Actions in Paris, other French cities also condemn election of ultrarightist  

BY NAT LONDON
PARIS - Close to 100,000 demonstrated in Paris and several thousand more in other French cities February 22, to protest against an anti-immigrant law being discussed in the National Assembly. The demonstrations were also a response to the February 9 electoral victory of the National Front (FN) in the town of Vitrolles, a suburb of Marseilles.

The march in Paris assembled at the Gare de l'Est train station, where thousands of Jews, immigrants, Blacks, Gypsies, and homosexuals were deported during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. At that time the Vichy regime in France required residence lists, and informants helped organize mass deportations from to Nazi death camps.

The march ended at the Police Prefecture, which is where immigrants get their residency cards. A number of people carried suitcases as a reminder of those that were deported.

While many of those demonstrating were writers and other professionals, there were also thousands of youth. "I came to demonstrate against the intolerable hatred and the political climate at the moment in France," said Joelle Blum.

"The government takes up the ideas of the National Front. That's no longer a democracy. It's becoming fascist," said Frederic Peroumal, who is in the military.

One poster in the Paris demonstration had a photo of Vichy head of state Philippe Pétain. "Refuse to collaborate with the Debré law," the poster proclaimed.

"It looks like Vichy, it tastes like Vichy, it is Vichy," proclaimed a banner of the "free artists against the Debré law."

The draft of the law - named after Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debré -would oblige those housing an immigrant to inform the authorities when their "guest" leaves or overstays their visa. This would make it a legal obligation to be an informer for the police concerning the movements of immigrants.

Other aspects of the law would make "mixed marriages" between a French citizen and a foreigner more difficult, would give more powers to the police, and would make it more difficult to renew residency permits, even after 15 years residence in France.

Special certificates necessary for housing foreigners were created by the Socialist Party government in 1982.

New law targets Africans and Asians
"The distinction between legal and illegal immigration is our best defense against racism and xenophobia," declared Prime Minister Alain Juppé, in defense of the proposed new law. The new law would mainly target Africans and Asians from former French colonies. Debré and other government officials are defending the bill as measure to prevent the ultraright National Front from using its anti- immigrant views to gain support.

National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen issued a statement February 18, calling for a national referendum on immigration. "The Debré law will come back like a boomerang to strike its authors." The rightist chided the "weak government" in Paris that "the only way to fight immigration is to enforce the program of the National Front."

The National Front has said if it won power in the 1998 national parliamentary elections it would deport 3 million immigrants as a way to solve the country's unemployment problem. Unemployment stands at 12.8 percent nationwide. "We are not only against legal immigration, but also for the return of immigrants to their country of origin," said Bruno Mégret, a deputy national leader of the National Front. "There's too much immigration from countries of the Third World. It's a question of national survival," he added.

Mégret's wife, Catherine, is the mayor of Vitrolles who ran as a stand-in for him after he was barred from the race because of past campaign spending violations. The National Front won with 52.5 percent of the vote. Vitrolles, a town of 39,000, has many North African residents and has been hard hit by a jobless rate of 19 percent.

This is the fourth such victory for the National Front in the south of France, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants settled after Algeria won its independence in 1962. It was the first time ultrarightists have won an election with an absolute majority of the votes cast. Their previous victories took place in three-way municipal elections in which the National Front received a plurality of the votes.

Following her election as mayor of Vitrolles, Mégret announced that she would "immediately stop all public aid to immigrants and give the money to the French." She also promised to cut off any aid to "organizations of foreign origin or left organizations because they simply do not have any right to be here." She added that "we have to put some order in our culture... all this rap culture is just not our business. A rap musician or a Black musician can never feel things the way we do.... Jean-Marie Le Pen was quite right when he said that Blacks are more skilled in sports and dancing than whites, who have other skills."

`Criminality of immigrants'
She supported Le Pen's statement that there were "inequalities between races," adding that these were "simply genetic differences." She promised to put more police on the streets to fight "the delinquents who are always the same, above all the immigrants.... Criminality is synonymous with immigration." Mégret said she would refrain from taking "left" mass circulation newspapers out of the municipal library, as was done by the other National Front mayors, "in order not to give an argument to the left."

A recent study showed that the National Front may receive enough votes - 12.5 percent of the registered voters - to be present in the second round of voting in as many as 220 electoral districts. This would mean three-way runoffs in 184 parliamentary districts currently held by conservative parties and 36 districts held by the Socialist, Communist, and other "left" parties.

The demonstrations on February 22 were organized in response to a call by writers, artists, and film directors in what the conservative daily Le Figaro has called "an insurrection of the intellectual party," against the immigration law proposed by Debré.

The daily newspaper Le Monde ran front page articles building the march every day the week of the demonstration. Libération, a daily paper that supports the Socialist Party (SP), had 16 pages of coverage the day of the march.

Two days after the election in Vitrolles, 59 film directors issued a call to "disobey" the new immigration law, in particular a provision requiring a special certificate issued by the local mayor for anyone housing a foreigner. The next day a similar call was issued by 155 writers, followed by 1,100 journalists, 402 actors, 496 musicians, 421 university professors, and over 400 lawyers. Doctors announced they would refuse to check identity papers to see which of their patients was an "illegal" immigrant, while others publicly announced they would house undocumented immigrants in violation of the law.

Over 100 judges called for "using all legal means" of resistance to a law that was "liberticide," that is, which kills freedom. In reference to the Vichy regime during the Nazi occupation of France, the judges declaration pointed to the "magistrates' sad role in the darkest period of our history. Are we on the point of doing it again?" A government minister, Jacques Toubon, said he was "stupified" by the judges' action.

On February 17, a committee of prominent individuals called for a mass demonstration against the law. The committee includes intellectuals, trade union officials, and political figures. "The Debré law, like the Pasqua laws which preceded it," they said, "take the actions of the Vichy government as their model: `Anyone who houses a Jew, for any reason, including if it is without charge, must make a complete declaration to the local police commissariat of the identity of the concerned party, within 24 hours of their arrival' (article 5 of the law of December 10, 1941)."

The government has now proposed some small amendments to its draft law by putting the control of housing certificates in the hands of a préfet representing the state administration instead of it being under the control of local mayors. It also dropped the need to announce to the police when a foreign guest leaves your home.

Debate not about illegal immigration
Writer Marek Halter, one of the sponsors of the demonstration, asserted that the real debate on immigration has not yet begun. "We cannot avoid this debate. It will no doubt be violent," he said. "For the moment we have only been discussing the question of denouncing foreigners guests.... But for the fascists the real question isn't the illegal immigration but the four and a half million immigrants who live in this country legally."

As bourgeois politics in France continues to shift to the right under pressure from the economic and social crisis, parties that call themselves "left," as well as the conservatives and Gaullists, take up increasingly anti-working-class policies. These parties have used the growing influence of the fascist National Front as their excuse.

The struggle against "illegal" immigration is supported by the Communist and Socialist parties. Many of the protesters accused these parties, particularly the Socialists, of adapting to Le Pen's right-wing views.

On the day of the demonstration, Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin was conspicuous by his absence in Paris. Instead, he attended a small rally of less than 2,000 in the southern city of Toulouse where he declared that the "struggle has to be centered on the networks of illegal immigration, in which the government is much too timid."

One poster at the rally asked "Jospin, where are you?" The SP was also absent from the National Assembly when the Debré law was first discussed. The Socialist party's anti- immigrant policy is not new. Former President Francois Mitterand stated that France had "reached the level of tolerance" concerning immigration, while former Premier Michel Rocard protested that "France cannot accept to receive the misery of the entire world."

Many of the demonstrators expressed the view that the Socialist Party was to blame for the National Front victory in Vitrolles. Its answer to the National Front attacks during the Vitrolles campaign was a leaflet put out by the campaign committee for incumbent Socialist Party mayor Jean- Luc Anglade. The National Front statement proclaimed, "Everything that they have proposed, we have already done."

Meanwhile, strikes to fight unemployment by reducing work time are continuing. Striking bus drivers in several cities have gone back to work with partial settlements in their struggle for the 35-hour week with no loss in pay and retirement at 55 years. Three cities are still on strike and a new national day of action has been called for February 28.

In Marseilles, bus drivers have won the 35-hour week with no loss in pay effective Feb. 1, 1998. Drivers will be able to work half-time at 80 percent pay at age 55. Non- drivers will work 37 hours. These measures will create 45 new jobs.

The workweek for bus and metro drivers in Lille will be reduced to 35 hours 40 minutes at 39 hours pay. All part- time workers will be hired full-time and 58 new workers will be hired. The strikers also won 16 additional paid holidays.

The bosses have proposed a 36.5-hour week in national negotiations that are still continuing.

Nat London is a member of the CGT union federation.  
 
 
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