How the French riot
Theodore Dalrymple reports on the disturbances in Clichy-sous-Bois, following the death of two young thieves
Les Vans, Ardèche
For a patriot like me, it is a great consolation to know that other societies are undergoing precisely the kind of decomposition, if a little more slowly and with slightly more resistance to it, in which we so clearly lead the world. This reassures me that, eventually, nowhere will be better than Britain, and then I will be able once again, like George III, to rejoice in the name of Briton.
In France, for example, it was not many years ago that people with tattoos were infrequently to be seen, but now they are everywhere. The small bourgeois town near my house boasts not one but two tattoo and piercing studios, inscribing indelible kitsch on the skins of the dim and tasteless young. The latter hope thereby to achieve an individuality of which a total immersion in popular culture deprives them: therefore a scorpion above a nipple or a snake over the deltoid provides them with a unique character that they would otherwise lack.
Though the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is one of reprobation, often but not always rightly, in the French press, the fact is that they — the French — follow us in the end, especially in our foolishnesses. They have followed our teaching methods, for example, in the state schools, to the great detriment of the poor and the great advantage of the bureaucratic elite. ‘Anglo-Saxon’ means modern, and modern means the latest thing; and in a nation of the fashion-conscious the latest thing means the best thing, to be without which is to be ... well, démodé.
They even have small riots like ours. This proves that they are up to speed on the latest social developments. A few days after the attempted pogrom in Lozells, Birmingham, there was a two-night riot in the charmingly named Clichy-sous-Bois, where you might have imagined that many Britons had bought properties for a song, about whose improvements both in amenities and monetary value they so boringly boasted at dinner parties.
Alas, property in Clichy-sous-Bois is probably quite cheap, but not because the original inhabitants have fled its rural isolation. It’s a suburb of Paris, social housing territory, and social housing, in modern societies at any rate, means antisocial behaviour. Such areas are, in effect, riots waiting to happen. The cause of the riot, apart from the relatively clement weather for the time of year that is a necessary but not sufficient cause of such rioting, was the death of two youths and the severe burns of another. They apparently formed members of a group of 15 who were peacefully breaking into a workshop when the police arrived and arrested six of them. Unlike the 14-year-old girl in Lozells who was allegedly raped by the friends and associates of the shopkeeper from whose shop she had been peacefully shoplifting, the three youths of Clichysous-Bois were incontestably real.
They fled and took refuge in an electricity transformer by climbing over two walls complete with eloquent notices that millions of volts were bad for you, where two of them were electrocuted to death and one suffered severe burns. The two dead were of Turkish and Malian extraction; perhaps the new methods of teaching had left them unable to read, at least at speed.
The police felt it politic, in order to calm the situation, to issue a statement to the effect that the three were not being chased ‘physically’ at the time of their sanctuary in the installation of Electricité de France but, as the good book says, the guilty fleeth where no man pursueth.
Alas, the police’s sensitivity did not calm the situation; it was too late. Rioting at the terrible injustice done to the three youths ensued, kindergartens and schools were stoned in natural consequence of their martyrdom, and 28 cars were burnt. The fact that the cars probably belonged to poor inhabitants of the quartier did not inhibit the rioters, or even give them pause; in such a situation it is self-expression that counts. A shot was fired at one of the armoured vehicles carrying the forces of law if not of order, and pierced its armour: a testimony to the increasing fire-power of the slums.
The imam of the area said, on one of the days following the rioting, that arrests in Clichy-sous-Bois were often strong-armed, and that therefore youths felt humiliated by them. I accept, of course, that the French police are not universally appreciated for their tact or delicacy; nevertheless, this seems to be taking the doctrine of every youth’s inalienable right to self-esteem a little far. It is surely stretching credibility to suggest that strong-armed tactics are never required, and that the youths of Clichy-sous-Bois always come quietly, with a frank acknowledgement of the fairness of their arrest.
The headmistress of one of the stoned kindergartens said that Clichy-sous-Bois was not a particularly bad area. It was generally peaceful, but there was petty theft, and cars were sometimes festively burnt on Christmas and New Year’s Day, but that was all. The parents of her pupils were shocked by what had happened.
According to Le Monde, they marched in homage to the deceased on the day following the rioting. Were they heroes of the resistance, then? If so, resistance to what? To social security, social housing, and the mobile telephones with which some of the rioters were reported to have called in reinforcements from elsewhere? To the inflexibility of France’s labour laws, which protect those already in employment but prevent the unemployed from finding work? The deaths of the two were a tragedy to those who loved them, of course, and it is tragic also that youths feel that breaking into workshops gives meaning to life, but even allowing for the impetuosity of youth it is difficult to see anything in their conduct worthy of homage.
How widespread is disorder in the suburbs of French towns and cities? The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has built a career on emphasising its scope. In an interview with Le Monde, he once said that 9,000 police vehicles had been stoned in the previous ten months, and that between 20 and 40 cars were burnt out every night in France. Certainly, the latter figure is not an exaggeration: every suburb worth its salt is littered with the carcasses of burnt-out cars. If Britain is the car-theft champion of the world, France is the vehicle-arson champion.
In defence of French social underdevelopment, however, it must be said that arson is much less likely to bother members of the French bourgeoisie than is car-theft to bother members of the British bourgeoisie. In France, your car will not be burnt out unless you are at least teetering on the edge of relative poverty. Despite the animadversions of the French press about savage liberalism, therefore, Britain is a much more egalitarian society than France, where criminality is so much better zoned.
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