Port with a rebellious past ready to take on Macron
DRUG lords barely out of their teens often resort to Kalashnikovs to carve out territory in Marseille, but beneath the decrepit tower blocks of this grimy port city a key political battle is being waged for the future of modern France – and it promises to be ugly.
One of Emmanuel Macron’s first big challenges as president is to push through controversial labour reforms in an attempt to end France’s jobs-forlife culture against stiff opposition from militant trade unions.
Street protests could break out after the return from summer holidays in September.
The parliamentary elections today are expected to hand the president’s party a crushing majority, although low turnout meant that only 14 per cent of registered voters cast ballots for the movement in the first round last week. The elections are likely to give an opposition platform to the far-Left populist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on, on course to win a central constituency in Marseille.
It includes the Mediterranean port’s tough 3rd arrondissement, the country’s poorest, where more than half the population live below the poverty line, set at €989
(£864) a month. Overall, a quarter of Marseille’s nearly 900,000 residents fall under the threshold. In the final hours of the campaign, Hendrik Davi, a Mélenchon activist, handed an election leaflet to a black-robed Muslim woman in northern Marseille as the mistral wind whipped up dust.
“Don’t worry, I’m voting for you,” she told Mr Davi, 39, a scientific researcher with a close-cropped beard and blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Mr Mélenchon, 65, a fiery orator who admires Hugo Chavez and Mao Tse-tung, hopes to turn his constituency into a focus of discontent.
He is calling for “resistance” to Mr Macron’s plans to cut corporate taxes, cap redundancy awards and devolve powers to companies to bargain with their workers over payp and conditions. “You’re dreaming if you believe the workers of this c country and wage-earners generally are going to be fleeced simply because all the glossy ma magazines have published photos of the smiling young prince [Mr Macron],” Mr Mé Mélenchon said on the final day of campaigning. “This is France,Fran and a century and a half of struggle for the rights shrined in the labour code are not going to be wiped out at the stroke of a pen. There will beb a struggle.” Mr Davi (left), who is himself standing for Mr Mélenchon’s France Unbowed movement in another Marseille constituency, predicts violent protests.
“Sooner or later the country is going to explode during Macron’s term. People will take to the streets. If it turns ugly and there are deaths, the question is, how will he react?” said Mr Davi. He expects to lose to a candidate from Mr Macron’s party.
Marseille’s most powerful trade union, Force Ouvrière (Workers’ Force), is also bracing for a bruising confrontation with Mr Macron’s government. Franck Bergamini, the head of the union’s Marseille branch, said: “We opposed the labour reforms put through under the last government, which Macron said didn’t go far enough. Our militants marched against them more than a dozen times last year, and we’re expecting to mobilise them again this year.”
At the union’s office in a street lined with groceries catering for Marseille’s large African and Asian immigrant populations, Mr Bergamini stressed that the movement would first try to wrest concessions from Mr Macron through negotiations. But he added that talks would probably fail.
“Macron won’t want big street protests early in his term,” said Mr Bergamini, 36. “If he alters course, there wouldn’t be any need to demonstrate, but we won’t let ourselves be crushed.”
In hot-blooded Marseille, where Louis XIV responded to a 17th-century revolt by building forts on the port with the guns reputedly facing the city to intimidate its population, many people welcome talk of rebellion.
As Nazia Jeddai, 43, watched her daughter play in a tree-shaded square in the historic Panier district, she said: “We all like Mélenchon. We think he can get things moving and defend the people. We want jobs but they say there are none. We’re suffocating.”
Jean-Pierre Ambrosino hand-makes cutlery in his workshop in the Panier.
Once the working-class heart of Marseille, the area is rapidly becoming gentrified as young professionals move into its pastel-coloured apartment buildings with wrought-iron balconies. “Mélenchon gives us hope against Macron’s free-market ideas. Tradesmen are struggling. We need someone to stand up for us,” said Mr Ambrosino.