New Contexts for Racism and Anti-Racism, 1992–2002

Abstract

The political conditions in which anti-racists were at last to experience some success in their attempts to roll back the National Front were initially set by the change of government which had occurred in 1993. The Socialists’ crushing defeat, the circumstances of which we describe in Chapter 9, gave the RPR-UDF an incredible 485 seats out of 577 in the National Assembly. The size of the landslide was partly owed to the fact that over 13 million people chose either not to vote or spoilt their ballot papers, double the number who voted Socialist, and more even than voted for the conservative majority. After his experience in 1986–88, Chirac, leader of the conservative camp, had no wish to repeat his role of Prime Minister in a second cohabitation administration in which Mitterrand would remain for another two years at the Elysée. Edouard Balladur, his former Finance Minister, therefore took over the premiership with Chirac expecting to prepare his presidential bid free from the cares of office. When Chirac in due course achieved his life’s ambition and became President in 1995, it was only after a dramatic and uncertain campaign in which his chief rival had been none other than Balladur, his ‘friend of thirty years’.