François Billoux

Born May 21, 1903, in Saint-Romain-la-Motte, Loire. Activist in the French workers’ movement. Worker by profession. Member of the French Communist Party (FCP) since 1920; member of the FCP Central Committee since 1926. From 1928 to 1930, general secretary of the Central Committee of the French Young Communist League, and from 1937 to 1972, a member of the FCP Political Bureau.

Billoux became a parliamentary deputy in 1936. In 1939 he was arrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor. After his release from prison (February 1943), Billoux belonged to the French Committee of National Liberation. He was a member of the French delegation to the 1945 San Francisco conference. From 1944 to 1947 he was a member of the government and held the posts of minister of public health, the national economy, reconstruction and city services, and national defense. From 1950 to 1954 he was acting chairman of the FCP parliamentary group, and from 1953 to 1956 he was a member of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the FCP. In 1955 he became political director of the weekly of the FCP Central Committee, France Nouvelle.