Robert Hue

Robert Hue (2015)

Robert Georges Auguste Hue (born October 19, 1946 in Cormeilles-en-Parisis , Département Val-d'Oise ) is a French politician of the Mouvement des progressistes party .

biography

youth

As the son of a communist worker, his father was a bricklayer and his mother worked for a textile company, he and his father often went to sell the newspaper L'Humanité . He attended the Collège d'Enseignement Technique in Cormeilles-en-Parisis and played in the rock group Les Rapaces under the pseudonym Willy Balton. At the age of 16 he entered the Communist Youth, a year later in the Parti communiste français (PCF). In Paris he trained as a nurse and then practiced this profession in a psychiatry in Argenteuil . In his youth he was also a judoka . Hue was a French university champion and wore the 2nd Dan black belt .

Political career

In the PCF, Robert Hue rose step by step as a supporter of Georges Marchais in the party hierarchy and was initially involved in local politics. In 1977 he was elected mayor of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles . He is considered very popular there and has been confirmed in his office to this day. In addition, Hue also won other local mandates, such as a seat on the regional council (Conseil Régional) of the Île-de-France region . In 1987 he was admitted to the PCF Central Committee and in 1990 to the Politburo. Four years later, although he was still unknown, Georges Marchais made him his successor as General Secretary of the PCF. Driven by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ideological crisis of the PCF after the end of real socialism , he heralded change within the party. The Communist Party now opened up to other political currents, said goodbye to parts of the traditional party program, got a dual leadership (Hue became party leader and Marie-George Buffet took over the post of general secretary). He also published a book to explain the reforms within the party: Communisme: la mutation (Communism: the change). In 1995 he ran for the PCF in the presidential elections: he got 8.65 percent of the vote and suffered badly from the competition of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire and the Lutte Ouvrière , but achieved a better result than the previous communist candidate. Two years later he supported the idea of ​​the gauche plurielle , which then successfully enforced the third cohabitation . Several communist ministers have been appointed to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's cabinet .

Meanwhile the PCF suffered a sharp decline in membership: the number of members fell from 200,000 in 1998 to 138,000 in 2001. In the same year, the party lost many of its strongholds in local elections. A year later, Hue was again a candidate for the presidency and only achieved 3.37 percent of the vote: the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen , who surprisingly made it into the second ballot, declared the Communist Party to be dead. The election result was so bad that the campaign costs were not fully reimbursed and the party was thus in the red. Robert Hue left the party leadership and handed it over to General Secretary Marie-George Buffet. The post of party leader disappeared when he left. In 2003, Hue lost his seat in the National Assembly in partial elections . However, a year later he was elected to the Senate .

In 2009 Robert Hue left the PCF because he considered it "unreformable". Instead, he founded the new Mouvement des progressistes party . He has been party chairman there ever since.

Political career

• March 21, 1977, election as mayor of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles in the Val-d'Oise department
• March 24, 1986, elected to the Ile-de-France Regional Council
• October 2, 1988, elected to the General Council of the Val-d'Oise department
• March 30, 1992, elected to the Île-de-France Regional Council
• 1994, elected Secretary General of the PCF
• 1995, PCF presidential candidate, got 8.65% of the vote
• June 1, 1997, elected Member of the National Assembly of the Val-d'Oise department .
• July 20, 1999, first place on the list in the elections to the European Parliament , achieved 6.8% of the vote and became a member of parliament
• October 2001, election as party leader of the PCF
• April 21, 2002, PCF presidential candidate, received 3.37% of the vote
• February 2, 2003, fails in partial elections for the National Assembly in his constituency ( Argenteuil , Val-d'Oise department ) against the UMP candidate , Georges Mothron
• September 26, 2004, elected Senator for the Val-d'Oise department

Publications

• Histoire d'un village du Parisis des origines à la Révolution (History of a village des Parisis from its origins to the revolution, 1981)
• Du village à la ville (From village to city, 1986)
• Montigny pendant la Révolution (Montigny during the Revolution, 1989)
• Communisme: la mutation (Communism: The Change, 1995)
• Il faut qu'on se parle (We have to talk to each other, 1997)
• Communisme: un nouveau projet (Communism: a new project, 1999)

Web links

Commons : Robert Hue  - collection of images, videos and audio files