French town bans May Day as ultra-right gains first taste of power

The RN is flexing its power against all symbols. In Lievin, the mayor canceled May Day celebrations. In Harnes, the new mayor removed the European flag (as well as the Ukrainian one) from the front of the town hall.

In Liévin, one of the municipalities in the former mining basin south of Lille, the newly elected mayor from the National Rally (RN), Dany Paiva, canceled the traditional May Day ceremony, which also commemorated the 42 miners who died in the 1974 explosion in shafts 3 and 3 bis – a tragedy that led to the permanent shutdown of the mine.

“Today, the ceremony is used by the unions to engage in political propaganda on a national level,” the mayor claimed, “and the purpose of the unions is not to hold open-air events.”

Liévin is one of 12 municipalities in the Pas-de-Calais department that were won by the far right in the latest municipal elections, bringing the number of towns now led by the RN to 14 in an area with a long working-class history. Located between Lens and Douai, the region has been recognized by UNESCO since 2012 as a World Heritage Site for the values it represented.

Since the postwar period, Liévin had elected mayors exclusively from the French Communist Party (PCF), the French........

© Il Manifesto Global