Analysis
French town bans May Day as ultra-right gains first taste of power
The RN is flexing its power against all symbols. In Lievin, the mayor canceled May Day celebrations. In Harnes, the new mayor removed the European flag (as well as the Ukrainian one) from the front of the town hall.
In Liévin, one of the municipalities in the former mining basin south of Lille, the newly elected mayor from the National Rally (RN), Dany Paiva, canceled the traditional May Day ceremony, which also commemorated the 42 miners who died in the 1974 explosion in shafts 3 and 3 bis – a tragedy that led to the permanent shutdown of the mine.
“Today, the ceremony is used by the unions to engage in political propaganda on a national level,” the mayor claimed, “and the purpose of the unions is not to hold open-air events.”
Liévin is one of 12 municipalities in the Pas-de-Calais department that were won by the far right in the latest municipal elections, bringing the number of towns now led by the RN to 14 in an area with a long working-class history. Located between Lens and Douai, the region has been recognized by UNESCO since 2012 as a World Heritage Site for the values it represented.
Since the postwar period, Liévin had elected mayors exclusively from the French Communist Party (PCF), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and the Socialist Party (PS). But the town, which is also home to descendants of Italian and Polish immigrants, suffered the social devastation of deindustrialization and the gradual closure of the mines between 1960 and 1980; the poverty rate there is double the French national average. The identity of the past has been lost and the new mayor is delivering the final blow, while his party proposes a new one in its place: France for the French and “national preference” against “others.”
The RN is flexing its power against all symbols. In Harnes, for example, another town in the mining basin, the new mayor decided to remove the European flag (as well as the Ukrainian one) from the front of the town hall – just as happened previously in the south of the country in Carcassonne and Cagnes-sur-Mer – because “this is not required by law” (in France, this is only a legal requirement on May 9, Europe Day).
According to a local representative of the CFDT, France’s largest trade union, the decision by the mayor of Liévin “speaks volumes about what the RN actually thinks of workers, how much it detests trade unions and its lack of respect for the history of these regions.” In Liévin, Marine Le Pen won 64.4% of the vote in the 2022 presidential election and the RN took 54% in the European elections.
On May 1, the party’s likely presidential candidate Jordan Bardella got some attention by criticizing the government, which, after proposing to allow certain categories of “volunteer” employees to work on Labor Day, was forced to backtrack due to protests.
Gradually, as the prospect of taking power becomes more likely, the RN and the industry associations are growing cozier. Bardella was invited to a lunch on April 20 by the leaders of various employer federations within Medef, the largest employer federation in France.
“One cannot ignore the RN,” said Medef President Patrick Martin, while insisting that the “preconceived notion” of a rapprochement with the far right is “a fallacy.”
Marine Le Pen, who remains in the running for the Élysée Palace at least until the appeal ruling on her European Parliament fraud case (expected on July 7 after her previous first-instance conviction), was invited to dinner at Drouant – the restaurant where the Prix Goncourt is awarded – by some 15 major French business leaders. Attendees ranged from executives at LVMH, TotalEnergies, Renault, Accor and Engie to one of the sons of Vincent Bolloré, who is now a media mogul. Martin claims he is acting out of “pragmatism,” but this has not always been the case: Laurence Parisot, who led Medef from 2005 to 2019, had imposed a “cordon sanitaire” against the far right, and her successor, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, was stopped in his tracks when he tried to invite Marine Le Pen to Medef’s summer university in 2019. Bardella was openly welcomed there in 2025.
According to Marylise Léon, general secretary of the CFDT, “a dam has burst.” Meanwhile, few voices within Medef are speaking out against this drift.
While hiding behind the slogan of defending retirement at age 60 – Marine Le Pen’s banner policy – the RN has actually consistently voted on the side of business owners since entering the National Assembly in significant numbers. In its actions, it has stayed in continuity with the positions of the National Front’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who used to tout himself as “the French Reagan.” Moreover, the financial advisor to the elder Le Pen, François Durvye, is now working alongside Bardella. Durvye is the right-hand man of Catholic billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, who, alongside Bolloré, is aiming to unite the right-wing factions. One of the first points in Bardella’s presidential platform is to commission an “audit of public finances”: a move that usually comes right before the imposition of austerity.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/francia-a-lievin-vietate-le-celebrazioni-prime-prove-dellultradestra-al-potere on 2026-05-01