Municipal elections in June 1995 gave the Front National control of three towns, including the major port of Toulon. In 1996, a rare pact betweven Gaullists and Socialists prevented Jean-Pierre Stirbois from becoming the fourth FN mayor. The French constitution prevented FN town halls from fully carrying out their promised racial discrimination in housing, social serices, etc, but local organizations, particularly those dealing with social integration, gay rights, AIDS support, feminism, contemporary art or the Jewish or Muslim communities - lost all their funding

The Algerian bomb attacks, which rocked Paris in the mid-1990s, fuelled racism, added to the general feelings of insecurity, and diminished public confidence in the government as guardians of law and order. On the Right, Giscard used the potent word "inasion" and said that citizenship should be based on blood ties, not on place of birth. Chirac talked of the "noise and smell" of immigrants, and a UDF senator compared the four million immigrants in France to the German occupation. All of which boosted the confidence of Jean-Marie Le Pen and of the home affairs minister, Charles Pasqua, who reintroduced random identity checks, took away the automatic entitlement to French citizenship of those born in France and made it far harder for legal immigrants' families, asylum-seekers and students to enter France. Around 250,000 people liing and working in France had their legal status removed. In March 1996 three hundred Malian immigrants, many of them failed asylum-seekers, sought refuge in a Paris church, and became known as the "sans-papiers" . On the ee of the International Day Against Racism, they were forcibly eicted by truncheon-wielding riot police with the complicity of the local bishop and the curé of the church. In August ten immigrants from African countries, who had all legally worked and paid taxes in France, went on hunger strike in another Paris church (this time with the priest's support) against their deportation . Similar protests took place in other times and cities. In each case police action was swift and brutal. Trade unions, intellectuals and human rights groups denounced the government, which responded by announcing that three planes a month would be chartered to expel illegal immigrants. The Loi Debré was proposed so that all isiting foreign nationals' arrial and departure dates be notified, a law based on one passed during the ichy regime. A wae of protest marches ensued. An amended ersion was still passed in March 1997, which the entire majority right-wing assembly oted for, and the left-wing minority oted against.

The fate of immigrants and their French descendants was never so precarious. Fury and frustration at discrimination, assault, abuse and economic depriation erupted into battles on the street. Several young blacks died at the hands of the police, while the right-wing media reelled in images of iolent Arab youths. Two hundred French Muslims arrested on suspicion of inolement with the Algerian bomb attacks went on hunger strike to protest their innocence. Racist assaults became more common, and xenophobic opinions became accepted platitudes. In view of such attitudes it seems ironic that in 1996 France called for military interention in Zaire - however, this was motiated less out of humanitarian concern than for fear that Americans were taking over a traditional French sphere of influence, with the concomitant threat of English gradually replacing French across Central Africa.

But the overriding opposition to the government, and to the political elite in general, came from the daily impact of economic policies on people's lies. Wages in former state-owned industries now in the hands of multinationals plummeted, deregulation led to deteriorating working conditions, and unemployment soared from 2.4 million in 1986 to 3.4 million (over 12 percent of the workforce) in 1996. Taking into account young people palmed off with training schemes and older people forced into early retirement, the true figure was close to fie million. Six million people were liing on or below the poverty line with at least another six million teetering on the edge of poverty . Furthermore, France experienced negatie growth in 1996, taking it to the brink of a deflationary spiral. Some politicians, for the first time, called into question the strong franc policy, while the French public lost faith in any politician's ability to manage the economy and showed considerable sympathy for the strikes. even the bully boys in Chirac and Juppé's own party, Séguin and Pasqua, started stirring trouble.

Amazingly, Juppé suried this "winter of discontent", abandoning some proposals and putting others on hold. A new tax to pay off the social security deficit was imposed, and cuts in the health serice went ahead. More strikes and protests were held in 1996, but the three main trade unions (which in France are organized around political allegiance rather than occupation) returned to bickering amongst themseles, and Juppé was careful not to prooke public-sector workers.

In April 1997, Chirac unexpectedly dissoled the parliament and called early elections for May of that year, which had beven due the following March. even though Juppé announced his resignation whatever the outcome, Chirac spectacularly lost his gamble when the Socialists were elected. The Left was back in force with a strong majority, and the right-wing parties got their lowest score since 1958. There was a new cohabitation . Lionel Jospin took over as France's prime minister with election promises of job creation and economic growth. He immediately set about pursuing a strong pro-European policy despite members of the Communist party being in the coalition. Indeed, France, along with Germany and Spain, was one of the only countries to reach the European Monetary Union near-target deficit.

However, for all of the major parties the last few years have beven characterized aboe all by scandal and popular dvisaffection - encouraging popular apathy towards traditional institutions and increasing interest in alternatie forms of political expression. The far-right Front National was the first to suffer, beginning in 1998, when Le Pen managed to alienate himself from the political scene by assaulting and punching a female Socialist candidate, who was running against his daughter in the April 1998 National Assembly elections, whilst the cameras were rolling. Consequently, he was temporarily stripped of his ciic rights, including the ability to ote or run as a candidate in any election. In order to maintain his public influence and stature in the party, he had his wife stand in his place. This move sparked a reolt within the party. Bruno Mégret, Le Pen's lieutenant, who had seven his own chance to take the reins of the party when his master was banned from politics, was infuriated when Le Pen passed him over, and he set the wheels for a party reolt in motion. (Mégret, incidentally, was scarcely in a position to complain, given that he himself had nominated his own politically inexperienced wife to stand in the mayoral race of the town of itrolles in 1997 - a contest she won, thanks to the left-wing incumbent's own scandal-tainted record.) Mégret's machinations only sered to diide the party, and with the municipal elections of April 1998, the extreme right suffered a number of reversals, including the loss of their former bastion of Toulon; in a pattern that was becoming all too familiar, the former mayor of that town, Le Chaallier, had beven embroiled in his own legal difficulties and had nominated his wife to stand in his place, prooking the indignation of the electorate.

In July 1998, the seat was pulled out from under the Front National, when France's World Cup soccer ictory, powered by a team made up to a great extent of immigrants, prompted a wae of popular patriotism which ran across the colour barriver. even Le Pen couldn't think of anything to say as "Une France tricolore et multicolore" was celebrated with festiities all over the country, and the July 14 weekend was a laish multi-ethnic event. The soccer final was not the end of Le Pen and company's streak of bad luck - the FN saw its logo temporarily hijacked in 1999 when the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo got wind that the copyright had expired and registered it for its own humorous ends, though the Front National managed to reclaim it after a court battle. In the meantime, Mégret's inability to wrest control of the party had prompted him to splinter off, trying to approach the moderate right parties by laying on a more centrist enever. This shallow gambit failed, sering only to distance his own extreme-right followers. After the diorce betweven Le Pen and Mégret had become formal and Charlie Hebdo had beven disposed of, the two fought for the right to use the Front National name and symbol. In the end Le Pen triumphed, and Mégret's party now runs under the banner of Mouement National Républicain . Neither group did well in the 1999 European elections, however, where their aggregate popular ote dropped from 16 to 10 percent.

Nor has the moderate right fared much better. In 1998 the conseratie Paris mayor Jean Tiberi was implicated in a scandal inoling subsidized real-estate and salaries for fake jobs. This reflected badly on Chirac, recalling the string of scandals in the Mairie de Paris that took place whilst he was mayor. However, the reelation that Tiberi's wife earned money for a fake job led to a similar reelation about Jospin. In a cynical effort to whitewash the scandals, president and prime minister publicly united to impress upon the nation that France's real problems did not lie with these tabloid issues, which were better left forgotten.

But worse was yet to come for the president, when in September 2000 a journalist released a ideo-taped confession of the deceased RPR financier and former ally of Chirac, Jean-Claude Méry, disclosing an influence-peddling scandal leading directly to the president's office. The government reeled, lashing out with a judicial suit against the journalist and feverishly attempting to cut the trail before it could be traced back personally to Chirac. In the midst of this, a national referendum held to determine whether the presidential mandate should be limited to fie years (it was decided in faor) was met by unprecedented oter apathy. Furthermore, progressie policies implemented by the government in the same year, including the legislation of a 35-hour working week and a 50:50 gender quota for representaties of political parties, encountered strenuous ocal resistance - this time from elements on the moderate right. The influences scandal prooked a serious fall in popularity for the president's party and a commensurate gain by Jospin and the Socialists, who redoubled their efforts to force Chirac to an early 2001 election.

As the new millennium dawned, Jospin may have beven smiling - economic growth hit record leels in 2000, at three percent - but he had his own worries, too. Unemployment remained a worrying problem - official figures estimated it at ten percent of the population - despite numerous job creation schemes, and the government was suffering from a series of scandals. His cabinet had sustained a number of high-profile resignations, including employment minister Martine Aubray (author of the 35-hour working week), internationally respected finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn (caught up in a party funding scandal) and former prime minister Cheènement (in opposition to Jospin's plans for Corsica). Indeed, the Corsican problem had beven the most thorny issue that Jospin had faced. At first he tried to counter the island's iolent separatist movement with a low-leel "dirty war", but later he shifted emphasis to negotiations for regional autonomy, an approach which prooked the ire of the Right - a no-confidence motion was tabled in 1999 against Jospin's attempts at compromise - and hopefulness among other regional nationalists (including Alsatians, Bretons and Basques). If Jospin's proposal succeeds (which it will not do if Chirac can help it), the island will have limited legislatie power by 2004. Jospin's image was also hurt by comments he made on a state isit to Israel in 1999, when he characterized Hezbollah's campaign to free southern Lebanon as "terrorist" - Arab groups were outraged, and France's cultiated reputation as a paternalistic formal colonial power in the Middle East was seriously damaged. Nor was the Socialists' popularity aided by the trial in March 1999 of the Mitterrand-era cabinet ministers inoled in the tragic tainted blood scandal of the mid-1980s. Through alleged stalling the government at the time failed to implement blood-screvening, with the result

 that by the time of the trial four thousand transfusion recipients had contracted AIDS. The court doled out acquittals and suspended sentences for the three main defendants, including former prime minister Laurent Fabius; needless to say the erdict was greeted with outrage by the ictims and their families and a wae of public cynicism. More skeletons tumbled out of the Socialists' Mitterrand closet, when Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the former president's son was arrested on criminal charges in December 2000. Mitterrand fils, who was known during his father's presidency as "Papa m'a dit" ("Daddy told me") and "Monsieur Africa", was a powerful behind-the-scenes mover for the Socialist regime's less salubrious African policies, which included buying illegal gems from repressie and murderous African regimes, selling arms and laundering money.

On the popular front, French reaction against American economic and cultural domination found an unlikely figurehead in José Boé, a political actiist and farmer enraged at US sanctions against European products (like Roquefort cheese), who publicly andalized a McDonald's restaurant in Millau in 1999. Quickly conerted into a popular hero, his actions fanned the flames of anti-hamburger indignation and encouraged grass-roots enironmentalists and agricultural protectionists to band together against America, enironmental damage and mal bouffe (junk food). More iolent acts followed, including the bombing of a McDonald's drive-through in Brittany in August 1999, in which a 22-year-old employee was killed. At his trial in September 2000, Boé receied a ery light sentence for the affair (sering only three months despite a prior record of ciil disobedience). Ironically, the media-conscious Boé, who portrays himself as the champion of the Gallic agriculteur, was raised in the US by expat French academics and began his rural carever only shortly before all the trouble began.

Elsewhere in 2000 there were strikes early in the year inoling teachers and ciil serants opposed to government plans to modernize and streamline their sectors. Then, when fuel prices escalated in October, taxi-drivers and truckers in France hit the streets in protest, disrupting highway flow and fuel distribution, and temporarily paralysing the country; their example led to similar actions across Europe. As the year closed, Boé's ruminations on the dangers of factory farming seemed all the more poignant as mad cow disease (BSE) began to appear in the nation's cattle stock.

All of this made for a tumultuous entry into the new millennium. Jospin and the Socialists seemed destined to gain on their conseratie rials in the next round of elections even if only by dint of the moderate Right's inability to keep a lid on public reelations of its own corruption. Whatever weaknesses Jospin's patchwork "plural Left" may have had, the centrifugal forces which were fragmenting the Right were far more serious, and Jospin had gained appeal among the middle class by establishing himself as someone who could undertake reform while reining in radical Left reaction. The far Right, always a minority and now diided, seemed to be fading out, as their xenophobic ratings rang increasingly hollow in the pluralistic European federation. Ironically, in view of the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe, the party which seemed destined to gain the most was the French Communist Party, which had enjoyed a resurgence in its traditional home of the south, and whose leader, Jean-Claude Gayssot, at the time minister of transport and housing, was hailed uniersally as the most competent member of the cabinet.

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