It’s a story that’s over a century old. In 1911, Peugeot moved to Sochaux, a peaceful village of 427 inhabitants, to create one of the largest factory towns of the post-war boom period. At its peak, the Peugeot-Sochaux plant had more than 40,000 employees. But beyond a site, the Peugeot family had also set up a whole system: supermarkets, summer camps, or even a famous football club, FC Sochaux, intimately linked to the history of the factory and from the city. Its sale, in 2014, and its cumulative difficulties in the following years, in the indifference of Peugeot, marked the divorce between the former “Peuge” and its leaders. In a book published by Editions du Cerf, At the heart of the major downgrading: the lost pride of Peugeot-Sochauxthe journalist Jean-Baptiste Forray tells this French story.
L’Express: Why did you choose to write about the sale of FC Sochaux?
Jean-Baptiste Forray : It all started with an interview, in 2019, on Europe 1, of the Spanish director of sponsorship and partnerships of the Peugeot brand. At the end of the interview, the journalist, Emmanuel Duteil, asks Isabel Salas Mendez if the company could not help the company’s former club, Football Club Sochaux-Montbéliard, in great difficulty. After kicking in touch, Salas Mendez ends up letting go: “Football is a sport that does not go too well with our values. It conveys popular values, while we are trying to go upmarket”. This quote is a good illustration of the split between the elites and the working classes. This is the version of the “toothless” of François Hollande, of “those who are nothing” of Emmanuel Macron, or even of “those who smoke cigarettes and drive diesel” by Benjamin Griveaux. The symbol is all the more important as Sochaux is not just any city: it is a bastion of the Trente Glorieuses, the capital of the French automobile. In the 2000s, the boss of Alcatel had conceptualized the principle of business without factories. Here, we saw the break between marketing and factories. Somewhere, she was trampling the history of her company by saying those words.
This book has a more universal vocation than the case of Sochaux alone. I have no roots in the region, but I chose the Montbéliard basin because it seems to me emblematic of a certain number of changes in our society. Sochaux is a French story, where we can trace how an industrial empire ended up, little by little, cutting itself off from the city and its roots. It is also a site which, due to its location in the heart of Europe, between the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, has been able to resist relocations, but has gradually lost its importance.
What is FC Sochaux doing in this industrial history?
Originally, it was a club created by Jean-Pierre Peugeot, the head of the dynasty. At the end of the 1920s, he looked across the Channel, and saw, with a rather paternalistic objective, that football was a good way to occupy the workers. The aim is to prevent workers from going to bars and union offices. At the time, FC Sochaux was the boss’s club and was therefore extremely wealthy. He recruits players internationally, a bit like he was the PSG of the time. Despite this distance between players and workers, a form of community is created, especially during the war. At that time, players also enter the Resistance.
“Peugeot is Sochaux, and Sochaux was Peugeot”
A kind of communion is born between players, supporters, and the Peugeot family. When Sochaux launched the very first training centers in France, its players were housed in pre-fabricated buildings which had previously been occupied by Yugoslav workers… In the 2000s, we still had young shoots in the team who were Montbeliard. When it won the League Cup in 2004, the whole factory was decorated in the colors of the lions. Peugeot charters entire trains to go to the Stade de France. Peugeot is Sochaux, and Sochaux was Peugeot.
In summary, an paternalism “à la papa”…
This system is not unique: it is found in Le Creusot, with the establishments of the Schneider family, for example. But the Peugeots push it to its climax. For example, there are the Ravi supermarkets created to feed workers and their families during the First World War. The purpose of the latter was to limit inflation, with establishments that were the cheapest in France. It was a unique system in the country, which meant that if Peugeot’s wages were moderate, so were the prices. There were also holiday camps for children and a works council which was the most powerful in France. The activity was accompanied by a form of social progress, with kids who entered into apprenticeship and who could then become executives in the company during their career. We worked Peugeot, we slept Peugeot, we died Peugeot. It was an extremely closed system, a small world. His strong irredentist mentality fit well with this rather particular place, where the Peugeots had developed a form of principality.
How does this feeling of downgrading translate on the ground?
There is a form of fatalism. The town of Montbéliard was rather prosperous, with brand stores, barbers, which have now been replaced by chicha shops, kebabs. The municipality of Sochaux was one of the richest in France, with fine facilities, and it has become one of the poorest in the country. Of course, this is reflected at the ballot box. In Sochaux, the National Rally is close to 40% in national elections.
Pierre Moscovici was the PS deputy for the constituency of Sochaux. But locally, he chained electoral failures, which can be linked to the fall of the left among the working classes. The left and them no longer speak to each other, no longer understand each other. In 2005, the inhabitants of Sochaux voted massively “no” in the referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty. A vote contrary to the position of the left of the time, which had ensured that the opening allowed by the text to the countries of the East was not going to eliminate positions in Sochaux. That the cars manufactured there would only be for the local market, and would not flood France. However, this is what happened when, despite the no in 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy had parliament ratify the Lisbon Treaty three years later.
In addition to this fear of downgrading, you also mention cultural tensions that we find in Montbéliard…
There is a difficult cohabitation between two worlds. At one time, this large industrial company was also a machine for integrating populations that had been sought out in the Maghreb, in Turkey, in Yugoslavia. But Peugeot no longer plays that role. In town, a number of political activists have been replaced by imams. Economic downgrading is accompanied by a form of cultural insecurity which will perhaps be reflected in the ballot box. When you go to the Audincourt market, you have on one side a bar of “Peuge” retirees, who drink a beer at the counter and, a few meters further on, halal shops, and still a little further on a universe very strict.
A bit like in Gran Torino, where Clint Eastwood plays a former Ford worker who worships his car, the retirees of the Peuge worship their 250 GTIs, but also feel a little lonely. Their neighbors are no longer integrated into the Peugeot system as before. There are obviously cultural tensions, but that is expressed in a rather hidden, underlying way.