A month away from polling day, and the Paris headquarters of the Front National (FN) are peaceful. People stroll through reception as relaxed and friendly as if deep in the provinces. As the FN did so well in the last presidential election, I expected a mayhem of consultants and spin doctors. But then little that I saw of the FN matched my expectations. The headquarters are guarded, I had read, by great numbers of uniformed thugs, who closely question all visitors. True, there is a security guard inside the building wearing a badge with the FN flame insignia, and I have to pass through one of those security door frames, but that's positively welcoming compared to the battalions of riot police outside Nicolas Sarkozy's headquarters.
The FN is held in contempt by most French people, yet polls up to 30 per cent in local elections. Its vote was half that in the 1997 and 2002 national elections, but much higher in its heartlands, the belt which follows the border from Belgium in the north, running across to Alsace, down the eastern edge to the Italian frontier, then along the coast to Montpellier, where many ex-colonialists settled when forced out of Algeria in 1962. And, of course, in the 2002 presidential election, the FN's leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked France and the world by pushing the Socialist Lionel Jospin into third place; Le Pen went on to win 18 per cent of the vote in the run-off with Jacques Chirac.
France is usually seen as a statist, left-wing country. But the current fifth republic has only had one socialist president, against four from the right. During its 49 years of existence, it has had a socialist government for only 15 years. Admittedly, the French centre-right believes firmly in the role of the state and social solidarity. But this domination by the moderate right in part explains the existence of its radical shadow. For many years, editorialists kept up the mantra that the FN—founded in 1972—was no more than a neo-fascist blip. But as the years went by, it refused to fade. The FN is now the longest-surviving party on the right, and it has penetrated the French mind, jangling deep-seated nerves—which is perhaps why it arouses such animosity. It is the unsettling electoral voice of an entrenched part of French life.
These five groups may be fringe, but the first two at least resonate back in time to the origins of French history. Catholicism is the cradle of the right in France; traditional Catholics are those who reject much of Vatican II (1962-65), and in particular the idea of the mass being spoken in any language other than Latin. The overt support of traditional Catholics gives the FN a certain moral and spiritual weight. The radical nationalists, by contrast, are the FN's darker side. It is their violent behaviour rather than their beliefs which has influenced a part of the FN and turned public opinion against it. Today that influence is fading, but the old phantoms resurface occasionally. And an enduring hero of the FN, object of pilgrimages and commemoration services, is Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, who planned the attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle in 1962, achieving martyr's glory by being the last Frenchman to face a firing squad. The thread goes deeper, because Bastien-Thiry was a member of the OAS, the nationalist army determined to keep Algeria. Algérie française is a key even to today's FN. Many of its members, such as Le Pen, fought to keep Algeria French, and the shame of losing it has marked their lives.
The monarchists are a less obvious threat to the republic, and a dwindling influence on the FN, although they share many beliefs with the traditional Catholics. The pro-lifers also share many beliefs with traditional Catholics and, like the radical nationalists, are prepared to take action to express them.
What unites these groups is a strong sense of nostalgia and attachment to the past, real or mythic. Each has its own memorials and pilgrimages. The principal subjects of veneration are the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc, Louis XVI, Marshal Pétain and L'Algérie française—so-called "nostalgeria." Martyrs and defeats are particularly well represented.
If these groups represent the traditions that many of the FN's core activists draw upon, what about the far more numerous voters? Their profile is changing and broadening. In 1995, Le Pen first began to attract workers in significant numbers. Many workers in heavy industry began to feel that the Socialist party was deserting them and giving priority to the concerns of teachers, lawyers and doctors. Similarly, many of the FN's recent recruits are ex-Communists, equally disillusioned with the extreme left. Meanwhile, many people in rural France are voting Le Pen because they do not trust the centre-right to stand up for them against "Europe." Others vote Le Pen because of the old populist belief that all the main parties are the same—hence the most popular FN slogan: Ni droit ni gauche mais français. Nonna Mayer, author of a study of the FN, suggests that the considerable presence of these ni…ni… voters means we should no longer label the FN as extreme. Le Pen is also skilled at picking up specific voter groups. For example, warmed by Le Pen's anti-Jewish remarks, some Arabs feel that he represents them. In April 2002, some Jews voted Le Pen because they saw him as the best way of stemming the influence of Islam. But one unchanging factor is that the majority of Le Pen's voters are male. If the first round of the 2002 presidential election had been open only to male voters, Le Pen would have won by a fairly comfortable margin. If only women had voted, he would have come third.
The French voter, like others in Europe, appears to be shifting somewhat closer to FN thinking. A 2005 report by the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights found that the number of people who said there were too many foreigners in France had risen from 38 to 56 per cent in just one year. The number saying immigrants were a source of cultural richness fell from 74 to 62 per cent.
The FN, meanwhile, is attempting to soften and moderate its image without losing its appeal to people who feel like the losers of modern France. It is Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie (and his campaign manager) who, along with general secretary Louis Aliot, is leading this reform. She is untried in office, but comes across as a gutsy, straight-talking politician. On live television she walks over timorous journalists, questioning their supercilious assumptions and lack of research, throwing punches like, "OK, how much will you bet on that?" or, "It was a joke. Haven't you got a sense of humour?" Being cast as the devil's daughter gives her a certain licence.
"Until recently," says the FN's programme, "four pillars supported the national edifice: family, school, religion and the army. Since 1968, the silent revolution of anarchy and globalisation has destroyed them. The traditional family is disappearing." The FN proposes to offer mothers (or fathers) a salaire parental, the minimum wage, for three years to look after a child. Such parents will have the same social security and pension rights as the employed. "We want to give back to women the freedom not to work," says Marine Le Pen. "The major French financial equation is based on there being a high birth rate: our pension system can't survive if we have fewer children and live longer. But for there to be confidence in the family, there has to be state protection." The French population is, in fact, already rising, with the current generous family support. But it is widely believed that non-French mothers are responsible for most of the increase—a view encouraged by the FN.
As so often with the FN, there is a "nostalgic" undercurrent for true believers: in this case linking its policy back to Vichy France. Under Pétain, the Constitutional Acts of July 1940 replaced the republican motto liberté, egalité, fraternité with travail, famille, patrie. It was Pierre Poujade's UDCA party, made up of shopkeepers and small businessmen, which in the 1950s first angrily challenged what it saw as the myth of left-wing resistance and right-wing collaboration during the occupation. The FN echoes these sentiments, and venerates Pétain, if not his Vichy government, as a truer patriot than De Gaulle. But this connection with a time which many French people would prefer to forget acts as a constraint on FN modernisation.
A less controversial aspect of "modernisation" is economic policy. "For years, people said we had no proper economic programme," says Marine Le Pen, "and it was true. What we are now proposing is intelligent capitalism." This means lower taxes and employers' charges, plus the introduction of le business angel to help fund small companies. More eye-catching is the FN plan for a big extension in referendums.
I ask both Marine and, a few days later in Strasbourg, Jean-Marie himself how the party's thinking is evolving on race, nationality and immigration. What, I ask Marine, does it mean to be French? Is it just having French blood in your veins? "Of course not," she replies. "National identity is a feeling, it's like love, and can you define love?" A sparkle of humour glints in her eyes. "Being French is the consciousness of belonging to a people who have a common history, a common territory, a common future and above all a common language. It goes far beyond simple regulations. La nationalité française soit s'hérite soit se mérite [French nationality has to be either inherited or deserved]. The last homeless French person must have greater rights than any foreigner, however talented, clever or respectful the foreigner may be. Because that French person's father may have been a paysan, his grandfather maybe died at Verdun. He is the heir to all who have built France."
This contentious theme burst into the election campaign in mid-March, when Nicolas Sarkozy unexpectedly announced that, if elected, he would set up a ministry of immigration and national identity. The idea is shocking, even to the centre-right; for most people, the concept of national identity is inextricably linked with nationalism and war. "Republican identity" is more acceptable. But for Jean-Marie Le Pen, it is all about bones: "Nationality is about where your parents are buried. I think a foreigner wanting French nationality begins to become truly French only when the bones of his parents dissolve into the soil of France. It is at that moment he begins to belong to France charnellement." Where does that put those Englishmen whose grandfathers' bones rot gently into that great charnel house of northern France? Do we become French? Or do those foreign fields remain "forever England"?
Two days after Sarkozy's announcement, Le Pen gave a speech at his birthplace in Brittany, talking about origins. His were humble; his father was a fisherman blown up by a German mine in the second world war. Le Pen says voters must know where candidates come from: "The president of the republic is the incarnation of his people. He must show where he comes from before he can say where he's going"—a dig at Sarkozy, whose father is Hungarian and maternal grandfather Jewish. The same day, a poll found that 55 per cent of the French favour a ministry of immigration and national identity.
It is not immigrants themselves who cause Le Pen sleepless nights—they cannot be blamed for wanting to come to such a wonderful country. Instead, he blames those in France responsible for its "wishy-washy" immigration policies, including Sarkozy. He rejects, of course, the routine accusation of racism made against him. He accepts that French citizens may be black or brown—indeed, he makes much of his two mixed-race goddaughters on the island of Réunion, a French département in the Indian ocean. He says he has always worked closely with black and brown Africans—so long as they are French. Yet he also clearly feels that the normal definition of racism is drawn too loosely: "There are certain truths one cannot discuss in France. If you do discuss them, or if you even uphold the principal that, like all truths, they are open to discussion, you can be taken to court [Le Pen has been sued, and is being prosecuted for remarks he has made]. There are a number of taboo subjects, but often it comes down to racism. Racism is the supreme sin—the merest whiff of it excludes you from the intellectual community, but also from the human community. You become a sort of monstrous animal; that's what I do not accept. I have the luck to be a free man, and I set great store in freedom."
Leaving race aside, I ask him how he can reconcile such strong national preference with the universal rights of man of the French revolution. "Oh that's just an antiphon, it's like making the sign of the cross," he says dismissively. "Understand me, I am not against the rights of man. I am just irritated by this constant 'We are for the rights of man,' as if it absolved all sins. But it doesn't prevent western countries from trading with China, which doesn't believe in such rights. It's like the French bo-bos [bourgeois-bohemians] who are all in favour of open immigration but have never received an immigrant into their flat or their house on the riviera."
"Listen," Le Pen leans forward in his chair. "There are the rights of man, there could be the rights of Europeans and there are the rights of nationals. One does not exclude the other." But, I interrupt, the belief in a universal moral equality? "No, no, that's globalisation… there can't be social solidarity except within the national framework."
How is préférence nationale going to affect those members of the EU who wish to live in France? "No problem," says Marine Le Pen. "For people who have the means of looking after themselves, there's no difficulty. We're not xenophobic. What bothers us is the influx from outside Europe. According to the ministry of the interior, only 5 per cent have work contracts. With our huge debt, we can't afford it."
The FN campaigned against the European constitution, but Jean-Marie Le Pen sounds less viscerally hostile to the EU than I had expected. "I would simply like France to have the same status in Europe as Britain," he tells me. "A national currency, for example, which would give us reasonable sovereignty. Fifty years ago, I voted against the treaty of Rome." He chuckles, "I must be one of the last survivors of that parliament. [He was in the national assembly, representing the Poujade shopkeepers' party.] Why did I vote against it? I felt European after the war. I certainly wasn't opposed to the idea of a united Europe. But when I read that this treaty I was being asked to sign was the first stone in the path that would lead to the United States of Europe, modelled on the USA… the idea seemed to me absurd. The two are not comparable.
"People say I want to wall up the borders. Not at all. Borders are filters. I want to renegotiate Schengen only because Europe airily told us, 'Get rid of your frontiers, we'll look after security.' Well, they haven't and they can't. An example: over the last five years, Zapatero and Berlusconi have regularised 1.4m illegal immigrants, exposing France to further immigration. It's likely that many will come, because in France the system of social security is more favourable. The figures are masked by une obscurité savante, but we calculate that immigrants cost us between €40-50bn a year. With a debt of €2,000bn, we simply cannot afford it. For me, patriotism never replaces the duty of being generous towards humanity. If we're going to help poor countries, then let it be through education, but first let's rebuild the reasons for our prosperity. There's also the moral aspect: Sarkozy's selective immigration is creaming off the best from poor countries. Many African leaders have said to me: 'We will never get out of the mess we're in if our elite, who go off to study in France, stay with you afterwards. We're not going to have any left here.' I agree. I have never said, 'Only the French.' I say, 'The French first.'"
At 78 years old, Jean-Marie Le Pen is still portrayed as the unacceptable face of France. I ask whether he prefers the role of martyr, deliberately putting himself outside the system: "No: first I am put outside by others. They said, 'Le Pen is Hitler.' That's how it was. But, agreed, I am outside in that I have a different conception of the world, of responsibility and society. It's true, I do not agree with the French governing class, but that's what democracy is about—normally. So why are we excluded from the national assembly while I have been here in the European parliament for 22 years? I am a French patriot: that means I give priority to the French." In 1986, a brief flirtation with proportional representation gave the FN 35 seats in parliament, but after two years, the country reverted to the first-past-the-post system, which, combined with canny inter-party alliances, results in the FN currently having no seats. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, the UDF party of François Bayrou, the current centrist candidate for president, won 4.9 per cent of the vote and 29 seats. the FN won 11.3 per cent and no seats.
The FN under Jean-Marie Le Pen will never become part of the more mainstream right, as Bruno Mégret wanted when he challenged Le Pen for control of the party nearly ten years ago. For all the party's moderation of image and policies, it continues to associate itself with too much of the dark side of French history. When the FN elects a younger leader—perhaps Marine Le Pen or Louis Aliot—it may nudge closer to power, despite, or perhaps because of, being contemptuously ignored by the mainstream parties and media. But for the near future, it will remain the noisy outsider of French politics.
