Pierre Juquin is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 politician and trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

ist.

Early life and PCF politics

The son of an SNCF

SNCF

The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...

 employee, he is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure

École Normale Supérieure

The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

, and was a teacher of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 at the Lycée Lakanal

Lycée Lakanal

Lycée Lakanal is a secondary public school in Sceaux, France. It was named after Joseph Lakanal, a French politician, and an original member of the Institut de France. The school also offers a middle school and highly ranked "classes préparatoires" undergraduate training...

 in Sceaux

Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine

Sceaux is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.-Wealth:Sceaux is famous for the Château of Sceaux, set in its large park , designed by André Le Nôtre, measuring...

 between 1959 and 1966. A disciple of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime, particularly the history of the peasantry.-Early life and career:...

, Juquin joined the French Communist Party

French Communist Party

The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

 (PCF), and was a candidate in the municipal elections of 1959 as well as a regional leader for the PCF in Seine

Seine (département)

Seine was a département of France encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Its préfecture was Paris and its official number was 75. The Seine département was abolished in 1968 and its territory divided among four new départements....

. A collaborator of Georges Marchais

Georges Marchais

Georges René Louis Marchais was the head of the French Communist Party from 1972 to 1994, and a candidate in the French presidential elections of 1981 - in which he managed to garner only 15.34% of the vote, which was considered at the time a major setback for the party.-Early life:Born into a...

, he was admitted as observer to the PCF Central Committee

Central Committee

Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...

, and defended the official party line

Party line (politics)

In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...

 inside the Union des Étudiants Communistes. He was also a prominent member of the Syndicat National des Enseignants du Second Degré (SNEF, a teachers' union, in which he helped the communists gain a decisive say).

He was elected to the French National Assembly

French National Assembly

The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

 for Essonne

Essonne

Essonne is a French department in the region of Île-de-France. It is named after the Essonne River.It was formed on 1 January 1968 when Seine-et-Oise was split into smaller departments.- History :...

 and, in 1967, became a full member of the PCF Central Committee. Voted out of the Essonne seat in 1968, he regained the position in 1973 - and was re-elected until 1981; an observer to the Politburo

Politburo

Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...

 in 1979, he joined the body in 1982, and was assigned leadership of the press and propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 bureau.

Independent voice

He was excluded from the Politburo in October 1984, and publicly disagreed with decisions taken at the 25th Part Congress of February 1985. His opposition was tolerated until October 1987, when he was excluded from the Party altogether - after he had expressed his wish to run for French Presidency

President of the French Republic

The President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State....

 on his own platform.

Thus, Juquin ran in the 1988 presidential election

French presidential election, 1988

Presidential elections were held in France on 24 April and 8 May 1988.In 1981, the Socialist Party leader, François Mitterrand, was elected President of France and the Left won the legislative election. However, in 1986, the Right regained a parliamentary majority. President Mitterrand was forced...

 with backing from the Unified Socialist Party

Unified Socialist Party (France)

The Unified Socialist Party was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. It was originally led by Édouard Depreux , and by Michel Rocard .- History :...

 (PSU) and the Revolutionary Communist League

Revolutionary Communist League (France)

See Revolutionary Communist League for the other Ligue communiste révolutionnaire.The Revolutionary Communist League was a French democratic revolutionary socialist political party. It was the French section of the Fourth International...

, grouping a sizable following of former PCF members, trotskyists

Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

, various Greens

Worldwide green parties

A Green party or ecologist party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of Green politics. These principles usually include social justice, reliance on grassroots democracy, nonviolence, and an emphasis on environmentalism...

, and non-committed left-wingers. Despite the creation of numerous Support Committees, he only managed to obtain 2.08% of the votes. His movement survived as the New Left for Socialism, Ecology and Self-management, which fused with the PSU to form Red and Green Alternatives (nowadays known as Les Alternatifs).