France’s failure

The biggest lesson of the French riots is that more jobs are needed

"IN THE deprived suburbs, a kind of soft terror rules. When too many young people see nothing ahead but unemployment after they leave school, they end up rebelling. For a time the state can struggle to impose order, and rely on welfare benefits to avoid worse. But how long can this last?"

Thus one rational analysis of the forces that lie behind the riots, car-burnings and street battles with police that have broken out, first in the banlieues of Paris and then right across France, every night for the past two weeks (see pages 25-29). It is an analysis that points to a pressing case for action to build a greater sense of identity with French society among the rioters, most of whom are second-generation Muslims of north or west African origin. It also highlights the dispiriting effects of high unemployment as something needing urgent attention.

Yet what is most depressing about the words quoted above is that they were written over ten years ago, in January 1995, by a leading centre-right politician named Jacques Chirac. Mr Chirac has been France's president since May 1995, surely long enough for him and his various governments to do more to help the "deprived suburbs". But almost throughout his time in office, French unemployment has hovered close to or above 10%; the average rate of youth unemployment has lately been over 20%, one of the highest in Europe; and unemployment among young Muslims in the banlieues has generally been twice as high again. This week the president said little or nothing to echo the forthright views he expressed in 1995: he confined his scant public remarks on the riots to a simple call for the restoration of law and order.

That must certainly be a top priority. By the middle of the week, an extra 1,500 police reservists had been drafted in to back up the 8,000 already deployed. The government had also resorted, controversially, to an emergency decree, based on a law of 1955 (at the time of the Algerian war), to permit the imposition of local curfews. Through a combination of such measures and the efforts of Muslim leaders to restrain their more hotheaded youths, the police seemed to be regaining control of the suburbs around Paris and they will surely do so in the rest of the country too. As always, much of the violence was driven by mindless criminality - mercifully directed mainly at vehicles and property, though there has been one death, and shots and petrol bombs have also been directed at the police.

But beyond the reimposition of law and order, France must learn several broader lessons from these riots. Start with policing methods. As Britain found in the early 1980s in Brixton and Toxteth, a tough, locally unaccountable police force that routinely harasses people from ethnic minorities can easily foster a climate in which seemingly minor incidents lead to mass outbreaks of violence. Just such an incident happened in Paris on October 27th, when two young Muslims who thought they were being chased by police were electrocuted after taking refuge in an electricity sub-station. To reduce the risk of more riots in future, France needs to try more of a neighbourhood-based approach to policing. It should also work harder at recruiting more police from ethnic minorities.

The bigger lessons from the past two weeks go far beyond the forces of law and order. The proximate trigger of the riots may have been the deaths of the two youths. But nobody doubts that the real roots of the trouble lie in the social and economic alienation of the largely Muslim population that has for two generations been isolated in the grim banlieues around so many French cities. There are arguments over why they feel alienated, but the answer surely lies in the toxic mix of poor housing, bad schools, inadequate transport, social exclusion, disaffection among Muslims who are discriminated against - and, above all, in mass unemployment.

Much of the world's attention over these two weeks has been on the role played by Islam. France is home to some 5m-6m Muslims, one-third of the total in the European Union and almost one-tenth of the country's population. Some French Muslims have been radicalised by such recent events as the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Iraq war (even though France opposed it) and the ban on wearing the Muslim headscarf in state schools (which was imposed in early 2004). Yet the French government has tried harder than many to integrate its Muslims, to create institutions to represent them, to work closely with imams and mosques, and to keep a wary eye on Islamic extremists. In any case, despite claims that the riots are France's intifada, they have not taken on a religious tinge. The rioters have not been the more devout Muslims; indeed, they include many non-Muslims.

Give us the jobs

A much greater contributor than Islam to the malaise in the suburbs is the lack of jobs. Mr Chirac promised in 1995 that unemployment would be his top priority, an assertion repeated ten years on by his new prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, when he took office last May. It is here, not in esoteric disputes over different models of assimilation, integration or multiculturalism, that the biggest differences between France and countries such as America and Britain are to be found (see page 50). Over the past decade the British and American economies have generated impressive growth and plenty of new jobs; the French economy has failed on both counts.

Why? The main answer is that the French labour market is throttled by restrictions such as the 35-hour week, a high minimum wage, and tough hiring and firing rules. Yet even after a decade in office, the supposedly centre-right Mr Chirac has made little effort to relax these restrictions. The few measures that his government has cautiously put in place to open up the labour market have served mainly to entrench a two-tier system, in which insiders continue to benefit from job and wage protections that are denied to outsiders. Rather than tackle the fundamental causes of France's high unemployment, Mr Chirac has recently taken to railing against the evils of Anglo-Saxon market economics and liberalism (which he has termed the new communism).

It is, of course, the outsiders, especially the young, unskilled and ill-educated who come disproportionately from ethnic minorities, who pay the price - and it is these people who have led the riots. Not only do they feel economically and socially ostracised; they also see a political elite that appears aloof and detached from the troubles of their daily life. No wonder so many are affronted by the language of Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, who dubbed the rioters "scum" and has promised to expel any foreigners among them.

Despite his tough words, Mr Sarkozy is actually one of the few French politicians who has made any effort to reach out to the banlieues, so it would be ironic were he now to pay the political price for the riots. Most of the rest of the French political elite, on the left as well as the right, have simply ignored a long-festering problem. There are no black or brown mainland members of the National Assembly; hardly any black or brown faces on national television. The yawning gap between the French elite and ordinary people was a big cause of the government's loss of the referendum on the European Union constitution in May. Now it has been shown once more in the night-time streets of suburban France.

Editorial says that the biggest lesson of the rioting in France during the autumn of 2005 is that more jobs are needed.