Camille Huysmans

Camille Huysmans, born Camiel Hansen in 1871, was a Belgian socialist politician who served as prime minister of Belgium from 1946 to 1947. A trained philologist and former teacher, he joined the Belgian Workers' Party young, worked as a socialist journalist and from 1905 to 1922 was secretary of the Second International, where he pressed for an active peace policy and spoke against continuing the First World War at the 1917 Stockholm conference. He was a prominent voice of the Flemish movement, backing the use of Dutch at the University of Ghent, and served as mayor of Antwerp and as minister of arts and education. His short postwar government of socialists, liberals and communists passed a series of social reforms on workers' safety and family allowances. In old age he chaired the Chamber of Representatives and remained widely popular.