Claude Estier

Claude Estier (born Claude Hasday Ezratty; 8 June 1925 – 10 March 2016) was a French politician and journalist. He was deputy of Paris from 1967 to 1968 and again from 1981 to 1986, then senator from 1986 to 2004 and was president of the socialist group in the senate from 1988 to 2004.

Estier's father was a supporter of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Because of this, Estier grew up in a socialist culture throughout his youth. His professors included Robert Verdier and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Estier participated in the Résistance in 1942, engaging in the carriage of arms and newspapers in Lyon until 1944. In charge of reports of listening to Radio Londres and Radio Algiers, the Free France broadcasts, he ended the war in the French Forces of the Interior.

In 1945, he then became a member of the centre-left French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). A very critical article on the SFIO Interior Minister Jules Moch's harsh repression of the 1947 strikes published in the newspaper Combat at the end of 1947 led to his exclusion from the party.

He campaigned in 1948 for the Unitary Socialist Party where he met, among others, Gilles Martinet and Pierre Stibbe. All three were former Résistance fighters who advocated a left-wing political line between the French Communist Party and the anti-communist SFIO.