Reseach framework: In France’s Pas-de-Calais coalfield, the Communist Party structured itself by politicizing local communities. By investing in families, it made possible “native” political socialization.

Objectives: This article focuses on the role of family ties in shaping and transforming political involvements.

Methodology: Thanks to a biographical interview with a former French Communist Party (FCP) activist in specific site and historical context, the aim is to reconstruct a trajectory which sheds light on the mechanisms of partisan attachment and then detachment.

Results: Irène Delvaux, born in 1936 in the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, where the FCP was strengthening its influence at the time, is a “native” communist: born into a committed family, her militant socialization began with her primary socialization. Daughter of a mineworker who became a trade union leader, a Communist executive and leader, then a member of parliament and mayor, she inherited a “red” politicization. Although she describes the context of her youth as “stalinist” and “sectarian” in retrospect, her story is marked by boundless admiration for her father, whom she describes as a devoted self-taught man and exemplary activist. Having become a municipal employee, she got involved with the party’s “base” and adopted its “openness” policies. In the 1990s, this position put her at odds with federal political direction. While this disagreement contributed to her break with the FCP in 1996, the feeling of non-recognition of her father by local activists precipitated her exit.

Conlusion: This trajectory of a Communist woman, which is inextricably bound up with socio-historical and affective logics (formation of a working-class political staff, strategic developments and partisan divisions, loyalty to a father who embodied domestic as well as political authority, succession of generations in Communist dynasties, inheritance management), sheds light on the ways in which family ties affect the partisan bond, and vice versa.

Contribution: As part of an oral history project, this text is a contribution to the sociology of socialization.