France: As mass protests and strikes loom, the challenges and potential of a movement to defeat the work law

Lisbeth Latham
Today (March 31) workers, students, unemployed and retirees will join the fourth mass mobilisation against the attemps of the Parti Socialiste lead government of Prime Minister Emmanual Valls to pass a new work law. This new legislation if passed will significantly reduce the rights of French workers The, legislation which is popularly referred to as El Khomri, in reference to labour minister Myriam El Khomri, will deepen the efforts of previous efforts by both the current PS government and earlier right-wing government’s to make workers and other popular sections of French society pay for capital’s crisis. Despite the mobilisations against the law, media commentary are seeking to portray these mobilisations as fruitless against the inevitable introduction of the "necessary" liberalisation of France’s labour laws. This dismissal has centred on the relatively small size of the current movement in comparison to previous French mass mobilisations around workers’ rights. This article will explore the proposed bill and the emerging movement against the new laws comparing this movement with previous mass French mobilisations within the world of work and examining the new challenges it faces within current political landscape in France.

The initial proposed bill contained significant attacks on both working conditions and unions, these included:

Increased number of consecutive weeks where workers can be required to work overtime – the French working week is 35 hours, however this can currently be increased to 44 hours (with paid overtime) for a period of 12 consecutive weeks. The bill would this to be extended 16 consecutive weeks – where an enterprise agreement had been reached this could be extended to 46 hours over a maximum of 16 weeks;

Capping of payments to workers who are unfairly dismissed at 15 months of salary;

Making It easier to for employers to force part-time employment – current provision requires that for part-time work to be implemented, the employer must give prior notification to the labor inspectorate in order to avoid abuse. The bill proposed that the employer be able implement part-time work unilaterally;

Removal of the legal entitlement to bereavement leave (presently set at two days) with local agreements determine whether workers have access to such leave and its duration;

Increase in the maximum duration of night work from 40 hours per week for three months to 40 hours a week for four months;

Increased use of "package-days" where work is expressed in days rather than hours – 50% of French managers already are employed on this basis – the change would extend the practice to more workers – with enterprises with less than 50 employees not needing an enterprise agreement to implement. The proposal would also remove responsibility for ensuring workers take minimum hours of rest between work days or days off;

Varying of work time over three years. Under France’s 35 hour week it is possible for hours to be averaged over a number of weeks (if the average over this time is not above 35 hours) then no overtime is paid. If there is no enterprise agreement then the maximum span of time that hours can be averaged over is four weeks – with an agreement the maximum is one year. The proposed change is that this be extended to three years. In companies with less than 50 employees were no agreement is in place the four weeks could be extended to sixteen weeks;

Increase in the work week for apprentices under the age of 18 – the current maximum working hours are 35 hours per week and eight hours a day – the new maximums would be 40 hours a week and ten hours – this increase would not need to be approved by the labour inspectorate;

Making it easier for employers to force through enterprise level agreements – current provisions requires that for an enterprise agreement to be valid it must be agreed to by one or more unions representing 30% of employees (based on votes France’s union representative elections) and that the agreement is not opposed by unions representing more than 50% of workers. The new law would allow a company referendum will validate an agreement even if the unions representing 70% of workers are opposed;

Companies would be able to reduce wages or increase working hours (with no increase in wages) even when company is not having financial difficulties. Currently can do this (for a maximum of two years) if they are facing financial difficulties if workers and unions agreed – the proposed change would allow companies to propose the change if they felt it would enable them to meet a business opportunity, to do so they would be able to bypass unions and put a vote to workers – if a majority approved the change any worker who refused to accept the change could be sacked without any redundancy payment;

Ending the right to  11 consecutive hours of rest between "package-days" – instead breaks would be able to be broken up with periods of work within these 11 hours. If a worker is on call then on call, the period that they on call and not  engaged in work would count as part of the rest period;

Change of mission of occupational physicians – occupational physicians are currently primarily responsible for prevention of workplace injury, and is in place with a focus on the health of workers. Their objective is to maintain of employees to perform their duties - by proposing adaptations to them if necessary. The new bill would give physicians a new mission: to certify "the ability of the employee to exercise any of the existing tasks in the company" and "to ensure the compatibility of the worker's health the position to which he is assigned" – which is an inversion of the current role and significant attack on workplace safety;

Leave during natural disaster no longer be legally guaranteed - currently the length of leave for natural disasters is 20 days guaranteed by law. With the bill, it is the branch or company agreement that will define its duration and the conditions for access;

The duration and terms of a sabbatical would no longer guaranteed by law - the minimum duration of the sabbatical leave is currently set at a minimum of six months  and a maximum of eleven months. With the bill, any access to a sabbatical, and its duration, would be defined in an enterprise or branch agreement;

Weakening of job training programs – currently young workers or older unemployed workers can enter into a "professional contract" which includes on the job training for a recognised qualification while receiving a subsidised wage – the bill would allow these contract to include more limited on the job training that would not result in a recognised qualification;

Increased use of three year wage deals – currently there are mandatory annual negotiations on wages. Since 2015, it is possible for an enterprise to hold its negotiations every three years if there is a majority agreement in place in that company. The bill will allow a branch agreement to be negotiated triennially based on 30% support in that branch of industry;

Allow for the state to finance private apprenticeship training providers;

Facilitate dismissals during the transfer of business - currently, when a company sells all or part of its business, jobs are maintained and work contracts are automatically transferred into the new structure. The bill will provide for a portion of employees to be transferred with the business, but will allow for the dismissal of others;

Allow for part-time worker to be paid less for additional hours – currently when part-time workers work hours in addition to their contract they get a differented payment of additional wages – for those hours that constitute upto 1/10 of the contracted hours they receive a loading of 10% on the additional hours worked and a loading of 25% for all hours in addition to this – only a branch agreement can change this arrangement to a flat additional payment of 10%. Under the bill all part-time workers would receive a 10% loading – this change will have a significant impact on gender equality as women workers make up 82% of all part-time workers in France;

Reduce notice period for changes in rosters – currently part-time employees must given seven days notice of a change in their work schedule – only a branch or enterprise can reduce this to a shorter period (with a minimum of three days). The bill provides for that the schedule change is possible for all part-time workers with three days notice;

Employers able to change paid leave arrangements at short notice - the law currently provides that employers should take into account workers’ family situations when determining dates for paid leave. Within a month scheduled beginning of a workers’ leave the employer has no right to change the start or finish dates of the leave. With the proposed bill, these mandatory measures were transformed into 'supplemental' provisions. They can be challenged by way of enterprise or branch agreement;

Under the bill enterprise agreements would have a maximum of 5 years – Current enterprise agreements last indefinitely, unless otherwise provided in the Agreement, or terminated by either party. The agreement can be unilaterally denounced by trade unions signatories or by the employer. In this case, the rights and entitlements within the agreement continue to apply until there is a new agreement. Once terminated there is a three-month notice period before renegotiation begins, allowing trade unions to prepare, inform and mobilize workers ... With the proposed bill, all enterprise agreements have a term of 5 years. The provisions of the agreement are immediately canceled and cease to apply, even if there is no new agreement. There is no notice period prior to the beginning of negotiations;

Overpayment: employment centre can draw directly on unemployment benefits - When an employment centre claims to have made a mistake in the payment of unemployment benefits and wishes to recover the overpayment it must get the approval of a judge. This ensures that the overpayment was actually made (sometimes it hasn’t been) and allows the unemployed person to arrange for repayments to be made in instalments. With the proposed bill the judge's approval is no longer mandatory. The employment centre will directly deduct the overpayment from following month’s benefits payment. If the employment centre made a mistake, it unemployed person to go to court to their money repaid. This risks unemployed workers suddenly facing having little or no money one month to another. The spreading of repayments, which has been previously easily accessed, will be much harder to obtain;

On call-time may be counted as rest time – in violation of the European Committee on Social Rights requirements that time when works are required to be on call not be counted as mandated rest-time between working time the proposed bill will allow this to occur;

Reduced protections for employees who invalidly made redundant - when a court declares a redundancy void the worker is entitled to reinstatement. When this is not possible the current law provides 12 months of salary compensation to a minimum. The new law will limit this to six months, and this will only be for works with at least two years of service with the company;

Lower allowances for dismissed sick and injured workers - when a worker is dismissed for incapacity following an industrial accident or an occupational disease and the employer took no steps to find alternative work or arangements – the dismissal is not valid. The current law provides for compensation of a minimum of 12 months of salary. The bill proposes that this be only 6 months salary;

Enterprise agreements will be able to reduce overtime payments – the Labour Code provides that the first eight hours of overtime attract a penalty rate of 25% with subsequent hours paid an additional 50%. Under the proposed bill management will be able through an enterprise agreement to reduce the overtime rate to a flat 10% rate.

The government has motivated these changes on the idea that France’s existing labour code deter investment in the French economy and discourage companies from taking advantage of business opportunities (for fear of a subsequent contraction in the business) – the reality is that much of the changes have a significant capacity to undermine job creation – this is particularly the case for the provisions for increasing the work week – even those that supposedly make investment "less risky" they don’t address the key cause of France’s economic woes (the ongoing effect of the GFC) nor do they address the reality that outside of a sharp decline in demand companies have the capacity to adjust employment numbers without recourse to redundancy through mechanisms of natural attrition.

Blaming the growth on precarious employment in France on "rigid employment laws" is undermined by the reality that more liberalised labour markets, like Australia, have extremely high levels of insecure and precarious employment.

The proposed bill has caused widespread anger across France – with opinion polls indicating 70% opposition. A change.org petition against the bill launched in February received 200, 000 signitures in the first four hours of being online, the petition has now been signed by more than 1.2 million people.

March 9 strikes and mobilisations
Strikes and mobilisations were called in 140 cities and towns across France for March 9. These protests were supported by the three most militant union confederations – the CGT (Confédération générale du travail – General Confederation of Labour), FO (Force Ouvri – Workers Force) and the trade union Solidaires – in addition the call for the mobilisation was supported the large education union the FSU (Fédération syndicale unitaire – United Union Federation)and the university and high school student unions UNEF (Union Nationale des Étudiants de France – National Union of Students of France), FIDL (Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne Independent and Democratic Secondary Student Federation) and UNL (Union Nationale Lycéenne – National Union of Secondary Students). Between 250, 000 and 500, 000 people participated in the protests across France (both the unions and the interior ministry employ official protest counters to count the size of protests – these counters differ in their methodology as to who should be included as a participant in the protests – with police only including those who within the confines of the march on the street – whilst the union counters will tend to include those who are on the edges of protests along the footpaths – which particularly makes sense on big mobilisations).Think this is too long to be in brackets and needs some full stops and that. The largest of these was held in Paris with between 27, 000 and 100, 000 participating in three protests across the day. In addition to the protests a number largest of these was in the SNCF (France’s national rail system) where four main rail unions (including reformist unions such as the Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Democratic Confederation of Labour - CFDT) and the Union nationale des syndicats autonomes (National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions)) had issued a strike notice resulting in significant disruptions to rail services over a range of issues including the ongoing reduction in the SNCF workforce via natural attrition of some 25, 000 workers over the past decade.

At the Paris union march from the MEDEF (Mouvement des entreprises de France – Movement of the Enterprises of France) to the ministry of labour, CGT general secretary Philippe Martinez told the crowd that in the CGT’s call (reformatting) that the government withdraw the bill that "The message is clear. Mr Hollande and Manuel Valls to stop incorporating the proposals of employers".

Some of the student slogans at the March 17 and March 24 protests included:
“On strike until retirement!”
“Be young and shut up!”
“Less valls, more tango” - a play on valse (waltz)
“You do not let us dream, we will not let you sleep!”
"The night is made for kissing, not for work”

In the lead up to the March 9 mobilisation the government announced that the presentation of the bill to the council of state would be delayed from the scheduled date of March 9 until March 24 – this was to provide more time for the draft bill to be amended to take on criticisms from both within PS and concerns from the more moderate unions particularly the CFDT - with three aspects expected to be changed. In the wake of the protests El Khomri announced that she would take on board calls. Prime Minister Valls announced he would meet with student organisations to discuss their concerns.

The bill presented to (and adopted by) the council of ministers on March 24 had undergone considerable changes including:

• Return to a maximum of 12 consecutive weeks of overtime;
• The proposal to extend the maximum number of consecutive weeks of overtime will be subject to a consultation period up until October;
• Proposal to cap unfair dismissal payments has been removed however there has been an indicative scale in place since 2013 for during the conciliation stage of unfair dismissal cases – the government has indicated that it will change this scale by decree (avoiding the need to have the law passed) and extend the scale to apply to awards in cases that move to trial;
• The provision to remove bereavement leave from the Labour Code has been withdrawn but other forms of leave such as carers leave will be determined in the enterprise agreement;
• For a company to implement the spreading of overtime over three years an enterprise level agreement would not be sufficient, instead there would need to be branch agreement in place;
• Increase in the hours for young apprentices was withdrawn (although companies will be able to apply to the labour inspectorate for an increase);
• proposal to allow unilateral introduction of part-time work dropped;
• Proposal to extend "package days" was modified to stop employers being able to unilaterally implementing "package days" – any shift would require agreement with union representatives in the enterprise;
• In the revised bill, the referendum on adopting a contested enterprise agreement is called "consultation". Initially, these "consultations" will not be implemented for determining working hours, however the bill provides for referendum to eventually apply to all sections of the Labour Code including working hours;
• Removal of the entitlement leave for caring for parent or close family with illness or disability (currently set at three months) and would have to be provided in an enterprise agreement.

In addition a new change was included removing the minimum payment for wrongful dismissal – at present if a worker is unfairly dismissed they receive a minimum payment of six months if the company has more than ten employees and they have more than two years of experience – the new proposal is to strip this protection entirely meaning a worker who is wrongfully dismissed could receive nothing.

While MEDEF and other employer groups have been critical of the government for buckling to the movement– the unions leading the mobilisations are clear that they want the bill withdrawn in its entirety.

A limited Movement?
Much of the mainstream English language media coverage of March 9 protests (the later student protests have barely rated a mention) have focused on the fact that this mobilisation was smaller than previous mass union mobilisations in France, (new sentence) most notably the 2010 movement against Francois Fillon’s assault on pensions – which featured seven days of mass strikes and protests between September 7 and October 28 of that year involving more than two million people and ongoing strikes in a number of sectors most notably the oil industry.

While these observations are true, they fail to recognise either the different context in which the current movement is occurring. Much of these conditions act to undermines mobilising capacity of the unions; or that of the big union mobilisations across the last decade only one of these began with truly large union mobilisations, while the others grew into a larger movement from a more modest beginning.

Looking at the experience of the previous campaigns there arethree distinct experiences for the movements of 2006, 2009 and 2010. In 2009 the movement against the austerity policies that sought to make working people pay for the capital’s crisis began with two mobilisations of more than two million people on January 29 and March 19. By May Day protest numbers were down to 1.2 million people, and the movement dissipated after the summer holidays. By comparison the unsuccessful campaign against pension reforms in 2011 began with mobilisations of around 800, 000 in March of that year (this mobilisation was supported by the entire labour movement). While the campaign against the first employment contract (CPE) in early 2006 initially attracted limited union participation in the protests. Instead the movement was driven by hundreds of thousands of university and high school students whose action during February helped to overcome the resistance of a number of union confederations to participating in the movement (largely to regain control of the movement from the insurgent student). Once the unions came on board the protests and strikes grew rapidly. With 1.5 million and 2.71 million on March 18 and 28 respectively and 3.1 million on April 4, resulting in the scrapping of the law on April 10 (another anti-worker law – the equal opportunity law – remained in place but the movement split and dissipated in the wake of the scrapping of the CPE).

The last three big national labour movements in France all occurred under governments of the right. The defeat of the 2011 movement saw a shift away from street mobilisation into hopes that change could be achieved through the ballot box – demonstrated by through the PS victory in the 2012 presidential and national assembly elections and the rise of Front de Gauche’s (an alliance of left parties centred around the PCF and the Parti de Gauche) whose presidential candidate Jean Luc Melechon achieved a vote of 11.10% in the presidential election. Since the 2012 election the PS and its governmental allies have been a disappointment to much of its base and the social forces to its left– not only has the PS failed to reverse the pension changes but has also deepened the liberalisation of the labour market in the interests of capital. These actions have resulted in the electoral rise of the Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front Nationale – and electoral decline of the PS and more importantly the parties to its left.

Unlike the previous mass worker and student mobilisations – the current mobilisations have not been united (with the "reformist" worker and student organisations not supporting the March 9 protest). This division makes it more difficult to build as large protests as in the previous movements. As to bring the members and supporters of the reformist unions (particularly the CFDT - , France’s largest union by membership) into motion, they have to be appealed to over the heads of the leaderships of their unions. However the absence of these forces means that there is a stronger basis for ongoing mobilisation as differences in objectives between the two wings of the union movement (demands for total withdrawal of the bill by the militant class struggle unions vs. calls for consultation and modification of the proposed text of the bill by the reformist forces) are not expressed within the movement itself. This presents a greater opportunity for mobilisations to continue if the legislation is passed, particularly compared to 2011, when the reformist unions who had sought greater consultation by the Fillon government withdrew completely from the movement once the legislation passed – resulting in the almost immediate collapse of the campaign.

An additional factor impacting on the mobilisations against the El Khomri bill is the continuing state of emergency in France (the state of emergency was initiated in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris on November and has since been extended twice). From its inception the state of emergency has stifled the re-emergence of union mobilisations – with strikes cancelled in the week following November declaration of the state of emergency. The state of emergency has also provided a space in which the state has been able to exercise significant levels of repression particularly directed at students- both at student mobilisations and against student organising. The most notable case of repression was the assault by riot police and BAC undercover police on a 15-year-old high school student who had his jaw broken by police - the video of this violence was shared widely and forced the Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem tweet regret about "shocking violence violence against high school student" (the police officer is now facing criminal charges and is expected to go on trial in May). A number of universities have been closed administratively to stop them being used as organising spaces, whilst there have been reports of CRS riot police actively excluding union activists from university general assemblies to stop them from participating in the deliberation and votes on further actions in the campaign.

Despite these difficulties and challenges there are important signs that movement that can challenge and potentially defeat the bill is developing. The most important aspect of this has been both ongoing organisation of students through the holding of general assemblies of students at universities and schools but also the development of joint actions between works and students between the mass days of mobilisations – which was so central to the 2006 campaign against CPE, albeit at lower level than in 2006. Since the lead up to the March 9 protests, student unions have holding general assemblies in which students come together to decide on the course of action at their institution – including whether the institution should be operating. These meetings, particularly at universities involve hundreds of students.

Where to for the movement

Today’s protests are an important test for the campaign. The growth in the size of the protests from March 9 will be important to maintaining momentum and in bringing pressure to bare on the government MPs, particularly those from the PS who are divided over the law - with its right-wing objecting to the concessions to the movement, center supporting the amended bill and left-wing opposing it.

The early signs for a growth in the movement are good with more protests scheduled across both metropolitan France and the overseas territories than on March 9. Equally important a statement by the leadership of Solidaires indicates that their militants are reporting that at the local level at least, it appears likely that members, and possibly some branches, of the CFDT will participate in some of the actions despite that confederation’s leadership not supporting the strikes and protest. However, the experiences of 2006, 2009 and 2010 suggest that the growing may not be enough for the movement to force the defeat of the bill either in parliament or once if it is passed. For the movement to have a strong chance of success it will need to increase in intensity and again in both amongst students and workers there are signs this is possible. Amongst students the general assemblies of students, particularly at university continue to grow – with some meetings involving more than 1000 students on individual campuses. Moreover like in 2006, there are reports of students linking up with striking workers and helping to spread the movement. Amongst workers, in a number of sectors, most notably the SNCF, there are discussions of launching "renewable strikes" where workers meet in the local workplace each day to vote on whether to continue their strike action – with general assemblies of workers being organised for tomorrow (April 1). There has already been a further day of protest called by the "facs in the struggle" – the campuses whose general assemblies have voted to participate in the campaign – for April 5.

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France: Notes on the French situation after the local elections and the 12th April demonstration

François Sabado
21 April 2014
from International Viewpoint

1) The last municipal elections represent a new worsening of the political balance of forces for the left and the labour movement. 150 cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants swung from SP or CP-led to the right or far right.

Of course, after years of social-liberalism where the PS took its distance from the labour movement, a defeat of the PS at the polls no longer automatically indicates a defeat of the workers’ movement.

These workers, who do not feel represented by the parliamentary left any more, do not feel the bankruptcy of the Socialists to be theirs, fortunately. They even abstained massively (between 50 and 60 % of the registered voters in the popular suburbs or regions).

2) But when such defeat at the polls of PS leaves the space to the right and far right, when what remains of “historical municipal socialism” is falling apart, when the PCF loses a third of its local councils, in particular in the “red suburbs”, and these retreats are not compensated for, far from it, by victories of the radical left, this can only weigh negatively on the power relations between the classes.

This took place in an economic context marked by plant closures and governmental attacks which can provoke struggles or partial mobilizations, but that are not strong enough to block the austerity policies or to force the government to retreat. Years of reorganization of the workforce force, casualization and unemployment have shaped a workforce that is now paralysed by the crisis.

Especially as here too, the trade-union leaderships directly support the government’s“ pacts” with the employers or position themselves as “accompanying” them.

3) The last demonstration of this turn to the right was the nomination of Manuel Valls as Prime Minister.

In the SP primary elections that decided on the candidate for the 2011 presidential election, Valls represented the right within a Socialist Party that is already itself well to the right. He stood as a candidate against the 35-hour week, against an economic redistribution policy, for the privatization of the public services, and for reduction of the social security contributions, which aimed at new attacks on the Social security system. He identified loud and clear with the “policy of offer” based on a reduction of labour costs and subsidies for businesses – opposed to a policy of restarting the economy by demand. He got only 5% of the votes in this election, which proved that even for a very rightwing PS Valls was too much.

Two years, later, Valls’ policy is being openly applied, by Hollande, by the government and the PS. Stark result: 30 billion of subsidies to business, 50 billion of budgetary “savings” which will result in severe cuts in the public budget and social security. Already announced: the closure of ten hospitals, non-refunding of certain prescriptions, fall in wages of state employees. In Europe that is in a deep and lsting crisis, and where growth rate is around 1 %, such a policy can only plunge the country into the infernal spiral of austerity, unemployment and precarity.

But isn’t this precisely the desired goal, a radical modification of the social and political balance of forces? To undermine what remains of the “European social model” by eliminating a series of social gains, and align Europe in world competition.

4) The problem is that these socio-economic choices sap the social bases of the traditional parties, both of the right and left, and provoke political crises.

As regards social democracy, these parties are “less and less working-class and increasingly middle-class”. They are not bourgeois parties like the others, because the system needs their specificity to ensure alternation. But the relationships of these parties to the labour movement no longer express their history and their politics no longer have much to do with the classical policies of social democracy. They are neoliberal policies. For ordinary citizens and salaried workers Hollande-Valls are on the same line continuity as Sarkozy not only on social and economic qustions, but also in pressions repression o the undocumented or communities like the Romani. Valls is not offended by being considered the Sarkozy of the left.

But will the neo-liberal evolution of the PS not put into question the very existence of these parties? In southern Europe, the Portuguese PS or the Spanish PSOE have not shared the historical catastrophe of the Greek PASOK, even if they have been weakened. The French PS is still a major party, but these elections shook one of its fundamental pillars: its in the bases… If it continues its policy, other electoral failures will follow: with forthcoming European election, in the regional elections and cantonal and one does not see how the PS could claw back its support before the next presidential and parliamentary elections in 2017. A total collapse cannot be excluded.

The drop in support for the PCF is of another nature, that of the historical decline of post-Stalinism, but it represents also this worsening of the balance of power, in particular in a series of cities where the right has replaced the PCF elected representatives in the councils.

5) It is in this situation, with record abstention, that there was the swing to the right and the Front National, the latter gaining control of about ten big cities. The right has been strengthened in spite of contradictions on a series of questions: Europe, relations with the Front National, its leadership given the possible “comeback” of Sarkozy. Its activist base and its electors are under pressure from the ultra rightwing or the far right. As for the FN, it has confirmed its popular base, and the fact is that it increasingly attracts part of the working and popular electorate. Like the parties of fascist origin, it combines social questions and racism in its programme, but how i, in this situation will it manage contradictions between its fascist origin and leadership and the pressures that will arise from its integration in the institutions?

Admittedly, we are not in the 1930s, the ruling classes have chosen integration in capitalist globalization and not protectionist nationalism, but there can be “political accidents”, swing moments, where there would be a desynchronization between the fundamental socio-economic choices of the capitalist classes and the irruption of authoritative political solutions with the coming to power of (direct or indirect) coalitions of the right and the far right. The growth of the far right throughout Europe and the acceptance of governments like that of Orban in Hungary show the possible dangers for democratic freedoms and the popular movement.

In France as in many Europe, the balance is tipping towards the right, but fortunately there is also a social and political fightback.

6) The day of demonstrations on Saturday 12 April 12 in Paris and throughout the country testifies to this resistance. Several tens of thousands of demonstrators answered the call of more than 200 leaders of campaigns, trade unions or political parties to fight against the right and the far right and to oppose the austerity plans of the Hollande-Valls government.

The origin was a call by Olivier Besancenot for a weekend of revolt by the left against the successive demonstrations of the extremist right and the governmental policy. This was followed by statements along the same lines from Front de Gauche leaders. Then there were several weeks of work on a united-front call and preparatory meetings. The nomination of Valls gave an additional impetus to this mobilization. What made the success of this demonstration was its unity, its radical nature and its diversity. As well as the political organizations, tens of campaigns in particular for the right to housing, and sectors of the trade union movement were mobilized. In the CGT, a significant number of federations and local sections called for the mobilization against the position of the confederal direction. We should also note the significant contingents of PCF and the NPA in the Parisian march. This demonstration showed that, despite of the results of the municipal elections, there is a leftwing in France that does not accept the government’s policy and resists, and goes well beyond simply the parties of the radical left.

7) One of the key questions is: how to continue, how to express politically this dynamic of partial but significant mobilization, in this context of downturn?

The questions of unity of action, of radicality, and the fight against the governmental policy, the right and the far right are a guiding line for anticapitalists.

First in day-to-day social resistance, the fights against redundancies, budget cuts, strikes or mobilizations for social rights. The demonstrations for 1st of May are the next occasion. Without broad social mobilization which blocks austerity plans, wrests some partial victories, makes it possible to give back confidence to the workers and social movements, there will not be the beginning of change of the balance of forces. It is decisive.

But this must also be expressed politically by united action in struggles and in electoral battles. Already in the local elections, the NPA presented or supported 87 lists including 55 united ones, on an anti-austerity programme independent from the SP in the first and second round of the elections. Beyond, the radical left presented several hundreds of lists which marked a certain resistance, with appreciable results – unlike the rout of the SP.

After the municipal elections and the preparation of the 12 April demonstration the question existed of a unity proposal for the European elections. It is on this basis that the NPA sent a letter to the Front de Gauche, to LO, to Alternative Libertaire to discuss the possibility of a united list for the European elections. There are, of course, different positions on this question: the Party of the European Left is for refounding the European Union which seems to be an attempt at reform, whereas the anticapitalists fight for a break with the European institutions; Mélenchon can make ambiguous statements against “German Europe” or for “interdependent protectionism”, whereas we defend an internationalist policy without concession to nationalism. But for the “general public”, both will seem to be opposed to governmental austerity policies and the European Union and will propose another social and democratic Europe.

We this it is regrettable that the conditions could not exist to reach an agreement. The hesitations on both sides had an impact, but the tensions which paralysed Front de Gauche did not allow for a true discussion. It was, moreover, only at the last minute that the components of Front de Gauche finally reached an agreement on their own lists.

But beyond this agreement for the Europeans, the Front de Gauche is deeply divided on the relations to have with the PS. In the majority of large and medium-sized cities the PCF was allied with the PS. The other components of the Front de Gauche refused this alliance for the first round of the local elections. The result was that the Front de Gauche exploded on a key question that the NPA has raised for years: relations with the SP, then with the government. Although the NPA has been violently criticized for having put this question at the centre of the debate and has been accused of looking for excuses not to make the unity, many FdG activists recognize today that in fact the divergences on this point led to the explosion at the time of the municipal elections. Many things will depend on the next election results, in particular the Europeans, but the formula of Front de Gauche launched in 2010 is null and void today, it is necessary to discuss again unity and the basis for unity.

Indeed, unity is needed, and the anticapitalists must redouble efforts to deploy a unitive policy, but with the stepping up of the neo-liberal attacks by the PS in government, electoral alliances with this latter are impossible, support for SP parliamentary majorities or governments even more so. This is why the policy of Mélenchon to build an “ecologist popular front” with the leadership of the Greens (EELV) would lead to a new dead end, especially as the majority of the EELV group supports the Valls government.

The objective, in the weeks and the months to come, it is to broadcast loud and clear the voice of a left opposition to the government. A broad unitive opposition but a true opposition and, in this sense, we cannot build a left opposition with forces that support or take part in the government. This is unfortunately the case with the “left” of the PS and the EELV…

For the anticapitalists, in this difficult situation we have to combine unity in social and political action with a policy of clear independence from the PS, and an anticapitalist programme that defends the social needs of the workers and the population as a whole.

In a situation where the old left is rejected, it is necessary to rebuild the labour movement by redefining a unitive perspective which integrates the organizations but invents new forms and new programmiatic content. It is by fertilizing “the unity in action” with anticapitalist content that the revolutionaries will be useful in rebuilding.

The unity achieved on 12 April and suggested for the Europeans is a good indication for the orientation of the NPA in the months to come.

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François Sabado is a member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. He was a long-time member of the National Leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).

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France: As National Front support grows, strategy struggle erupts in Left Front

By Dick Nichols

November 6, 2013

Originally published in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

 

October was a month of sharp shifts in French politics. On October 4, a poll in the French weekly Nouvel Observateur showed the xenophobic and racist National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen leading voting intentions for the 2014 European elections with the support of 24% of those interviewed—up 3% in six months.

On October 13, in the second round of the by-election for the canton of Brignoles (in the Mediterranean department of Var), the FN easily defeated the mainstream conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), by 53.9% to 46.1%. Until 2011 Brignoles had had a Communist Party (PCF) mayor, but in this election the main left candidate, with a PCF background and supported by the Socialist Party, could only manage 14.6% in the first round.

On October 19, a BVA poll revealed that 65% of those interviewed thought that Rom school girl Léonarda Dibrani—taken off a school excursion bus by police on October 9 and deported with her family to Albania—should not be allowed to return to France. That poll result became public even as thousands of school students and their supporters flooded central Paris for three days to protest Léonarda’s expulsion.

On October 20, when President François Hollande of the Socialist Party (PS) (down to 23% in the latest polls) appeared on national television to offer Léonarda right of return to France without her family, he simply made matters worse for himself. “With her mother and sisters”, insisted PS secretary Harlem Desir. This difference between government and party didn’t matter for long. From Albania the 15-year-old Léonarda told Hollande where he could put his offer.

As Hollande’s authority nosedives even with PS faithful, that of interior minister Manuel Valls, the “hard man” stuck with the thankless job of expelling “illegals”, keeps rising. An October 24 Figaro poll had Valls as preferred president after the next election (2017), at 33% to Hollande’s 9%.

 

The rise of the FN at the expense of the UMP and PS has been deepening divisions within all main political trends. UMP leaders and candidates have been trying to beat Le Pen at her own game of race hatred and exclusionary nationalism while ministers within the ruling Socialist Party (PS) government have been at loggerheads over the treatment of Léonarda.

Left Front alliance debates

Within the opposition Left Front (Front de Gauche) a debate has opened up over how to orient to the rightward-moving PS. This debate is also being driven by the failure of the Left Front to make any major gains in by-elections held since the May-June 2012 presidential and National Assembly elections.

Most importantly, between October 17 and 19, Paris region members of the Communist Party (PCF), the main force along with the Left Party (Parti de Gauche) in the nine-party Left Front, voted to maintain their party’s present alliance with the PS in the Paris council for the March 2014 municipal elections in France.

This decision, taken by 57% to 43%, represented a break with the strategic line of the Left Front. This is to have Left Front tickets in all towns with over 20,000 inhabitants and to support the inclusion of other left forces on these tickets only if they take a clear stand against the austerity policies of the national PS government of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

(In municipal elections, the two-round French voting system allows the Left Front to stand in its own name in the first round, while supporting PS candidates against right-wing tickets in the second round if its own vote is less than 10%. If the Left Front vote is more than 10% it is free to withdraw, stand again, or seek to negotiate a joint ticket with other forces.)

The PCF’s Paris decision was possible because the party’s national leadership had earlier decided that the alliance policy for the 2014 municipal elections would be decided by local membership vote. Yet the Paris decision, supported by national secretary Pierre Laurent, has been causing angst among Left Front supporters, opening the most serious crisis in its four-year history. It has also opened sharp conflicts within the PCF itself.

The reaction from the Left Party leadership was one of outrage. Left Party national secretary and deputy mayor of Paris’s 12th arrondissement (ward) Alexis Corbière asked: “Now that the young people have risen up against the inhuman consequences of the policies of Manuel Valls, how is it possible to be on a common ticket with his friends in Paris?”

Paris is not France

Will the Paris region PCF vote remain an exception, or does it prefigure a return to the pre-Left Front norm of PCF-PS alliances, especially where these have run major towns?

While many PCF town branches have still to vote on their approach, decisions to date indicate that the Paris decision may well turn out to be more exception than rule. On October 25, L’Humanité carried the news that PCF members in Lyon, France’s second largest city, had voted 52.9% in favour of a Left Front ticket for the municipal poll, rejecting a deal over program and seats similar to that accepted in Paris.

According to an October 27 L’Humanité article by Left Party national secretary Eric Coquerel, in “nearly three-quarters of the towns with 100,000 inhabitants” local PCF ballots had supported the option of a Left Front alliance.

At the time of writing (November 5), PCF members’ decisions in towns of more than 100,000 inhabitants was as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. PCF decisions on alliances for 2014 French municipal elections
(towns over 100,000, at November 5, 2013)

Town	Region	Inhabitants (2010)		Decision or likely decision
A.   Towns with existing SP- or Greens (EELV)-led majority (in many cases including PCF councilors)
Paris	Île-de-France		2,250,000	With PS
Lyon	Rhône-Alpes		484,000	With Left Front
Toulouse	Midi-Pyrénées		442,000	Undecided, but leadership has rejected Left Front. Decision on November 16
Nantes	Pays de la Loire		285,000	To be decided, with leadership favouring PS
Strasbourg	Alsace		282,000	With Left Front
Montpellier	Languedoc-Roussillon		257,000	With Left Front
Lille	Nord-Pas-de-Calais		228,000	To be decided
Rennes	Brittany		207,000	To be decided, with leadership favouring PS
Reims	Champagne-Ardenne		180,000	Still to be decided. Council group leader leaning towards the PS.
Saint-Étienne	Rhône-Alpes		171,300	Local leadership leaning towards PS
Grenoble	Rhône-Alpes		155,600	With Left Front
Angers	Pays de la Loire		147,600	Leadership proposal for alliance with PS. To be voted November 6
Dijon	Burgundy		151,200	With Left Front
Brest	Brittany		141,300	With PS
Le Mans	Pays de la Loire		142,600	With Left Front
Clermont-Ferrand	Auvergne		140,000	With Left Front
Amiens	Picardy		133,400	With PS
Tours	Centre		134,800	Still to be decided. Proposal to go to citizens meeting, November 7
Limoges	Limousin		139,100	With Left Front
Villeurbanne	Rhône-Alpes		145,000	With PS
Metz	Lorraine		120,700	With Left Front
Besançon	Franche-Comté		116,900	With PS
Caen	Lower Normandy		109,000	To be decided
Rouen	Upper Normandy		110,900	With Left Front
Argenteuil	Île de France		103,100	With Left Front
Montreuil	Île de France		102,700	With Left Front
Saint-Denis	Île de France		106,700	Left Front supporting PCF mayoralty
B.   Towns with existing right-wing majority
Marseille	Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur		850,000	With Left Front
Nice	Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur		343,300	With Left Front
Bordeaux	Aquitania		239,200	With Left Front
Le Havre	Upper Normandy		175,500	With Left Front
Toulon	Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur		164,500	With Left Front
Nîmes	Languedoc-Roussillon		142,000	With Left Front
Aix-en-Provence	Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur		141,400	With Left Front
Perpignan	Languedoc-Roussillon		117,400	With PS
Orléans	Centre		114,167	With Left Front
Mulhouse	Alsace		109,600	With Left Front
Boulogne-Billancourt	Île de France		114,200	Not yet decided
Nancy	Lorraine		105,421	Not yet decided

Sources: Regional French media, regional PCF and Left Party web sites, L’Humanité, Libération, Le Monde, blog Politiquemania, web site Regards.fr.

The vote to date has exposed the tensions between the recommendations of local PCF leaderships and the sentiment of many PCF members, who place more value on the political potential of the Left Front than on maintaining the PCF’s present council representation.

(The PCF has 1709 council seats in metropolitan France, and 1857 when the “overseas territories and departments” such as Tahiti are included. There are 88,298 council positions in France and its “overseas possessions”.)

To date membership votes overturning leadership recommendations have taken place in Lyon, Montpellier, Le Mans and Évry. Lead PCF candidate for Lyon, Aline Guitard, explained the vote like this: “The members judged that what was being proposed with the PS didn’t allow a stronger fight against austerity.”

In response to that decision, according to the October 30 Le Monde, eight local PCF councilors denounced the “vote of split”, threatening not to take part in a “reductionist” ticket. In Le Mans, outgoing PCF councilors said they would continue to negotiate with the PS majority.

In other centres, like Perpignan, the threat of a victory of the right or far-right (FN) convinced members that a first round alliance with the PS was a political necessity. According to lead candidate Philippe Galano: “It’s reckless to say that the forces of the left, if disunited in the first round, could compete with the UMP and the FN in the second.”

In the light of these trends an interesting question is whether the Paris line would have carried if there had been a single national ballot of the whole PCF membership.

PS—best builder of the FN

How are all these dramatic developments related? The underlying issues are how to reverse support for the FN and how to orient to the PS when rapidly deepening disillusionment with the Hollande presidency—elected 18 months ago for its promise of “Change, Now!”—is what has most fed the growth in FN support.

Le Pen’s outfit is seen by increasing numbers of angry people in France as the one party untainted by connections with the political establishment and with an understandable message.

Nonetheless, for sociologist Eric Fassin, writing in the October 24 Le Monde, the rise in FN influence “refutes the hypothesis of a rightward shift in society--cultural or economic”. Rather the FN is gaining a hearing because of the growing desperation of people ground down by austerity, because of the persistent, 30-year-long retreat of the official “parties of government” before the FN message, and because the alternative left message isn’t yet audible or believable enough.

The FN’s “discourse” evokes a mythical French paradise lost that flourished before the arrival of globalisation, the European Union and the euro currency; when the country had its franc, there was discipline in the classroom, respect in the family and order in the suburbs, and the necks of serious criminals met the guillotine.

That belle époque—destroyed by one-parent families, homosexuality and homosexual marriage, lax immigration laws and oppressive political correctness—can be restored by a sane and healthy “people” led by the FN rising up against the “politicians” and their parties.

Over the years the reaction of the governing elites has been to sneer and pretend outrage at this message, while combing through the concrete issues on which to make the concessions that could hopefully steal away some of the FN’s support base.

Predictably, the area where FN policy has most passed into the mainstream is that of migrants’ and refugees’ rights. French policy is among the most restrictive and discriminatory in Europe.

The long-run political effect of this combination of empty moralising and concrete concessions to the FN’s racist policies has been to add to the political authority of the FN as the party that has been doggedly putting its finger on French society’s “real problems” for decades.

Now, UMP candidates openly compete with the FN in racist vileness while the media feel no shame in pillorying entire communities such as the Rom.

The events of October produced a speed-up in this syndrome, a race to the bottom between the UMP and PS over migrants’ and refugees’ rights. On October 24, UMP leader Jean-François Copé proposed that the right to French citizenship of children born to migrants be repealed—a 25-year-old demand of the FN—and that free medical service for “illegals” be confined to emergency situations.

One day later, minister Valls announced that he would produce a “reform” of the system of political asylum by mid-November.

To complete the pantomime, PS national secretary Desir (once leader of the powerful campaign movement SOS Racisme!) declared: “I say the FN is a party of the extreme right!”

As for Leonarda Dibrani, the saturation message from the mainstream commercial media was that she had it coming. What could you expect from someone whose father was a classic “gypsy bad dad”—happy to live on social security payments, showing no sign of looking for work or interest in jobs offered him, not sure whether his kids are at school, and with three different versions of why he couldn’t produce an identity card?

Debates in the Left Front

Such is the atmosphere in which the Left Front has been battling to get its anti-capitalist message through to people drawn to FN simplicities. It helps explain why the strategy debate within the Left Front, centred on where and how to look for the broader alliances that will win it hegemony over the PS and enable the Left Front to be seen as an alternative for government, has become so sharp.

In an October 21 blog comment, Mélenchon summarised his view of the situation facing the organisation after the Paris PCF decision: “At the level of Paris, the situation is simpler than it appeared—the Left Front continues with [lead candidate] Danielle Simonnet. There will be a pluralist ticket for the municipal elections, hundreds of activists and sympathisers will get involved among whom no doubt there will be a considerable number of communists.

“But at the national level, the situation is much more complicated. The loss of visibility is terrible for us. It helps the extreme rights present itself as the only alternative to the system.”

In the October 16 L’Humanité, before the PCF Paris vote began, the Left Front leader had insisted: “We are not in a logic of wheeling and dealing, but of political and ideological conquest. For us the local and the national are the same reality.”

Asked about local tickets between the Left Party and the Greens, he contrasted these with what the PCF was proposing for Paris: “The line is to bring together everything we can against austerity and for solidarity rather than curling up on the old turf of alliance with the ‘Solferians’, who repel anything that moves or fights in the country… I am opposed to the unilateral surrender of our forces for the sake of a single town.”

The PCF leadership viewpoint previously had come in an interview in the October 14 Le Parisien where Pierre Laurent said: “It’s not a question of allying with the people who are carrying out the government’s choices, but of creating on the ground a coalition of men and women of the left who don’t identify with this austerity policy. These voters, who could come from the ranks of the socialists or ecologists, have the feeling of being trapped. It’s not the time to shut ourselves off in our own domain, but to extend them a hand.”

Concretising the PCF perspective at the September L’Humanité Fair, Laurent had said: “To build 500,000 extra public housing units, to open health centres, to build new systems of public transport, to create new networks of solidarity where communities are being torn apart, for my part I am ready to take part in the broadest coalitions of the left if that is in the interest of the people.”

As for the future of the Left Front, thrown into doubt by this conflict between its two main affiliate organisations, Laurent said: “I fight with all my strength against the idea that a difference of assessment over the municipal elections opens a crisis in the Left Front. We need the Left Front for today and for the future. So let’s stop polemicising, dramatising, and caricaturing each other’s positions.”

An October 21 statement by the PCF leadership, called “A Big Ambition for the Left Front”, proposed that the front adopt four campaigns in order to revitalise its work and draw in broader forces. These are an exposure campaign around the cost of capital; a campaign for fiscal justice; a campaign around the need for new solidarity- and democracy-based foundations for Europe; and a campaign for a Sixth French Republic.

Mélenchon has not been so sanguine. Describing the PCF Paris choice as “strategically incompatible” with the Left Front’s approach, the PG leader was appearing to signal a struggle against “a small minority, yes prestigious and well placed, that has abandoned us” even while “the unitary dynamic of the Left Front remains overwhelmingly in the majority in the rest of the country”.

Mélenchon also reminded readers of L’Humanité that the PS, while making endless calls for the “unity of the left”, was conducting a sectarian crusade against Communist and Green mayors, especially in the Paris “red belt” around Seine-Saint-Denis, Argenteuil and Saint Denis.

In an October 26 article on his blog titled “For whom tolls the bell?”, the Left Party leader reflected on the impact of the of the PCF Paris decision and on Pierre Laurent’s possible motives for conducting negotiations with the PS without informing other Left Front organisations.

“A lot of my friends are flabbergasted and bewildered. All are struggling to work out what has happened. How could Pierre Laurent lie to us for months while he was selling the Eiffel Tower to [PS lead candidate and Paris deputy mayor] Anne Hidalgo?

“With what criteria and what collective goal? If alliance with the Socialists is his collective goal, why not trade off Paris for peace in towns with communist leaderships, under attack from the Socialists in the municipal elections? Why did he get personally engaged to the point of pushing for a national dramatisation of the stakes involved? Why such brutal arm-twisting of local communist leaderships? On [national TV station] France 3 we saw a communist elector say he was voting for the alliance with the socialists ‘under compulsion and duress’!

“All that merely, as the press says, to save the senator’s seat that he has been occupying since the departure of Senator [former PCF senator Nicole] Cohen-Seat?[i] A lot of people around me couldn’t believe it. There must be another factor. Maybe a psychological one? A pressure which, for the moment, we don’t know about.

However, for Mélenchon the important issue was not to reflect on Laurent’s psychology, but to grasp the political ramifications of the PS-PCF deal.

“For the moments the goal of the ‘Solferians’ has been achieved. In Paris, disarray is total. Among the communists, hundreds of members are demoralised. But our people have also taken a big hit. Campaigning without the communists was really not what they wanted. But that the communists will be forced to campaign against them, that’s really depressing…

“At a national level the leaks in the commanding vessel can be seen from afar. The general staff has been decapitated: how can you hold campaign coordinating meetings with people who are active on opposing tickets? Moreover, our public message gets distorted: all our interviews are taken up with explanations concerning ‘the end of the Left Front’, demanded with gluttonous jubilation. And what is certain is that this is just a foretaste of what awaits us in the local elections.”

The Paris agreement

The strength of the shock to PCF ranks is reflected in this resignation letter of Maeva Nicotra, the branch secretary in the 15th arrondissement, after the Paris decision in favour of joining PS lists.

“I am a revolutionary Left Front militant, committed to implementing [ìts program] Above All, the Human and to the Sixth Republic.

“Given such irreconcilable differences, there is no way I can continue to lead the branch.

“I can’t on the one hand condemn the PS’s machinations and on the other support it in its campaign, even at the municipal level.

“If I had wanted to be a social democrat I would have directly joined the PS.

“I respect the decision of the majority, but cannot in any case renounce my ideals.”

Part of the reaction of the Paris PCF leadership to this sort of response has been to insist that the PS’s Paris administration has not been applying austerity.

In an October 21 interview in Líberation, Ian Brossat, PCF lead candidate for Paris, said: “The policy carried out in Paris is not one of austerity. The level of public investment has more than doubled since 2001. The policy carried out in Paris is not that implemented by the government. That’s why the majority of communists have judged that convergence is possible in the capital but not nationally.”

The programmatic agreement for the 163-seat central Paris council assigns the PCF 13 councillors in electable positions (up from eight) and as well as 32 councillors in electable positions in the city’s 20 arrondissement councils (364 seats in all).

The agreement commits the two parties to:

• Increase the rate of social housing construction so that by 2030 30% of all housing is social housing (proposal of PCF—the present level is 17.4%);

• Create 5000 new childcare places;

• Create a network of direct food distribution allowing cheaper prices to consumers and higher returns to producers (proposal of PCF);

• Guarantee a minimum supply of free water per household (proposal of PCF);

• Develop community health centres, especially in the poorer suburbs and oppose the closure of the emergency department at the Hôtel Dieu, Paris’s oldest hospital;

• Improve cleaning services and keep those that are still public in council hands;

• Follow the example of the PCF-run council in Seine-St Denis in providing extended support services to domestic violence victims and their children, as well as boosting education around the extent of violence suffered by women;

• Create mechanisms for greater social participation, including a participatory budget structure;

• Reject “all austerity policy” and refuse to accept financial arrangements with the state that would prejudice the ability of the council to carry out the undertakings on which it was elected.

• End the freeze on hiring of council staff (proposal of PCF).

In an October 14 opinion piece on the Mediapart web site (“A Cheap Agreement with a Heavy Political Price”), Alexis Corbière commented that the 30% social housing target was nothing more than that stipulated by law and one whose implementation was impossible to guarantee, given the distant target date. In addition, the PCF-PS deal contained no commitment to return privatised cleaning services to council ownership, its childcare places target fell well short of need and it had abandoned the Left Front demand for the €1.6 billion owed to Paris by the state for services provided be paid.

As for the undertaking of “no austerity in Paris”, how could that be guaranteed when seven PS Paris councillors were also MPs who had voted for the €75 billion austerity package of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault? “Can they oppose, in the Town Hall, the measures they support in the Borbon Palace [seat of the National Assembly]?”

On October 24, seven Left Front affiliates announced the main points of the front’s Paris campaign, led by Danielle Simonnet. If focusses on rent controls and prohibition of evictions, requisitioning of unoccupied housing, priority to social housing, re-establishing council ownership of privatised services, increased extracurricular activity for school children, as well as reforms to the health system, an extensive program of housing insulation and free public transport—all to be financed by greater use of taxes on capital.

Their statement said: “Paris is a rich city (with a budget of more than €7 billion) which has the means of financing an ambitious solidarity-based anti-crisis program, at the local and metropolitan level.”

The statement ended: “We want to make Paris the capital of resistance to austerity, of struggle against real-estate speculation, of eradication of casual work, of promotion of new forms of solidarity, of implementation of real equality of rights, of an ambitious collective urban development process, of international cooperation with the South, and of a democracy that serves citizen participation and allows Parisians to take back their town!”

PCF differences elsewhere

The internal PCF discussion has also been sharp outside Paris, such as the department of Hérault and its capital, Montpellier. In the October 16 edition of L’Hérault du jour, PCF departmental secretary Michel Passet criticised the party’s Montpellier branch for voting to support a Left Front ticket when “in Montepellier there are things that need changing, but the town is on the left and that’s where it should stay. It would be terrible if elected communist representatives didn’t take part in the new majority.”

Two days later the secretary of the Montpellier PCF branch, Claude Avenante, replied: “Why the rush to be on a PS ticket at any price, run by [PS mayoral candidate] J-P Moure, whose proposals are still unknown but whose political practices and neoliberal orientations can be measured?”

He added: “Today we are engaged in a process of jointly evolving an alternative project for Montpellier that will be up to meeting the social needs, expectations of democracy and environmental requirements of the people of our town. We do not look for convergence around the Left Front, but look for a convergence of the majority, with the Left Front as the tool that we communists have chosen to bring that about…”

A similar contest broke out in the Brittany department of Finistère when departmental secretary Eric de Bour came out in support of an alliance with the PS from the first round, provoking the circulation in the PCF’s Brittany region of a pro-Left Front petition, “For a Clear Left Alternative”.

Repercussions in the far left

These struggles are also beginning to affect France’s far-left forces, particularly the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), whose predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) promoted “100% Left” tickets in the 2008 municipal poll and achieved results like 15.3% in Clermont-Ferrand, 7.5% in Nancy, 7% in Limoges and 6.5% in St Denis.

To date the NPA has yet to announce a general approach to the 2014 municipal poll, but has already taken several local initiatives, including the creation of a ticket with the Left Party in Évry. Évry is the base of Manuel Valls. The PCF in Evry voted not to maintain its alliance with the PS but is critical of the NPA-Left Party ticket and is proposing a Left Front ticket.

In St. Denis the NPA is promoting a far left “mobilisation” ticket against the PCF-Left Front list.

In Arles, the NPA has joined the Left Party and other Left Front affiliates in supporting an opposition ticket to the incumbent PCF mayor. According to Christian Schwab, member of the Left Front affiliate Anti-Capitalist Left, “The orientation of the municipality is not what you would expect from the Left Front, there’s no break from what the PS could do.”

In the Channel port city of Dieppe, the PCF mayor could face a PG and Greens challenge over the issue of the transition to sustainable energy..

Some underlying issues

Above and beyond the heated debate of motives revealed by the PCF’s Paris decision lie important differences on the key issue—how to broaden the Left Front’s base of support, specifically which sections of a potential broader social base to focus on winning. Disappointed PS members and voters? The less “political” disillusioned masses being tempted by the FN? Young people, especially the unemployed?

The prevailing approach within the PCF is to try to build anti-austerity and anti-right majorities that are as broad as possible, involving, wherever possible, parts of the PS, especially its official left tendencies. The call is on these currents and the PS membership and sympathisers to drag the Hollande and Ayrault government away from austerity policies.

Supporters of this approach often find Mélenchon’s tone towards the PS too abrasive. On October 28, author and PCF local councilor Antoine Blocier wrote on his blog: “His main argument revolves around the idea that Hollande’s policies are disastrous and must be fought at all levels and that Hollande must ‘be punished’ (his words).

“Obviously, I share his point of view on the policies being carried out at the moment and the cruel disappointments they bring. But I find this business of ‘punishing’ too strong a coffee for me.

“Who indeed would be ‘punished’ if the elected representatives of the Left Front (and in particular the communists, whose competence is recognised in the municipalities), were absent from local councils? Not François Hollande, not the employers, but the people living in the towns…”

Blocier then asks: “Do we go along with Mélenchon’s injunction or do we decide case by case?

“If it’s to play a bit part and have no impact on the real debate, I’m against agreements with the PS…But, yes, wherever it’s possible for us to have agreements with the PS and the Greens without selling our soul but on the basis of clear human values and ambitious social objectives, I am for…

“I don’t want to demonise PS members as a whole. Some of them are real left citizens. Some of them are just as angry as we are with the backsliding of the government. There are mayors who have resigned from the PS. In short, they are the sort of people we can get somewhere with.”

Among the comments on Blocier’s piece appeared this note (from Paris PCF member Christophe Adriani):

“I agree on the basic point, even if I didn’t make that decision [in the Paris vote] because I didn’t find it relevant. The [Paris] majority decision breaks the momentum of the Left Front not because one should never ally with the PS nor ever govern with them, but because accords between chiefs-of-staffs (even with ‘steps forward’) rob us of a Left Front campaign—participative, inventive (you’ll remember ‘the order is--there are no orders’), broadening the base of the movement by bringing together not just organisations but citizens …

“Your arguments are above all valid to justify technical mergers in the second round, to move towards taking part in executive (yes, let’s be useful), but after having campaigned for a project as a whole, for a political alternative.”

In an “Open Letter to the Communists of Paris and Elsewhere” on the Mediapart web site PCF member Jean-Jacques Barey made a similar point before the Paris vote: “If we stand broad Left Front tickets in all the arrondissements on the basis of our analysis and program and we run a an aggressive, popular and dynamic campaign (something, pardon the reminder, that will not be the case in the event of a joint first round list with the PS), we will confront the question of a merged ticket in the second round with a strengthened balance of forces. And if we get over the 10% threshold, a realistic goal, we’ll achieve very good negotiating conditions for obtaining a lot more elected positions.”

Underlying such positions is the sense that the Left Front can’t advance much without helping build a popular fight back against the demoralising impact of the PS government, and that its election campaigns and tone have to aggressively promote that. That is what Mélenchon embodies, including for thousands of PCF members. In the words of Corbière: “What Hollande is doing weighs upon people’s morale. His message has ideological consequences: he disorients people and the first result is abstention. To be understood you need strong voices.”

In the October 25 L’Humanité PCF executive committee members Isabelle Lorand and Frédérick Genevée published a “Letter to Jean-Luc Mélenchon” that, while regretting the decision of the Paris PCF majority, sought to bring out underlying issues.

“If what bring us together is stronger than our differences, it remains the case that we have differences. Some are trivial. Others are more serious. We see two—over convergence and centralism. In an interview with Inrocks you show that your intellectual point of departure is a choice that’s thought-out, tenable and one for which you take responsibility: ‘What interests me is the most determined fraction of our people, that part that is ready to mobilise to construct an alternative. I build on what keeps going.’ And you add: ‘I believe conflict creates consciousness’.

“The least that can be said is that your point of view is coherent. But you can’t be unaware that another point of view, sustained for a long time by the PCF, exists inside the genuine left. The majority of the people of the left must be brought together. Rather than divide, it is necessary to seek out the highest levels of convergence, in order to struggle and win together.”

The PCF leaders continue: “As for centralism, it will be at the heart of our future debates. From the autonomy of parliamentarians to that of campaign and policy areas we don’t have the same approach. We communists broke with democratic centralism in 1994. That wasn’t so it can be revived in the Left Front …”

The writers end with an expression of support for Laurent and an appeal to Mélenchon to stop flirting with the idea of a rejigged Left Front including the Greens and the NPA.

“Like so many others, we don’t want that because it would be a feeble Left Front without a future. What would France be without the Left Front? Deadly thought! Of course, the Left Front is going through a turbulent patch and some put that to good use: the Left Front will be dead, and Mélenchon and Laurent with it. We must put an end to these speculations.

“The astounding election campaign that you led produced a dynamic that overcame our differences. It did not erase them…Let’s never lose sight of the essential, let’s carry out the debate fraternally so that the Left Front lives.”

What phase?

What can be realistically expected for the Left Front in the present phase of French politics? Mélenchon has set the organisation the task of getting a higher vote than the PS in the 2014 European elections, but is that really feasible? It seems clear that such a perspective cannot be met unless there are favourable changes on the ground of social struggle and boosted support for the Left Front arising from that.

In an October 17 note on his blog, Christian Picquet, spokeperson for Left Front founding affiliate the Uniting Left, explained that the rise of the FN was an inevitable phase among “the weakest and most disoriented sectors of the popular classes”.

“That’s doubtless what explains why the Left Front, while henceforth a point of reference on the political chessboard, has not been able to expand the influence acquired at the last presidential poll … We are therefore prey neither to a crisis of dissolution that some interested parties proclaim, nor to a growth crisis that a bit of agility would allow us to overcome.”

For Picquet, the Left Front has now to focus, on the basis of “that unity which is our greatest achievement”, on showing the mass of people that even partial victories against austerity are possible and helping prepare them.

“For the popular sectors to overcome their lethargy and or a devastating feeling of powerlessness, it is critical that hope returns and a perspective is reopened of victories, be they partial in the immediate term. The present weakness of mobilisations, as revealed in the battle over retirement and pensions, is basically explained by the feeling of wage earners and citizens that they don’t have the means to turn the situation to their advantage.”

Whether the Left Front, after the turmoil of the last period, is in condition to provide the inspiration, organisation and leadership necessary to turn the tide will become clearer in coming months.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the basis of the trend to majority PCF vote for Left Front tickets, is lately more hopeful: “I am not afraid of seeing communists in the streets distributing leaflets alongside Paris socialist MPs who voted for the National Interprofesional Agreement[ii], retirement at 66 and all the rest. It will not happen. Never. No way. Hidalgo has bought the wind! The communists are in the resistance. They are massively and fundamentally Left Front and not Huists[iii].

“As for us, let’s be patient. The split in the PS and the Greens is inevitable, just like the decomposition of the official left… But hold firm, because none of that will happen if we do not advance down our chosen road.”

[Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly’s and Links International Journal of SocialistRenewal’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona.]

Notes

[i] In France senators are elected indirectly, by a combination of local and regional councilors and deputies (150,000 electors in all). The more local councillors a party wins, the greater its chance of having senators elected.

[ii] The National Interprofesional Agreement (ANI) is the Ayrault government’s “labour market reform”, negotiated between the main employer confederation (MEDEF) and some of the French union confederations.

[iii] Huists, followers of former PCF national secretary Robert Hue, who came to believe that the class struggle had ceased to exist.

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