La Rose in Concrete. The eighth electoral district of Marseilles, picked by Le Pen to test his strength, is a mixture of popular and middle-class sections. You can reach it by the new modern subway, getting off at La Rose station, the end of the line. Outside you have blocks and blocks of flats. Indeed, as you reach the suburbs of Marseilles you are struck by a series of high-rise, cheap housing projects, which have grown like mushrooms during the building boom. Those at La Rose are not among the worst and therefore not packed with immigrants. Yet here as elsewhere there are no cultural amenities, and community spirit has vanished. The blue- and, increasingly, white-collar workers feel insecure, worried about travel in their evenings, about their jobs, about the future. Marseilles seems to be surrounded by a concrete wall of crumbling expectations.

Experts on the spot confirm what is written in the few studies on the subject, namely that Marseilles has mismanaged its economic modernization. It is not just that the harbor was affected by the end of the French Empire; this was partly compensated for by the development of oil traffic. Marseilles failed to build an industrial hinterland, to diversify beyond its traditional activities connected with the harbor, or with the soap, oil and food manufacturing industries. The failure was concealed for a time by the building boom, linked with the jump in population--from 660,000 in 1954 to 882,000 in 1968--spurred partly by the return of French settlers from North Africa. But beneath this bustle, the local bourgeoisie, satisfied with petty speculation, missed its opportunity during the postwar transformation of the French economy to more capital-intensive methods of production. Or, to be more accurate, the chance of regional expansion conceived of in the late 1960s through the Fos complex (i.e., petrochemicals and a steel industry based on imported ore) came too late. The "miracle" was over and the vast plan got bogged down in the international crisis.

As a result, Marseilles is a town whose population is dwindling and where industrial jobs are declining--a very partial explanation of the collapse of the local Communist Party, whose electoral strength declined in seven years from 25.8 to 10.9 percent. White-collar employment has not expanded sufficiently to compensate and is, on the whole, on the lower end of the pay and status scale. Marseilles, lagging behind the national average in higher or technical education, is well above it in unemployment. The North Africans, brought over during the boom years, particularly for work in the construction industry, provide their contingent of the jobless. The economic deterioration goes a long way to ex- plain the melancholy mood of this town and coincides with - the end of one man's political reign.

In Search of a Godfather. On arrival in Marseilles everybody tells you that this month's parliamentary elections are merely skirmishes for next year's big municipal battle, which will determine the choice of the new godfather. This mafia analogy is disrespectful--if not entirely unfair--to the Socialist Gaston Defferre, a well-off Protestant lawyer from neighboring Hérault who dominated local but from politics throughout the postwar period. He was Mayor of Marseilles for-thirty-three years until his death in 1986, but his system lasted for thirty; it was set up in 1953, when, fearing a Communist takeover, the right--except for the Gaullists--made an alliance with the Socialists. The pact was based on the assumption that the bourgeoisie would get the profits and the Socialists the patronage. Thus, town planning, for example, was entrusted to the right, which explains the social segregation that has seen the poorer people driven from the city center to the new high-rises of the periphery. The Socialists were in charge of the allocation of lower-rent flats and also controlled jobs provided by the municipality and the harbor. Indeed, they turned the network of power and patronage into a fine art; hence the passion in the present struggle for the Town Hall.

Strained by the economic and social crisis, the pact collapsed under the impact of national politics. Defferre could not sit in government in Paris (where he was Minister of the Interior) together with the Communists and at the same time rule in Marseilles in alliance with the right. In 1983 he chose to fight the municipal election with a popular front. The two big parties of the respectable right, determined to defeat him, based their campaign on law and order. To their surprise, a completely unknown list called Marseilles-Security lagging captured more than 5 percent of the poll. The way in which not only the right but the Socialists too wooed this jingoist electorate between ballots was one of the most shameful pages in the S.P.'s history.

While Defferre survived by the skin of his teeth, his system was in ruins.'Ia the European elections a year later the National Front made a triumphant entry with 21.4 percent of the votes cast, grabbing support from all sides. In the parliamentary elections of 1986, which unlike this year's were run through proportional representation, it climbed to 24.4 percent, while the left, once an overwhelming power in the town, was reduced to about 40 percent. Le Pen's score in this April's presidential poll thus marks a steady rather than a spectacular advance. The swing is no longer from the left from the classical to the extreme right. The loser is Jean-Claude Gaudin, the conservative bloc's crafty leader, rather than its strongman. He thought it clever to be elected president of the regional council with the support of the National Front, then to take neofascists as his assistants. He simply rendered the Front more respectable. With 28.3 percent of the poll, Le Pen won more votes in Marseilles than Chirac and Barre combined.

It was this showing that induced Le Pen to seek his fortune here. Yet he was taking quite a gamble. To get a parliamentary seat, let alone the Town Hall, Le Pen, who got 33 percent of the poll in the first ballot, on June 5 , required the backing not just of some but of all the supporters of the respectable right to stand a chance of winning. Had we reached that stage, the situation would be desperate, which it is not. With Le Pen faltering, the Socialists will now present as their candidate for mayor Michel Pezet, the man who won the skin game for Defferre's succession. But they were playing it safe.

Le Pen was not the only "parachutist," as carpetbaggers are called in France, in this area. Bernard Tapie, the handsome tycoon and. media personality, landed in Marseilles with the Socialists' blessing, promising to cure unemployment. That this capitalist champion of "restructuring" should be of the few cases of ouverture is symptomatic. Come to think of it, Mitterrand's "opening" is really the Defferre system writ large on a national scale, a Socialist alliance with the bourgeoisie, with the respectable right renamed the "center" for the purpose. This will be the test in next year's municipal elections. In the polarized world of French politics, it will not be an easy one, either in Marseilles or the rest of the country.

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