It has a sports stadium named after Lenin and a Boulevard de Stalingrad. It has had a communist mayor since 1925. Welcome to Malakoff, a Parisian suburb that is one of the remaining bastions of France’s tenacious Communist party, reports The Financial Times.
Going into municipal elections to be held across France this Sunday and next, Catherine Margaté, Malakoff’s incumbent mayor, is in confident form. She is set to be re-elected outright in the first round, winning the necessary 50 per cent to avoid a run-off vote next weekend.
“The people here are not really communist,” says Kemal Mohammedi, leader of the local centre-right opposition, sipping a cold drink in a café on Malakoff’s newly pedestrianised town square, opposite the modern Hôtel de Ville.
“They vote for her because she is appreciated for what she has done as mayor. The communists have been here for 90 years. They know how to win!”
Malakoff is one of some 750 towns across France that have a communist mayor, including nearly 30 with a population of 30,000 or more. It is a fraction of France’s 37,000 municipalities and only half the number reached at the party’s peak of popularity in the late 1970s.
In the days before their working-class strongholds were undermined by industrial decline and the collapse of the Soviet empire, France’s communists were strong enough to be included in the socialist-led government of François Mitterrand in 1981, alarming Washington at the time.
Today, the communists are outside President François Hollande’s socialist administration, which is set for a reverse in the local polls. But a combination of strong organisation, a willingness to adapt and a proud history as a leading force in the second world war résistance against Nazi occupation have enabled the party to retain a significant role in French politics.
Read more of this report from The Financial Times.