BY NAT LONDON AND RAFIK BENALI
PARIS - As municipal police and the first assistant mayor of Vitrolles, Hubert Fayard, looked on, the windows and doors of Le Sous-Marin café and concert hall were bricked shut. The building was seized October 6 by order of Catherine Mégret, the new mayor of Vitrolles and a member of the fascist National Front party.

Vitrolles is one of four municipalities with National Front mayors. Like the others, it is in southern France near Marseille.

The Le Sous-Marin association had organized concerts of rock, reggae, rap, and rai, a popular form of music from North Africa. Mégret first canceled the city's annual aid of 200,000 francs (US$33,400) to Le Sous-Marin. The grant had been awarded by the previous Socialist Party-led town administration.

On October 4, only two days before the municipality shut down the center, 4,000 people had attended a concert in support of the embattled association.

The mayor's office issued a communiqué stating that Le Sous- Marin was a source "of great annoyance to the residents, a pernicious environment would prevail for youth, since drugs would circulate under the table and groups would appear that appealed to uncivilized behavior, violence, and indeed crime."

Before bricking up Le Sous-Marin, city officials seized computer files listing the names and addresses of the group's 1,000 members and 10,000 financial contributors.

Four days later the center won a temporary reprieve, as a court ordered its reopening. According to the court ruling, city hall had not followed appropriate legal procedure in ordering the closure. The next day, October 11, some 2,000 people marched in Vitrolles to defend Le Sous-Marin, as the mayor's office prepared a new municipal procedure to close down the center.

Expansion of municipal cop force
Said Belhout, a social worker in Vitrolles, is particularly worried by the efforts of the new city administration to reinforce the municipal police. "Their objective is to have a municipal police force of 80 policemen by early 1998. They are dressed in black uniforms and are there to provoke fights," he told the Militant. "They use these fights against us to say that foreigners are all savages."

The only legally recognized police in France are those directed by the French state. In recent years, however, some municipalities have taken to organizing their own police forces. There are now 12,000 municipal cops throughout the country. Although the "municipal police" have no legally defined powers other than giving out parking tickets and guarding street crossings in front of schools, they dress in uniforms, are armed, and often act as if they were part of the National Police force.

The previous Socialist Party mayor established the municipal police force in Vitrolles, which the National Front administration rapidly expanded from 34 members to 50. They plan to increase the force to 80 by early 1998, and have already set up a special militarized "rapid intervention brigade" within the municipal police. By comparison, the National Police Commissariat in Vitrolles has 79 cops.

The expansion of the municipal police in Vitrolles was accompanied by a political campaign by the National Front against "police slackness." The mayor's office sponsored a petition criticizing the police, which pointed to several incidents of unsolved minor crimes and a number of physical attacks on elected city council members who were members of the National Front. The local Commissioner of the National Police, Jacques Rabiller, was criticized as being hostile to the new city administration. However, the mayor's office added, "The policemen are our friends."

The National Front has been trying to build a base within the National Police. In 1994 they founded a "union" called National Front-Police. The next year the FN-Police received 7.5 percent of the total vote in nationwide "union" elections among the National Police. Following protests by other police associations, the FN-Police was ordered dissolved last March by a court judgment which found that "the FN-Police aims to disseminate the ideology of a political party."

Leaders of the FN-Police then joined another small police "union" that is part of the Catholic trade union confederation, CFTC. The national CFTC ordered the CFTC-Police to take 11 former FN-Police leaders off of its list of candidates for the next elections.

The Vitrolles municipal police is being led by M. Brunel, a leader of the National Front's marshal squad, the DPS (Department of Protection-Security). DPS members are being moved into Vitrolles from all over France to take part in the municipal police force. Belhout said, "The Vitrolles municipal police is really the National Front marshaling squad in disguise."

The national press has speculated on "growing tensions" between Vitrolles city administration and the National Police. However, the two sides organized a "peace agreement." The local head of the National Police will meet once a month with a representative of the mayor's office to work out any differences between the cop forces.

A former member of the DPS has given a long interview to a major daily newspaper, Libération. Using the pseudonym "Dominique," he explained that the DPS has special "unofficial" intervention squads made up of former paratroopers and Foreign Legionnaires, veterans of French imperialist interventions in Chad, Lebanon, and the Central African Republic. They are armed with helmets and shields, gas masks, tear gas launchers, guns that fire rubber bullets, bullet proof vests, clubs, and gloves with lead weights. They have compiled computerized lists of journalists and antifascist activists with their names, addresses, and photos.

They engage in punitive actions against their opponents but have, Dominique said, excellent relations with the police, including the police commissioners. They are organized with military grades such as colonel and captain. According to Libération, the DPS now has 3,000 members.

The group's commander, Bernard Courcelle, claimed, "We only defend ourselves. We never attack the meetings of other groups." Courcelle is the former security director of the French armaments manufacturer, Luchaire.

While the National Front has been working to expand its tightly controlled police force in Vitrolles, it has been trying to root out any opposition among municipal employees. In July two young women working in a municipal vacation center were fired for refusing to serve meals to elected officials of the National Front.

The Municipal Council boasted in July that they had already fired 80 municipal employees. A local association claims the figure is 130. After numerous protests, a representative of the prefecture, which represents the national government, sent the mayor a letter asking that 31 of the firings be "postponed."

Among those fired was Regina Juin, director of the movie theater Arts et Essais. She was fired for refusing to cancel a series of short films on homosexuality and AIDS.

The municipal council has also voted to change the names of city streets, including Nelson Mandela Place and Francois Mitterand Avenue. Jean-Marie Tjibaou Avenue, named after the assassinated leader of the independence movement in the French colony of New Caledonia, will become Jean-Pierre Stirbois Avenue. Stirbois, a leader of the National Front, was killed in a car accident in 1988.

Other cities with National Front mayors have not been far behind their counterparts in Vitrolles. In Toulon, Gérard Paquet, a well-known director of the Chateauvallon Theater, was fired in spite of a national movement of intellectuals in his defense. In Orange the municipal council cut off the budget to the Centre culturel Mosaique. The Chorégies Art Festival also had its funds cut off.

Rafik Benali is a member of the Young Socialists in Paris.  
 
 
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