French Letter: Little Callac in the eye of the storm over immigration

I don’t live in Callac, the pearl of the Argoat. But I live nearby and visit the town two or three times a week to do my shopping and to spend time in the ever-welcoming Café de la Place.

Until last week, just about no one outside of central Brittany and the regional cycling fraternity had even heard of Callac. Bikers know it because each July it hosts a cycle race to raise funds for research into cystic fibrosis. Other than that, it is remarkable only for the fact that it has one of the oldest age profiles in France.

A quiet town, let’s face it, where not much happens, but the widely esteemed undertaker, Serge Le Madec, does big business.

All the more surprising, then, that last weekend Callac made national headlines over an initiative taken by the local mayor, Jean-Yves Rolland, to restore life to his dying town.

The plan he proposed, subsequently endorsed by a clear majority of his colleagues on the town council, is simple and direct, yet radical. A rather handsome one-time school, closed for many years, is to be renovated to provide temporary accommodation for some 50 refugees and their families, who will be encouraged to live and work in the area, thus helping reduce the admitted “desertification” of Callac that has persisted for the last 50 years. They will be taught French and given training in a variety of trades.

Funding will be provided by the Horizon Project, a charitable foundation set up by Bernard and Marie-France Cohen, whose ready-to wear chain, Bonpoint, and “concept store,” Merci, has not only made them and their children extremely rich but allowed them to indulge their long-held belief that with great wealth comes great responsibility.

The Cohens have been in the philanthropy business for many years, most notably in Madagascar, but now wish to extend their help to causes closer to home. Callac is intended to be the first of 20 Horizon projects, linking the integration of refugees in France, as advocated by President Macron, to the development of an economic model in areas of the country suffering from under-investment and declining populations. 

The problem is that a majority of the good folk of Callac, more than half of them middle-aged or elderly, do not agree. A petition “for the defence of the identity of Callac” collected some 8,500 signatures from the town itself and its surrounding communes, and last weekend demonstrations were held, for and against the project, that drew in reporters from the Paris press as well as some 200 gendarmes and bused-in officers of the Police Nationale.

In the event, nothing untoward occurred. There was no violence and no arrests. A bit of a damp squib, really. In front of the mairie, an estimated 250 opponents of the scheme listened to messages of support from, among others, Éric Zemmour, leader of the far-right Reconquête party, who in this year’s parliamentary elections attracted a derisory 2.56 per cent of the vote in Callac. Elsewhere, in the town square, a similar number of activists, most of them not local, proclaimed their “solidarity” with refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants generally.

Zemmour’s message was easily summed up. “Callac must remain Callac, Brittany must remain Brittany, and France must remain France.” Who could argue with that? Both sides flew the French and Breton flags, though the banners of many leftist factions, as well as that of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, were also in evidence. Two hours after the rival manifs began, the competing megaphones fell silent, leaving the issue as unresolved as ever.

No one that I knew, save for one who had come looking for a beer, turned up on either side of the non-existent barricades. Most Callacois and, I would say, the entire British expat population (numbering around 120) stayed at home. Whatever views they may have held, they had no desire to create a fuss or to become involved in any form of public disorder.

Project Horizon, meanwhile, is to proceed as planned, causing the erstwhile candidate for Reconquête, to tell Le Figaro, “Callac is an example of what now awaits our country”. 

Mayor Rolland, from the soft-left, who finds himself at the centre of an unsought controversy, was elected in 2020. He succeeded two women in the role – the first in the town’s history – both from the political right, who had achieved very little. They in turn had taken over from the long-serving Felix Leyzour, known as Deaf Felix due to his alleged unwillingness to waste time listening to complaints. Leyzour, who was at least nominally a Communist, regarded Callac as his fallback job, according to critics. For much of his 20-year tenure, he also served in the National Assembly, both as a senator and as a deputy, meaning that he spent at least six months of each year in Paris.

No one could accuse Rolland, a farmer, aged 66, of harbouring such national ambitions. He simply wants to ensure a viable future for the town’s 2,200 inhabitants, only 10 percent of whom are under the age of ten, against 21 per cent who are 75 and over.

His opponents cite the fact that the local unemployment rate is 18 per cent and that the arrival of scores of foreigners – principally, one gathers, from North Africa – will only add to the total while placing increased demand on already stretched local services. Rolland responds by pointing to the 75 unfilled jobs in the area and to the fact that in 2019 just nine children were born in the town to set against 61 recorded deaths, meaning that the local school faces an uncertain future.

What happens if the resettlement programme is repeated over and over, leading to a steady increase in the proportion of Callacois of overseas origin, has yet to be addressed. The grand remplacement of which Éric Zemmour warns is a real concern for many. 

The eye of the media has already moved on but will no doubt return when the first batch of “refugees” is introduced at the beginning of next year. It will be when these families turn up in the supermarkets and doctors’ surgeries that the truest evidence will emerge of how local people actually feel. My guess is that there will be an undercurrent of discontent that slowly fades when it turns out that the new arrivals wish only for a roof over their heads and a place at school for their children.

But I could be wrong.  

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