2023-08-14 16:46:29
Former French socialist minister Louis Mexandeau waits in front of the headquarters of the Socialist Party (PS) before the visit of the former president, on May 14, 2017 in Paris JOEL SAGET / AFP
On April 7, 2018, at the podium of the congress of a dying Socialist Party (PS) in Aubervilliers, an 87-year-old gentleman unleashed applause. “ We are the party of paid holidays, collective agreements, the Wheat Board but also the abolition of the death penalty and marriage for all”, proclaims Louis Mexandeau, brandishing his membership cards since the Epinay congress in 1971. “I have the audacity to feel an inexpressible pride”he adds with contained emotion. “You will see the left in power again”, promises Olivier Faure, just elected first secretary. Faithful among the faithful of François Mitterrand, of whom he was a minister, Louis Mexandeau left before this hypothetical return. He died on Monday August 14 at the age of 92, announced the Calvados deputy Arthur Delaporte as well as the mayor of Caen, Joël Bruneau.
Son of farmers, Louis Mexandeau was born on July 6, 1931 in Wanquetin (Pas-de-Calais). His father, a Protestant, died in 1936 and his family joined the Resistance. He completed his secondary studies as an intern at the Lycée d’Arras. After obtaining his baccalaureate, he enrolled at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris but he interrupted his course after a year unable to meet the costs. Supervisor at the Arras high school, he studied history at the University of Lille. After obtaining an aggregation of history, in 1960, which he prepares at the Sorbonne with his friend Louis Mermaz, he is a teacher at the Lycée Malherbe in Caen (1961-1968) then in preparatory classes (1968-1973) .
François Mitterrand, “an irradiation”
Louis Mexandeau joined the Communist Party in 1952 and actively campaigned for the National Union of Secondary Education. In 1956, he signed a petition against the sending of the contingent to Algeria then gradually moved away from the PCF with which he broke in 1961. A year earlier, he married Michèle Cusin, daughter of a senior official who during the Front popular, in the cabinet of Léon Blum, organized the sending of weapons to the Spanish republicans, with which it will have three children: Nicolas, Cécile and Aurélie.
In 1965, during the presidential campaign, he met François Mitterrand – “a kind of irradiation”, he will say – of which he becomes unconditional. He established the Convention of Republican Institutions in Calvados and, in 1971, he joined the PS, reigning unchallenged over his Norman stronghold until 2000. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1968, he was elected, on March 11, 1973, deputy of the Calvados, re-elected in 1978, in 1981, in 1986, in 1988, in 1993 and finally in 1997. to be elected mayor, partly due to internal conflicts in the PS – and regional councilor of Basse-Normandie from 1986 to 2004.
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