Camus, Albert and the Anarchists (2007)

From his time as a goalkeeper, Albert Camus always had a team spirit. Camus had first expressed admiration for revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists, conscientious objectors and all manner of rebels as early as 1938 whilst working as a journalist on the paper L'Alger Republicaine, according to his friend Pascal Pia. Camus met with the organisers of the event, Fernando Gómez Peláez of the paper Solidaridad Obrera, organ of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT, and José Ester Borrás, secretary of the Spanish political prisoners' federation FEDIP, asking them to approach Breton without telling him that Camus had suggested it. Later Camus told the Spanish anarchists that because he had not replied to Breton's anger in kind that a near-reconciliation was possible. Again in 1954 Camus came to the aid of the anarchists. Camus also stood with the anarchists when they expressed support for the workers' revolt against the Soviets in East Germany in 1953. Camus often used his fame or notoriety to intervene in the press to stop the persecution of anarchist militants or to alert public opinion.