Racist victory in Dreux tradictions sowed doubt and disarray, especially among working people with the least tradition of organization. This dis array reflected a feeling of helplessness in the face of the crisis and an exasperation, which in some strata create fertile ground highlights threat to French workers movement The recent by-election in Dreux
"respectable" right and Despite the scandal, the right won the
"Dreux, a sign of hope." That was the conclusion of the editorial on the election in le Figaro the prestige daily of the right). It was signed by Alain Pevrefitte. minister of justice in the last government
The Stirbois-Hireuax duo, has become a banner, a reference point for the right.
The danger is not fascism. we are not seeing the poorer white-collar workers and middle strata turning en masse to the far-right groups.
The threat comes from the classical right - the RPR and the UDF (1) -which is imbued with the antiworkingclass and racist ideology of the so-called
To prepare themselves for the coming class confrontations, the RPR and the UDF are taking an aggressive class-struggle stance, that is, on behalf of the bour-
What they are coming out with is no longer the old Gaullist froth or Giscardian-liberal soothing phrases.
The features of the bourgeois class line are beginning to appear. In Dreux it is anti-immigrant racism; in Levallois, Balkany's campaign against the unions. (2)
"A quarter of the population is immigrants. The racist tensions are not the expression of some sort of philosphy but of an instinctive reaction that. is probably inevitable once a certain limit of toleration is passed."
Is this fascist, New Right, or just ran-
Anyway, the attempt to elevate racism into some sort of biological reflex is not the monopoly of the
So, behind the moderate speeches with the right's three stars - Barre, Giscard, and Chirac - opened this fall political season, the right's intentions are emerging more clearly.
Could anyone have thought that the right would conduct its campaign to regain power in a gentlemanly, sporting groups have long since joined the RPR or the UDF. This is indicated by the appearnames as Alain Robert, Alain Madelin, and Ecorcheville on the slates of these parties. They are wellactivists in the Nazi
This convergence is not simply the result of a Machiavelian entrism by former students from the Assas faculty of law and economics (an ultra-right stronghold)
now coming into their pudgy thirties in the guise of local notables. There is a common interest, the mainspring of which is the desire to inflict a defeat on the workers movement as a
Those who think that Dreux was a lost cause, a bad combination of circumstances, are wrong. Dreux is not the blast of a fascist offensive. is a tableau of the traditional right in all its battle array. There is not a decent right on the one hand, represented by Veil and Stasi, and an indecent one hooked up with the ugly fascists, on the other. There is one right, which is not squeamish about the means for getting back into power. They are called racism and repression against the workers.
The Majority (the CP-SP coalition) sent such leading figures as Rocard and Juquin to Dreux. They raised the alarm. They said that voting for Hieaux meant voting for and thus voting
However, neither the CP nor the SP party leaders managed to make
The "great calm power" (as the coalition calls itself) marked time. Despite the through appeals in the media, most of those who voted right or fascist in the first round did so also in the second.
There was a little motion. gained a thousand votes. But the fascistright slate also gained two hundred votes. These results are the index of the negative effects of the government's austerity policy.
Even at the last minute, right glued to the Front National by representatives Majority defended a halt to immigration and justified repressive measures against the "illegat" immigrants.
So, they stepped right into the trap laid by the right, which was trying to present immigration as the central prob-
It's true they said gravely that the concentration of immigrants in public housing causes problems. It's true that the illegal immigrants who come here cross the Mediterranean to take the bread out of the mouths of our unemployed create problems. its immoral for the right to ally themselves with fascists.
By trying to separate the good right from the bad right, the Majority proved ineffective against the right in general.
You cannot fight racism by calling for a halt to immigration. Clearly such confor the racist demagogy employed by the fascists and the classical right.
Isn't there any breakwater strong enough to hold back this groundswell of racism? Why have the fascists and the right found it so easy to play on hostility to immigrants?
This is because in this area we are having to pay a particularly heavy price the capitulations of the majority leaderships in the workers movement. The SP as well as the CP, the CFDT as well as the CT, early on accepted a halt to immigration. They came out for protecting labor against foreign labor. In so doing, they yielded to the bosses' drive to regulate the supply of labor to suit the needs of business.
THE WORKING PEOPLE DIVIDED
By dropping the demand for the right to vote for immigrants after May 10, 1981 (when the left came to power) these capitulationist leaderships helped to relegate immigrants to the status of secondclass citizens. But if immigrants had had the right to vote, the workers parties would have had a majority in Dreux.
By helping to keep immigrants out of political and social life, by denying them the full rights of citizens, these working-class leaderships have driven a wedge into the ranks of the workers. And this was widened by the government's August 31 measures.
Now, Stirbois, who has gotten himself set up as a petty gauleiter, can apply the letter of the August 31 decrees regarding illegal immigrants to his heart's content.
A national consensus has been built up on the question of immigration, as was before on producing
And the consensus against immigration is no less dangerous
Solid links have not been built up between the immigrants and the workers
And the struggles of immigrant auto workers did not trigger any reflex to make up for lost time. contrary, solidarity was slow in coming for the immigrant workers at Citroen and
Now the way is open for the development of a "poor White" racist mentality
That is because the defenses of the workers movement were lowered to the point that a latent racism could get back shameful memories of the capitulations by 1. Rassemblement Union pour la Democracie Francaise, the political formation of the former President, Valery elected mayor, Balkany deprived the unions of their traditional de Travail provided the city governments have served as the centers
"Out with the US