SMEAR CAMPAIGN ON EVE OF FRENCH ELECTIONS

_ Allegations against PCF ‘off beam’

Over the past several weeks, and leading up to the
French presidential election (April 26 and May 10), a
Severe attack has been launched both by the right-wing
French press and by the Western media abroad against
the French Communist Party(PCF). :

“French Communists wage racist campaign”’, reads a
ine ona major story, March 3, in the Toronto Globe
& Mail. “PCF — Poffensive fascists”’, cries the French
Newspaper, I’Express. Another French journal, Le
Point, accuses PCF leader George Marchais of changing
the party into a French version of the Ku Klux Klan.
_ The campaign began last December following several
Incidents in PCF-run suburbs near Paris. In a report on
the events themselves and the tactics behind this anti-

PCF campaign, the British Morning Star carried the ~

following article from its Paris correspondent Harry
son: :
*x* * *

_ It is not by chance that the recent incident involving
immigrant workers in a Paris suburb has occurred only
Months before an important national election.

The French, and also the foreign press, have again

1 scraping the bottom of the barrel of anti-Com- —

Mmunism to smear the French Communist Party — this
e accusing it of racism. :
_ Something did happen just before Christmas concern-
ing 300 immigrant workers. But what are the facts? _
__ Like Britain, France is a traditional refuge for immi-
Stant workers, often from former colonies. =
There are over four million foreign men, women and
children in France of which nearly a half are workers.
Most are from southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy)
and many others from North Africa (Algeria, Morocco,
Tunisia).
Satellites
As in most large cities, Paris is ringed by satellite
towns. :

capital with a right-wing council. During the early hours
of Dec. 22, 300 immigrant workers from Mali were
..wakened and transported in great secrecy from their
hotel in St. Naur to nearby Vitry, a Communist-run town
With a large immigrant population.

St. Naur is a middle-class municipality just outside the .

They were taken to a building that had been bricked

up for-months pending structural repairs and which is

due to be reopened as a hostel for single postal and
railway employees — the purpose for which it was built.
The workers were installed there in flagrant disregard

for the most basic safety regulations by the ADEF, the _

organization renting the premises from Vitry’s housing
department. /

The ADEF, which also runs the St. Naur hostel,
claimed that the St. Naur establishment was unhealthy
and that the workérs had to be moved. But they had
never had the Vitry premises checked to see if they were
fit for occupation and had not even sought permission
from the Vitry housing department to instal the workers.

A month earlier the ADEF had attempted a similar
dumping operation on the Communist town of Valenton.
This had failed and, still determined to rid St. Naur ofits
unwanted population, the ADEF with the obvious com-
plicity of the Conservative St. Naur council tried Vitry.

It is obvious that St. Naur with 2,000 empty dwellings
could have rehoused the workers, but it wanted to get rid
of the immigrants and at the same time whip up feeling
against a Communist municipality.

Vitry already has two 500-bed immigrant hostels, a
17% immigrant population (twice the national average)
and a 3,500 long waiting list. The town council wants
decent conditions for all the town’s inhabitants —
French and immigrant — and it believes that right-wing
towns throughout the area like St. Naur also have a
responsibility to decently house all its inhabitants.

It was only two: days later that locals informed the
town hall that the building was being occupied. Vitry’s
mayor, Paul Mercieca went at once to the ADEF, which
refused to meet him. He then went to the hostel to speak
to the newly installed workers and suggest that they go
with him to St. Naur where most of them work, to get the

town to rehouse them there.

Intervention

This was stopped by the intervention of a so-called
‘‘tribal chief’ who was in fact a Mali embassy function-
ary. It was afterwards that, regrettably, some local in-

habitants took it upon themselves to destroy symboli-

El Salvador seminar in Toronto

Lisa North, apolitical scientist specializing in Latin American affairs, addressed an audience of over 100 |

TRIBUNE PHOTO — WALLY BROOKER

cally the gates leading to the premises and cut off the
water, gas and electricity which had never been tumed
off by the council.

During the following days, the mass media had a field
day accusing the Communists of racism. The French
Communist Party (PCF) political committee has recently
issued a statement on housing for immigrants.

The document recalled that immigrant workers help to
create France’s wealth, often in the hardest jobs. Many
foreign workers had known unemployment in their own
countries and are experiencing it again in France.

Many live in overpopulated, badly adapted, un-
hygienic hostels and all are subjected to racism, police
harassment and insecurity. The PCF, which has always
fiercely opposed all racial and religious discrimination,
the document continued, condemns all threats to the
dignity of these men and women living far from home and
reaffirms its solidarity with them as it has always done in
the past.

It is for this reason that in the present economic crisis
and to avoid adding to the two million French and immig-
rant workers already unemployed that the PCF is calling
for a halt to immigration in a mutual interestof all work-
ers in France, irrespective of their origin.

Blaming the government, the employers and the
right-wing Paris housing department for their respon-
sibility in purposely concentrating immigrants in chosen
places — usually. Communist municipalities — and
creating ghettoes, the statement reaffirmed the party’s
long standing policy of the right to decent housing for all
workers.

The party vociferously opposes the recent law making
it easier to deport immigrants and has condemned the
statement by the French employers’ federation seeking
to reduce the number of immigrants in France by one
million before 1985.

Vitry’s Communists have received considerable sup-
port from all over France including from the country’s
biggest labor body, the General Confederation of Labor.

This ‘two’ million member organization has con-
demned this attempt to pit French and immigrant work- ©
ers against each other and re-stated its policy for the right
of all to decent housing. Messages have also béen forth-
coming from immigrant groups and the ADEF has even
sent a letter to Vitry’s mayor admitting it had been
wrong.

_ Support

In January over 10,000 people demonstrated in the*
streets of Vitry in support of the Mayor. :

In a letter to the Rector of the Paris mosque the PCF
general secretary stated: ‘‘The Communist ideal is, of
course, opposed to all: racist and religious discrim-
ination.

“We believe that all workers are‘brothers irrespective
of their country of origin, the color of their skin, their
beliefs, creeds, values or customs.”

The PCF’s position is clear, it is also clear that it is the
only real force for change and as such represents a
danger to the French powers that be and with only a few
weeks before the important presidential election Com-
munists can expect yet further mud slinging with the aim
of discrediting them.

*: *

The Danish newspaper, Land og Folk, which raised
many of the same points as the Morning Star, added
another aspect:

‘There was also the PCF’s campaign against the il-
legal drug trade which is also concentrated in working
class quarters. Drug addiction over the past few years
has increasingly victimized the most vulnerable sections
of the population.

‘French authorities have taken the situation very
lightly, and the communists in the municipality of Mon-
tigny decided to take action themselves and named a
family which is well-known as a drug centre. Imme-
diately the Communists were accused of beinginformiers.
It didn’t help the situation that the family happened to be
Moroccan.”’

The French newspaper Le Monde wrote about the
incident: ‘‘Wouldn’t it be more fitting to oppose the
methods the party has used and, at the same time, to
recognize that it has raised some real problems? Ghettos

peop Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The occasion was an
See ee ere Gaticraseninnd by the Committee of Solidarity with the El Salvadoran People. Profes-
sor North’s lecture offered penetrating insights into the class structure of El Salvador, the archaic ideology of
its dominant families and the repressive role of Its military and paramilitary death squads. Other speakers at
the educational were,Professor Dick Gathercole, Chairman of Canadian Action for Nicaragua and Kathleen
Ptolemy, General Secretary of the inter-Church Committee on Refugees. The meeting was held as part of El

Salvador Week: March 21-29.

of immigrant workers in the workers’ suburbs is a fact.
Spreading drug addiction among many people is also a
reality.

‘* The right to free speech does not really exist for a
whole group in society which has been robbed of the’
access to expression ...’” Le Monde describes accusa- j
tions against the PCF as completely off the beam,

PACIFIC. TRIBUNE—APRIL 3, 1981— Page 9