He is undoubtedly one of the Anglo-Saxon authors who best knows France and its turpitudes. For twelve years, the historian Gavin Mortimer has lived in Paris, from where he observes political life (but also sport and questions of terrorism) for the British magazine The Spectator. For L’Express, he analyzes the events that shook France after the death of young Nahel, killed at close range by a police officer during an arrest on June 27.
According to him, “Emmanuel Macron was elected after three successive presidencies which showed weakness by refusing to take care of this important part of society which no longer feels obliged to comply with the laws. But it is not enough, as has been the case for twenty years, to throw money at the poorest. One has to wonder why this large proportion of young French people, generally from ethnic minorities, have this feeling towards France. a thorough examination of this parallel society that has developed in this country. Otherwise such uprisings will happen again.” Interview.
L’Express: At the microphone of France Inter, Camille Chaize, the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, considered that the possible criminal record of Nahel was not the subject of the debate. What do you think it is?
Gavin Mortimer : I join her. To conduct the investigation and therefore do justice to this case, the question is not whether Nahel had a criminal record or not. The priority is to determine whether the police reaction was proportionate in this situation. According to the video images of the scene that many people have already seen, it seems that it was disproportionate. However, it is obvious that it is up to the investigators to determine this with certainty, in particular by comparing with other images, taken from a different angle by other witnesses.
During the demonstrations that I was able to follow, the yellow vests, the protests against the health pass, the marches for pensions, the reaction of the police seemed to me essentially proportionate when some were very aggressive and threatening towards them. This is the question to ask in such dramas: did the police feel that their lives were in danger?
The UN has called on France to “seriously address the deep problems of racism among law enforcement”. Isn’t that another question to ask?
I think the French police are generally doing a good job. But it’s true, last year thirteen people were killed, which is too many. Any number is too large, and officers who break the law and act disproportionately should, of course, be disciplined.
Let’s not mix everything up: part of the far left is nurturing a vendetta against the police. But we must not forget the bravery of some, such as that of Constable Arnaud Beltrame, or all those who intervened during the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Let’s not forget either that the police are under pressure. In 2021, the authorities recorded 27,000 refusals to comply. Above all, it is urgent to reassess the training of police forces in the light of reality and the situations they have to face in the exercise of their profession.
I repeat, 13 dead is too many. But it is important that the forces of law and order are supported by the government, just as it is essential that a thorough investigation is carried out into Nahel’s death, with discipline – that is the key. We can blame the police to a certain degree, but we must not lose sight of what these refusals to comply and these insurgencies mean…
What do they mean?
These are acts of contestation not only of the authority of the police, but also of the State, of the government, of the Republic in general. It’s a way of saying: “No, we don’t respect France”. They are the translation of what you, French, call the “lost territories of the Republic”. It has been going on for twenty years. There was Jacques Chirac, then the bling-bling President Nicolas Sarkozy who arrived in 2007 after the 2005 riots promising to resolve the situation. A desaster.
Emmanuel Macron was elected after three successive presidencies which showed weakness by refusing to deal with this important part of society which no longer feels obliged to comply with the law. But it is not enough, as has been the case for twenty years, to throw money at the poorest. We have to wonder why this large proportion of young French people, generally from ethnic minorities, feel this way about France. Conduct an in-depth examination of this parallel society that has developed in this country. Otherwise such uprisings will happen again.
You wrote that Emmanuel Macron does not inspire the people, that he angers them…
The president has done good things, especially in the face of Islamic extremism. But one of the advantages of being an Englishman in France is that people talk to you about French politics in ways they wouldn’t talk to each other. What comes up most often is that the French despise President Macron as much as they feel despised by him. He is an enarque, from a very narrow system, like a large part of the French political class.
In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak led a very privileged life. I don’t know if he really understands the daily needs of Britons and the problems facing the working class. It’s a bit the same thing in France. Emmanuel Macron is handicapped by what he is. He is only five weeks older than Volodymyr Zelensky, who is dealing with an outside aggressor and seems capable of judging the mood of his people. In France, Emmanuel Macron does not seem able to communicate with the people he chairs…
Nahel’s death is indicative of the deep divisions that exist in France. It’s very dangerous. The right is convinced that the words of the president (who described Nahel’s death as “inexcusable” and “inexplicable”) or of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne prejudge the results of the upcoming investigation. And the left considers that Emmanuel Macron is at the head of a totalitarian regime… I think that the riots that we are experiencing really constitute the most serious and dangerous crisis of his presidency, because it could well spiral out of control.
That’s to say ?
In 2005, riots spread to the rest of France after police threw grenades at mosques. This is what had generated the conflagration and the spread of the riots. In the context of 2023, if a police car accidentally hits a person, it can go very quickly. But the current situation worries me more than the one France experienced in 2005. At the time, there were already cell phones, but not Youtube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat. These platforms now allow demonstrators to better organize themselves, even to ambush the police. Advances in technology may well cause the riots of 2023 to spread even more than twenty years ago. There’s also the timing, which couldn’t have been worse. In 2005, the riots started in October. It was winter. It was dark at night. Today, this happens in the summer, during school holidays. Most of the children in these neighborhoods don’t go on vacation, they are bored… It’s fertile ground for fire.
The President of the Republic called “all parents to responsibility” who, according to him, must keep their children at home…
It seems naive to me. I don’t think he is aware of the environment in which these young people live. Many of these families work very hard. Some parents have two jobs, work all day and are poorly paid. They don’t have time to take care of their children, who remain more or less alone with their big brother or big sister. I don’t believe that will work. Just as I think it is utopian to believe that declaring a state of emergency will change anything. On the contrary, it would be perceived as an unnecessary provocation.
Some observers have pointed to selective indignation from part of the left, and from certain artists. What do you think ?
I completely agree. The murder of a young boy from the suburbs and that of a 12-year-old child, like that of Lola in October, should move the same way. They are two young people whose lives were tragically cut short. I do not understand how one can address a message of sympathy to one and not to the other. It is hypocrisy and, more seriously, a factor of division and anger. During the yellow vests crisis, I was very surprised to see that the French actors, always quick to say something about what is tragic elsewhere in the world, did not have a word for the injured demonstrators.
Yes, we have noted the political recovery of the Le Pen camp. But what the left does is also recovery. Unfortunately, I believe we owe this evenly shared trend to social media. In most Western countries, including France, Twitter seems to have reduced the mental age of our politicians to that of a 12-year-old child. They only utter insults and accuse the opposing camp instead of keeping the French informed of the results of the investigation and calling for respect for the family of the deceased. This is not the time for debate. I come back to my previous comment: hoaxing, hypocrisy, insults add to the public’s anger and increase the risk that the situation will become unmanageable.
Do you think the parallel with the death of George Floyd is relevant?
The analogy between the American and French situation seems very dangerous to me because it amounts to looking at the events which are shaking France through the prism of a country which is showing encouraging signs of drifting towards a kind of civil war. In France, this type of drama remains rare, and fortunately. Yes, there is a problem with a minority of police officers. But I think the level of violence and fatal shootings in America are really harder to control than in France and increasingly so.
You have described a France fractured on all sides. Should we understand that this France is irreconcilable?
The fundamental question that Western Europe, including France, must ask itself concerns its immigration. Since the beginning of the year, around 12,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean according to Frontex. They are mostly young men from countries whose culture is radically different from European values. For example, there are tensions over the rights of LGBT people depending on the religion. But governments prefer to bury their heads in the sand on these issues, as if they did not arise. The result is the division of society into ghettos. In the 1950s and 1960s, many migrants came from Jamaica, the Caribbean, but also from India and Pakistan. They faced racism, but they were able to integrate and enriched British culture enormously.
In the United States, inter-ethnic relations seem to have declined in recent years. And I fear that will happen in Europe. In England, we celebrate diversity, but this is no longer the case today. We had cowardly, short-sighted leaders who thought that migrants were there to work and contribute to the economy of their countries. And that’s true ! England wouldn’t exist without its hard-working immigrant community. But at the same time, when you look at the protests for the retreats, for example, the processions are mostly made up of white people. It seems that our mixed societies are no longer satisfied with this proposal…