The 21-year-old Parisian beauty taking on the militant

par Sarah Oliver

Source : The Mail on Sunday

Sabine Herold is easy to spot as she emerges from the elite Institut des Sciences Poli-tiques on the Left Bank. In a scruffy throng of students, she is wearing a smart black trouser suit and a pair of demure pearl earrings. There's a dusting of make-up on her skin, and her long oval fingernails are painted a rather matronly oyster. She is brimming with self-confidence, and only the nibbled skin around her nails offers any clue as to the extraordinary circumstances she now finds herself in. `The new Joan of Arc', trumpeted the prestigious Le Figaro magazine as it hailed the 21-year-old political science student as the darling of the French Right - the girl who is standing up to the trade unions paralysing France and crippling the country's economy in protest at proposed economic reform.

Today she will lead her biggest anti-union demonstration yet. Her political discussion group, Liberté, J'Ecris Ton Nom (Liberty, I write your name), has dispatched half a million mail shots and 300,000 faxes. Sabine has spent the week on the French radio and television circuit and is being watched closely by the French Press, which is traditionally staffed by Left-wing writers and intellectuals. After another week of general strikes, which have brought chaos to the is still asleep and we must wake her up before it's too late.

Cities barricaded and buildings set ablaze

`I am a liberalist because I believe it promotes the individual ahead of the group, and that encourages independence and entrepreneurial spirit.' She is an articulate and engaging speaker. It is what drew an audience of 2,000 to that first anti-union rally, held the same day as hundreds of thousands of strikers staged a showpiece march through the French capital in protest at pension reforms currently before parliament.

`We were bored with them, bored with no transport, bored with the disruption to the exams which will affect the rest of our lives,' she says. `We said we can talk or we can act. I think people were surprised that we demonstrated against the unions.'

The Liberté demonstration was little more than a footnote in the following day's papers but it brought Sabine to the attention of Le Figaro's news magazine. She is sweetly, if somewhat naively, baffled by the fact that the coverage of Liberté has focused on her alone - but with her immaculate wardrobe, glossy brown hair and startling, dark blue eyes, it's not hard to see why.

But it comes at no small risk to herself. Not realising that she would become a figurehead, Sabine allowed her mobile number to be printed on all the 130,000 leaflets advertising the first demo against the Communist-led CGT and fellow hardliners Force Ouvrière.

Within days she received a lives of millions in Paris and the provinces, support for her is growing. To those who remember the industrial strife of the Seventies, the power and extremism of the trade unions in France will be horribly familiar and a grim warning of what life could be like under Giscard d'Estaing's federal European constitution. The younger generation must find the sort of mayhem which is common-place in France inexplicable. For despite its role at the centre of Europe, France's unions still enjoy the political influence and disruptive force that has not been seen in Britain for more than 20 years.

The parallels with the British experience are not lost on the French. Sabine has already been nicknamed Mademoiselle Thatcher, and she admits the former British prime minister has been an inspiration to her.

Sabine is an unlikely political heavyweight. She has yet to graduate and her most pressing problem is how to pay her burgeoning mobile phone bill on a student budget. But since her first anti-strike speech on May 25, Sabine has become the voice of a population wearied by lightning strikes known as `coups de poing' (punches), which have seen cities barricaded, buildings set ablaze, power supplies cut, schools and universities closed, airports shut, rail, bus and underground services axed and tons of rubbish festering in the streets.

Sitting by the banks of the Seine, Sabine says: `I don't loathe all our unions but I detest those with Communist roots which offer only violence and no compromise - they oppose every-thing on principle and do not accept that reform is required if France is not to collapse. Francevoicemail message saying she was going to be beaten up unless she stopped. She traced the number to the office of a French rail union, which was horrified but unable to identify the culprit. She made a formal complaint to the police. `For days afterwards I was terrified every time I stepped out of my flat.

`I genuinely wondered if I would be harmed and asked myself what kind of people would make such threats against anybody who opposed them.'

`I was terrified I would be harmed'

Sabine's controversial public profile has also affected her family: her mother Sonia, 54, a Latin and French teacher, and her father Bernard, 57, a lecturer in computer science, who live in a village near Reims. `Most teachers strike, but my mother does not. Now some col-leagues have stopped speaking to her. It seems she is being ostracised because of what I am doing. Of course I'm worried that this might harm my family, but I can't stop because I truly believe in what I am doing.

`My mother is a strong woman and my father is proud of his daughter, as most fathers are. They will be fine, I'm sure, but I had to go home last weekend to talk it all over with them.
`It's strange because as a family we are an apolitical lot.

They are centre Right by nature and tradition, but we almost never discuss politics round the dinner table. It's not as if I was politicised by them at an early age. I applied to Sciences Po [the familiar name for the institute] because it was a Grande Ecole [the French equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge] and when they make you an offer you don't say no.'

She began studying in Paris at 18, pursuing a childhood dream of entering the judiciary. It was there she met the classical liberalist who would become her best friend and mentor - Edouard Fillias. When he founded Liberté to promote his ideas, she joined and became its spokesperson. From that point onwards she devoured classic political texts and the work of liberal thinkers. Sabine has served internships in the French civil service and studied for a year at Birmingham University (`dangerous and ugly but I loved it'), and also worked for the French Trade Commission in Hong Kong.

So what's her verdict on Britain? `France is lagging 20 years behind you' and Tony Blair is `a good man, I just don't under-stand what he's doing on the Left. He's a liberalist if ever I saw one.

`Britain has a strong work ethic. If people want to work, they can. In France there is no value put on work and people are always looking for a way to get out of it. We have let the unionised minority take us hostage.'

Her contemporary idols are Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar and his Portuguese counterpart, Antonio Guterres. They are 'inspirational and impressive men strong, intelligent and coherent speakers and thinkers'. But of course no one surpasses Baroness Thatcher. `She was a gifted reformer. She broke the unions and showed strength of spirit. She was a brilliant leader and I hope to meet her.' The writing of Friedrich Hayek, one of Lady Thatcher's favoured political philosophers, played a formative role in Sabine's politicisation.

Surprisingly, for one whose life is permeated by politics, it is not Sabine's intention to pursue it immediately as a career. After she graduates later this month, she hopes to find a place at a business school and continue her education for two more years.

`Politics maybe but later. I am too young,' she says. `Before talking, you need to know what you want to say. You should not be an apparatchik of politics; it should not be your job. If you depend on politics, then you will do anything to get elected and that is not healthy. I believe people should succeed outside first.'

Today her Press calls are in bars and cafes. She's accessible and friendly, but as she falls under the spotlight of French media giants and garners an increasing amount of popular support, this must change. Sabine is keento stress she retains the support and friendship of all those at Liberté who watch her being feted by the media while they remain labelled as student activists.

Already it is costing her dear in her private life. She's struggling on four or five hours' sleep a night and it has been weeks since she indulged in her favourite pastime of throwing a five-course dinner party for friends. It's also killing any chance of romance.

`Thatcher was a gifted reformer'

She is single, and although she `has an eye' on a fellow student, she says: `I'm always on the phone like a businessman so I'm not sure I look very feminine.'

As I left her she was returning to her studio flat to write a dissertation. The following day she had a law class at 8am. `I can always get to class at 9am and tell them I'm late because of disruption from the strikes,' she says.

I suggested that if she won her battle with the unions, she would be doing herself out of an excuse. `Oof, of course,' she replies, giggling. `But it's a price worth paying, non?'