In Indre, one of the least densely populated departments in France, farmland stretches for miles. During the European elections, the far right swept the board, taking 45% of the votes cast. In all the municipalities – except one where the Reconquête party won – the list led by Jordan Bardella came out on top. The same success was seen in the first round of the legislative elections on June 30: the two RN candidates in the department’s two constituencies came in first place with more than 40% of the vote. An unprecedented triumph in a territory once divided between the center-left and the center-right.
“The RN wanted to focus on rurality,” explains Claire Lemercier, historian and research director at the CNRS, co-author of The value of public service (La Découverte, 2021). To convince them, their speech was as follows: ‘You are abandoned, there are no more public services’.” In his work France after (Seuil, 2023), political scientist Jérôme Fourquet speaks of the disappearance of public services as an electoral fuel for the RN in small towns and villages, “painfully experienced by local populations and their elected representatives”. And Indre is no exception to this phenomenon, between the closure of certain post offices, the decline of public transport and difficult access to care.
One of the worst medical deserts
“Le Blanc vois rouge”. In mid-September 2018, the slogan resonates on the square of the town of Le Blanc, 6,500 inhabitants. There are nearly 4,000 of them pounding the pavement, dressed in red, to demonstrate against the closure of one of the last two maternity hospitals in the department. The threat had been looming for several years. Lost in the west of Indre, the sub-prefecture has become the symbol of the fight against medical desertification.
Occupation of the premises by a hundred people for several days, simulation of births on the motorway… Despite the strong local mobilisation, led by the collective C’est pas demain la veille, the maternity ward ceased to operate in October. The Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, then mentioned “very bad practices” revealed in an “audit”, added to the lack of staff which had led to the temporary closure of the maternity ward since June.
Since then, pregnant women have had to drive for an hour to Châteauroux, or cross the Vienne to Poitiers or Châtellerault, in order to give birth. In Le Blanc, since the hospital was taken over in 2017 and the maternity unit closed the following year, the RN vote has jumped more than five points above the national average. “The feeling of abandonment among residents, which fuels the far-right vote, is all the stronger when it concerns health,” notes Claire Lemercier.
Especially since Indre is one of the worst medical deserts in France. In 2022, the department had fewer than 120 specialists in regular activity per 100,000 inhabitants. What about the hospital? Faced with worrying dysfunctions and waiting times sometimes amounting to several dozen hours, the mayor of Châteauroux, Gil Avérous, asked his agents at the end of March to “strongly advise” residents against going to the emergency room.
Abandoned railway network
At first glance, Indre is well served by public transport. The railway line from Aubrais-Orléans (Loiret) to Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) – which is part of the major Paris-Toulouse axis – crosses the heart of the department. Issoudun, Châteauroux, Argenton-sur-Creuse… Fifty years ago, it was at the cutting edge of modernity, one of the fastest in France. Not anymore. “Today, we are probably, along with Clermont-Ferrand, the slowest line in France”, regrets André Laignel, mayor of Issoudun and vice-president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
“Around 1900, there were many small train lines that stopped everywhere,” recalls historian Claire Lemercier. “But since 1970, we have observed a gradual closure of these lines or, more perniciously, a reduction in the number of small stations served.” Of the Indre rail network, there are only twelve passenger service points left – only 5% of the municipalities – compared to 75 at its peak at the beginning of the 20th century. “Seeing a train no longer stop in your town also fosters the feeling of abandonment,” she analyses.
In a department that covers nearly 6,800 km2, where 67% of the land is used for agriculture, the car appears to be the only alternative. In 2020, 82.5% of Indre residents voted for it to get to work, compared to 77% in 2009. While the RN has positioned itself as a defender of “all cars”, promising to lower the VAT rate from 20% to 5.5% on the price at the pump, “the public authorities are placing motorists under contradictory injunctions, explains Luc Rouban, political scientist at Cevipof. On the one hand, you have to be mobile for your work, but on the other, they impose environmental standards that do not correspond to the daily lives of these residents.”
Feeling of insecurity
And then there is this black series, which hit Châteauroux between April and June 2024: four homicides in 40 days. Fights, drug trafficking, alcohol consumption… The motives are varied. The situation worried the authorities, as well as the inhabitants. “This series of events strongly impacted opinion in Châteauroux, and in the entire department”, recognizes André Laignel.
“The media coverage of delinquency in the countryside has increased,” recalls Claire Lemercier. “The RN has made it its business.” The death of Matisse, a 15-year-old teenager stabbed to death by another minor at the end of April in Châteauroux, was particularly publicized. In a video published on X (ex-Twitter), Jordan Bardella made him “the new victim of a senseless migration policy.”
In rural areas, insecurity is growing. It’s a little tune that has been rising for several years. “The abandonment of community policing is the cause,” grumbles the vice-president of the AMF. At the end of December 2023, nearly 70 demonstrators protested in front of the Châteauroux police station. The aim of the mobilization: to request reinforcements of 25 additional personnel. The Alliance de l’Indre police union has been warning about the deterioration of the situation for several years. Between 2003 and 2019, the number of police officers at the police station was halved. Faced with this lack of resources, crime increased by 14% between the first five months of 2023 and 2024 in Châteauroux.
“They don’t deserve a wicket”
Dressed in a blue and yellow ensemble, crisscrossing villages and bell towers, the postman is the only daily visit for many inhabitants. In these rural areas, he retains a social role. The Post Offices, for their part, serve as the last meeting places and remain appreciated by a majority of French people.
But Indre has not escaped the consecutive closures of local La Poste branches. Between 2016 and 2021, thirteen offices closed. In the territory, there are only about thirty left. “A symbolic and practical abandonment, especially for those who need it most (elderly people, people without vehicles)”, estimates Claire Lemercier. Replacement by commercial relays, by France services premises… “The inhabitants of small villages perceive that they do not even deserve a counter, she specifies. Through the closure of these offices, they have the feeling that the Republic is moving away from them.”
“The State is breaking away from the territories, it no longer has physical relays on the ground,” says Luc Rouban. Because the Post Offices are not the only ones affected by these closures in Berry: the same is true for courts, Pôle emploi or health insurance offices, tax centers, etc. All spaces that participated – on a small scale – in the creation of social links. “The rate of meeting places is very correlated with the RN vote, points out Claire Lemercier. It is especially prosperous in the municipalities where residents no longer have the opportunity to meet.”
The rural school and the “forgotten of the Republic”
“The lack of social cohesion is also reflected in the management of the school, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively,” says Luc Rouban. “We feel like we are forgotten by the Republic”: in a letter addressed to the Ministry of National Education in February 2024, the mayor of Niherne, a small town of 1,525 souls, warns of the closure of a new class. A first had already taken place in 2021.
Despite a drop in numbers, the mayor is keen to point out that “the strictly accounting policy applied to the school map results in sacrificing the educational future of our rural school.” In Niherne, the RN vote soared after the closure of a class, already in 2014. Since then, the far-right party has peaked on average eight points above the national scale. In the second round of the presidential election in 2022, Marine Le Pen came out on top.
In the last three years, ten classes have closed in Indre, to which six more will be added next year. And shops, in turn, are gradually deserting the centres of small villages. In five years, thirteen bakeries and as many hair salons have disappeared in the Berry region.
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