Far right gains in municipal
The most significant and disturbing - result of of this size in Europe to come under far right control
France's June municipal elections was the victory of since the second world war. The party of Jean-Marie the far-right National Front in three southern cities Le Pen also doubled its number of municipal including Toulon, a major naval port with over councillors throughout the country. Keith Mann
130,000 inhabitants. This is the first city government reports on the challenge ahead for anti-fascists elections
The elections also revealed the fragility of the right wing majority which controls both houses of parliament and now the presidency. The conservative coalition of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) and the Union of French Democracy (UDF) was hoping that the victory of Jacques Chirac in the May presidential elections would create enough momentum to assure it widespread victories in the municipal elections. But the victory of the Socialist Party (PS) in a number of important cities as well as six of the twenty local Paris governments, all of which had been under right wing control for years, supports the analysis that Chirac's relatively narrow victory over PS candidate Lionel Jospin (53.6 to 43.2%) was more a victory by default over a badly discredited PS than a widespread enthusiastic show of support for the neoliberal policies of the right.
The PS managed to hold off concerted right wing challenges in such important cities as Lille, Mulhouse and Clermont Ferrand where former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing of the UDF hoped to unseat the PS mayor. The PS also managed to defeat long-time conservative mayors in a number of cities including Rouen and Tours. But the failure of the PS to oppose the conservative parties on the basis of a clear left wing alternative to the attacks by the government of Chirac's prime minister Alain Juppé on hard won social gains indicates that many of the voters who choose the PS did so more out of opposition to the right than out of genuine support for the Socialist Party. Those hoping that the Communist Party (PC) would benefit from the relatively good showing of its presidential candidate Robert Hue (who received just under 9%, an improvement over recent PC electoral efforts) were disappointed. The PC failed to make headway and even lost control over the Norman port city Le Havre which it had controlled for years, though it was slightly compensated by victory in the relatively large southern city Nimes.
The results were also disappointing for those who hoped that the excellent score of Lutte Ouvriere (LO — Workers' Fight) candidate Arlette Laguillier who scored 5.3% in the first round of the presidential elections would be the basis of a broad left wing pole of opposition to the neoliberalism of the right and the Social Democracy. Hopes along these lines were raised when Arlette publicly called for the building of a "large party." However, in the weeks following that declaration LO made it clear that its idea of a large party was a simple extension of its own active
O CT but small, tightly knit organization rather than a genuine effort to work with other anti-capitalist forces for a new political force to the left of the PS and the PC. This was reflected in the municipal elections themselves. LO refused offers to run joint slates with other forces including the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) French section of the Fourth International. In most cases it failed to improve on its usual 2-3%. Worse yet, its insistence on running against the LCR in several cities such as Saint Denis, a working class suburb north of Paris, contributed to the loss of the LCR's two municipal councillors there whose seats have now
France been filled by the right.
The week separating the two rounds was dominated by speculation around the possibility of National Front (NF) victories in a number of cities and the attitudes of the main parties in cities where the elections were "triangular," that is with contests pitting candidates from the UDF or RPR, the PS or PC and the FN. Le Pen clearly relished his role as "arbiter" taking a cynical pleasure in sowing confusion in the ranks of the "respectable" right wing parties and hoping to attract some of their voters. For example, though Le Pen and most currents of the FN usually favor a
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C hard line against the RPR and the UDE, differentiating themselves as much as possible from these parties — even against such figures as former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua whose words and deeds are close to the far right — Le Pen ostentatiously offered to support to Valery Giscard d'Estaing in his bid to unseat the PS incumbent in Clermont Ferrand Though the UDF declined to accept Le Pen's offer there is no guarantee that the mainstream right will not collaborate with the FN in the future.
Speculation during the period separating the two rounds centered around the southern city of Vitrolles where there was
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France a possibility that Bruno Mégret, number two in the FN, might translate his near 50% score in the first round into a victory in the second, and on Mulhouse in Alsace in Eastern France where the FN also to win. Though the FN narrowly failed to win these cities it did win three significant elections in Toulon, Marignane, and Orange. One could also add Nice to the list. The new mayor there recently left the FN in search of a more "respectable" political label, without however, renouncing his agreement with FN ideology.
Although the FN did not enjoy a big advance overall in terms of votes in relation to the presidential elections where it polled 15% nation-wide, these electoral victories represent a new stage in its progression. The FN has had elected officials in municipal councils, regional assemblies, the national parliament and the European parliament for years. But its isolation from other political formations has meant that these posts have only served as tribunes for the FN to spew its racist propaganda. The danger now is that it will use its control of city councils and the mayor's office in these cities to actually implement its openly anti-immigrant policies of "national preference."
These FN victories represent a new phase in the struggle against Le Pen and the FN and in defense of France's immigrant population. FN strategists claimed prior to the elections that municipal victories for its party would be the first step toward power in France as a whole. And FN leaders gave a frank indication of what they mean by national preference. Marie-France Stirbois, FN candidate in the city of Dreux told Le Monde that "if a (housing) seeker is French, they will receive a lodging. If it is a foreigner, he will be sent to the back of the line." Asked what he would do if elected mayor of Vitrolles, Bruno Mégret said he planned to increase the police force and assign it the task of creating a "climate of insecurity" for "delinquents" — often a code word for youths of immigrant origin. Mégret also said that if elected the city government in Vitrolles would take all possible measures to stop "the arrival of new immigrants in the city" "gradually reduce the number of immigrants already present through a housing policy which would give priority to French families."
On election night, Le Pen crowed that these cities were the first "liberated" cities in the country. But the FN will now have the burden of proving to its electorate that it is capable not only of denouncing immigrants as the source of all of the
International Viewpoint #268 July 1995 country's problems, but implementing its program and actually running public affairs. This has already led to differences within the organization. Le Pen himself favors immediate, strident measures to exclude immigrants from access to municipal housing lists and other city services. Others, including Le Chevalier, the new FN mayor in Toulon, are sensitive to the contradiction between the FN program and existing French legislation prohibiting the kind of open discrimination proposed in the FN program. While Le Pen proposes a sort of civil disobedience by which the mayors would ignore the authority of the local Paris-appointed prefect in favor of a higher "national interest" (another FN leader talked about a "showdown with the state"), Le Chevalier hopes to find ways to implement discrimination against the immigrants within the limits of the law. In any event immigrants with or without papers -especially youth who have long been victimized by police brutality - can expect an even a harder time in these cities.
The new situation opened up by these FN victories also constitutes a challenge for anti-racist and anti-fascist individuals and organizations to adapt existing forms of mobilization and opposition to the FN.
For example many cultural festivals are held in Southern France during the summer months. Should artists and musicians should perform in Toulon, Marignane and Orange? Popular singer Patrick Bruel (who is of North African Jewish origin) has stated his intention to boycott the FN cities earning himself an angry antisemitic outburst from Le Pen. Singer Charles Aznavour has called the idea of a boycott "ridiculous." Other performers plan to shift events planned in these cities to nearby localities as a way of protesting the FN without punishing the large numbers of voters who did vote against the FN.
A similar debate is taking place on the left from the PS to anti fascist activists and revolutionary socialists. Some have proposed boycotting these cities as a way of pressuring those who voted for the FN. Others have advanced the argument that this would amount to abdicating from a political struggle within these localities and leave the immigrant population vulnerable to city government-inspired
Clearly, measures must be taken in solidarity with, and defense of, the immigrants in these cities who are often grouped in miserable ghettos rampant with poverty and unemployment. This involves monitoring and denouncing every instance of discrimination against them. Defense of immigrants as the most vulnerable element in French society is an elementary duty of socialists, And united action by all democratic forces under the leadership of the parties of the left, the trade unions and anti-racist and anti-fascist organizations around the principle of "an injury to one is an injury to all" would be a powerful weapon against the FN. This is because the FN's anti immigrant racism and xenophobia is only the most visible part of its program; the type of society that the FN would like to bring about also involves frontal assaults on the rights of workers gays, lesbians and women. Widespread support for such a united front would also bar the way to the development of the type of "Republican Front" between the parties of the right and the PS and PC which has already been proposed. Such an alliance would blunt the fight against the far right by tying the left parties to the right wing ones and detaching them from their natural allies in the trade unions and progressive organizations. It would thus cede leadership of the fight against the FN to the same right wing parties whose policies in government have been strikingly anti-
This is why effective opposition to the FN will also involve a broad political campaign of education amongst the large numbers of workers who have been swayed by Le Pen's scapegoating of immigrants for unemployment and "insecurity." This facile demagoguery must be opposed with arguments demonstrating that unemployment is the result of the capitalist crisis and the austerity policies instituted by the parties of the right and the left. Ultimately, this is inseparable from the struggle to build a mass anti-capitalist party to the left of the PS and the CP. Much work needs to done; the FN receives more working class votes today than any other party.
The coming weeks and months will be rich in experience for the fight against the FN. The stakes are high for all sides, not only in France, but internationally. While the victory of the FN in three cities has certainly encouraged racists and fascists internationally, a powerful movement against the ideas and practices of the FN in a country once proud of its reputation as the birth place of the ideals of human rights will also educate and inspire those throughout the world who are fighting against racism and fascism.