KEY POINTS:
Four 19-year-old youths in jeans and baseball caps are sitting outside a kebab house in a struggling ex-mining town in eastern France.
What are they talking about? Rock music, girls, the Champions' League? No, they are talking about this Sunday's election. They are determined to vote for the
first time - they just don't know who for.
"We have to vote. We know that we must vote. But none of the candidates is talking to us," says Michael. Michael is a pure product of the mining valleys of eastern Lorraine. He is half Polish and half Algerian. Two of the others are of French origin.
One is from an Italian family. All of these youths' fathers and grandfathers were coal miners. Since leaving school, they have struggled to find jobs on short-term contracts as central heating workers or as van drivers over the border 5km away in Germany.
"Over there, they have lots of jobs," says Michael. "Why? Because everyone works for one another. In France, everyone works against one another."
Welcome to Forbach, a town on the edge of the country and a town on the edge of its nerves. In the first round of the last presidential election in 2002, Forbach voted 29 per cent for Jean-Marie Le Pen - the third highest score for the far-right of any town in France.
That may seem odd. Forbach is a town built by successive waves of immigration. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Poles, Italians, Yugoslavs, Turks and Algerians came here to work in the mines. The last mine closed in 2002.
You might think that Forbach - with unemployment at 17 per cent, twice the national average - would be the last town in France to vote for the xenophobic, anti-European Le Pen. Think again.
I met Jules, a fit-looking, 57-year-old former miner, in the Forbach market. Jules used to vote communist and, occasionally, socialist. Last time, he voted for Le Pen and, this time, he will do so again.
"Why? To tell the politicians to wake up. Forbach is not Forbach any more. France is not France any more. If you come here at night, all you can see is Arab or Turkish kids revving their motorcycles or blasting their car radios. People are afraid to come into their own town."
I had a drink in a bar with Dominique Pirrera, 36, whose family came here from Italy in the 1950s.
"Here, in Forbach, everyone resents everyone else," he said. "The people who work in Germany resent the Germans. Those who don't work in German resent those who do. The retired miners resent the unemployed Arab kids for not working. The unemployed resent anyone who has a job and drives around in a nice car."
Le Pen, though, is not so popular with the young. None of the four youths outside the kebab bar plan to vote for him. All have rejected the centre-right's Nicolas Sarkozy.
Two of the youths were considering voting for Francois Bayrou. One liked the Trotskyist Olivier Besancenot.
I asked the youths what they saw in the future. What did they want to do with their lives? "Leave Forbach," Jerome says instantly. "Leave France," Michael chips in.
- INDEPENDENT
