Maybe it’s his Mediterranean side. Laure Lavalette has a submachine gun output. Wednesday February 15, the RN deputy from Var and spokesperson for the group in the National Assembly is unstoppable, guest of the morning of France Info. In her white suit jacket, the Varoise connects the answers, speaks with her hands, perfectly manicured. Tit for tat, the talkative brunette handles snappy formulas and elements of language. On the menu for discussion: pension reform. Marine Le Pen appointed the deputy rapporteur for the text for her group a few weeks earlier. On this explosive file, where the RN intends to score points by reaping the fruits of social anger, the post is a mark of confidence.
At 46, Laure Lavalette is one of the new emblematic faces of the National Rally. The brown square and the repartee of this mother, as comfortable on television sets as in the hemicycle, perfectly embody this new “de-demonized” RN that Marine Le Pen intends to show at the Palais-Bourbon. In this register, Lavalette is a sniper: able to shoot all sides, in two minutes flat. This Wednesday, February 15, still at the microphone of her desk, she accuses the executive “of confusing the public debate”, LR “of acting with variable geometry” and the Nupes of “making the French women feel guilty”, on their desire for motherhood . “Insolent” on the edges (“it was written on my reports”, recognizes the person concerned with L’Express), but always smiling even in the attack, Laure Lavalette takes the light. A national explosion which crowns nearly thirty years of commitment to the extreme right, and which began in the violence of small student groups.
Skinheads, leather jackets and commandos
It seems far, very far, the time when Laure Lavalette was the muse of another group, less tie and polite than the elected Lepenists of 2022. Between 1996 and 1998, the fights and the tensions caused by her group of activists have nevertheless filled the columns of the regional press and made the happiness of the various facts of the newspaper South West. The young woman still lived in the Bordeaux area.
Laure Lavalette is 20 years old and, in the photos of the time, already wears the same plunging square and the same proud look. In 1996, the law student reigns over a small band of big arms with short hair. The Student Renewal, a nationalist and identity movement, university branch of the National Youth Front (FNJ) occupies his days and nights, to the detriment of his studies. Among the Lavalettes, commitment is a family affair: his father, Jean-Philippe, is a former member of the New Order, the far-right movement behind the creation of the National Front. A historic activist from the South-West too, from all the polls, on the list of municipal authorities in Bordeaux, candidate for the legislative and departmental elections…
The young woman quickly took on responsibilities in the student movement: vice-president of the Bordeaux section, then president in 1998. It was the era of Fred Perry bombers and polo shirts, well, not for everyone. “I didn’t have bombers but a sexy leather jacket”, claims the ex-activist. The only girl in the group, Laure Lavette is both the leader and the protege of these activists accustomed to tense collages and brawls. “She had her big arms around her, some of which came from the GUD”, recalls a former member of Unef-ID, the left-wing union which then opposed nationalist students on a daily basis. The violent far-right group often comes to lend a hand to the future deputy.
Activism was then far from being a good child, as evidenced by the archives consulted by L’Express. On October 9, 1996, the hall of the Bordeaux III university was saturated with tear gas. It’s 3:30 p.m., the chairs are flying and the tables are being smashed with metal bars. “These fanatics were aggressive, equipped as paramilitaries and the tear gas canisters they used should not be on the market”, explained the former president of the university, Anne-Marie Cocula. One day in February 1996, while she was putting up posters on campus with other Renewal comrades, Laure Lavalette was beaten up in front of the cafeteria. The attack is directly attributed to the Scalp, the squarely anti-Le Pen Section. Then began a long period of violence and commando operations in the corridors of Bordeaux III. To avenge the aggression, the Student Renewal “calls on big arms from Paris”, observed at the time Fabrice Rouderies, one of the leaders of the group.
Tridentine Rite and Mass in Latin
The Crous restaurant, the Forum, is regularly the scene of these clashes. In 1996, the students of the Movement of Young Socialists and the Unef were injured in the arches and forehead by those of the Student Renewal. The Unef immediately takes legal action and accuses the only elected member of the group, Laure Lavalette, of having “brought the attackers and the weapons back” inside the campus. Today, the MP claims to have “no memory” of this violent episode. In March 1998, still inside the university restaurant, a member of the Student Renewal even pulled out a gun during a clash between skinheads close to the movement and far-left activists. “Laure Lavalette was there. I see her again with them”, insists a witness. What would have happened without the intervention of the Pessac police? Twenty-five years later, MNA Lavalette is suddenly less talkative when discussing those troubled years. “It was violent but it came from both sides,” defends the now spokesperson for the group.
The chosen one masters the art of dodging. She prefers to pour out her twelve-year break away from politics (during which she had five children) rather than recall her stay of a few months with Bruno Mégret, after the split in 1999. This traditionalist Catholic – she attends all Sundays at Mass in Latin, and claims the Tridentine rite, a liturgy questioned by the pope in 2021 – would also like to make people forget their past positions on social issues. In 2014, the Varoise had signed a charter initiated by La Manif pour tous, in which the last point proposed “to repeal the law on abortion in the long term”. Laure Lavalette claims today to have changed her mind, she who voted against the constitutionalization of abortion, in November 2022.
Her conservative line kept her away from Paris and responsibilities for a long time. “For years, she was completely tricarde”, recalls an influential elected Lepenist from the South-East, who swears that “Marine Le Pen could not supervise her”. Too Catholic, too much on a Marion Maréchal line, too big a mouth… “I was very little Parisian”, evacuates the Toulonnaise, without dwelling on her years of disgrace. “She has the ear of Marine Le Pen”, swears today Thomas Ménagé, co-rapporteur of the text on pensions. The other face of the RN on the issue ensures that it gets along wonderfully with this historic activist. In private, however, his omnipresence in the media and his ability to grab a microphone earned him enmity in the group. “She annoys more than one, you have to deflate her,” warns one of his colleagues, microphone off. Rest assured: if it is still common to come across the MP with a leather jacket over her shoulders, there is no longer any question of iron bars.