Marseille: How the Far-Right Built a Political Laboratory

As we did in our live coverage the week before the first round of municipal elections, we offer here a dive into our archives. With Franck Alisio, the National Rally (RN) candidate, obtaining 35.02% of the votes in the first round of the election in Marseille, we propose a look back, through our archives, at the presence of the far-right in the Phocaean city.

Since 1986, the leader of the National Front has made Marseille and its region a political laboratory.

Jean-Marie Le Pen maintains a powerful relationship with Marseille: he achieved his best electoral scores there since 1988, topping all presidential elections from that date onwards. The southern capital also served as a political laboratory for him, both in the management of local authorities and in displays of force.

The first shock came with the European elections of 1984, where the National Front (FN) surprisingly registered 21.42% of the votes in the city. Many believed it to be a fleeting success, until the far-right party obtained 25 seats out of 117 in the regional election of 1986 and entered the majority in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) regional council with the classical right, already led by Jean-Claude Gaudin, the current mayor of Marseille. Two years later, in the presidential election, Mr. Le Pen seduced 28.3% of Phocaean voters and attracted 20,000 supporters to the Vélodrome Stadium. “Marseille sent me a message of love,” he proclaimed.

In the same year, the leader of the FN and his lieutenants, Jean-Pierre Stirbois and Bruno Mégret, tried their luck in the legislative elections in the Bouches-du-Rhône. Mr. Le Pen chose a working-class constituency in Marseille, convinced – wrongly – that his notoriety would be enough to defeat the socialist Marius Masse. He suffered a clear defeat there. In the regional elections of 1992, he headed to the Alpes-Maritimes, but left Mr. Mégret in the department. Both will sit on the regional council, which will serve as a platform and financial base for them.

During this period, the FN continued its work of implantation and training of cadres and elected officials, which would bear fruit in the municipal elections of 1995: the Le Penists won four towns, including two very close to Marseille, Marignane and Vitrolles – where Mr. Mégret won after repelling Mr. Le Pen’s council from running in Marseille.

In 2014, Stéphane Ravier, the National Front, seduced the “hot” districts of Marseille.

Marseille remained with Jean-Claude Gaudin (the leader of the right), but, for the first time, in 2014, a sector of the city, the 7th, fell into the hands of the National Front. A large town, the most populated in Marseille, 150,000 inhabitants of the 13th and 14th arrondissements of Marseille, in the north of the city, made up of districts with names of trees and flowers that poorly recount their decay. “Bars” inhabited since the 1960s by Maghrebians and then Comorians and which gave themselves to Stéphane Ravier, offering the far-right one of the biggest successes in its history.

But this victory is a reflection of a broader strategy. To establish oneself in large cities. This was one of the objectives that the FN had set for the municipal elections of 2014. And Marseille had the most promising profile for the far-right party. “We see a very large city where we obtain very good results. It is a bit of an exception,” estimated Nicolas Bay, who piloted the far-right municipal campaign for large cities. “There is a real issue: in the legislative elections, Stéphane Ravier made the second-best score (49%) in France behind Marine Le Pen.”

Beyond the score, Marseille presented the advantage, according to Mr. Bay, of being a city where the “porosity between the right and the FN” is strong. This is notably due to the co-management of the region between 1986 and 1992 between the right and the FN. “There is an electorate of the right that does not necessitate much to join us. The communicating vessels between UMP and FN are stronger than elsewhere,” Mr. Bay claimed.