Revolutionary Communist League (France)
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The Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire) (LCR) is a French Trotskyist political party. It is the French section of the reunified Fourth International. It publishes the weekly newspaper Rouge and the journal Critique Communiste.
It was founded in 1974, after its forerunner the Communist League (Ligue Communiste) was banned in 1973. The Communist League was itself founded in 1969 after the Revolutionary Communist Youth (Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires), which was banned in 1968, had merged with Pierre Frank's Internationalist Communist Party. The group includes members of other Trotskyist tendencies who are able to organise openly within its ranks to gain support for its views.
Its official spokespersons are Alain Krivine, Roseline Vachetta, who are former members of the European Parliament, and Olivier Besancenot who was the party's candidate for the presidential elections.
An ongoing issue is the possibility and conditions of electoral alliances with other left wing forces, such as the fellow Trotskyist party Lutte Ouvrière. In the past the two have at times run joint candidates (for example in the last regional and European elections), and at times run separately (for example in the 2002 and 2007 presidential elections).
In a situation where massive campaigns against government policy have brought millions into the streets, but established political parties have lost a lot of credibility, the idea of unifying in an electoral alliance the radical Left is much discussed. There are for example talks for an alliance with the French Communist Party, after both parties worked together on the victorious campaign of the 'No' in the 2005 French referendum on the Constitution of the European Union. Relations between the two parties have been improving since Marie-George Buffet took over the leadership of the PCF.
LCR militants openly work within left-wing groups such as Association pour la Taxation des Transactions pour l'Aide aux Citoyens and the Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques trade unions.
In France's 2002 presidential elections, LCR's candidate Olivier Besancenot won 4.25% of the vote. Thus the far left (LCR, Lutte Ouvrière and Parti des travailleurs) gained a total of more than 10%. The run-off election provided voters with only a choice between the right-wing Chirac and the extreme right Le Pen. The Left in its vast majority voted for Chirac. The LCR did not call for abstention: the LCR campaigned to "minimize the vote to Le Pen". The LCR campaign was run under the slogan "Beat Le Pen on the streets and in the ballot box". A minority within the LCR were opposed to this slogan, believing that it amounted to a call to vote for Chirac.
For the 2007 French presidential election LCR's candidate is again Olivier Besancenot.
