France in Flames

France in Flames; La Crise des Banlieus

‘The riots themselves are not hard to fathom; several French commentators have said the only mystery is why they didn’t break out 15 years earlier. If you corral hundreds of thousands of the poor and disadvantaged into sink estates and suburbs, expose them to unemployment rtes of up to 40% and then subject them to daily racial discrimination at the hands of employers and the police, you can hardly expect peace and tranquility. Cut public expenditure on social programmes by 20% and you will guarantee an explosion. All you have to do is light the fuse.
Jonathan Freedland, Guardian, 9th November 2005.


Origins of the Riots
On 27th October, 2005, two young North African teenagers-Buona Traore, 15, and Ziad Benna, 17, were electrocuted in the suburb-‘banlieu’- of Clichy –sous- Bois while apparently fleeing from a police identity check. It now seems they were not being pursued by police but the fact that people believed they were when 20,000 volts ended their young lives, plus a tear gas grenade thrown at a local mosque, was enough to spark a major riot. Relations between the police and the young, mostly immigrant population of these crowded and run-down areas, are so bad that the reaction to this event acted like a trigger. That night there were 258 arrests and 2,100 vehicles burned.

A huge conflagration ensued of similar suburbs on the outskirts of French cities- the spread of the trouble was apparently the result of young rioters egging each other on via mobile phones- the video facility being the function used to greatest effect. Whole companies of police were attacked and everywhere cars were being set ablaze. The latter, incongruously became the barometer of the riots- a certain number of blazing cars was held to be ‘normal’ but anything over 200 per night indicated something worrying and unusual was going on. Riots spread to the north and west of Paris in the Seine-Saint Denis region. Interior minister Sarkozy and Prime Minister De Villepin both cancelled trips abroad, so serious did they consider the riots to be.

Progress of Riots
A few days later gangs attack trains heading for Charles De Gaulle airport and drag the conductor off it. Riots spread to other cities-Rouen, Lyon and Strasboug- and buildings are destroyed, police are injured, a man dies. Already it seems clear that the trouble is not inspired by Muslim extremists; the Union of French Islamic Organizations issues a fatwa condemning the violent activity. Most commentators had already concluded, after the first week or so that what was happening was indeed unusual and a symptom of something wrong within the heart of la belle France.

Amadou, a youth from Aulny –sous-bois, quoted in The Guardian, 3/11/05 said:
‘Nobody in Paris knows what it’s like to live on that estate. There’s so much frustration. All this was just waiting to explode.’ In retrospect this comment sums up much of what the riots were about: alienation, resentment, ignorance and pent up frustration. French citizens were shocked to see the scenes each night on their televisions. 6000 vehicles were torched in 300 cities and towns; over 1500 hundred arrests were made and at least one person killed. ‘It is the worst social turmoil since the student led unrest of 1968 and the government has appeared powerless to contain it’ Economist 12th November, 2005. Taking the first seven months of 2005 overall, there were 22,000 torched vehicles in France. In Greater Manchester the figure for a week is about 20. Eventually de Villepin declared a state of emergency, utilizing a 1955 law dating back to the time of the war in Algeria, which allows a curfew to be imposed in troubled areas.

Republican Model of Integration
News paper columnists were unanimous that the riots illustrate the failure of an idea central to French republicanism dating back to the revolution: that every citizen is equal to any other in the eyes of the state. According to this view, the state is both secular and indivisible- it assimilates all its components by not recognizing any peculiarities like race and religion. This means that there are no statistics based on ethnicity or religion, no way of finding out how many members of ethnic minorities are out of work; how many in prison and so forth. Furthermore:

‘Under the model of integration, the idea that ethnic, linguistic and religious groups might enjoy rights and recognition due to their particular minority status is unthinkable’
Jon Henley Guardian 8/11/05

This means that the affirmative action Sarkozy suggested last year to remedy some of these problems, was howled down by both Chirac and the leftwing leaders for offering ‘anti-republican’ and ‘un-French’ ideas. Yet to deny the existence of minorities with differences and special problems seems short-sighted and even absurd. Early immigrants from Poland, Spain, Italy and Portugal fitted in within this concept of ‘integration’ because they were white and arrived when there were plenty of jobs for them. The more recent ‘visible immigrants’ from north Africa have not found conditions to their liking. Some 750 estates are classified as ‘difficult’ and their inhabitants evidence that the old model has broken down. One student Yasser Amri told the Guardian:

‘The republic deals with citizens, not individuals. But we’re not citizens. We don’t know what we are. Not Arab or West African, but not French either. We’re unrecognized and unremembered. No wonder people rebel.’

‘The continent has woken up to its inability-frightening in the age of radical Islam- to embrace the destinies of thousands of youngsters estranged from the societies that their parents adopted’ Observer, 6/11/05.

French criminologist Hugues Lagrange, adds his own interpretation:

‘France is committed to a concept of citizenship that ignores both cultural origin and religious orientation, so it has been difficult for the country to recognize that it has been fragmented by segregation. The estates are not places of lawlessness, but where, due to the social segregation, all social tensions have become exacerbated. Far more than their parents, the youths of these estates feel misunderstood and hated. Those who have money or have been educated have escaped, resulting in an overwhelming sense in the communities that those who remain have failed.’ Observer, 6/11/05

The ‘Outcast Generation’
Ironically, the ‘multicultural’ approach, used in UK, anathema to the French, has possibly been more successful as a vehicle of integration (see quote at end of briefing). But some similarities are plain to see. It is not so much the first generation immigrants who feel alienated- though many do- it is their children and grandchildren who feel it most keenly. They who sense the racism in society against them and who do not feel at home either when they visit the country of their parents’ origin, whether it be Algeria for the French or Pakistan for Britons. It is from the former that the rioters have been drawn in France and the latter the suicide bombers in the UK. France has six million Muslims- the largest such population in Europe- and a third live in the suburban ghettos. This pattern of settlement is described by Manuel Valls, Mayor of Evry and socialist MP, as ‘territorial apartheid… in France our social elevator is blocked.’

Racism: French people- so proud of their rational intellectualism- do not like to admit to racism but it flourishes in the home of the Enlightenment. Le Pen’s National Front came second in the last presidential election, allowing the Gaullist Chirac to gallop home with the support of the left, horrified Le Pen might do too well in the run-off. Many young men interviewed for the French and British press claim their applications for work are binned as soon as their names- Ahmed, Omar, Mohammed or Hamid- become known. And France has a major problem as immigrants and their families represent 10 per cent of their population. Yet, these minorities are not officially recognized, hiding behind the myth of ‘republican equality.’ The 2004 ban on Muslim headscarves did nothing to calm feelings in the banlieus. An interesting contrast with Britain is provided. We have 15 members of ethnic minorities in the Commons, including Muslims plus a raft of our best known broadcasters drawn from the same source. In France, aside from those representing overseas territories, there are none and TV anchors plus the police are conspicuously all white. The only aspect of French life which seems to offer role models for immigrants, is its football where Zidane and Henry are deserved national icons and almost all its members are immigrants.

Unemployment: in France is very high-over 10%- partly because employees have such strong legal employment security. This means that employers are reluctant to take on new staff; that full –time jobs, especially those in the well protected public sector, are hugely sought after; and that minority race applicants end up on the bottom of the pile. Seventy per cent of all new jobs are now part-time- lasting little more than a month- yet even these are very hard to come by. A whole generation of the offspring of immigrant families have felt locked out and ignored- though it is young men rather than women who are the more discriminated against. Some calculations place unemployment on the estates at 20% but among immigrant families or ‘visible minorities’ as they have come to be called in reports- it is closer to 40%. Moreover, in one typical estate, Aulnay-sous-Bois, scene of some of the worst rioting, out of a 90,000 population, over 40% are under 25 years old. Statistics show that of EU countries France, Belgium and Italy all have youth unemployment over 20% compared with 13% in Britain and 12% USA.
Yet, the riots do not seem to have overt jihadist characteristics. Rather, the rioters seem to be young, angry unemployed people: petty criminals rather than radicalized fanatics. Some riots have seen the intervention of ‘les grand -freres’, often young men from the mosque who have tried to end the fighting. This is not to say however that these sink states do not offer huge potential for recruitment of radical Islamists in the future. The fact that an estimated half the country’s prison population is Muslim is another worrying indicator.

Politics and the Riots

The 5th Republic System and Jacques Chirac
The French Republic was founded in 1958 and retains a powerful (Napoleonic?) chief executive in the form of the President, elected originally for a seven year term-reduced to five in 2000. He appoints a Council of Ministers (Cabinet) numbering about 20 and can dismiss them should he choose or even submit a bill to a referendum. He can also declare a state of emergency and dissolve the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly and is the most powerful executive in Europe. France, incidentally, held onto overseas possessions longer than most, fighting to retain Algeria until 1962 and allowing such overseas territories as Reunion to send representatives to the French Parliament.

Usually voters elect a majority to the legislature from the same party as the president but when this does not happen a period of ‘co-habitation’ ensues e.g. 1997-2002, when the president shares executive power with the prime minister. Elections in 2002 saw the far right National Front, beat the socialist, Lionel Jospin in the first ballot. When no candidate wins over 50% in the first ballot a second is held between the two leading candidates and in this Chirac-now 72- won the top job, fulfilling his lifelong ambition. When a candidate for the presidency in 1995 Chirac promised to counter the threat posed to national unity by urban ghettos or, as he put it: ‘these difficulties that threaten to grow into a fracture that is urban, ethnic and even religious’ Ten years later it would seem that little has been done. Chirac has presided over an economy which has faltered, an EU policy which has been rejected by the nation and a social model which has signally failed to reverse France’s deep-seated problems. He faces 18 more months in power but most of his effective power has drained away. His public insistence during the riots that all citizens were equal regardless of race or religion merely emphasized his lack of understanding of what is happening.

Jean-Marie Le Pen-Leader of the Front Nationale.

“In the last 15 days our party has acquired several thousand new members. We’ve received thousands of e-mails, faxes and letters from people who say ‘At last we have understood. You were right Monsieur Le Pen. They said you were an extremist, but you were a visionary. You predicted everything.’”
Sunday Times, 13/1/05. Le Pen, 77, who was once a paratrooper who served in Algeria, calls for an immediate halt to immigration, expulsion of all immigrants without a French citizenship and a ‘French-ness test’ for those who wish to stay. ‘I have great hopes’ he told the Sunday Times, ‘change is coming’.


Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominic de Villepin

These two leading and ambitious French politicians found themselves at the centre of a fraught vortex of events which could determine their respective chances of winning the contest in 2007, for the presidency. Chirac is pretty much a tired out lame duck president and both younger men are fighting for the succession- something not lost on the rioters who have become angrily aware that their activities are being used by the two men the better to position themselves for the coming contest.

Sarkozy, 49, of paternal Hungarian origin-his mother was a mixture of Greek and Jewish- has made it clear he has little respect for Chirac- they fell out after the younger man supported a different candidate in the 1995 presidential elections. He has established his reputation as a hyperactive minister, full of ideas and energy but also as a brilliant performer on television. With his accusations that the rioters were ‘louts’ and ‘scum’ his response appeared ‘knee-jerk’ rightwing to many observers this side of the Channel but this might have been to tap into the support Le Pen might otherwise have commanded- ironic, maybe, given his mother’s origins. Sarkozy has been associated with a zero-tolerance’ policing policy, cracking down on illegal immigrants and prostitution and forbidding ‘hostile gatherings’ plus arming local police forces with Flash Ball rubber pellets. In addition however, the Minister of the Interior recommends a wider more empathetic approach embracing affirmative action: ‘French Muslims’ he has said ‘are also capable of being senior civil servants, researchers, doctors, teachers’ His careless rhetoric inflamed an already delicate situation but his political instinct was that modern France tends to swing to the right in crises. Many say the former finance minister and party leader is hard to pin down e.g. pro-USA yet anti Iraq war; it’s closer to describe him as a pragmatist who is determined to get to the top. The foreign politician he most admires is… Tony Blair.

De Villepin, 51, is a classic ‘enarch’ of the French system- aristocratic, intellectually brilliant, handsome, eloquent and with literary gifts. In other words, he is the kind of Frenchman who has been ruling his country, either elected or as a senior official, for decades. He is, inevitably a graduate of the Ecole Nationale D’Adminstration but has also written volumes of poetry and a biography of Napoleon. He spent most of his career as a diplomat but moved on to be Chirac’s closest adviser and has remained a loyalist. He served as Interior minister and distinguished himself as a hard-line opponent of Islam and easy immigration, setting up an ‘immigration police force’ and insisting imams attended courses in French language and culture. His pro-Chirac loyalty explains why he was appointed Prime Minister in the wake of Chirac’s loss of the referendum- the earlier loss of Paris’s Olympic bid to London could not have helped Chirac either. Critics point out that de Villepin has never been elected to office by voters; they also claim he is far too arrogant for his own good. As foreign minister 2002-04 however he was best known for his impassioned opposition to the war in Iraq. His address to the security Council in February 2003 was greeted with unprecedented spontaneous applause.

The Economist found it hard to assess which of the candidates for the presidency had come out of the riots best. Sarkozy had the courage to venture into the suburbs and issue lurid statements designed to attract rightwing support. However, de Villepin’s promise of more money for the suburbs plus a more conciliatory style seems to have won him support according to a Paris- Match opinion poll during the riots. But the overall judgment must be that the centre-right government has been left appearing lost and impotent as the fires have raged in the suburbs.

Finally Jonathon Freedland finished off his 9th November article in the following fashion:

‘Britain has an emerging model too, one we call multiculturalism. It did not arrive from nowhere, but partly came out of our own experience of race riots in the 1980s. Unlike France’s, it recognizes difference and has passed legislation to protect it. But it also yearns for some affirmation of common identity. It knows there are differences between us –but it wants there to be ties that bind. What those ties should be, what notion of British-ness might hold us al together, nobody seems quite sure. Indeed the problem of racial cohesion in Britain is far from solved, as we saw last month in Lozells. But multiculturalism is still the best model we have.’

Bill Jones 29th November 2005