Léon Nicole

Léon Nicole ( born April 10, 1887 in Montcherand, † June 28, 1965 in Geneva) was a Swiss politician.

Life

Nicole was born into a peasant family. From 1903 to 1905 he graduated from the School of Administration in St. Gallen. Subsequently, he was until 1919 an official of the Postal and Telegraph Administration.

As co-initiator of the country strike of 1918 Nicole was acquitted by the military justice system. Subsequently, he was founder and editor of the newspaper La Voix du Travail ( 1922 Le Travail ). As a representative of the Social Democratic Party and later the Labour Party from 1919 Nicole was a longtime member of the Geneva cantonal parliament and at the same time the Swiss National Council. From 1922 to the incorporation in 1931, he was also active in the local politics of Le Petit- Saconnex.

After the riots of 1932 Geneva Nicole was sentenced by the federal assizes to six months imprisonment. Subsequently, he was a member in the years 1933 to 1936, the Geneva cantonal government, where he led the Justice and Police. The government, which he chaired in 1934 and 1936, was the first Social Democrat-dominated executive Canton in Switzerland.

In 1941 he was expelled along with three colleagues from the National Party, after the Federal Council, the Fédération Socialiste suisse (FSS ) had dissolved, a leftist group that had split off under his presidency of the SP. During the Second World War, Nicole was a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS in Switzerland and moved in a clandestine political environment, what him and his son Pierre 1943, a three-week imprisonment earned. In 1944 he was elected president of the newly formed Party of Labour ( PdA ) and entrusted with the management of the newspaper La Voix Ouvrière. In 1947 he was elected to the National Council. In 1952 the stalin loyal Nicole was excluded because of disagreements from the PdA.