Vocation : Politics : Party Affiliation

Robert Barcia, also known as Hardy and Roger Girardot (22 July 1928 in Paris – 12 July 2009 in Créteil), was a French politician who was leader of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI), a Trotskyist organisation better known by the name of its weekly paper, Lutte Ouvrière (Workers' Struggle). Barcia was only known by his cadre name, Hardy, even to the majority of LO members.
Robert Barcia was born into a working-class family in Paris and was originally a member of the Communist Party. He began his activity as a militant in the Second World War. He then joined a tiny Trotskyist group, the Union Communiste, led by Barta (David Korner) a Romanian Trotskyist. Given that the group was clandestine, all members adopted cadre names and there was a considerable stress on security within the group. This continues today as does the emphasis of the UCI on orienting towards workers in the workplaces.
The UC did not take part in the regroupment of the other French Trotskyist groups which took place in 1944 and led to the foundation of the Internationalist Communist Party. This was because the UC held that the other Trotskyist groups had not made a balance sheet of what the UC saw as their nationalist deviations in the early period of the war.
The central task of the UC was working around the Renault factory in the Paris area, where it had members working and doing educational work in order to develop cadres. In 1947, this work meant that the UC was instrumental in leading the Renault strike which contributed to the fall of the Government. However, Hardy was not personally involved in these events due to ill health.
The strain on the UC leading the struggle at Renault and subsequently the independent SDR union there led to its collapse. After various attempts to revive the UC, a paper, Voix Ouvrière, was launched in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez Crisis. Among the figures leading this effort were Hardy and another former member of the UC Pierre Bois the leading UC militant at Renault. An obscure dispute with Barta seems to have ensured his lack of involvement however.
From 1956, Hardy was the central leader of first Voix Ouvrière, and after 1968 Lutte Ouvrière, and stamped his character on the group. However, given that texts from VO and LO tend not to be signed by individuals and given also that Hardy has not run for public office his role in the organisation has been obscure.
The journalist Christophe Bourseiller published a book of conversations with Hardy in 2003. Following the announcement of Robert Barcia's death, he said: "There were two Hardys. There was Hardy the Trotskyist militant who ruled his comrades with great discipline and had dedicated his life to communism and to revolution. And there was Barcia, the private man, a likeable and knowledgeable man with a great sense of humour."

Patrick Balkany (born 16 August 1948 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French politician.
He is a former member of the National Assembly of France. He was representing the 5th constituency of the Hauts-de-Seine department, and is a member of The Republicans. He served as mayor of Levallois-Perret, a wealthy suburb of Paris, since 1983, with his wife Isabelle as his deputy. He is also a long-time friend of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He is of Hungarian, Latvian and Ukrainian Jewish origin.In 2019, he was sentenced for tax evasion to four years in prison and to ten years of ineligibility, then dismissed from his mayor's mandate. Five months later he was released for health reasons. In february 2022, his sentence got reverted back to imprisonment due to multiple violations of his house arrest.

René Andrieu (Beauregard, 1920–1998) was a French Communist Resistance fighter, journalist and politician. He served in the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans during World War II, and headed the Communist newspaper l'Humanité from 1958 to 1984. He was also part of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party.

Nicole Ameline (born 4 July 1952) is a French politician, lawyer, diplomat and women's rights advocate. She served as a member of the National Assembly of France for several terms between 1991 and 2017, and held various roles in the Government of France from 1995; she was Minister of the Sea in 2002 and Minister of Gender Equality from 2002 to 2005. She has been a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women since 2008 and was the committee's chairperson from 2013.She represented the department of Calvados as a member of The Republicans.

Dominique Dord (born 1 September 1959 in Chambéry, Savoie) is a French politician of the French Republican Party who served as a member of the National Assembly of France between 1997 and 2017. He represented the Savoie department, He is also the mayor of Aix-les-Bains since 2001.
In the Republicans’ 2016 presidential primaries, Dort endorsed François Fillon as the party's candidate for the office of President of France.

Marcel Deneux (born 16 August 1928) is a former member of the Senate of France. He represented the Somme department from 1995 to 2014 and is a member of the Union for French Democracy Party.