Rural France has lost its spirit The land of Albert Camus is in mourning

Few politicians could be more pleased with this result than Jean Glavany, agriculture minister from 1998-2002 in Lionel Jospin’s “Plural Left” government. In 2001, the death of a young motorcyclist in Glavany’s Haute-Pyrénées constituency prompted biker gangs to attack 168 trees with chain saws. In the aftermath of the accident, Glavany said that roadside trees were to blame for 799 deaths in the previous year alone. “We must not hesitate”, he barked, “to cut down the trees when it is necessary.” Conservationists replied that the answer was not to accuse the trees, but to address the causes of the crashes: speeding, drink driving, mobile phone use, poorly timed overtaking and sheer fatigue.

Over the past fortnight, I drove much the same route as Camus and the Gallimards from close by Lourmarin before diverting north of Paris to Calais. For one who has cycled and driven along these roads over many years, the loss of the trees along the old Routes Nationales is devastating. Their disappearance is matched by the increasing hollowness of villages and small towns along the way: berets have long been ousted by logo-emblazoned baseball caps, burgers and pizzas are on offer at every turn, Gitanes dangling from lower lips are a thing of a Camus-distant past. While Lourmarin, like so many Provençal villages, is a tourist “destination” today, villages off the tourist beat are increasingly shopless, shuttered and all but silent for most of their deep-sleeping days. The Chapon Fin inn at Thoissey and the old Hôtel de Paris et de la Poste at Sens have vanished, too.

It’s not just that many former residents have upped sticks for hopefully more rewarding lives in French cities, but that so few people stop by them on road trips whether for coffee or lunch or to pick up baguettes, olives, ham, cheese and cherries because there is nowhere to do so. Nowhere to buy a baguette? Mon Dieu. Reason enough for rural protest. This sorry pattern is replicated through great swathes of France. True, rural depopulation is nothing new in this big country, but the extent of it today is alarming.

You can choose to scythe through France on your way to the south, the sun and the sound of crickets along autoroutes largely oblivious to the small towns and villages on either side of 130km/h carriageways. If, though, there is a clue as to what might be happening around you, it comes in the guise of motorway toll gates. In recent years, these have been automated and are now staffless. Do those who once took your cash (comment?) now work in petrol stations on the edge of towns? Probably not. These are increasingly automated, too. So, you can drive from Calais to Provence without needing to meet or address anyone, or having to speak French, until perhaps you check in at your hotel.

Driving through the Massif Central, Auvergne, Burgundy and Champagne is an extraordinary experience. Such beautiful countryside; such a wonderful stock of handsome buildings. And yet, it seems all too often that neutron bombs must have fallen throughout rural France leaving its fabric more or less intact, but its population evaporated.

Despite numerous journeys through rural France, I have never knowingly met or conversed with a fascist, although I suppose very few people today in most of Western Europe would admit to being one. The impression the mainstream media gives — French and British alike — is of a rural France in thrall to “hard-Right” politics. What I have met is a sadness, a frustration and an anger nurtured by the powerlessness people of all ages feel as their countryside is stripped of life, their way of life. The very life promoted by tourist boards and the rose-tinted travel pages of newspapers and magazines. But when the political parties and the tree choppers of Paris appear to care little or nothing for their situation, how can the people of rural France not turn to political parties which say they are on their side? How can they not despise Emmanuel Macron whose security forces took out the eyes and blew off the hands of protesting gilet jaunes?

In this month’s French election, 37% voted for Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s “hard-Right” Rassemblement National (a larger proportion than that which voted for Keir Starmer’s triumphant Labour Party in the recent British election). It is easy to imagine support for RN growing in coming years. If Paris and the Left wanted to derail its opponents, and if it had sufficient common sense and humanity, it would aim to bring work and life back to rural France. It would see people as more important than automatic machinery and superficial technological efficiency.

Although Camus’s Lourmarin housed outsiders — artists, writers, summer holidaymakers — it was a working village in the old sense. The novelist’s best friend there was the blacksmith César Marius Reynaud, whose family had run the business for 400 years. Camus kept a donkey, rescued from Algeria. The only animals I saw in Lourmarin were well-groomed dogs, hopeful pigeons, basking cats and the occasional lizard.

Of course, things change. Imagine, though, government schemes that gave, for example, generous tax breaks to local start-up businesses and to companies happy to have staff working away from their main offices. Imagine cross-country railways with greatly improved services, which, outside the exclusive realm of the superb TGVs, are sparse in much of France. Imagine new types and forms of rural employment fusing hi-tech communications with craftsmanship and husbandry. Imagine, most of all, young people being offered the opportunity to live and work in beautiful parts of profound France. With good communications, this could yet be a dream for many.

For now, the mainstream parties’ and media’s lack of genuine concern for rural France is, at best, a political car crash in the making.