France: An Ugly Backlash in Lorraine

Amid riots and threats, Mitterrand presses a policy of rigueur

The blockade was in place even before daylight broke over the smokestacks of Lorraine. Gangs of workers erected more than 120 barricades of coiled sheet steel throughout that eastern region, sealing off the major towns and shutting the border crossings to West Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Factories were idled; stores, banks and public offices were closed and shuttered. In Nancy 10,000 marchers took to the streets, in Longwy 15,000, in Metz 20,000. In a dramatic climax to nearly a week of unrest, the entire region was delivering an ultimatum to President François Mitterrand: repeal a draconian restructuring plan, announced two weeks ago, that would eliminate 25,000 of the stricken steel industry's 90,000 jobs by 1987.

Mitterrand's response came a few hours later at a rare televised press conference. The plan, he declared, would go forward. The state had spent $2.1 billion from 1981 to 1983 to cover deficits in the steel industry, and it would probably shell out an additional $1.3 billion this year alone. "Can we go on devoting subsidies to losing enterprises forever?" asked Mitterrand. The steel plan is part of an overall restructuring program designed to make France's heavy industry competitive by trimming excess capacity and modernizing production. The process could eliminate as many as 60,000 jobs by 1987 in the coal, automobile, shipbuilding and steel industries. "The future of France depends necessarily on the modernization of its industry," said the President. "Either France will be capable of facing up to international competition or it will be pulled down toward decline."

Trying to take some of the sting out of the issue, Mitterrand pledged, "There will not be one layoff." Instead, workers would be gently eased into early retirement or transferred into two-year vocational retraining programs, with pay. Mitterrand also promised that Industry Minister Laurent Fabius, author of the restructuring scheme, would be given "exceptional powers" to encourage development in affected areas like Lorraine. Mitterrand even listed a number of new industries earmarked for particular towns in the region, and he made a point of promising a new high-speed rail line through Lorraine into West Germany. The workers at the barricades were unimpressed. "There have been so many such plans announced in the past that people just don't believe them any more," said a Socialist worker.

As word of Mitterrand's press conference spread through Lorraine last Wednesday, the mood turned ugly. At Longwy, site of violent steel riots in 1979 and the epicenter of last week's upheavals, some 200 young casseurs (delinquents) clashed with riot police. Soon the dingy town of 17,000 was a battleground. One young man had his hand blown off by a concussion grenade; another was hit in the face with a tear-gas canister and lost his lower lip. In the nearby town of Réhon, a gang of workers set fire to an elegant château frequented by factory managers; volunteer firemen, themselves off-duty steelworkers, refused to fight the blaze. When the long night was finally over, 15 people had been injured and 25 arrested in eight hours of skirmishes.