Your Shout : Vive la union basher, Sabine !

Source : The Daily Telegraph

Andrew Gimson in France finds plenty of local support for student's Thatcherite attack on President Chirac

The French long for a Margaret Thatcher to tame the over-mighty public sector trade unions, but despair of ever finding one. In the cafes of Reims, speaker after speaker deplored the weakness of President Jacques Chirac in the face of union opposition, with many echoing the withering Thatcherite critique launched against him by the 21-year-old student Sabine Herold in Paris.

Mlle Herold, who on Thursday reiterated her critique in the columns of The Telegraph, is from Reims, where many of the views she articulates find overwhelming support.

Jacques Vigne, an optician, said of Mlle Herold: "She's right. She's spoken very well. The public sector trade unions in France don't defend the workers. They defend the lazy. We're a country of do-nothings, and it will take three or four generations to sort things out."

M Vigne reckons the views of ordinary French people such as himself have long been suppressed. "I often write letters by Internet to the press, and they've never published any of them. There's censorship in France."

Pierre Gallet, a photographer, denounced the public sector unions. "They represent few people but they are very powerful. It's crazy. For the time being there is no leader in France. Chirac is an arriviste."

Michelle Roy, a novelist, added with a mournful laugh: "But we think that at the next presidential election Chirac will be re-elected, because there's no opposition."

Christelle Michelet, a police officer, said of the recent public sector strikes: "They stop the schools, they stop the transport, and that hurts everyone. The whole of France is ffected. I'm very much against strikes, and I'm very much against the government's imposition of a maximum 35-hour week. But I don't believe in the government at all."

Marie-Charlotte Collin, 19, said: "I think that Margaret Thatcher was too radical, too extreme.

"So it's true that in France we need someone who plucks up courage and doesn't go all weak in the face of the unions."

Hocine and Fatima Slah, a young married couple who work for EDF, the French electricity company, said reforms were urgently needed, but "there has to be discussion to achieve an agreement".

Mme Slah expressed concern that the French pension system has become "unsustainable".

Like many members of the younger generation, she fears she could end up paying the price for the impossibly ambitious schemes which the older generation put in place.

Nowhere is this belief that the older generation has been misguidedly generous more marked than in relation to the maximum 35-hour week.

Mlle Herold has bewailed the decline of the work ethic in France, but many people said they wanted to work much harder than they are allowed to do.

Sandrine Watelier, 28, who works in a video shop, regretted the fact that "in France it is not allowed to have two jobs, even for those who would be well able to do them".

The French believe they are paying far too much tax. As Mme Watelier said: "We have a tax for everything. I think we're the most heavily taxed nation in Europe."

The only person who challenged Mlle's Herold's critique of President Chirac was a young woman who said with a frown: "I don't agree with it, but I don't have time to explain why."

Frederic Fougere, a fireman, was at pains to point out that his own union did not behave like some of the more disruptive ones. "When we go on strike, it lasts two years because we don't disturb anyone. We maintain a minimum level of service." Christophe Moufflier, also a fireman, said with a frown: "There's only one Margaret Thatcher, but I would like to have one here."

The news of Denis Thatcher's death was not generally known in Reims, but condolences would undoubtedly have been sent to his widow if it had been.

Her name was not mentioned in the shocked or hostile tones which it might once have provoked. But not everyone approved of Mrs Thatcher's confrontational methods.