National Front on the offensive
It is one year since the National Front won control of the town councils in Toulon, Marignane and Orange, and tripled their number of municipal councillors. Arnaldo Castelleras of the anti-fascist group Ras I'front explains how the neo-fascists have launched their own "socioprofessional" organisations to combat the trade unions, and are trying to elect their members onto the management and consultation bodies responsible for France's municipal social housing (HLMs). In all parts of the country, in every domain of life, they are on the offensive.
THE NATIONAL FRONT (Front National, FN) reacted to the November-December 1995 public sector labour militancy with a double discourse: criticising Prime Minister Juppé's counter-reforms, and criticising the "social agitation" of the labour movement. Workers' frustration was legitimate, the Front explained, but the "established" unions had no right to organise a mobilisation around the question. "Many National Front voters and sympathisers are on strike. It is our duty to show them the way in which they are being fooled" wrote the FN's National hebdo, 12/1995.
This is not the first time the FN has used a double discourse when it is overtaken by events. The party presents itself as the alternative, not to the government, but to the two-party oligopoly. Social movements are not the far-right's favourite fighting ground, to the point where party leaders cried conspiracy. "This is a displacement of the political debate from the national sphere, where the FN is unbeatable, to a make-believe social sphere" Social-nationalism
On May Ist 1996, the National Front presented itself as the "trade union of the French." Party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's newsletter Français d'abord (French First) chose the provocative title "Social means FN!" The party's militants organised May Day events under the slogan "May First: national, popular and social".
Le Pen has never shown much sympathy for the "labouring masses," due to their unpleasant tendency to vote socialist or communist. But, now that their affection for those two parties is declining, he is re-evaluating them... as potential FN voters. Hence the FN's May Day banners calling for
/ wage of 7,000 FF (£950)
and, of course "jobs for the French".
The FN recognises the battle over deregulation of the public sector, and the massive cuts in services, as a chance for them to pick up some discontented voters. Leading FN theorist Bruno Mégret recognises that "there is a certain lack of support for the FN among civil servants... [and yet] we recognise them as servants of the state, which is the spine of the Nation... The FN is committed to defending the state and, as such, can only conceive political activities which support, rather than attack, the servants of that state." As the anti-fascist group Ras l'front commented in their June magazine, the new thesis seems to be "civil servants = state = nation = National Front."
The party's proposals for civil servants are clear: "make the criteria of priority for citizens in recruitment untouchable, reestablish the impartiality of the administrative sector, re-place the state in its proper position, give the civil servants the tools they need to do the job, and re-establish their prestige in the eyes of the public." Obviously, these promises are combined with a number of obligations, notably "reserve, and limitations on the right to strike."
Mégret's promises to civil servants are part of an attempt to improve the party's image among manual and white collar workers. This re-orientation has already brought positive results for the party: a record number of workers and the unemployed voted for the FN during last year's elections. Having won these new supporters, the challenge for the far-right is to keep them. For many of those who vote Le Pen in protest, have neither read, nor agree with the entire programme of the National Front.
Party leaders disagree on how to stabilise the working class support for the FN. But a number of elements seem widely accepted in
France * National Front May Day demonstration, 1996, statue of Joanne of Arc, Paris the party's inner circle.
First of all, of course, there is "the national preference," applicable in all domains of life, as the answer to all kinds of problems. The "French first" panacea enables the FN to propose order in social chaos, and rationalises the racist fantasies of a significant minority of the population.
"National preference" may not be legal, but it is the central element of FN policy in the towns where they dominate the municipal council, and wherever they are able to influence administrative bodies, including a worrying number of ANPE (state job placement centres). Those who implement this illegal, racist preference for the (white) French-born are by no means all militants of the FN. Which is all the more worrying... Cases of discrimination, including refusal to authorise marriages where one party is foreign-born, are increasing.
The FN has three times more municipal councillors than before the elections. Which gives the party unprecedented visibility in the local media. Their outrageous policies seem increasingly banal, even legitimised. They are present on school governors committees, they have proposals about the municipal budget... everywhere you tum you see them
Since the Nice Congress in 1992, the FN has been trying to intervene in the working class, with associations like Fraternité française, a charitable organisation running
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* France soup kitchens, and distributing aid to the homeless... of certifiable French origin, of course.
But now the party has launched its own trade unions, in the police force, and in the public transport utilities of Paris (RATP) and Lyons (TCL).
The FN has also begun presenting candidates in elections to the management committees of HLM social housing projects. The programme of "Tenants' National Front" is strong on racism and obsessed with personal security. They propose, of course, "national preference" in waiting lists, and "peace and quiet in the projects, by expelling those tenants who disturb public order, and by preventing over-population of these apartments." The enemy is fairly clearly will hold the balance of power in a number of constituencies. The party's 1995 Summer School in Toulon outlined the strategy for eating into the conservative vote over the next two years. According to Bruno Mégret, councillors and deputies from the conservative parties (RPR and UDF) "have a choice. Either live in illusions, and be rudely awoken in 1998 by the National Front, or start making their acts more coherent with their ideas... Inside or outside [of the Front] they should work with us in a wide regroupment, to lift the country out of the rut."
It seems, however, that the Front's leaders hesitate between Le Pen's grand dream of replacing the major right parties, and a strategy aiming to integrate the party in a realigned right. This second strategy will leadership to the extent that there are signs, from the outside, that the Front's ideas are more and more widely accepted on the right. Mégret can already list some progress: a number of RPR and UDF deputies recently signed a petition for the re-introduction of the death penalty; a number of recent parliamentary reports support FN thesis (Sauvaigo report on illegal immigration, Pic report on public housing); a number of anti-abortion amendments have been proposed in parliament. As the FN's ideologue boasts "all these are signs of the growing weight of our ideas in French society.... real progress on the ideological front for the National Front."
Unfortunately, Mégret is not wrong. National Front ideas have never been so well received. The government could hardly be doing a better job in preparing the ground for defined.