Support for National Front stuns France

French far-right leader and National Front Party, Marine Le Pen, centre, and the Secretary General of the National Front, Steve Briois. Photo / AP

The far-right National Front (FN) has sent shockwaves through France's political establishment, winning control of a council in a leftwing heartland in local elections marked by abstentionism and voters' desire to punish President Francois Hollande's Socialists.

The anti-immigration, anti-Europe FN gained an overall majority in a town in northern France's mining belt and set itself up for several gains in the south, the first time it has achieved success on such a scale.

The Socialists' nationwide share fell back, while support for conservative UMP remained unchanged, highlighting its failure to exploit Hollande's unpopularity or defuse the challenge from the extreme right.

FN leader Marine Le Pen, who three years ago recast the party founded by her firebrand father in softer, media-friendly tones, said history had been made.

"This marks the end of pendulum swing," she said, referring to the back-and-fro dominance of right and left.

Clearly shocked, the Socialist Party called on "all democratic and Republican forces" to block the FN's "advance". It was an echo of 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential elections, prompting the Socialists to urge support for centre-right candidate Jacques Chirac. The UMP pleaded with those who had voted for the FN in the first round to carry their vote to UMP candidates in the second round next Sunday. The daily Liberation headlined: "Fear in the towns" over a picture of Marine Le Pen.

The elections are run under a two-round system. A party that wins an overall majority in the first round of voting wins control of the council. If no party gets this, any party which secures 10 per cent backing can take part in the runoff, a week later.

FN secretary-general Steeve Briois scored 50.3 per cent of the vote in Henin-Beaumont, a rundown town in the northern mining area, against a joint leftwing list weakened by in-fighting and scandal. In high-immigration towns in the south, the FN came in first in Perpignan, Forbach, Frejus, Beziers, Tarascon and Avignon.

A force in presidential elections, the FN has always sought a breakthrough at local level to show it has grassroots. In past elections, it has sporadically taken one or two southern towns, peaking with three in 1995. But this was not in the first round of voting, and the party struggled to hold its gains in subsequent ballots.

According to a BVA poll, the FN won 7 per cent of the vote.

In Paris, the Socialists' candidate, deputy mayor Anne Hidalgo, was edged out by conservative Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, an environment minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, placing the city on course for a knife-edge second ballot.