Mademoiselle Thatcher takes on the left

Source : The Sunday Times

Sabine Herold, the beautiful young student confronting France's unions, tells Susan Bell how she became radicalised. Beatified as the new Joan of Arc on a crusade to save the French from attack by the nation's mighty unions, Sabine Herold is a rare commodity for France's right wing. This is a country where, for most, being a student means being politically correct with a capital P and C. Students of Herold's generation are anti-war, anti- globalisation and anti-American. But this beautiful, unabashed libertarian has become a mascot for a population wearied by public service strikes. She says her political heroes are Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Herold has branded as "reactionary egotists" the striking unions that are crippling France over pension reform. During the Iraq war she took the almost unheard-of step of demonstrating in front of the US embassy in Paris in a gesture of solidarity with America. Over a glass of mineral water on the Boulevard Saint Germain, Herold, 21, who studies at the elite Institut des Sciences Politiques, explained how she arrived at views so radically different from those of her peers. "Libertarianism is almost a dirty word in France," she said. "Our newspapers are so left wing that it constantly gets a bad press. In fact, I find if one explains its tenets to the average French person he will agree with you, but as soon as you mention the word, people draw back in horror."

While her fellow students consider her a lost cause, her opinions have provoked violent reactions among some members of the public. She has received several threats, including one from a man who wanted to "smash her face in". She tells me this with a light little laugh. Poised, articulate, smartly dressed and immaculately made-up, Herold radiates confident Parisian sophistication. It is not difficult to imagine her in a boardroom within a few years unless she is running for political office. She admits that her views have not matured enough for her to embark on a political career just yet. "I don't want to get involved in a political party just to shout `Bravo!' at meetings and stick posters up which is usually the lot of people my age," she says.

The daughter of teachers from Reims, her political awakening came two years ago when she became involved in the organisation Liberté J'Ecris Ton Nom. This was founded by Edouard Fillias, a fellow student, with the aim of promoting liberal conservatism. Herold began devouring the works of Alexis de Tocqueville and of Friedrich Hayek, the favourite philosopher of her idol, Thatcher. She was seduced by the idea that we are, first and foremost, individuals rather than community members. "It was the idea of a free individual who decides for himself, in contrast with communist or socialist ideologies that see an individual as part of a group. I have always been independent and I don't have this idea of being a member of a group before being somebody," she said. Soon she began writing learned essays for the association's website and later became its spokesman and editor-in-chief.

On May 25 her views suddenly reached a far larger audience. As hundreds of thousands of union members marched through Paris, Herold stood on the steps of the town hall and argued against industrial action. To cheers from 2,000 people she delivered an impassioned speech against the transport strikes that were disrupting her education.
Naturally her words were greeted with enthusiasm by people who believe that economic reform is long overdue in France. But she also became an instant heroine to the tens of thousands of students and their parents angered by teachers' strikes and worried about threats to disrupt university exams and the Baccalauréat, France's school-leaving exam that determines university entrance and future job prospects.

Herold does defend the principle of the right to strike and draws a line between France's moderate CFDT union and two hard-line organisations, Force Ouvrière and the communist-led CGT, both of which she says "practise systematic opposition and make no propositions". Herold has even received letters of support from workers in RATP, the Paris public transport company. "They write to say, `What you're doing is great. We are behind you'. One said, `I am a Métro driver and I've had enough of my colleagues who are selfish. I think of my children. I want to reform pensions so that the contributions they have to pay are not too heavy, so they can live'."

But if she has found a ready audience for her anti-strike views, her position on Iraq is different. Although she says she was motivated primarily by humanitarian concerns, few French people wanted to hear her arguments a result that she believes was largely due to profound anti-Americanism. "As soon as America wants to do something it is necessarily wrong because `Bush is an idiot' and `Americans are imperialists'. People in France don't think of the long-term consequences, they just adopt this attitude before they have even thought things through," she says. French pride, she believes, is at the heart of this poor transatlantic relationship: "France was at one time the dominant nation in the world and it cannot bear the fact that that is no longer the case.

"I think the French at the moment are lacking in desire, they don't have a `French dream' like the `American dream'. To create a dream you must create a dynamic, so that people say `Come on, let's take things in hand and try'."France would benefit from a good dose of Thatcherism, she says: "It needs someone capable who would mobilise people and smash the unions, someone who could give a reforming spirit to France." She clearly does not believe that President Jacques Chirac, who she accuses of caving in repeatedly to the unions, fits the bill. "Spineless" is her verdict on him.

"When I heard Chirac was up for the Nobel peace prize when he opposed the war in Iraq, I almost collapsed in shock." Tony Blair, however, receives her full approbation: "I like him very much. I don't really understand what he is doing on the left, but he is very good. He was firm on his position on Iraq. He was absolutely impeccable." Herold studied British politics closely when she spent a year at Birmingham University as part of her course. She was impressed with the British work ethic. Work is clearly something of an obsession; she recently returned from a work placement at the French consulate in Hong Kong, where she applauded the evident Chinese love of hard work: "Here in France people are always trying to find a way to do the minimum."

As she leaves to prepare for her end-of-year exams, Herold offers some parting advice for the beleaguered conservative government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin: "Hold firm, continue with your reforms, which I believe are necessary. We really don't have a choice. The system will explode if these reforms are not carried out."

Next Saturday Herold is hoping to bring her message to an even larger audience when she speaks in the Place du Châtelet on behalf of Liberté J'Ecris Ton Nom. "I think we will get a lot more people and it will show that this country is fed up, that there is a majority who usually suffer in silence during these dreadful strikes in which the country is taken hostage by a minority of left-wing unions," she says. "Now they are going to say, `That is enough'. We will see that there is a majority in France which wants reform."