike that took place at the Lip watchmaking factory in Besançon (Doubs). Begun in the early 1970s, the struggle lasted until mid-1976 and mobilized tens of thousands of people across France and Europe, notably at the Lip march on September 29, 1973, which brought together more than 100,000 demonstrators in a dead city.

Other elements also contributed to the scale of this workers' struggle, such as the strike mode, which for the first time in history included "self-management" in a company, with striking workers working on their own account and producing watches in their factories, before selling them at "wild sales"; but also because of the political aspect of the affair, which took a national turn when the government of the day had no choice but to kill off the company in order to avoid a nationwide "labor and trade union upsurge".

The Affair Lip marked a radical change in the trade union movement and the rise of "spontaneous" movements, widely reported in the media. It gave rise to an abundance of press and film footage portraying the company director and shareholders as "rotten"..

Lip, from a family business to a factory
An old watch manufacturer founded in 1867, Lip saw its financial situation deteriorate in the 1960s. The company faced new competition from low-cost watches, particularly those made in Asian countries.

In 1967, Fred Lipmann, now Fred Lip, having changed his name after the 1939/1945 war (because he was subject to the anti-Semitic measures of Vichy France), decided to open up his company's capital and sold 33% of his shares to a Swiss company, Ébauches SA (a subsidiary of ASUAG, the major watchmaking consortium that would become the Swatch Group).

In 1973, Lip produced the first French quartz watches. However, competition from the USA and Japan was putting the company in jeopardy. On April 17, 1973, Jacques Saint-Esprit, the company's Managing Director at the time, resigned and SA Lip filed for bankruptcy. In the weeks that followed, the Lip factory became the scene of a nationwide strike.

Beginnings of the Lip affair
In May 1973, an action committee ("Comité d'Action" or CA in French), inherited the ideas and methods of May 1968, was reconstituted.

On June 12, during an extraordinary Works Council meeting at which workers were threatened with bankruptcy, workers snatched the briefcase of one of the directors and learned that management was planning 480 dismissals and that it intended to divest itself of the mechanical industry and related sectors, retaining only watchmaking. Administrator Laverny and other board members were sequestered overnight to find out more, as the workers forced them to announce the results of the negotiations in Paris. Rummaging through the offices, they also learned that management intended to abolish the sliding wage scale and freeze wages.

The Palente plant was immediately occupied. During the night, the stock of 25,000 watches was hidden in caches. The Prefect of Doubs goes to Paris to try to reach the Minister of Industry, Jean Charbonnel. The strike is led by PSU member and CFDT leader Charles Piaget and Jean Raguenès, who dazzle Benny Levy, founder of the Gauche prolétarienne, who stays in Besançon all summer. Benny Levy declared (in private): "I see in the Lip event the agony of our revolutionary discourse".

On June 15, a demonstration brings together 1,200 people in the streets of Besançon.

On June 18, a general assembly decided to restart production, under workers' control, to ensure "a living wage". The Lip workers' struggle was popularized with the slogan: C'est possible: on fabrique, on vend, on se paie (see self-management). The General Confederation of Labour (France)-French Democratic Confederation of Labour intersyndicale asked Les Cahiers de Mai magazine to help them produce a strike newspaper, Lip-Unité, which helped publicize the movement. It was also decided to put all watches on sale at the same 42% discount as that granted to the network of watchmakers and jewelers.

On August 2, the Minister for Industrial Development, Jean Charbonnel, named Henry Giraud as mediator.

On August 11, negotiations begin between the unions, the Comité d'Action and Henry Giraud.

On August 14, following a decision by the Prefect acting on the orders of the Minister of the Interior, the C.R.S. stormed the plant and drove out the workers occupying it. They remained there until February 1974. On hearing this news, many companies in Besançon and the surrounding area went on strike, and the workers clashed with the police. Trade unionists intervened to prevent a confrontation. This did not prevent arrests and convictions (some thirty workers were sentenced in a week) during the demonstrations that took place over the following days. Clandestine production resumed, while in Cerizay, Deux-Sèvres, ninety-six workers began making blouses they called PIL outside the factory.

Direct sales at wholesale prices created opposition within the HBJO (watchmaking-jewelry-goldsmithing) network. The national federation of watchmakers and jewelers filed a complaint for damages, claiming that the sale of Lip watches elsewhere than in their shops was illegal. Faced with this complaint, Lip's supporters reacted by imitating the model of activists in favor of legalized abortion, signing a "manifesto of receivers" in September 1973.

Political support
On September 29, a nationwide march was organized to Besançon. Nearly 100,000 people (including many participants from elsewhere) demonstrated in the pouring rain, the "March of 100,000". Michel Rocard (Unified Socialist Party) was present, guaranteeing the smooth running of the demonstration in front of the Socialist city council, the PCF and the CGT. Activists from the Unified Socialist Party, the Revolutionary Communist League, the Gauche prolétarienne, the Revolutionary Anarchist Organization, Bernard Lambert' s peasants, high school committees, etc., were present: the far left made up a good third of the demonstration, with around 30,000 people. Tensions grew between the CFDT and the GCL.

On October 15, Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announces: " Lip, it's over! " Behind the scenes, a few CNPF business leaders (Antoine Riboud, Renaud Gillet and José Bidegain) work hard to find a solution. In the end, it was Claude Neuschwander, then number two of the Publicis group and a member of the Unified Socialist Party, who was sent by Michel Rocard (national secretary of the PSU, who advocated self-management but believed that the company could not survive without the contribution of capital) to negotiate with the unions, suppliers and financiers with a view to taking over Lip.

On January 29, 1974, the Lip delegation signed the Dole agreements, which provided for the takeover of the entire workforce in exchange for the return of 7 tons of documents and equipment, between 15,000 and 20,000 watches, as well as a check for 2 million francs, corresponding to the remainder of the sale of a stock of watches, which had exasperated the 3,000 watchmaking merchants who had to compete with this uncontrolled sale. The Compagnie Européenne d'Horlogerie, headed by Claude Neuschwander, took over Lip's watchmaking activities, gradually reintegrating 830 workers from March 11, 1974. This marked the end of the strike

Neuschwander management
Claude Neuschwander and his supporters wanted to show that new management in the spirit of May 1968 was possible. Antoine Riboud provides a journalist from the Nouvel Observateur to illustrate this experience in the book Patron, mais... (1975). Nevertheless, he failed to really revive the business.

A new conflict
Over the next two years, the new management team had to deal with a number of unforeseen difficulties:

According to Jean Charbonnel (Minister of Industry in 1973), within the economic context of the first oil crisis, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and his Prime Minister Jacques Chirac deliberately "murdered Lip", the symbol of the struggle won by the unions, which risked contaminating the social and political spheres: the Ministry of Industry suspended the subsidy linked to the Quartz plan, and the nationalized Renault company cancelled its orders for dashboard clocks.
 * The company's interlocutors had changed: Jean Charbonnel left the company with the arrival in power of the new President of the Republic, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing:
 * Suppliers failed to meet orders;
 * The Tribunal de commerce asks Lip to honor the former company's 6 million debts to suppliers (contrary to what was stipulated in the Dole agreements).

On February 8, 1976, Claude Neuschwander was dismissed by Antoine Riboud: "Until Lip, we were in a capitalism where the company was at the heart of the economy. Afterwards, we found ourselves in a form of capitalism where finance and the interests of money have replaced enterprise". Michel Rocard, who, along with José Bidegain and Antoine Riboud, was one of the instigators of Claude Neuschwander's appointment, first disputes this thesis: "Neuschwander put Lip back into bankruptcy, period." This is also the view of Claude Peyrot, the author of the 1973 recovery plan on which the Dole agreements were based, to whom Claude Neuschwander constantly refers in his book Patron mais... (Le Seuil, 1975). Claude Neuschwander used his right of reply in Le Monde on April 8 and 9, 2007, quoting Jean Charbonnel in the film LIP L'imagination au pouvoir: "Jean Charbonnel, then Minister of Industry, says it clearly, with singular force: they murdered Lip".

In April 1976, the Compagnie Européenne d'Horlogerie filed for bankruptcy.

On May 5, 1976, the Lip workers began a new occupation of the factory, restarting watch production. Libération ran the headline "Lip, c'est reparti!".

The rest and the end of Lip
Faced with a lack of buyers, Lip was definitively liquidated on September 12, 1977. On November 28, 1977, after lengthy discussions, the Lip family created six cooperatives (SCOP s), including Les Industries de Palente, perpetuating the LIP name as an acronym well into the 1980s. The SCOP Les Industries de Palente was transformed into a SARL (limited liability company) in 1983, and bought out in 1986 by the Société Mortuacienne d'Horlogerie, SMH Kiplé, which in turn went into liquidation in 1990.

Monique, Lip I and La marche de Besançon, Lip II
Monique, Lip I and La marche de Besançon, Lip II are two documentaries about the Lip conflict made by Carole Roussopoulos in August 1973. In the first documentary, there are scenes of workers expressing their points of view without directing the answers to the questions posed, and in particular in the person of a particularly highlighted employee: Monique Piton, who explains her vision of the conflict with enthusiasm and lucidity; she recounts the course of the occupation of the factory by the police, the four months of fighting, the place of women in this struggle, what she learned, and also criticizes the role of television and the media. The second documentary, also based on period footage, looks back at the Lip march on September 29, 1973. Right from the start of the occupation, the Lip workers' struggle had been covered in film by various militant groups, including ScopeColor, Roger Louis' team, and the Medvedkine groups, not forgetting Carole Roussopoulos. It was to overcome political and union differences that Chris Marker stepped in to edit this militant documentary, which was made in a week from footage shot by others, with a view to making the film available in early September 1973 to call for the major demonstration on September 29. The film is very much focused on the conflict, which it relates chronologically. It's more an agitprop tool than the product of in-depth analysis.

LIP ou le Goût du Collectif
Documentary by Dominique Dubosc (1976), 70 min; official selection Cannes 1977.

Les Lip, imagination in power
Les Lip, l'imagination in power is a documentary directed by Christian Rouaud, released in 2007. It presents the Lip affair and all its events through the testimonies of the main protagonists of the time, in a historical, social and political tone, and including some archive footage. Unanimously acclaimed by critics for its concept and neutrality, the film pays tribute to this struggle and aims to pass on this page of history to younger generations.

Fils de Lip
Fils de Lip is a documentary film directed by Thomas Faverjon in 2007, telling the story of the second Lip conflict through the testimonies of the "voiceless" (all those who were never heard from). It presents the new Lip struggle in a company that has filed for bankruptcy, but remains perfectly profitable in terms of both machines and workers. However, no buyer was interested, due to the economic and political elite of the time, who wanted to sanction the revolution of the first conflict. It's a new way of looking at these employees, who are not living through a glorious era like the previous struggle, but a bitter repression.

L'été des Lip (TV film, France 3, 2011)
L'été des Lip is a film by Dominique Ladoge retracing the great Lip strike. Through the eyes of a 20-year-old employee named Tulipe, the daughter of an Italian immigrant, we revisit the greatest moments of the 1970s struggle.

Songs

 * A Besançon, on Jacques Bertin's album of the same name (Disques Alvarès, 1974)

Radio programs

 * Là-bas si j'y suis, France Inter: October 11, 2004, November 21, 2013, November 25, 2013
 * Affaires sensibles, France Inter: September 23, 2014

Comic strips

 * Wiaz and Piotr, Les Hors-la-loi de Palente. La grève des LIP, Société Internationale d'Édition, 1974
 * Laurent Galandon, Damien Vidal, Lip. Des héros ordinaires, Dargaud, 2014

Board games

 * Chomageopoly, board game designed and produced by the LIP workers, 1977. Testimony to the collective struggle to popularize their action following the company's bankruptcy. According to the game's "philosophy", "(it) reflects the struggle of workers made redundant by the bankruptcy of their company. Attached to their company, to their work tool, they stay together to force the government, the employers and the system that put them out of work, to find them a job". Illustrations by Daullé, Forcadell, Kerleroux, Pelou, Piotr, Wiaz.