Christophe Thivrier

Christophe Thivrier was a French politician of working class origins who was the first Socialist mayor in France, and deputy of Allier from 1889 to 1895. At this time the industrialists of France were using dismissals and other forms of repression in an attempt to stamp out socialism, and workers were responding with strikes. Thivrier was uncompromising in his socialist principles, and was known as the "deputé en blouse" for wearing his blue worker's smock in the Assembly to the outrage of the bourgeois members.