Le Pen victory sparks battles

Jean-Marie Le Pen this afternoon called on "all patriots" to back him after the success of his extreme Right-wing party shocked France and provoked clashes in the streets.

Heavily-armed Paris riot police battled with protesters today as 10,000 demonstrated against Le Pen's hardline anti-immigration policies.

Protests against Le Pen erupted across the country which has the biggest Jewish and Arab populations in Europe. European leaders also reacted with horror.

But nothing could disguise the scale of the victory of Le Pen's National Front.

The 73-year-old former paratrooper, who has described the Holocaust as "a detail of history," yesterday won more than 17 per cent of the vote - enough to take on Jacques Chirac in the race to become president of France in two weeks.

Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin was relegated to third place in a crushing defeat for the Left. Mr Jospin immediately resigned from "office and political life".

Still flushed with success, Le Pen said: "I call on patriots, sovereignists and authentic republicans to unite around my candidacy, to oppose the technocratic Europe of Brussels and create a true popular force to defend national independence and oppose globalisation."

President Chirac, leader of the centre-Right Gaullists, today appealed to the French to unite against Le Pen, declaring: "What is at stake is the very idea that we have of mankind, his rights and his dignity".

Downing Street and the Labour Party voiced their shock at the result, with Labour chairman, Charles Clarke, calling it a "tragic situation for France".

Labour's leadership, though, played down suggestions that the success of the far-Right could spill over into next month's local elections in this country, particularly in Oldham where the British National Party is hoping to exploit racial divisions.

Tony Blair's spokesman said: "It is not for us to interfere in an election which is for the French people alone to decide but we trust the French people to reject extremism of any kind."

Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: "I consider this to be a very worrying development. Whilst I am not one to dabble in French politics I do wish Mr Chirac - for all our sakes - the best of luck. I hope he succeeds and succeeds overwhelmingly. This rise of extremism must be taken head on."

Finance minister Laurent Fabius denounced Le Pen's victory as "a cataclysm of terrifying proportions". He added: "On the Left, but not only on the Left, many people are simply crying. This is not the France we love."

The result led to the collapse of the Left in France which only four years ago polled 15 million votes. The oncepowerful Communist party got only 3.4 per cent of the vote.

In many rural areas of southern France Le Pen topped the vote. A record 29 per cent of voters abstained in the first round of voting yesterday.

As the results came in demonstrators gathered in the Place de la Republique in Paris. There were similar protests in Strasbourg, Toulouse, Grenoble and towns and cities across France. Many carried signs reading "I am ashamed" and "down with fascism".

For most of the night, lines of officers used batons and shields to keep a highly volatile crowd of at least 10,000 protesters from marching toward the presidential palace, but managed to stop them at the Place de la Concorde.

Demonstrators chanted "Left, Right - we are all against Le Pen," and "first, second, third generation - we are all immigrants!"

The reaction was also strong in today's French newspapers. "Non" screamed Left-leaning daily Liberation in a single-word front-page headline. "The French political system has imploded," it said.

Voters now have two weeks to organise cross-party support for Chirac in an attempt to block Le Pen.

With some results still to come in, Chirac won 19.6 per cent of the vote, Le Pen 17.1 per cent and Jospin 16 per cent. Asked to explain the result, Le Pen replied: "It may surprise you, but it's no surprise to me. It shows that the French people have demonstrated great lucidity in deciding on a solution to the country's problems."

He said he would campaign against Europe and under the slogan "For the People and against the System".

Other points in his political programme are to re-write the French constitution so that French nationals have a legal priority for jobs, housing and public services; to reintroduce the death penalty; to deport all illegal immigrants as well as foreigners who commit a crime; to refuse French nationality to the children of immigrant criminals and lock up young offenders.

Le Pen first contested the presidency in 1974 when he polled only 0.74 per cent of the vote. His personal fortunes were boosted in 1977 when he was bequeathed a vast fortune by a French industrialist.

However, he owes his status as a national figure to President Francois Mitterrand who introduced proportional representation in an attempt to split the centre-Right in the Eighties.

This allowed Le Pen, to his own surprise, to become leader of a parliamentary group of 35.