Jean-Baptiste Lebas

Jean-Baptiste Lebas (; 24 October 1878 – 10 March 1944) was a French Socialist politician, deputy to the National Assembly of France during the Third Republic, who served twice as minister under Léon Blum’s governments. He was mayor of Roubaix and member of the Resistance during World War II. First step in politics Jean-Baptiste Lebas is the son of Félicité Delattre and Jean-Hippolyte Lebas. He was born at home in a humble house in Roubaix, an industrial city where his mother was a housekeeper and his father a textile worker. A Republican under the Second Empire and a syndicalist, Jean-Baptiste Lebas's father was a socialist who had become member of the Parti Ouvrier Français (POF) at its foundation in 1880. Altogether, it was observable that Jean-Baptiste Lebas had been brought up in a working class family and steeped in a left-wing milieu in his birth town. In 1896, following his father at the age of eighteen, he joined the POF. In 1900 he wrote under the pen name Jacques Vingtras a brochure premised by Jules Guesde and entitled: Socialisme et patriotisme. He entered a career as accountant for the cooperative society La Paix in 1901. In 1906 he became assistant secretary for the local branch of the SFIO.