From the “Midi Rouge” to today, what remains of communism in Provence?

• After the municipal elections of 1977, the PCF was at its peak in the Bouches-du-Rhône where it controlled around fifty town halls.

  Today, 10 municipalities have communist mayors and the party has 320 elected officials, PCF or related in the department.

• "We often talk about municipal communism, with voters who can vote for their communist mayor without necessarily doing so in national elections", notes Jérémy Bacchi, PCF senator and departmental secretary.

Martigues, Port-de-Bouc, Ensuès, Le Rove, La Penne-sur-Huveaune, Belcodène, Nove, Roquevert, La Bouilladisse, Septème-les-Vallons… Jérémy Bacchi, senator and PCF departmental secretary for Bouches-du-Rhône made at the end of the last municipal elections, the accounts of the municipalities run by communists and relatives. “We lost Aubagne, it took 300 votes and missed Gardanne [winner by Hervé Granier, LR] while the left-wing parties won 70% of the votes”, adds Jérémy Bacchi. During these same last elections, the PCF, still in the Bouches-du-Rhône, also lost Arles.

A constant decline since the peak of the Party marked by the municipal elections of 1977, where he led nearly 1,500 municipalities in France, and "about fifty in the department", recalls Gérard Leidet, historian and president of the association Promemo (Provence memory and the working world) who directed the collective work

.

In the next legislative elections, in 1978, the PCF won 8 of the 11 constituencies.

"It gives the measure of the power of the Party at the time," notes the historian and retired teacher.

A power that has its roots in the labor structure of employment in the Bouches-du-Rhône (steel industry in Fos, trades in the port and mining basin of Gardanne, etc.), but also in history.

Historical roots

"The first congress of the Labor Movement in France took place in Marseilles in 1879", situates Gérard Leidet.

We are then in what historians will call the “Midi-Rouge”, a term which designates the attachment of the south of France to radicalism and republicanism, when the latter still clashed with royalism during the second half of the 19th century.

was also the name of a daily newspaper, attached to the PCF and published in Marseilles during the inter-war period and until the beginning of the 1950s. After the Liberation, the PCF then controlled two daily newspapers,

, therefore, and 

, a newspaper which still exists today and, although no longer really backed by the PCF, remains affiliated with it, and bears witness to the survival of communism.

Still, the PCF “has been on the decline since the early 1980s”.

But it declines less quickly in local than national polls.

“We are backing down, but less than some other left-wing parties,” observes Jérémy Bacchi, who believes that his party “is resisting quite well.

We often talk about municipal communism, with voters who can vote for their communist mayor without necessarily doing so in the national elections”.

The Bouches-du-Rhône, second federation of France in number of activists

The different structures of sociability that the communists were able to create throughout their history can partly explain this “resistance”.

“The FSGT, the Secours populaire, many summer camps, the CGT”, lists the historian, are indeed “Communist parasocieties, an offshoot of the PCF”, names Gérard Leidet.

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the PCF today still has 320 elected communists and relatives.

“We have two parliamentarians, a political group in the department and in the metropolis.

The PC is a political force that counts.

The first force on the left in terms of elected officials, and the Bouches-du-Rhône federation is the second in number of activists after the North, ”concludes the senator.

A force which however seems to be eroding as surely as the waves grind the shells into sand.

Successive waves that Gérard Leidet designates: “deindustrialization, individualization, failure of the union of the left of 1981 and fragmentation of the workforce”.

"But the communist thought of a more just society will remain", wants to believe the historian.

This Sunday, Fabien Roussel, the PCF candidate for the presidential election will be at a meeting in Marseille to expose this one.

Elections

Presidential 2022: In Marseille, communist activists find "a certain pride"

Politics

Family allowances: Senators want to return to a universal payment

• Fabien Roussel

• Communism

• Presidential election 2022

• French Communist Party (PCF)

• Marseilles

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