Fall of France, 1982
Richard West
Paris Words like desastre, catastrophe and bouleversement are scarcely adequate to the French these days who have witness- ed not only two devaluations but the amaz- ing scores in the World Cup football: England 3, France 1 and, still more sensa- tional, Algeria 2, West Germany 0. The publican at the local bar was so appalled that he could not stop laughing at the ab- surdity. Much the same feeling appeared in the press. Witness France Soir of 17 June: 'Total Defeat for France! Not only on the field where English superiority turned it in- to a demonstration match, but also on the terraces, where faced by the English sup- porters, the French were outclassed in every aspect: in voice, gesture, punches and drink — beer, whisky and even red wine! Decidedly all the French bastions fell on Wednesday at the San Mames stadium in Bilbao.' So depressed are the French that they could not even come up with the usual Sunday scandal about the British Royal Family. All they could manage was `PRINCESS DI! STUBBORN, OBSTINATE, SHE SAYS "NON" TO THE QUEEN AND DEMANDS TO HAVE HER BABY IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE'. 'Thin stuff compared to the good old stories on Princess Margaret. And not even true.
Defeat by England has brought out the old resentment against the Anglo-Saxons, a mish-mash of fears and suspicions against !Intelligence Service, the CIA, the Pro- testants, Freemasons, the City and Wall Street; President Reagan's economic policy is interpreted here as having only the one
object of doing down the franc. The English are seen as clever and devious for having created a war in the Falkland Islands. The French are frankly jealous of us for having been in a scrap. They were on our side, but they do not like us the more for being victorious. They find us unbearable.
The French tell one knowingly that they too 'have their Falkland Islands': outposts of Frenchmen threatened by foreign despots. In fact the military French are always ready to get into fights all over the world regardless of claims to sovereignty. They mounted a bloody assault on rebels in the Katanga province of Zaire, the former Congo, which used to belong to Belgium and now has no conceivable link with France. French mercenaries recently seized the Comoro Islands off the east coast of Africa, shooting the Sultan and anyone else they chose. Scarcely anyone noticed, let alone raised the case before the United Na- tions. France still in effect rules most of its former African colonies and claims that most of her islands are integral parts of France. The negroes and mixed race people of islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe regard themselves, and are accepted as, black Frenchmen. Unlike the Jamaicans in England they do not indulge in cults like Black Power or Rastafarianism, and conse- quently they are liked and accepted.
Other immigrant groups are much less popular. The Portuguese, who have settled in France en masse, are looked on as peasants, which most of them are, who can- not adapt to France or speak the language.
French dirty jokes, of the kind that used to be told by commercial travellers, often end with a Portuguese coming home and fin- ding his wife in bed with a Frenchman. Black Africans, from Mali and Senegal, do most of the dirty jobs in France, like street- sweeper, dustman and sewage worker. Also they peddle leather and wooden objects. Two years ago, when the French Com- munist Party found it was losing support, it tried to drum up hatred against these black immigrant workers; a communist mayor of a town near Paris demolished a hostel for Mali and Senegal workers.
But working-class Frenchmen feel their keenest xenophobia against North Africans, above all Algerians. This animosity dates to the previous century when France not only colonised Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia but sent out settlers to farm the land. In Algeria, as in Kenya, South Africa and Rhodesia (but not in the torrid zone) white farmers could work and bring up families and regard themselves as at home. Hence the bloody civil war when Algerian nationalists wanted their land back. Only this year, the 20th anniversary of its independence, Algeria claims to have found a mass grave, holding the bodies of 1,200 men who, it says, were killed by the Paras. The French right-wing press says that the dead were Algerian soldiers who once had fought for the French and were murdered after the country's independence. Perhaps it does not matter now but it brings back a memory of the former hatred.
I once was despatched to Lyons to cover a strike of Algerian workers at one of the Rothschild family smelters. Their pay was not bad — at any rate very much better than they would get at home — but working conditions were dreadful. Most of them had been splashed by molten lead or suf- fered other injuries. Although they had the support of some middle-class Trotskyists, these Algerian strikers got no money or sympathy from the Communist Party, which put out leaflets sneering at them for illiteracy. In Lyons at that time, carloads of 'Frenchmen would go out potting their guns at Algerians in the streets.
Now the Communist Party has sided with the Algerians; perhaps they hope to attract Algerian votes. At any rate the French CP has managed the present strike of im- migrant workers at Talbot, the car factory, splitting the work force. In France, as in England, most of the better-paid jobs are in fact reserved for whites, but immigrants are conspicuous in the car works.
The Talbot strike has inflamed xenophobia. Algerians used to be thought of as sad, small unshaven men, standing around at railway stations, or dumpy women swathed in scarves. Now they are seen as militant strikers wanting the jobs of Frenchmen. Worse still, they appear to be good at football and managed to beat the favoured Germans. The Algerians even have a football team of their own in France, at Montpellier. These are disturbing times for France, threatened once more by two of her oldest enemies, England and Algeria.
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