France's Communist party has undergone a revolution and dropped the hammer and sickle from its membership cards, reports The Guardian.
The party (PCF) is replacing the communist emblem of peasants and the proletariat with a five-pointed star representing the European Left, a loose alliance of far-left parties, including France's Left Front. The move, announced at the party's 36th congress, which closed on Sunday, has angered traditionalists.
"Everyone in the party is shocked," Emmanuel Dang Tran, the party's Paris secretary told France Info radio. "The PCF is allowing itself and its values to be swallowed up by another organisation."
He said the hammer and sickle represented "a historic element in resistance against the politics of capitalism for the working class of this country", and accused the party leadership of selling out to a form of social democracy made up of "Greens, socialists, Trotskyists and I don't know who else".
Pierre Laurent, PCF national secretary, defended the decision to abandon the symbol, saying it no longer represented present-day realities.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.