On Wednesday May 19th 2021 one of the articles of the first Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was rendered null and void in the very country where it was first proclaimed in 1789. Article 12 reads: “To guarantee the Rights of Man and of the Citizen a public force is necessary; this force is therefore established for the benefit of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.”
In other words: the police must not make the law, it is there to serve the citizens and them alone, their rights and their freedoms; its first task is to be a guardian of the peace for the benefit of the whole population and not simply keep law and order just for the benefit of the government of the day. The French Republic is not there to serve the police. On the contrary, it is for the police to submit to the Republic, to its fundamental laws, its founding texts, to the principles and values that it sets forth.
That is the clear democratic reality that is now under challenge from the demonstration held by police trade unions in front of the National Assembly in Paris on Wednesday May 19th. As the statement put out by the inter-union group representing police officers makes clear, the aim of the protest was to bring about the “implementation of minimum sentences for those who attack members of the forces of law and order”. This is nothing less than a demand for a justice delivered out of context, without taking account of individual circumstances, and a measure which would bind both judge and jury.
A true democracy should not have automatic sentences; courts should deliver them independently and calmly, free from pressures, emotion and vested interests. Yet it is this republican legacy that a coalition of confused politicians who joined the demonstration have chosen to throw to the reactionary and conservative wolves. By supporting the protest in a display of cheap populism, these politicians have effectively condoned police pressure on our national representatives. Among them was the current interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, who no longer even bothers to hide his instinct to follow the herd.
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In fact, no one should be surprised that this particular politician invited himself to a police demonstration. For since he became France's interior minister in July 2020 Gérald Darmanin has simply continued the downward spiral started by his predecessors, who have transformed the Ministry of the Interior into the Ministry for the Police. Whether from the Left or the Right, they have all adopted an unattractive, feverish and craven position, that of getting “behind” the police to accompany and support them whatever they do and whatever they demand, rather than standing in front of them, to lead and command.
The simple fact that Gérald Darmanin rushed to join this gathering when even the police unions have abandoned his law and order consultation process - known as the 'Beauvau de la sécurité' after the Ministry's Paris address - says a great deal about the nature of the relationship he has with the police. The fact that he justifies his support for the police case by indiscriminately citing “attacks from the media class”, terrorism, “a year of violence from a section of the 'yellow vests' [editor's note, protest movement]” and attacks on police officers shows, at best, intellectual dishonesty and, at worst, a deliberate and dangerous attempt to sow confusion. The police are supposed to be answerable to the minister of the interior who himself is answerable to the citizens. Not the other way round.
The executive's renouncing of political authority over a coercive force is more than just symbolic; it signifies the privatisation of public force for the use of those in charge, for the private interests that they protect and for their survival in the face of protests. This was very clearly illustrated by the repression of the 'yellow vest' movement. But as the lawyer François Sureau writes in his essay 'Sans la liberté (Tract/Gallimard) “one can also see in this an admission of an abdication that all the fine words in the world could not wipe away from our collective memory if we do not at least stop forgetting that we are citizens before we are voters”.
The radical liberal lawyer continues: “In the end, it depends on us whether those who govern and control us are able or not to go all the way in that tendency towards authoritarianism which is the fate of all governments, which is precisely why those who drew up our Constitution wanted powers to be separated.” The separation of powers has always been a very vague concept for this government, as the presence of the minister of the interior at a police demonstration on Wednesday is yet further proof. This is something that has never been seen before. “It's never been seen before because it shouldn't happen,” says one senior official in the ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party, who is appalled both by Gérald Darmanin's “gesticulations” and the current mood.
In such a climate no one is surprised any longer to hear the minister of the interior describe police officers as “soldiers” involved in a “war”. This type of language has echoes of a recent petition in which 93 retired police officers called for measures to “take back control of own country and the re-establishment of the authority of the state everywhere where it is failing”. At the same time two letters, the first from reservist military officers and the second from serving military officers, appeared in a far-right weekly publication calling for the forcible taking back of a country which the officers claim is threatened by internal enemies. These enemies are supposedly 'other' groups of a cultural or religious nature, and social or political dissidents.
No one is surprised any more. And no one – or at least hardly anyone – is angry about it. Police violence is increasing yet the government denies its existence. In the case involving a criminal investigation into a petrol bomb attack on the police in the Paris suburb of Viry-Châtillon, Mediapart has revealed how a police set-up led to innocent youths spending time in prison for several years. But this news has not produced any official condemnation. We have become collectively numbed by their fears. And this lethargy does not augur well. This is especially true given that the apparent need for an authoritarian government, something that was once only demanded by the xenophobic far right, is now entertained by rulers who claim to be constructing a rampart against such authoritarianism, but who are in fact paving the way for it.
Riding roughshod over his role as a member of the executive, Gérald Darmnain crossed paths this Wednesday with numerous elected representatives from the far right Rassemblement National (RN), including Jordan Bardella who is number two in Marine Le Pen's party. The main leaders from the two historic parties of the French Left, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Communist Party (PC), were also there. The PS's Olivier Faure and the PC's Fabien Roussel, who were also joined by senior green politician Yannick Jadot, clearly have nothing to say about the pressure being exerted by the police on the legislature.
Yet the same political groups have in recent times come up with a thousand excuses for not protesting in union against discrimination, Islamophobia and police violence. So how can these parties supposedly of the Left claim to represent the democratic, social, environmental or feminist hopes that run through the country and which mobilise young people when they are never there to protest about these urgent issues? How is one supposed to interpret their eagerness to follow the ideological agenda imposed by a Right that is ever more extreme, rather than helping those struggles that are about constructing hope?
A year before the 2022 presidential election, these questions ring out as urgent warnings for a Left which is the Left in name only. In the case of the police demonstration, the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) ('Unbowed France') and its various allies, plus a number of greens, have preserved their honour by following the path of opposition and refusing to be manipulated politically in this way. But one section of the Left has made clear its division, and consequently its impending defeat, by supporting its opponents' obsessions. In doing so it is turning its back on wider society, and is now seeking legitimacy only within the established order, with all its injustices and self-deceptions.
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- The original French version of this op-ed can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter