Council outnumbers observers by eight to one
Commune proceedings revive optimism in representative democracy
THE agenda was long but looked innocuous – matters of parking, planning, water and the regional Occitanie government. If the proceedings became too complicated, fractious or protracted, I could leave if I wanted.
Inspired by such exciting publicity, after nearly four years in the village, I decided I’d go and see how the commune’s municipal council operated.
I’d seen the agendas for the monthly meetings on the noticeboards around the village each month but never been.
In winter, even though darkness falls as much as an hour later than in the northern stretches of the United Kingdom, my nesting instincts have taken over well before the starting time of 19h30. In the spring and summer, the temptation is to retire to the roof terrace with an apéro, to enjoy the evening sunshine.
After keeping myself very much to myself for probably too long, my confidence in understanding French is improving. Admittedly, I still have to interrupt those who speak very quickly, asking them to slow down – which they manage to do for about two sentences at a time, but that’s far better than nothing. I recognise more words, whether that’s in Midi Libre or from television news bulletins; speech radio remains too scary although I’m feeling I should take that aural plunge before long.
I’d met the maire at the opening of the heritage trail, at the VE Day commemorations although – by being away each time – I’d missed all three of his October ‘newcomer’ receptions since I arrived. The time had come to see this particular aspect of French democracy at work.
With the village hall being refurbished, the meeting took place in a large room at the mairie.
I arrived a few minutes before the 19h30 start, only to be told the meeting hadn’t started. I went outside and walked to the book exchange cabinet with its own bus shelter, looking at romantic novels before finding a 1974 paperback edition of Part II of Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, covering the ‘New World’ from 1485 until 1688. The cover photograph came from the BBC costume drama Churchill’s People, showing a coven of courtiers with Sir Walter Raleigh in front of the throne of Queen Elizabeth I, standing, looking as if they were waiting to give ‘good counsel’. The image seemed apt.
When I heard the church clock strike the half hour, I went back. The council member sitting nearest the door beckoned me in.
Reassuring involvement
I looked round. Sixteen people were sitting at the tables almost forming a circle; ten men and six women, one of whom was clerk to the council. The maire was in the chair. Two or three seats were unoccupied. For a minute or two, I was the only occupant of one of the three seats in the ‘public gallery’; a neighbour joined me a few moments later. We were outnumbered eight to one.
I looked round the table, not recognising any of the faces. The average age was probably about 45, reassuringly young for political involvement in comparison to the UK. They were refreshingly ordinary, some in ‘corporate workwear’ probably having come straight from their jobs. No one was an exhibition of affluence.
A younger woman, probably in her late 30s, looked into the distance past those at the other side of the room, occasionally checking her phone and pulling her padded jacket tighter, against the cool, damp evening air. Opposite her sat a big, bearded, bruiser of a rugbyman feared as the heft of the second row of the scrum, an artisan in his 30s.
Each was sufficiently different and in some ways appeared stereotypical enough to be the characters in an episode of Inspecteur Barnaby, in the Hérault, rather than Midsomer. (Midsomer Murders and other ITV ‘procedurals’ such as Lewis and Poirot air every afternoon on the … TV channel.)
Tacitly, they cared about the commune and the community where they live. Their approach to local governance visibly apolitical. I thought about the words Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité engraved into the structure of every public building in France and their influence on those in government, at whatever level.
Putting the questions
Most agendas for the conseil municipale have six or eight ‘questions’; this one had 11.
The first was about parking – and the need for more near the church and place de la Croix, where more tourist accommodation has opened in the last 18 months – and the availability of land nearby. Competition for the limited street parking should end before long.
The next questions were about planning matters, with short reports from commune officials and comments from the maire. For the last, the maire recused himself from the chair. Other questions involved the local water supply and relationships with the Officanie regional government.
Within a few minutes, each was put to the vote. Contre? No hands went up. Abstentions? None again. Pour? Every hand went up. Immediately.
Decisions were unanimous and no questions were asked. The real discussions had probably taken place during the private meeting that preceded the public performance.
The proceedings lasted less than an hour.
Candour and closeness
While transparency and accountability, sensitive and confidential aspects of government – hopefully as few as possible – should be discussed behind closed doors. Candour is more likely in private.
Although local government is closest to the people and, in many jurisdictions, their first point of contact with public services, interest is disproportionately poor in many jurisdictions.
The centralisation that dramatically increased with prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s determination to curtail the power of England’s (Labour controlled) metropolitan councils in London, the West Midlands, Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, West and South Yorkshire, largely undermined local authorities by moving decisions involving more than 90 per cent of their budgets to London, leaving local councillors as little more than apologists for the Westminster government.
Even when councils in England were allowed to levy their own property taxes and take more decisions about local spending, public interest was poor. Local newspapers dutifully sent reporters to committee (and sub-committee) meetings, to cover discussions about subjects ranging from refuse collections, parking, planning and parks to when bars could open and close and when the local arts centre was permitted to stage dance performances.
Two or three elderly local residents would turn up at the council chamber in winter, to sleep through the proceedings while saving money on heating. Other than disgruntled individuals trying to overturn planning decisions, the two reporters at the press desk would usually outnumber those in the public gallery.
Press perspectives
The electorate would be aware of politics, but mostly in a national, Westminster perspective, from the national newspapers and broadcasters.
The perspective is very similar in France. Regional news programmes on France 3 TV regularly interview maires, including reports about what has been happening, but not explaining the context or trying to discover why something had happened. Coverage of individual communes, the rural communautés de communes, the urban agglos (agglomerations), the départements and the region is rare in Midi Libre.
France’s written constitution provides the country’s population from any threat of Thatcherite centralisation. It implicitly acknowledges that a continual healthy tension between the different layers of governance is as important a check-and-balance on each as the separation of powers. Whatever she may have said, Thatcher’s actions spoke far louder than words – and they were not democratic.
France, like the UK, the US, most of Europe and many other nations, is a representative democracy. ‘The people’ elect representatives who take decisions on our behalf. They have to be accountable for those decisions and ‘the people’ have to hold them to account. It’s very easy and comfortable to say that happens with elections. That’s partially true, but with elections several years apart, ‘the people’ – the electorate – should not become lazy.
Turning up to council meetings, whatever the level of government, is a reminder of our representatives’ responsibilities to the people of their constituencies. Questioning doesn’t always have to be formal. Simply being silent but present can be a reminder of responsibility.
Conversations and contributions
Standing for office means being available and ready to be stopped in the street to answer questions about (local) political decisions. Accountability is more than answering formal questions in public debates or hearings, it’s about the less formal conversations in the post office, supermarket or coffee shop, at the football match or the golf club. Integrity is important too.
I don’t have a vote in France, but that doesn’t mean I cannot contribute to the democratic life of the country. I can meet and talk to the maire or the other members of the conseil municipale. I can offer suggestions and ask questions as a resident, paying my property tax each year. I can go to the conseil meetings after seeing what’s on the agenda, to hear those short reports and see the votes being cast.
How much of the detail of that first meeting did I understand? Not a lot. I did however recognise the spirit of the occasion, the ethos of those sitting around the table and the importance of the event in the political, economic and social structure of both commune and country.
If this one experience reflects the wider picture, the absence of political tribalism at the commune level in France is also refreshingly healthy.
If I’d been covering the meeting as a local journalist, I would have had to list the questions, perhaps explain the context and arguments and recording each decision. I would not have been distracted by the ‘process stories’ of who was opposing particular measures or why, whether the stance was genuine or the posturing demanded by tribal dogma.
Local priorities
The day after the meeting, Midi Libre reported that very small communes in the ‘high’ Languedoc which had, for decades, benefited from tourism, holiday and second homes were – with leadership from their maires – having to reclaim properties and facilities for themselves. The report didn’t mention that formal and informal communication between the commune residents and their conseils municipals was also crucial to this policy change and their efforts to prevent settlements with as few as 50 inhabitants from disappearing altogether.
Involvement is not about personal selfishness, but acknowledging the local collective and being a polite part of it. Integration is not dissimilar.
The agenda items may – in global terms – have been genuinely parochial but that does not dimish their importance. Similarly, the proceedings were, and are, as important to the principles of representative democracy as any parliament or legislature. Putting my notebook in my bag beside Churchill’s History, I remembered I had been witnessing representative democracy in action, in person, a few metres away, in the same room.
With so many journalist colleagues furiously covering process stories around the world’s many elections in 2024, the genuine simplicity and committment of those most humble representatives taking decisions with confidence but without any rancour whatsoever refuelled my optimism in ‘the least worst form of government’.