Republican Central Committee of the Twenty Arrondissements

The day after the proclamation of the Republic several hundred workers meeting in the rue au Maire decided to set up republican committees in every arrondissement. Members of the International Workingmen's Association took a large part in the initiative, which also brought in Blanquists and Jacobins. These committees, sometimes called vigilance or defence committees, each delegated two representatives to form the "Central Committee of National Defence of the Twenty Arrondissements of Paris", which first met on 11 September in the rue de la Corderie-du-Temple. Édouard Vaillant was one of its originators, and Eugène Varlin, Émile Eudes, Émile-Victor Duval and Charles Beslay, delegate for the 6th arrondissement, were among its members.

On 14 September the committee posted a pink poster, the so-called first Red Poster, calling for the formation of the Commune. Its programme proposed abolishing the state police in favour of magistrates appointed by the municipalities and helped by the National Guard, the election and accountability of all officials, freedom of the press, assembly and association, the abolition of the religious budget, the annulment of all political convictions, and the requisitioning and rationing of goods to withstand the siege. Among its 48 signatories, Cluseret, Longuet, Malon, Ranvier, Vaillant and Vallès later sat on the Commune council.

At first the committee sought no confrontation with the Government of National Defence and tried instead to help the provisional municipalities it had appointed with policing, supplies and schools. When its demand for an elected municipality went unmet, it organised demonstrations between 20 and 25 September. After its rally before the Hôtel de Ville on 8 October failed for lack of numbers, moderates and some of the Internationalists left, and the committee played only a symbolic part in the rising of 31 October. Renamed the Delegation of the Twenty Arrondissements on 1 January 1871, it posted the Red Poster again calling for the Commune on 5 January. After the armistice of 28 January it joined the International and the Federal Chamber of Workers' Societies in fielding revolutionary socialist candidates for the February elections, of whom four, Gambon, Malon, Pyat and Tolain, were elected.

After the rising of 18 March the Delegation took back its first name of Central Committee, but it was soon eclipsed by the Central Committee of the National Guard, which held power until the elections of 26 March. Many of its former members, among them Avrial, Pindy, Charles Delescluze, Vaillant and Duval, were elected to the Commune council. Its role during the Commune remained very limited, and it disappeared on 19 May, two days before the Bloody Week. The historian Michel Cordillot judged that by giving the Commune many of its leaders the committee had in the end achieved the aims it set itself at the start.