FRENCH FASCISTS: BRINGING NEW ORDER CLASSROOMS

The French fascist movement Ordre Nouveau is trying to take a leaf out of the book of its Italian counterpart, the MSI (Italian Social MoveThe movement's name is a reference to Adolf Hitler's 'New Order' in Europe and its members specialize in beating up militants.

It now wants to develop a respectable parliamentary facade and shed its present image as a band of fascist gangsters. Like the MSI, Ordre Nouveau wants to appear as a bastion of law and order against the 'red menace' The process of toning down its slogans is already underway. At a recent fascist rally in Paris, for example, Ordre Nouveau commandos shouted for "leftist' leaders like Alain Geismar and Jean-Paul Sartre to be put on trial.

In the past, they would simply have shouted out: 'Shoot them'. Besides changing its image, the movement is also striving to win the backing of all the other rightist splinter groups for its new policy.

Among the front men for this manoeuvre is General Vanuxem, a veteran of the Indo-China war. Another powerful supporter is an independent Gaullist deputy.

Ordre Nouveau has other powerful friends in the Gaullist establishment, as the recent incidents at the Montaigne high-school in Paris demonstrate.

On February 24, a group of about 40 fascists, armed with iron bars, wearing helmets and carrying riot shields, mounted a savage assault on the pupils as they left the school building.

Earlier the same day, the fascists had fumed with rage as the Montaigne pupils tore up their leaflets calling for a "clean-out of the leftist vermin' Among the victims of this assault was the deputy headmaster, who was hit over the head and in the stomach and left lying in the school entrance.

Two days later another Ordre Nouveau commando turned up at the school, threw an iron bar through one of the windows and injured one pupil so badly that he spent the next three weeks in hospital.

On each of these occasions, the police who are permanently stationed in their cars just a block away, turned up half an hour after the fascists had vanished.

They were not the fascists' only allies. Powerful support came from the school staff as well. At the end of last month, the school's disciplinary. council sat in judgement on six pupils who had dared to try and defend themselves against the fascist invasions.

Those who had thrown chairs at the attackers were accused of 'breaking school property and 'carrying iron bars'.

The majority of the school staff are ageing teachers at the top of the professional establishment who consider Montaigne as 'good berth' to end their career.

They reacted with hatred to the growth of militancy • in the school after May-June 1968. In the last union election, 60 per cent of the teachers voted favour of the SNALC, the 'yellow' teachers' union which won only Commandos of the fascist Ordre 5 per cent of the votes nationally.

They are backed by a group of wealthy parents who have been calling on the staff to take the school in hand" with harsh disciplinary methods.

Things came to a head last year, when the Ministry of Education put out a circular banning all general meetings of the student body. When the pupils Nouveau who speciallze in beating tried to hold a general protest meeting against this circular, three were expelled as 'ringleaders' Similar incidents over the last four months culminated in the two attacks by the Ordre Nouveau commandos. Collusion between the staff and the fascists cannot be ruled out and it is clear that the fascists' 'disciplinary' activities were welcomed by a good section of the staff.

The cowardly Ordre Nouveau commandos may, get away with breaking the heads of few defenceless schoolchildren, but disciplining the French working class is an entirely different story.

Their bid for respectability along the lines pioneered by the MSI cannot conceal the fascist cloven hoof under General Vanuxem's uniform.