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The Socialist Pedagogue
 His
experience as a lawyer on one hand, the social context, on
the other hand, brings Jules Destrée into politics.
His progressist ideas, in contact with Bufquin
des Essarts, bring him to the foundation, with his friend
Paul Pastur ,of the "
Democratic Federation of Charleroi ". This one will join
the Belgian working-class Party " (POB) and the other
leftwing associations in order to form, in 1894, a socialist
list at the parliamentary elections. Jules Destrée
becomes a deputy and keeps this function until his death in
1936.
He takes part in the creation of new working-class
associations, cooperatives, unions. He works for the workmen's
right, and fights for women and children emancipation.
Together with the economist Emile
Vandervelde, Destrée's socialism is based on humanism,
on democratic ideas and values linking up with his intellectual,
moral and aesthetic preoccupations.
As a Deputy, as an Alderman of Education, as a Minister of
Sciences and Art, he never stopped fighting for education
for everybody.
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