Pierre Juquin

The son of an SNCF employee, he is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), and was a teacher of German at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux between 1959 and 1966.

A collaborator of Georges Marchais, he was admitted as observer to the PCF Central Committee, and defended the official party line 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).

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

Thus, Juquin ran in the 1988 presidential election[1] with backing from the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and the Revolutionary Communist League, grouping some former PCF members, Trotskyists, various Greens, and independent left-wingers.