France is under threat from reactionary far-right opportunists – amongst other problems

On the sidelines of the turmoil that France is currently engulfed in, a despicable attempt at making political capital is going on. Yesterday evening, two MPs from the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), the majority centre-right party of which Nicolas Sarkozy is the leader, tabled the French legal equivalent of a white paper. Doing this is always a great opportunity for political immortality as a law that is passed successfully bears the name of the MP who first suggested it, but that’s just run-of-the-mill political vanity. The ideas put forward by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Georges Fenech are a pretty spectacular brand of irresponsible political posturing.

Dupont-Aignan and Fenech want a tightening of existing anti-rioting legislation. Specifically, as reported in Le Monde, he suggests that “from now on, the simple act of not spontaneously leaving a gathering susceptible of causing a breach of the peace from the first instruction to disperse should constitute an offence”. In addition, they propose want to “authorise the police top use their weapons when their physical persons or those of people” and places under their protection “are endangered”, but also “when they have no available alternatives to stop or prevent the flight of individuals who refuse to obey a reiterated order to stop”.

The first part of this is quite simply the denial of freedom of assembly, guaranteed by article 12 of European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights. Well, not the entire denial of course. They wouldn’t dream of that. It’s just subject to the police being happy with the crowd’s presence, and being satisfied that they don’t want to cause any trouble, so in other words it would be a crime not to go home if the police suspect that your intentions are objectionable. It’s denial of the right to protest. The second part is even more fundamentally repellent: in the event that people don’t go home when asked to, or don’t submit to arrest once the police have decided that they should, the police can shoot them if they see fit.

What in the Republic’s name are these two thinking of? It is patently obvious that the current situation on the streets has nothing at all to do with inadequate legislation, and it certainly hasn’t come about because of an insufficient level of state-sanctioned violence! These are not only revolting suggestions, they are deeply irresponsible. If it wasn’t already bad enough to have Sarkozy fanning the flames with his inflammatory language, his colleagues think that what France really needs now is for a truck full of kerosene to crash into the conflagration.

Who exactly are Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Georges Fenech anyway? A little research reveals them to be unremarkable reactionary right-wingers, with far-right leanings and delusions of grandeur. Undistinguished versions of Sarkozy if you will, but without the brains. Dupont-Aignan is the founder of “Debout la République” (“Republic, stand up”), a sovereignist association within the ruling UMP. Most of its members were also part of the electoral list lead by Charles Pasqua and Philippe de Villiers for the 1999 European elections. De Villiers is essentially the upper class, traditionalist Catholic version of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who needs no introduction. Suffice to say that he’s pretty damned right wing in a really nasty way, which fits in quite neatly with Dupont-Aignan’s ideas. Dupont-Aignan has twice stood for the UMP party leadership, in 2002 and 2004, soundly beaten by Sarkozy in the latest election. He is also a candidate for the 2007 presidential elections. To use my tried and tested Iznogoud metaphor, he wants to be Caliph instead of the Caliph, except that he’s only the Grand Vizier’s recalcitrant lackey. As for Georges Fenech, he is amongst other claims to fame the author of a report entitled “Placement under mobile electronic surveillance”. Amusingly, this was sent to Dominique de Villepin. The cover letter contains the sentence ”I have decided to entrust you with a mission of reflection on the subject of mobile electronic surveillance”. I’m sure that Dominique felt honoured that the eminent author of ”Tolérance Zéro” should have felt that he had the intellectual calibre to engage with the topic. I think that these facts give a good idea of these men’s political leanings. They’re Far-right Lite. Crypto-Fascists for ordinary decent folk. And of course frustrated, narcissistic fabulists.

State-sanctioned violence against crowds, ignoring what they have to say, denying them any real voice through legitimate channels is what has lead to the appalling events of the past twelve days. Sarkozy’s brutal rhetoric and police brutality against a section of society that feels – and is – victimised by the police turned another suburban riot into an insurrection. Because let’s be clear about this: twelve days of rioting across the entire country is an insurrection. That’s what we’re talking about here. In one sense at least, the young second generation immigrants have perfectly absorbed French Republican values. Every single significant social and political shake-up in France since 1789 has been the result of the disaffected, the poor, the powerless taking to the streets and waking up successive sclerosed governments through violence. In 1789, it was the starving Third Estate. In 1830, Louis XVIIIth’s attempted return to the Ancien Régime brought about another popular uprising. Napoléon III’s self-indulgent warmongering and subsequent abandonment of Paris to Prussian troops lead about the Paris Commune, ending in a massacre of the insurgents and ultimately the beginning of the 3rd Republic. Repeated rioting and fighting in the streets between far-right leagues, trade unions and left-wing organisations brought to power the Front Populaire and the beginnings of the welfare state. The stifling social conservatism of the political establishment brought the young to the street in 1968, demanding emancipation. Like all of these events, the current insurrection is the result of a social and economic cauldron boiling over after simmering for many years as the political establishment and a large section of French society ignored it.

It is a sad truth that meaningful change in France always appears to be catalysed by violence. Let’s hope that De Villepin and Chirac resist the temptation to fight fire with fire and to cave in to the more unsavoury current of their party.

”_ Mais, c’est une révolte?
_ Non Sire, c’est une révolution!”

The Duke of Liancourt to Louis XVIth following the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789

It’s a trying week for authoritarian, arrogant home secretaries

This week is turning out to be rather an interesting one politically on both sides of the Channel. Yesterday evening, the Blair government came within one vote of being defeated in the House of Commons over its proposal to criminalise the “glorification of terrorism”. Until now, Tony Blair has been able to assume that his majority would make sure that any motion that he tabled in the Commons would be successful, however this latest vote suggests that many Labour MPs voted against the government. I’ll just point out that of all the people who didn’t vote at all, I wouldn’t have expected George Galloway not to bother to be there. I hope he has a good reason like Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham), who ironically was prevented from voting on a security matter because of security procedures. On a separate matter, the question of whether or not the period during which terrorism suspects can be held without charge for up to 90 days instead of the current 14, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke was forced to postpone a vote to avoid possible defeat. These are both important matters, particularly for those with an interest in preserving civil liberties, but of course what has really taken up column centimetres this week has been the second resignation of David Blunkett in twelve months.

Strictly speaking, David Blunkett is an authoritarian, arrogant former home secretary, rather than a serving one, but Charles Clarke has only ever been a pseudo-Blunkett, who can be relied on to carry on with the previous agenda without doing too much, or indeed any, thinking about it. Anyway, it looks like David Blunkett’s chronic arrogance problem is what brought him down. Once again, he just didn’t really believe that the rules applied to him, because he’s somehow special. Which is of course just good old-fashioned Xerxes-style hubris. To use a contrived classical metaphor, David Blunkett flogged the Hellespont once too often and the sea decided to scatter his ships.

Meanwhile, over in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy, the third arrogant, authoritarian home secretary, has been having a bad week also. To a great extent it’s his own fault: his troubles were predictably brought about by being arrogant and authoritarian. An inquiry is underway into exactly what happened in Clichy-Sous-Bois last Thursday night, but what is certain is that three teenagers of North African extraction thought that they were being pursued by the police, took refuge in an electrical substation, where two of them were fatally electrocuted. Word quickly went round that they were victims of police brutality, and soon enough a riot was underway. Law and order, specifically taking a tough uncompromising line on law and order, are Sarkozy’s favourite areas, so I suspect that he was delighted at the opportunity to take centre stage. Unfortunately earlier in the week, he had referred very publicly to disaffected youths in sink estates as "scum". Also, in the summer, following similar incidents, he had vowed to clean up another estate "with a high-pressure hose" suggesting that the inhabitants were muck. So he was going to come up with some pretty conciliatory words to calm down the situation. But instead on Sunday he said that he would take a "zero tolerance" approach, that he didn’t want do any ordinary policing but wanted to make arrests. Then he sent an additional seventeen companies of CRS (riot police) and seven squadrons of gendarmes to Clichy-Sous-Bois to make sure that some proper repression took place. And so the problem escalated, and the violence continues and spreads a week later.

Politically, Sarkozy has jumped on the highest law and order horse he could find, and succeeded only in worsening the problem. His tough rhetoric and muscular reaction plays well to many members of his rightwing UMP party, but on the ground, it’s a disaster. He’s been severely criticised within the government, although the Prime Minister and the President have been trying to keep that quiet for the sake of appearances. But Sarkozy may well have severly damaged his credibility, having failed in the one area that many assume is naturally his greatest strength.

Clarke, Blair, Blunkett and Sarkozy all have in common a stunning degree of arrogance, the conviction that they don’t need to listen to anyone else because they’re always right, the accompanying inability to admit to mistakes, the belief that the rules don’t apply to them because they are above everyone else. They are wrong. And they will eventually all learn this the unpleasant way. This pine marten can’t wait.

I wish you all a merry Jerusalem Artichoke Day!

You may not be aware of this, but according to the French Republican calendar, today, Tridi 13^th Brumaire of the Year 214 of the Social, Universal and Indivisible Republic, is Jerusalem Artichoke Day. Accordingly, the Militant Pine Marten would like to congratulate all Jerusalem artichokes, and wish everyone else a very happy Jerusalem Artichoke Day.

The French Republican calendar is an interesting one, having been officially introduced on 6^th October 1793, or in Republican parlance Vendémiaire 15^th, Year II of the Social, Universal and Indivisible Republic. The idea behind the Republican calendar was to do away with the religious connotations of the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII to replace the less accurate Julian calendar. The Julian calendar had been introduced by none other than Caius Julius Caesar in 45 BC, however as the Julian year was about 11 minutes longer than the actual time between two consecutive Spring equinoxes. Therefore by 1582, the measurement of time was somewhat out of kilter, so on the 4^th October of that year, the Pope announced that actually it was October 15^th, and eleven days of everyone’s lives were wiped off the slate. General levels of numeracy and literacy weren’t great back then, and a lot of people resented the fact that their lives had been shortened in this way. But there was nothing for it: Gregory had taken the eleven days, he wasn’t going to give them back, and we still use his calendar today.

Except, that is, for France and its dominions between 6^th October 1793 and September 9^th 1805, or Fructidor 22^nd Year XIII if you prefer. The Republican Calendar is not in fact physically very different from the Gregorian calendar, since it is also a solar calendar, however it differs in the ideas behind it. Essentially these are that it should be divided into nice, orderly units in base 10, and that all religious connotations should be replaced with proper reasonable Republican ones. In practice, it works like this. The year is 365 or 366 days long if it’s a leap year. This is divided into 12 months (a slight slip-up with respect to the base 10 agenda) of thirty days each exactly. No more of this messy, illogical 30, 31, 28 and 29 days every leap year malarkey! In the same way, the silly seven day weeks are replaced with three ten-day decades in every month. Days have ten hours, each hour being further subdivided into one hundred minutes, comprising one hundred seconds. That last bit never caught on and was quickly abandoned. You’ll notice that this adds up to only 360 days, so to make up for it there are five or six complementary days at the end of each year known as sansculottides in honour of the revolutionaries amongst the common people who didn’t wear culottes or pantaloons, and wore trousers instead. Apart from the Republican clock aspect, which is frankly taking a decent idea just a little too far down the path of decimal militancy, it’s a perfectly serviceable calendar.

More importantly, it is a fun calendar. The names of all the months were devised by the (bad) poet Fabre d’Eglantine, whose only lasting legacy is the lacklustre French folk song ”Il pleut, il pleut, bergère”. However on this occasion he surpassed himself, and the months are named after changes on the natural world associated with the time of year. The year starts on the Autumn equinox (mostly the 22^nd September but variable, something of a shortcoming), on Vendémiaire 1^st, which is the month of the grape harvest, the vendanges. This is followed by Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse, Germinal (yes, like the film with Gérard Depardieu and the novel by Emile Zola), Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor. The days of the ten-day week however have pretty uninspired, arid names: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi and so on up to Decadi. You can spot the influence of the base 10 zealots there. Instead of all those backward Monarchist saints, the days are devoted to animals, plants and agricultural implements, hence today being Jerusalem artichoke day. Finally, the year ends with the five or six complementary days, which are the Festivals of Virtue*, Genius, Labour, Opinion (good inclusion, that one), Rewards and finally of the Revolution.

Assuming you’re still reading, you may be wondering what the point of all this is. The answer is simply that I think it was a fun calendar, and that in a way it’s a shame that Napoleon abolished it because he found it inconvenient and annoying. I’d like it if some enterprising printer decided to produce some up to date Republican calendars (it was New Year’s just over a month ago). And of course I wanted to celebrate the Jerusalem artichoke, a vegetable that doesn’t enjoy the spotlight very often, and that deserves more recognition.

If you’d like to experiment with the Republican calendar, or just have a bit of fun in your lost moments, you can download a free Gregorian/Republican converter by clicking here.

*The Festival of Virtue just happens to be the Militant Pine Marten’s birthday.