French Communist Party politicians

Jacques Vergès (5 March 1925 – 15 August 2013) was a Siamese-born French lawyer and anti-colonial activist. Vergès began as a fighter in the French Resistance during World War II, under Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. After becoming a lawyer, he became well known for his defense of FLN militants during the Algerian War of Independence. He was later involved in a number of controversial and high-profile legal cases, with a series of defendants charged with terrorism, serial murder, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This includes Nazi officer Klaus Barbie "the Butcher of Lyon" in 1987, terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994, and former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan in 2008. He also defended infamous Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1998 as well as members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. As a result of taking on such clients, he garnered criticism from members of the public, including intellectuals Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, political-activist Gerry Gable as well as Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.Vergès attracted widespread public attention in the 1950s for his use of trials as a forum for expressing views against French colonial rule in Algeria, questioning the authority of the prosecution and causing chaos in proceedings – a method he promoted as "rupture defense" in his book De la stratégie judiciaire. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1960 and temporarily lost his license to officially practice law. He was a supporter of the Palestinian fedayeen in the 1960s. He would later disappear from 1970 to 1978, without ever explaining his whereabouts during that period. An outspoken anti-imperialist, he continued his vocal political activism in the 2000s, including opposing the War on Terror. The media sensationalized his activities with the sobriquet "the Devil's advocate", and Vergès himself contributed to his "notorious" public persona by such acts as titling his autobiography The Brilliant Bastard and giving provocative replies in interviews, such as "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."

André Charles Adrien Tollet (1 July 1913 – 14 December 2001) was a French upholsterer, trade unionist and communist. He played a central role as chairman of the Paris liberation committee in the days leading up to the Liberation of Paris in 1944.

Gabriel Péri (Peri) (9 February 1902 — 15 December 1941) was a prominent French communist journalist and politician who was a member of the French Resistance. He was executed in German-occupied France during the Second World War.

Jeannette Vermeersch (born Julie Marie Vermeersch; 26 November 1910 – 5 November 2001) was a French politician.
She is principally known for having been the companion (1932–1947) and then the wife (1947–1964) of Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), with whom she had three children, born before their union was made official.

Pierre Juquin (born 22 February 1930 in Clermont-Ferrand) is a French communist politician and trade unionist.

Georges Cogniot (15 December 1901 in Montigny-lès-Cherlieu, Haute-Saône – 12 March 1978) was a French writer, philosopher and politician of the French Communist Party.

Jacques Brunhes (7 October 1934 – 30 September 2020) was a French politician. A member of the French Communist Party, he served Hauts-de-Seine in the National Assembly from 1978 to 1986. Brunhes returned to the National Assembly in 1988, and served until 2001, when he was appointed Minister of Tourism. His tenure as government minister ended in 2002, and he was reelected a deputy until 2007.

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."

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.

Jacqueline Fraysse-Cazalis (born 25 February 1947, in Paris) is a French cardiologist and politician. A member of the French Communist Party, she served in the National Assembly of France, from 1978 to 1986, as a Senator from 1986 to 1997, and in the National Assembly again from 1997 to 2017, as a member of the French Communist Party, in the Gauche démocrate et républicaine parliamentary group.Fraysse has also served in various capacities for the town of Nanterre, whose mayor she was from 1988 until 2004.In her capacity as mayor, Fraysse was overseeing a meeting of the Nanterre municipal council on 26 March 2002 when Richard Durn opened fire on the group, killing eight and wounding nineteen.