Farhat Hached (; 2 February 1914 – 5 December 1952) was a Tunisian labor unionist and activist who was assassinated by La Main Rouge, a French terrorist organization operated by French foreign intelligence. He was one of the leaders of the pro-independence Tunisian national movement, along with Habib Bourguiba and Salah ben Youssef. His assassination is attributed to La Main Rouge (The Red Hand), an armed organisation that favoured a French presence in Tunisia. More recently, on 18 December 2009, it was confirmed to the Al Jazeera news organisation, by a man called Antoine Méléro, who claimed to be a former Main Rouge member, that the Main Rouge had been a military wing of the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service) or SDECE.
Life
Early years
Farhat Hached was born at El Abassia on the Islands of Kerkennah, the son of Mohamed Hached, a sailor, and Hana Ben Romdhane. He spent eight years at the village primary school in Kellabine which was run by a French head teacher. He received his Certificate of Primary Education which might have opened the way to further education, but his father's death obliged him to abandon his studies and take on paid work.
In 1930 he took a job as a courier with "la Société du transport du Sahel", a transport company based at Sousse. In the same year he established a basic trades union at the company which he affiliated to the French Trades Union Confederation (CGT). This was the start of his career in Tunisian trades unionism. He took on a range of union responsibilities locally and in the region and, later, in national administration, working with . As a result, he was dismissed from his job in 1939.
During the Second World War, with Tunisia subject to the French puppet government at Vichy, a ban on political and trades union activity made life difficult. Hached therefore volunteered for work with the Red Cross in order to look after the injured, a task which he undertook outside his working hours. In 1942 Tunisia became a significant theatre for the fighting between principal wartime belligerents and the requirements of the Vichy government lost their significance as local administrative responsibilities passed to the Free French colonial government. In 1943 Hached was recruited for government service which meant relocation to Sfax where he was able to resume his trades union activities. The same year he married a kinswoman from Kerkennah, Oum El Khir (Emna Hached).
Trades union leader
As war in Europe continued, at the departmental congress of the CGT in March 1944, recognising the inability of the leadership in "Metropolitan France" to respond appropriately to the needs of workers in Tunisia, and disappointed by the failure of communists and socialists within it to support "the legitimate aspirations of Tunisians for national independence", he broke with the CGT. In November 1944, with other Tunisian trades unionists, he took the initiative to launch an autonomous Tunisian trades union, starting with the "Union of Free Trades Unionists in the South" ("Union des syndicats libres du Sud") based in Sfax. The focus was on three priorities: social justice, equality between Tunisian workers and those of French provenance, and national independence. In 1945 he established, in addition, the "Union of Free Trades Unionists in the North" ("Union des syndicats libres du Nord"), based in Tunis.
On 20 January 1946 a joint congress took place at which the "Union of Free Trades Unionists in the South", the "Union of Free Trades Unionists in the North" and the "General Tunisian Labour Union" ("Fédération générale tunisienne du travail") which had been founded back in 1936, combined together to form the Tunisian General Labour Union ("Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail" / UGTT). In 1947, still aged only 32, Hached was unanimously elected as the first General Secretary of the UGTT.