On April 10 and 24, the French will elect their president for a new five-year term. Immigration, insecurity, identity, purchasing power, France has been shaken for five years by major social fractures, which are shaking the political world. The duty went to take the pulse of the electorate in a few towns and villages, far from the circles of Parisian power.
“Maybe I will vote for Macron or I will abstain. Here, we have always been a left-wing city. But today, I no longer know. It’s not easy, this election. »
David is the owner of the bar Le Shaft, in Nantes. A stone’s throw from the main square of Bouffay, he takes advantage of the first days of spring to set up his terrace and forget the misfortunes that have plagued his profession for two years. Three weeks before the first round, like a majority of Nantes residents, he is part of this historic left which, according to polls, only accounts for 25% of the population in France.
David cannot believe his eyes to see the Socialist Party candidate, Anne Hidalgo, 2% in some polls, behind the sympathetic, but very marginal regionalist candidate Jean Lassalle. However, Nantes appears as an island apart in a France where only the candidate of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise), rises above 10%.
The mayoress of Nantes, Johanna Rolland, may well be Anne Hidalgo’s campaign manager, but what promises to be a second historic rout for the left after that of 2017 does not seem to affect the convictions of Nantes residents. “Nantes has always been a blue and republican city,” says a former journalist, now retired and who wants to remain discreet. “In Nantes, there are demonstrations every weekend. You could even say that it has become a city of sores! »
A tradition of the left
Nothing new under the sun. It was at the gates of Nantes that the royalist insurrection of the Vendeans was stopped and that in 1793, up to 4800 of them were drowned in the Loire during one of the most terrible episodes of the Terror. In May 68, the city was also the first to follow the national strike movement, with the occupation of the Sud-Aviation factory and the sequestration of its director. Not surprisingly, Notre-Dame-des-Landes is barely 20 kilometers away. This squat where, after more than 20 years of procrastination, Emmanuel Macron finally agreed with the zadists, despite a referendum supporting the construction of the airport.
Long nicknamed “the sleeping beauty”, the birthplace of Jules Verne has long been recycled in culture. Our director Robert Lepage has frequented it for a long time. The company La Machine, renowned for its Grand Éléphant and the Carrousel des mondes marines, plans to build a kind of suspended metal garden there called L’Arbre aux hérons, the cost of which has risen in a few years from 35 to 53 million euros.
It is therefore no coincidence that, on January 16, Jean-Luc Mélenchon launched his campaign there at the Parc des Expositions with a major “immersive and olfactory meeting”. It was a question, it was said, of “giving substance to more abstract concepts” by broadcasting not only images on the big screen, but also smells and perfumes.
Where does modernity end and insignificance begin? “Actually, we didn’t feel much. Especially since we wore masks! laughs Arnaud Wajdzik, departmental director of the daily West France. “Here,” he said, “there is a tradition of unity on the left that does not exist elsewhere. The extreme right has never really managed to break through. »
Crime on the rise
But all is not well. Designated in 2004 by the magazine Time As “the most pleasant city in Europe”, Nantes has experienced an increase in crime in recent years. In 2019, there were no less than 70 settling of scores, which left 3 dead and 30 injured by gunshots. “There aren’t many Nantes residents who don’t have someone close to them who has been attacked,” says Arnaud Wajdzik. According to Le Figarothe number of attacks on physical integrity increased from 5,532 in 2017 to 6,480 in 2021.
Despite a still high rate of attractiveness and 4000 newcomers each year, at nightfall, the charming alleys of the old quarter of Bouffay are the site of growing insecurity. From 2019, the local edition of West France painted a damning picture. The front-page photo showed a drug dealer in the middle of a transaction, while three police officers quietly crossed Place du Commerce a few meters from him. It only took the photographer 30 minutes to capture the scene.
But it’s not just drug trafficking. This crime is also “fatally linked to immigration and the arrival of young foreign minors”, says Wajdzik. The city, which wants to be welcoming for migrants, must undergo some days real “raids” of thefts of jewelry or scooters. The mayor of Rezé, five kilometers away, urged its inhabitants not to go out with jewelry anymore. Criminal networks sometimes reward young offenders with Rivotril, an antiepileptic that disinhibits and is nicknamed the “drug of petty thieves”, reported West France in October 2020.
“It’s getting worse and worse, but what can we do about it?” laments Benjamin. The owner of Le Poulp’ bar watches helplessly from his terrace as the traffic on Place du Commerce is just a stone’s throw away. A mother from Nantes reacted by creating a Facebook group in 2020 called “Les ptites Nantaises en sécurité”, which offers self-defense lessons to women who venture into the city center in the evening. The waitresses of the Shaft did not hesitate to take advantage of it with the support of their boss. One morning, when he was returning home around 4 a.m., an employee of the same bar was attacked and robbed, which earned him seven days off work. “We have felt for five years that this violence is increasing,” says David. It’s not the Wild West yet, but it looks like it. »
The Jospin Syndrome?
According to criminologist Alain Bauer, homicides and attempted homicides have “marked a sharp increase in France over the past ten years”. Recently, this crime, hitherto concentrated in large cities, has migrated to medium-sized towns. “The quality of the transport network and its extension have created connections with peri-urban areas and therefore new targets,” he says. However, deplores Bauer, “the denial of reality has long obscured the vision of political leaders in the name of a very French triptych: it is not true, it does not matter and it is not my fault. “.
In Nantes, however, many voters seem impervious to this reality that made the headlines for much of the campaign. “Crime is above all a subject that pleases journalists, says Esther Loisel, of the community group Nantes en commun.es Politicians only think of making political capital on this. A supporter of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, she will vote for the first time in her life on April 10 and wants to believe that he has a chance of reaching the second round, as some polls suggest.
Less than three weeks before the first round, many elected officials have the 2002 presidential election in mind. Invited to the television news, the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, had confessed to having “sinned a little out of naivety” believing that “if we do reducing unemployment, we will reduce insecurity. However, this has no direct effect on insecurity”. All had seen it as one of the causes of his humiliating defeat in the first round, passed to the hands of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Even if the police force and surveillance cameras have recently been increased there (there are more than 200 in the city), Nantes is perhaps the illustration of this “naivety” since, with one of the lowest unemployment rates lowest in France, it is experiencing an upsurge in urban violence. The deputies of La République en Marche could pay the price in the next legislative elections, which will take place immediately after the presidential election. According to Arnaud Wajdzik, not everyone is guaranteed to be re-elected. “Especially since, this time, the novelty effect will not play,” he says. It is not certain that, 40 years later, the great writer Julien Gracq would describe Nantes as “this city where the tuning fork of life was no longer the same” and where he said he breathed “an unknown, unusual perfume, of modernity”.