Arlette Laguiller

Arlette Laguiller (Toulouse, April 2007)

Arlette Yvonne Laguiller (born March 18, 1940 in Les Lilas , Seine-Saint-Denis department ) is a French politician who belongs to the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière party .

biography

Arlette Laguiller was born on March 18, 1940 in the town of Les Lilas in the Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris into a working class family and was interested in politics from her youth. After graduating from the Collège des Lilas at the age of 16, she began an apprenticeship as a typist at the Crédit Lyonnais bank in 1956 . She was to work there as a secretary and full-time union official until she retired in 2000.

Political career

Arlette Laguiller

At the age of 20, Laguiller fought against the Algerian War in 1960 . In the same year she became a member of the newly founded socialist party Parti socialiste unifié (PSU), later she joined the Trotskyist organization Voix ouvrière . In the 1960s she was also an active member of the communist trade union CGT , from which she was later expelled because of her revolutionary ideas. After the student revolution and the general strike in May / June 1968, radical left-wing organizations, including the Voix ouvrière , were dissolved by a decree by President de Gaulle . Arlette Laguiller then took part in the formation of the left-wing radical Lutte Ouvrière party on June 26, 1968 and was elected national party spokeswoman in 1973 at the age of 33. The following year, a strike broke out that spread to the entire banking sector from February to April 1974. Together with her fellow campaigners, she convinced the majority of the strikers to take part in an active strike, led by the employees themselves, which was to be organized with the help of elected strike committees and which was ultimately successful.

On May 5, 1974, Laguiller became the first woman in the French presidential election and received 2.3% of the vote (595,247 votes). She was confirmed annually in her office as party spokeswoman for Lutte Ouvrière , and from then on she stood for her party as a candidate in all French presidential elections up to and including 2007.

From 1999 to 2004 Laguiller was a member of the European Parliament . There she belonged to the group of the European party alliance United European Left - Nordic Green Left and was a member of the Committee on Social Affairs and Employment and a substitute member of the delegation in the joint parliamentary committee for the EU-Lithuania Association.

anecdote

Alain Souchon dedicated a chanson to her called Arlette Laguiller .

Important data

• 1960 joined the PSU
• 1962 membership of the CGT union
• Expelled from the CGT in 1965 for being a Trotskyite. Joined the workers' union Force ouvrière (FO), where she became a union representative.
• 1968 Formation of LO ( Lutte Ouvrière ), member of the LO board
• 1971 candidate in the local elections in the 18th arrondissement in Paris
• 1973 candidate in the National Assembly elections
• 1974 first female candidate in the presidential election; it received 595,247 votes (2.33%).
• 1979 candidate in the European elections at the top of the LO / LCR list; it receives 3.09% of the votes. (LCR: Ligue communiste révolutionnaire ; also a Trotskyist party)
• 1981 candidate in the presidential election; it received 668,057 votes (2.30%).
• 1988 candidate in the presidential election; it receives 1.99% of the votes.
• 1995 candidate in the presidential elections, she receives 5.3% of the vote.
• 1998–2004 member of the Île-de-France Regional Council
• 1999-2004 MEPs
• April 21, 2002 candidate in the presidential election; it received 5.72% of the votes and is in 5th place in the first round with 16 candidates.
• 2004 candidate in the European elections on the LO-LCR list
• 2007 candidate in the presidential election; it received 486,577 votes (1.34%).

On December 5, 2005, Arlette Laguiller announced that she would run for the last time in the presidential elections in 2007 and that afterwards a young activist from Lutte Ouvrière would take her place. According to her, "a whole bunch of young women could take on this role".

Works

• Moi, une militante . 1974.
• Une travailleuse révolutionnaire in la campagne presidential . 1974.
• Il faut changer le monde . 1988.
• C'est toute ma vie . 1996.
• Paroles de prolétaires . 1999.
• Mon communisme . 2002.

Web links

Commons : Arlette Laguiller  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• official site (french)
• Entry on Arlette Laguiller in the European Parliament 's database of MEPs