Around ten people were gathered around the television set on Thursday, January 12th, to watch the first televised debate of the seven candidates contesting the socialist primary to choose a candidate for this year's presidential election. Though the mood at the Socialist Party's offices in Roubaix, near Lille in northern France, was not one of great impatience, party activists were nonetheless clearly curious about what they would see. “Because of [President] Hollande's [declaration] on December 1st that he would not be a candidate, and then the break for the holidays, the primary campaign will have been a lot shorter that the Right's,” says Romain. “It was time for a debate to take place.”
Romain, 29, is undoubtedly one of the rare Socialist Party (PS) members to have joined the party during Hollande's presidency. In contrast to a PS that is moribund at a national level and disowned by many of its activists, Roubaix is something of an exception. The local party, which has 120 members, has only had two people quit as a direct result of government policy in the last five years. And even if the glory days of socialism locally are long gone – in the 1970s the local party had 3,000 members – the mood is not one of a party that has been deserted.
Since control of the local council was lost to the Right in elections in 2014, the Roubaix branch has been in reconstruction mode, focussing on local issues. Its aim is to wrestle back control of a town where municipal socialism was born at the start of the 20th century with the construction of numerous infrastructure projects aimed at the working population.
The head of the PS's local branch, Mehdi Massrour, has made internal debate one of his priorities. “Roubaix is one of those towns where the progressive left developed. It's here where it will be rebuilt,” says the local secretary, who is not afraid to be out of step with the national leadership. “Unlike the way most branches operate we have introduced freedom of expression and I don't seek to impose anything. Everyone speaks, everyone listens. There's no form of knowledge superior to another. That's why activists have stayed,” says Mehdi Massrour. He also declines to name his preferred person in the socialist primary to choose a candidate for the presidential election. “I prefer not to take a stance so that the members can make up their own mind,” he says.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In fact, when Mediapart visited Roubaix on Thursday a number of different views were expressed by branch members. The only issue to unite everyone was opposition to former prime minister Manuel Valls. “It's quite bizarre. This guy was prime minister and he still can't hide his emotions,” says Mehdi Massrour, observing the former premier's tense face during the televised debate with the six other candidates. “How anxious he is!” says Romain when Valls talks about the international situation. “This is about electing the president of the Republic of the fifth world power, of the second most powerful economy in the Euroepan Union in a world in crisis, with leaders such as Trump and [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan...” he says.
Mehdi Massrour goes further: “He's playing on fear. But you have to provide hope!” In Roubaix it is Manuel Valls's policies, first as interior minister then as prime minister, that have been rejected in particular in a mixed town that is home to a large community with North African origins. “The stripping of nationality was the breaking point,” say Romain and Mehdi, referring to the ultimately abandoned plans to remove French nationality from any dual national convicted of a terrorist offence. Their local party was even the first among the party grassroots to criticise the policy, via a Facebook page entitled: “Socialists against the removal of nationality.”
No one around the television springs to Valls's defence. The former mayor of Roubaix, Pierre Duboix, the oldest person present at the Thursday gathering, says: “Valls's tone is that of an incumbent standing for re-election. He's trying to support the [government's] record, he's trying to make several proposals, but he's struggling. He's personalising it too much by saying 'my government' ... 'my record'.”
At this gathering support is centred more on candidates Arnaud Montebourg, Vincent Peillon and Benoît Hamon, all three former ministers. The other three candidates, who are not from the PS, have already been discounted. The branch members laugh at the out-of-step comments made by Jean-Luc Bennahmias of the tiny centrist party Front Démocrate, are indulgent towards former minister and member of the centre-left Parti Radical de Gauche Sylvia Pinel who “is not coming out of it badly” and barely listen to green François de Rugy who “doesn't really have the profile of an environmentalist”.
A young party member called Mickaël, 24, is a declared supporter of Montebourg. “He's someone who's unhappy with the government's actions and at the same time he doesn't take the easy option of castigating those who have failed, as Hamon does,” says the young man. “He's also someone who's held the same line since 2012: Montebourg the 2017 candidate is the same one as in the socialist primary five years ago. Finally, I identify with his patriotic side.” Montebourg has, it must be said, already built up a certain popularity in Roubaix. A month ago he took part in a “popular banquet” organised by the local party. Over a good dinner the candidate answered questions from some 300 people present, and those who attended say it was a success.
Romain, meanwhile, already knows that he will vote for former education minister Vincent Peillon. “At the moment I'm the only one in the branch, but I'm not without hope of convincing a few tonight...!” He likes Peillon's policy of a ceiling on the level of tax paid by lower earners, with the amount they pay of the French equivalent of council tax, taxe d'habitation, to be capped at 20% of declared income. “[Council] tax is one of the most unequal of taxes,” he says. This measure strikes a particular chord for residents of Roubaix, a town with a significant social divide between the Barbieux district in the south, where some of the richest families in France reside, and the working class areas where most people live. Under current rules council tax payers who earn under a set amount a year are already eligible for a certain discount and barely one in five taxpayers in Roubaix pay full-rate council tax. Yet in Barbieux the proportion of people paying wealth tax is close to that of Croix, the wealthiest part of Lille, or even the plush Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Other local party members, such as Pierre Dubois, still hesitate over who they will vote for. He says he will decide at the end of the second or third debate between Montebourg and Hamon. “My reason says Montebourg, because he has the experience, a good knowledge of economic affairs, a desire to act, panache. Hamon, because I really like his proposals.” Benoit Hamon is the only one of the four socialist candidates to have proposed a basic or universal income.
An area firmly rooted to the left
As the television debate continues the candidates unveil their views and policies on Hollande's record in office, the economy and on security, though they are restricted by limits on how much time each person can speak. Some of the spectators begin to feel a little weary. “I can't take this for two hours,” one activist comments. “It lacks dynamism, originality,” says another who eventually leaves before the evening is over. A third sighs: “It's getting on my nerves.” Pierre Dubois suggests there should have been a debate between the independent presidential candidate and former economy minister Emmanuel Macron and the radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “We'd have had the chance to have a real debate, with a spectrum in terms of choice. It's obvious that we'll need to talk to them. The Left can't win if there is no coming together.”
The small audience in Roubaix gets more interested when Montebourg questions the point of the European Union rule that member states' budget deficits should be no more than 3% of GDP. “We should be dealing with the unemployed rather than applying obsolete, archaic rules,” the former minister declares in the debate. “That's true that, why 3%?” queries Mehdi Massrour.
Then comes a question about the new labour law, known as the 'loi El Khomri' after the employment minister Myriam El Khomri. What would the candidates do about this law, which is deeply controversial on the Left? Montebourg and Hamon say they would repeal it, Peillon would amend it, while Valls and Rugy would keep it. “There, that's the interesting moment of the debate,” says Pierre Dubois. “Montebourg is precise and concrete, I appreciate his clarity. Two completely different approaches are emerging between the candidates.”
When the discussion turns to security and terrorism and all the candidates, each with their own slight differences, show they are favourable to growing surveillance in the country and to targeted assassination operations in overseas war zones, Tony asks: “More armed forces, more police...is that the Left?” A socialist campaigner for 22 years, this municipal councillor does not yet know who he will vote for in the first round on January 22nd. He admits he has been very disappointed by the Hollande presidency, and in particular by the new labour law and the way the government has used a provision in the Constitution, article 49-3, to push controversial measures through Parliament. “It's doing what the Left has itself fought against for a long time!” he says of this Parliamentary procedure. As a member of the local party in Roubaix he says he does not feel he belongs to “the government party”. But he is, however, certain that “it's better to have a socialist government that an ultra-liberal government with [François] Fillon”.
Ultimately the debate holds few surprises for these party activists apart perhaps from the iconoclastic figure of Jean-Luc Bennahmias. “Each of them is as expected,” says Romain. “Valls tense, Peillon in the role of an educator, very much like a teacher, Hamon a little in the background, Montebourg setting out the programme that he's been preparing for months.” Montebourg did, though, make a mistake by talking of 5 million unemployed in mainland France, when in fact if you include all categories the number is 6.5 million. Meanwhile Peillon talked about French people “of Muslim origin”, causing the party members in Roubaix to raise an eyebrow.
It is late when the debate finally ends. Despite the signs of weariness expressed by some during the broadcast, Mickaël is quite satisfied. “In the end, we had a debate that was up to the occasion. They were not at daggers drawn with mutual recriminations...” Mehdi agrees. “I'm reassured. I'm not ashamed of my party. There was a debate without aggressiveness, which was respectful and democratic. I don't have the impression this evening that we're a divided camp.”
Nonetheless, many observers consider that there is work to be done on the ground to convince voters to take part in the primary later this month and then, three months later, to vote socialist in the presidential election. How do these activists in Roubaix count on persuading people to turn out after such a disappointing Hollande presidency? Pierre Dubois's confidence comes from the region's history. “Socialism may be a lost cause at a national level but I'm in an area here which has always been of the Left. Apart from in the southern part of Roubaix Fillon is inaudible here, he's an alien! And even if the [far-right Front National] were very slightly in the lead in the regional elections [editor's note, they had 102 more votes than the PS in the first round on December 6th, 2015] they don't have an extraordinary momentum. We'll go door-to-door, I still believe in it.”
There are to be seven voting stations in Roubaix for the socialist primary, which takes place over two rounds on January 22nd and January 29th, and around 30 activists will be involved in running the event locally. The local département or county of the Nord and neighbouring Pas-de-Calais still have some of the greatest concentrations of PS members in the country. This may be one area where the socialist primary does not suffer in comparison with the turnout for the Right's primary, which attracted more than four million people at the end of November. As for the rest of the country, local activists are not so sure. “If we manage to get between 1.8 million and 2 million voters at a national level for this primary, we'll be happy,” says Mickaël.
As far as Mehdi Massrour is concerned, the campaign discussion in the primary will focus above all on local issues, as was the case in the regional elections. Since the Right took control of the municipal council in Roubaix the level of grants to local associations has fallen, and the cost of school lunches and extracurricular activities has increased. “In this context being a socialist still has meaning: to defend justice and social fairness,” he says.
The question, however, is how to get voters who have turned their back on the Socialist Party to return to the fold. “By explaining to them that the PS is like a mini-society which has its own life, its debates, its majority and its minorities. It's not a structure that's fixed in style, it's an organisation that evolves,” says Mehdi. “You must know how to accept that your idea is perhaps in the minority but that you can fight for it to become an idea of the majority. You can't remain a spectator and hand out bad marks. People leave the PS when it's not going well: that's not what you should do! We need a reconstruction, a new Épinay Congress…” he says, referring to the 1971 conference that in effect marked the founding of the current Socialist Party.
Party history is certainly important for this local branch. On the walls there are photos of the late president François Mitterrand, the party's first-ever female presidential candidate Ségolène Royal and its first female boss Martine Aubry, whose stronghold is nearby Lille. There's also the front page of L'Humanité newspaper announcing the murder of revered socialist leader Jean Jaurès in 1914. Then there are the slogans from a bygone era: “For the victory of the common programme. For a united government of the Left.” A genealogical table of workers' parties meanwhile recalls the national congresses held at Roubaix at the turn of the 20th century. Finally, a gigantic portrait dominates the room, that of Jean-Baptiste Lebas, a renowned socialist politician from the area who died after being deported to Germany for his involvement in the Resistance.
Mehdi Massrour accepts that the nature of activism in the party is very different these days, but says that some traditional approaches are there for a reason. “In the era of the internet a new danger is lurking: to believe that you are an activist by being active on social networks, that a 'like' is membership...it's not true!” he says. “Politics develops through exchanging, through physical contact. It's only by bringing people together that we can move things forward.”
As Hollande's presidency comes to an end, all the local activists present have been left with a bitter taste in their mouth. But no one wants to throw in the towel. For beyond the 2017 presidential election, the PS itself needs to be reconstructed. “I'm not only terribly disappointed by the Hollande presidency, I feel betrayed,” says Romain. “One of the flagship proposals of the Left since 1981 has been for the right of foreigners to have the vote. I'm the son of a Algerian, it's a project close to my heart. And well, yet again, the ruling party has not had the boldness to do it. It didn't even try! It's this [unfulfilled] policy which has disappointed me the most.”
For this young activist, who recently became the parliamentary assistant for a European Member of Parliament, what is at stake now is the future of the party itself. “What frightens me is the state of the PS after this primary. If the Valls supporters take over the head of the federation, that could make me rip up my [membership] card.” His aim is to stop the rightwards drift of the party.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter