Fernand Désiré Alfred Desprès (or Després depending on the source) (13 April 1879 – 14 February 1949) was a French shoemaker, anarchist, journalist and later a Communist activist.

[a] While young he spent holidays with a friend of the father of the future poet Gaston Couté.

[2] Després found work as a shoemaker with Constant Marie, known as Père La Purge, an anarchist theoretician.

[3][b] In 1899 Després began to contribute to the Journal du Peuple, edited by Sébastien Faure.

Without access to notes, he wrote a leading article on Couté for a special edition of La Guerre Sociale entirely from memory.

He later wrote other articles on Couté in the Vie Ouvrière (1911), the Journal du Peuple, the Bataille Syndicaliste and in Humanité (1924).

[2] In August 1915 he and his partner Marcelle Capy resigned from the La Bataille syndicaliste because the paper had adopted the union sacrée position and would not let him write in defense of his friend Romain Rolland.

In 1918 Després, Marcel Martinet and Jean de Saint-Prix published La Plèbe, a magazine that was harassed by the censors and then banned.

Després ran unsuccessfully as Communist candidate for election to the legislature in 1932 for Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée He later worked as a proofreader while continuing to contribute to l’Humanité.