Monster of the 18th
Richard West
Paris The Paris newspapers know when they are on to a good thing like 'the Monster of the 18th Arrondissement', or 'moon maniac', who has so far killed nine little grey-haired old ladies (the French use the same classic clichés as we do), who has really frightened and shocked even Pari- sians who do not read Le Parisien. The hunt for the murderer also has overtones of the hunt for Francois Mitterrand and his Socialist government, who are blamed for Permissiveness, called also `Jewish permis- siveness', towards the criminals. It has helped to produce in Paris, not for the first time, a thoroughly nasty mood of suspi- cion, racial hostility and lust for vengeance.
The newspaper Path-Dimanche, the French equivalent of our News of the World, the flagship of the Murdoch group, has just published a table of fear of the 20 arrondissements in the capital. Oddly enough, only the 18th itself shows an actual Majority of men and women who say they are frightened, compared to some 40 per cent in the neighbouring arrondissements In the district of north-central Paris around Montmartre, the ancient gangster quarter with many Arabs, West Africans, Yugo- slays, drug-pushers and prostitutes, men as well as women. The 18th is in terms of London something like King's Cross and Soho superimposed on Brixton. According to Paris-Dimanche, the cri- minals of the 18th arrondissement are leading the search for the Monster, not least because the alarm has produced a number of raids on cafés and clubs where People who do not approve of killing old women, are nevertheless going about their business of robbing banks, peddling cocaine and managing prostitutes. 'If I catch this type, I won't tell the police, I'll take him to the cellar. . . The shit-heap needs a flogging. . . . The quacks will get hIm off as a lunatic.' These are some of the sentiments expressed on the subject of law and order by the working and criminal -class. One ferocious lady in the 11th arrondissement, which ranks number six in the league table of fear, told me she ranted to bring back not only the guillo- ne but the bagne, the penal colony in _ uyana best known for the camp on 'Devil's Island. Her programme was to restore the bagne and the Bourbons. Not a progressive thinker at all. In France, as in most of western Europe and the United States, the issue of law and order is much involved with racial politics. e arrondissements of fear are also those with high immigration. As Paris -Dimanche saYS, the Yugoslays are hoping that the Monster turns out to be an Arab, the Arabs are hoping he is an African, and the Africans are hoping he is anyone else. Fortunately, in this nasty atmosphere, it seems that the murderer is a Frenchman. One old lady who survived an attack gave a description which was published by Le Parisien in an over-realistic identikit pic- ture, leading to the arrest of some perfectly innocent man by the CRS — by no means the most gentle police force in the world.
In fact immigrants these days are as often the victims as the committers of violent assault. A Turkish striker was recently shot dead by a factory guard, an African. In Brittany a man of 22 opened fire on a Turkish restaurant, killing two people. A Jewish woman in the south was killed by a young Fascist who was de- scribed by one paper as 'short, shaven- headed, hare-lipped and myopic as a mole, in fact not the type of the Vikings he admires'. Of course the new right-wing National Front shouts loudly on 'law and order' while at the same time stirring animus. The Front's main press supporter Minute accuses the present government of 'permissiveness', especially the Jewish members such as the Prime Minister, Fabius, the Justice Minister Badinter and the Arts Minister Jack Lang, who has also been bold enough to conduct a sympathetic interview with the magazine Gay Pied. He has apparently been spending the tax- payers' money on a 'Gay Centre' as well as trying to promote trendy culture, rather in the mode of our own Arts Council.
, The Socialist government and its ever fewer supporters are all also under attack from the Communists and their trade union, the CGT. The union big-shots stayed away from the demonstrations of sympathy for the dead Turk. They are almost as hard on the immigrants as are the National Front, both getting support from the working class. Young middle-class left- wingers who joined these processions under the anarchist banner were beaten up by Communists. Indeed reading a paper like Liberation which sticks to the spirit of 1968, one finds that 'working-class' now has a nasty connotation, signifying a xenophobic attitude. In France one sees much more clearly than in England the growing divide- between what one might call the Scargill and Livingstone factions, on the one hand manual workers like dockers, miners and steelmen, and on the other the bureaucrats of central and still more of local government, also seeking support from the teaching and 'caring' professions, the immigrants, feminists, homosexuals and so on, most of the last being unpopular with the Scargill men.
In the 11th arrondissement, I did not encounter nearly as much anxiety as in for instance parts of south London. The local dope-pushers, most of them North and West Africans, have been chased away to another arrondissement. Those of their countrymen who remain do not have a reputation for mugging, as do Jamaicans. In France, unlike England, anxiety about law and order is not closely tied up with anxiety about immigration. They are large- ly separate causes of indignation, though no less strong for that. The politicians in France as in England always insist that law and order is less of a public concern than for instance unemployment, which may be true. But whereas people in both countries think there is little that can be done about unemployment, 85 per cent of the French, to judge from a recent survey, believe that law and order could be and should be improved.
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