An enduring defeat for the French Left

                                                                                                             By Mary Reid

On Mayday 2002, millions of demonstrators took to the streets of France to protest against the candidature of the extreme right wing leader, Jean Marie Le Pen, in the ultimate round of the Presidential election. The Mayday protest was the biggest demonstration seen in France since the famous "events" of May 1968 which had lasting effect on life in Franc. The 2002 demonstration followed ten days of popular resistance on the streets to Le Pen’s shock victory in the first round of the Presidential election, when he ousted the socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from the contest, and attracted to the profound horror and deep dismay of modern France, one of every four votes among the electorate.

A mere six weeks later, as France heads towards parliamentary elections, the millions who came out onto the streets on May 1st have vanished. One swallow does not a summer make, and the French Right, including Le Pen’s National Front party, are sailing smugly towards near certain electoral victory and overall dominance of French political life for the foreseeable future. The French left are tasting their most bitter defeat in over twenty years and the evidence is that is will be endure for a long time to come.

Despite the shock of the Le Pen vote, the collapse of the French left was predictable and has been a long time in the making. Francois Mitterand, who led a united left to political victory in May 1981, was a supremo of’ divide and conquer’ tactics within his own inner circle. This Mitterand legacy ensured that the Socialist Party itself operated as a system of rival ‘clans’ all too ready to wipe one another out at the first opportunity – as long ago, they effectively wiped out their first partners in government, the Communist Party. Almost imperceptibly over the years, the Socialist Party which had led the ‘unity of the left’ became the Big Brother leader dictating the conditions of engagement for the ‘plural left’ – the euphemism employed to disguise the fact that the left had fragmented to the point of decimation. The ‘shock’ of the Le Pen victory would have been less rude if anyone had taken the time to make a simple calculation and speculate on the likely outcome of an election where there were three right wing candidates and opposed by thirteen left wing claimants of various hues of red, pink and green.

The heroes of the hour in May 2002, as indeed they were in May 1968, were secondary school students, many of them not even eligible to vote yet. They organised the protest movement and led it onto the streets. They believe that they are citizens of a nation where the equal rights of citizen is a fundamental principle. They are passionately and sincerely anti-racism and, luckily for France, they have shown a potential for leadership which will bear fruit in the future. In the meantime, the heroes of May 2002 are scribbling furiously away in exam rooms and France is staring into the abyss to which the post-war generation has led it.