In Hénin-Beaumont, the government brandishes industry as an anti-RN weapon

2023-12-01 22:08:19

“Where are the elected representatives of the RN? Is there anyone from the town hall? » Olivier Véran comes out of his ministerial sedan, greets the prefect of Hauts-de-France, and asks the question, in a falsely ingenuous tone. The government spokesperson, accompanied by the Minister for Industry, Roland Lescure, was traveling this Friday, December 1, to Hénin-Beaumont, in Pas-de-Calais.

To welcome them, as is the Republican tradition, local elected officials from the Socialist Party (PS), the Les Républicains party (LR), or the Renaissance majority are present, but no elected officials from the National Rally (RN). However, since 2014 and the victory of Steeve Briois at town hall (re-elected in 2020), Hénin-Beaumont has become the municipal showcase of the RN. And, since 2017, Marine Le Pen has been a deputy for the constituency.

Officially, the visit of the two ministers is part of Industry Week, organized by the government, and it concerns the visit to a logistics company and the Louis-Pasteur vocational high school in the city. But it obviously also has a very political dimension. The choice of this town of 25,000 inhabitants was not made at random. A few months before the European elections in June 2024, where the far right is in the lead in the polls, the government duo wanted to demonstrate that industrial policy can be a response to French tensions and the rise of the RN.

“A factory that opens recreates hope”

Hénin-Beaumont, like other towns in the former mining basin of Pas-de-Calais, hit by the crisis and with an unemployment rate higher than the national level, symbolizes in its own way the deindustrialization which has affected France since the 1970s.

However, the government relies on a balance sheet in this matter. Some three hundred factories have been created in six years and one hundred and twenty thousand jobs filled since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017. “The industry is a political weapon against anger. A factory that closes is fuel for anger and for the RN; a factory that opens recreates hope and confidence among the French”says Roland Lescure, citing two recent examples in the North, the Buitoni factory in Caudry, about to be taken over by the Italian group Italpizza, or the Tereos sugar factory in Escaudoeuvres, taken over by the Belgian Agristo. “The National Front was born in the deindustrialization of the 1980s, but in recent years, France has been reindustrializing, it is becoming attractive again, it is good for the territories, and that the RN cannot recognize”adds Olivier Véran.

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