Jospin lays the ghost of long past Trotskyism

The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, admitted yesterday that he began his political career as a Trotskyist. Mr Jospin responded to questions in the National Assembly following press reports that he was a Trotskyist revolutionary who infiltrated the Socialist party on the instructions of his semi-clandestine organisation.

"It is true that in the 1960s I took an interest in Trotskyist ideas, and I established relations with one of the groups of this political movement," Mr Jospin said. "It was a personal, intellectual and political journey of which I am not the least ashamed." He was motivated by anti-colonialism and anti-Stalinism, he added.

As a student at the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) in 1964, Mr Jospin was considered a rare catch by Trotskyist leaders. He was given the code name "Comrade Michel" and excelled at teaching "revolutionary studies groups".

Mr Pierre Lambert, now 81 and still the leader of the French Workers' Party, decided that Mr Jospin's membership in the Internationalist Communist Organisation (OCI), founded in 1965, should remain secret.

The OCI was banned by the Interior Ministry for two years while Mr Jospin was an active participant. The group is often compared to a sect, its members known as "Lambertistes".

In 1971 the Lambertistes decided to infiltrate French institutions. Mr Jospin joined the Socialist party, and 10 years later became its first secretary, as a Trotskyist mole.

When Francois Mitterrand was elected in 1981, the revolutionaries believed the "great day" had arrived, that the Fifth Republic would collapse and their pre-positioning of men like Mr Jospin would pay off. But Mr Jospin broke all ties with the Trotskyists in 1987, 10 years before he became Prime Minister.

Rumours about Mr Jospin's Trotskyist past had circulated for years, but until yesterday he always denied them, claiming he was being confused with his brother, Olivier, who was also a Trotskyist.

But Mr Boris Fraenkel (80) revealed he was the young intellectual's mentor and guide within the movement in the 1960s. Most of those interviewed - now teachers, researchers, professors and journalists - did not wish to be identified. "They behave as if they carried a cumbersome family secret," Le Monde said. "It's silly to lie," Mr Fraenkel told the newspaper. "Trotskyism isn't syphilis. [Mr Jospin] repressed the whole thing. For him, it didn't happen."

Mr Jospin's earlier denials are more likely to harm his chances in next year's presidential election than his radical past, which he has in common with politicians like Dr Bernard Kouchner and Mr Joschka Fischer. "I have never been a Trotskyist," he said in 1995. When the question was repeated two years later, Mr Jospin quoted Andre Malraux: "A man is not what he hides, but what he does."