A miracle of mass catering

Kate Hudson reports from the 36th Congress of the French Communist Party in Paris

Confit duck legs for a thousand? No problem. The French Communist Party displayed its strengths this week in more ways than one. Its 36th Congress opened in the Docks d’Aubervilliers, a former industrial estate on the northern fringes of Paris served by the newly-opened and appropriately-named Metro station, Front Populaire.
Arriving by Eurostar across the snowy fields of northern France, it was a delight to join the 800 delegates and 100 foreign guests for lunch in a cavernous hall where curiously the ceiling twinkled with stars. Maybe this was the venue’s usual decoration – or maybe it was designed for the event itself, to chime with the title of the main conference document ‘Il est grand temps de rallumer les étoiles…’. Maybe only the French could choose such a beautiful quote from Guillaume Apollinaire for their 1,628 line discussion paper. And maybe only the French could spend three days discussing it line by line, with delegates springing up from their tables to speak from one of the many mikes dotted around the conference hall. Nuances of the discussion were doubtless lost on me, but what was clear was the huge enthusiasm for their work, an overwhelming endorsement for continuing the party’s participation as the largest component of the Left Front (Front de Gauche) project, with the Parti de Gauche and a number of other left groups. This participation has restored support for the party and its allies to levels last seen over a decade ago. Indeed, last year’s presidential election saw the Front de Gauche candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon poll almost 4 million votes, coming in fourth. The last time this happened was in 1981 when PCF leader Georges Marchais came in fourth on almost 4 and a half million.
Indeed, Melenchon himself made a visit to the Congress to bring solidarity greetings, immediately swamped by a sea of TV cameras. Lower profile, but more interesting politically – as unexpected by me – was the quiet appearance in the guest seats next to me of Olivier Besancenot, the famous revolutionary postman who gained over a million votes for the LCR (French section of the Fourth International) in the 2007 presidential elections. The LCR dissolved itself into the formation of the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA) in 2008. The NPA has been largely superseded by the Front de Gauche in electoral terms, and while the NPA has stood aloof from Front de Gauche, many former NPA members have nevertheless moved over. I don’t know whether we should read anything into Besancenot’s presence there – but he did have positive memories of his participation at the Coalition of Resistance’s Europe Against Austerity conference in London in October 2011. As I recall he made a barnstorming speech.
So the PCF seems set to continue with its modest growth and strong orientation to being a credible party to the left of the Socialists, abandoning its previous orientation to be the Socialists’ junior partner, come what may. It is now confident and optimistic. With 134,000 members and a reasonable presence across all elected institutions nationally, and a strong commitment to the European Left Party project of solidarity and cooperation across Europe, it is entitled to be so.