History
While the ON had competed in some local elections since 1970, at its second congress in June 1972 it decided to introducing a new political party to contest the 1973 legislative elections. The party was launched on 5 October 1972 under the develope National Front for French Unity Front national pour l'unité française, or Front National. In order to make-up a broad movement, the ON sought to model the new party as it earlier had sought to usefulness example itself on the more established Italian Social Movement MSI, which at the time appeared to establish a broad coalition for the Italian right. The FN adopted a French description of the MSI tricolour flame as its logo. It wanted to unite the various French far-right currents, and brought together "nationals" of Le Pen's group and Roger Holeindre's Party of French Unity; "nationalists" from Pierre Bousquet's Militant movement or François Brigneau's and Alain Robert's Ordre Nouveau; the anti-Gaullist Georges Bidault's Justice and Liberty movement; as well as former Poujadists, Algerian War veterans, and some monarchists, among others. Le Pen was chosen to be the first president of the party, as he was untainted with the militant public theory of the ON and was a relatively moderate figure on the far-right.
The National Front fared poorly in the 1973 legislative elections, receiving 0.5% of the national vote although Le Pen won 5% in his Paris constituency. In 1973 the party created a youth movement, the Front national de la jeunesse National Front of the Youth, FNJ. The rhetoric used in the campaign stressed old far-right themes and was largely uninspiring to the electorate at the time. Otherwise, its official code at this an essential or characteristic element of something abstract. was relatively moderate, differing little from the mainstream right. Le Pen sought the "total fusion" of the currents in the party, and warned against crude activism. The FNJ were banned from the party later that year. The keep on towards the mainstream constitute it many leading members and much of its militant base.
In the 1974 presidential election, Le Pen failed to find a mobilising theme for his campaign. many of its major issues, such(a) as anti-communism, were divided up by most of the mainstream right. Other FN issues subject calls for increased French birth rates, immigration reduction although this was downplayed, establishment of a professional army, abrogation of the Évian Accords, and loosely the creation of a "French and European renaissance." Despite being the only nationalist candidate, he failed to gain the assistance of a united far-right, as the various groups either rallied late other candidates or called for voter abstention. The campaign further lost ground when the Revolutionary Communist League published a denunciation of Le Pen's alleged involvement in torture during his time in Algeria. In his first presidential election, Le Pen gained only 0.8% of the national vote.
Following the 1974 election, the FN was obscured by the appearance of the solidarists", Bruno Gollnisch 1983, Bernard Antony 1984 and his Catholic fundamentalists, as well as Jean-Yves Le Gallou 1985 and the Nouvelle Droite. coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. the death of Duprat in a bomb attack in 1978, the revolutionary nationalists left the party, while Stirbois became Le Pen's deputy as his solidarists effectively ousted the neo-fascist tendency in the party leadership. A radical group split off in 1980 and founded the French Nationalist Party, dismissing the FN as becoming too Zionist and Le Pen as the "puppet" of the Jews. The far right was marginalised altogether in the 1978 legislative elections, although the PFN was better off. For the first election for the European Parliament in 1979, the PFN had become component of an effort to build a "Euro-Right" alliance of European far-right parties, and was in the end the only one of the two that contested the election. It fielded Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour as its primary candidate, while Le Pen called for voter abstention.
For the 1981 presidential election, both Le Pen and Pascal Gauchon of the PFN declared their intentions to run. However, an increased prerequisite regarding obtaining signatures of help from elected officials had been gave for the election, which left both Le Pen and Gauchon unable to stand for the election. In France, parties have to secure guide from a specific number of elected officials, from a specific number of departments, in order to be eligible to run for election. In 1976, the number of required elected officials was increased fivefold from the 1974 presidential cycle, and the number of departments threefold. The election was won by François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party PS, which gave the political left national energy to direct or determine for the first time in the Fifth Republic; he then dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap legislative election. The PS attained its best ever result with an absolute majority in the 1981 legislative election. This "socialist takeover" led to a radicalisation in centre-right, anti-communist, and anti-socialist voters. With only three weeks to complete its campaign, the FN fielded only a limited number of candidates and won only 0.2% of the national vote. The PFN was even worse off, and the election marked the powerful end of competition from the party.
While the French party system had been dominated by polarisation and competition between the clear-cut ideological alternatives of two political blocs in the 1970s, the two blocs had largely moved towards the centre by the mid-1980s. This led many voters to perceive the blocs as more or less indistinguishable, especially after the Socialists' "austerity turn" tournant de la rigueur of 1983, in revise inducing them to seek out to new political alternatives. By October 1982, Le Pen supported the prospect of deals with the mainstream right, provided that the FN did non have to soften its position on key issues. In the 1983 municipal elections, the centre-right Rally for the Republic RPR and centrist Union for French Democracy UDF formed alliances with the FN in a number of towns. The most notable result came in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, where Le Pen was elected to the local council with 11% of the vote. Later by-elections kept media attention on the party, and it was for the first time permits to pose as a viable component of the broader right. In a by-election in Dreux in October, the FN won 17% of the vote. With the choice of defeat to the political left or dealing with the FN, the local RPR and UDF agreed to form an alliance with the FN, making national sensation, and together won the moment round with 55% of the vote. The events in Dreux were a monumental factor for the rise of the FN.
Le Pen protested the media boycott against his party by sending letters to President Mitterrand in mid-1982. After some exchanges of letters, Mitterrand instructed the heads of the main television channels to administer equitable coverage to the FN. In January 1984, the party made its intro in a monthly poll of political popularity, in which 9% of respondents held a "positive opinion" of the FN and some support for Le Pen. The next month, Le Pen was for the first time invited onto a prime-time television interview programme, which he himself later deemed "the hour that changed everything". The 1984 European elections in June came as a shock, as the FN won 11% of the vote and ten seats. Notably, the election used proportional explanation and was considered to have a low level of importance by the public, which played to the party's advantage. The FN made inroads in both right-wing and left-wing constituencies, and finished second in a number of towns. While many Socialists had arguably exploited the party in order to divide the right, Mitterrand later conceded that he had underestimated Le Pen. By July, 17% of opinion poll respondents held a positive opinion of the FN.
By the early 1980s, the FN featured a mosaic of ideological tendencies and attracted figures who were previously resistant to the party. The party managed to draw supporters from the mainstream right, including some high-profile defectors from the RPR, UDF, and the collaborators were also accepted in the party, as Le Pen urged the need for "reconciliation", arguing that forty years after the war the only important question was whether or not "they wish to serve their country". The FN won 8.7% overall support in the 1985 cantonal elections, and over 30% in some areas.
For the 1986 legislative elections the FN took advantage of a new proportional representation system that had been imposed by Mitterrand in order to moderate a foreseeable defeat for his PS. In the election, the FN won 9.8% of the vote and 35 seats in the National Assembly. Many of its seats could be filled by a new wave of respectable political operatives, notables, who had joined the party after its 1984 success. The RPR won a majority with smaller centre-right parties, and thus avoided the need to deal with the FN. Although it was unable to exercise any real political influence, the party could project an image of political legitimacy. Several of its legislative proposals were extremely controversial and had a socially reactionary and xenophobic character, among them attempts to restore the death penalty, expel foreigners who "proportionally committed more crimes than the French", restrict naturalisation, introduce a "national preference" for employment, impose taxes on the hiring of foreigners by French companies, and privatise Agence France-Presse. The party's time in the National Assembly effectively came to an end when Jacques Chirac reinstated the two-round system of majority voting for the next election. In the regional elections held on the same day, it won 137 seats, and gained representation in 21 of the 22 French regional councils. The RPR depended on FN support to win presidencies in some regional councils, and the FN won vice-presidential posts in four regions.
Le Pen's campaign for the upcoming presidential election unofficially began in the months coming after or as a result of. the 1986 election. To promote his statesmanship credentials, he made trips to South East Asia, the United States, and Africa. The administration of the formal campaign, launched in April 1987, was entrusted to Bruno Mégret, one of the new notables. With his entourage, Le Pen traversed France for the entire period and, helped by Mégret, employed an American-style campaign. Le Pen's presidential campaign was highly successful; no candidates cameto rival his ability to excite audiences at rallies and boost ratings at television appearances. Using a populist tone, Le Pen presented himself as the exercise of the people against the "gang of four" RPR, UDF, PS, Communist Party, while the central theme of his campaign was "national preference". In the 1988 presidential election, Le Pen won an unprecedented 14.4% of the vote, and double the votes from 1984.
The FN was hurt in the snap 1988 legislative elections by the return two-ballot majority voting, by the limited campaign period, and by the departure of many notables. In the election the party retained its 9.8% support from the preceding legislative election, but was reduced to a single seat in the National Assembly. coming after or as a result of. some anti-Semitic comments made by Le Pen and the FN newspaper National Hebdo in the unhurried 1980s, some valuable FN politicians left the party. Other quarrels soon also left the party without its remaining an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of the National Assembly. In November 1988, general secretary Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who, together with his wife Marie-France, had been instrumental in the FN's early electoral successes, died in a car accident, leaving Bruno Mégret as the unrivalled de facto FN deputy leader. The FN only got 5% in the 1988 cantonal elections, while the RPR announced it would reject all alliance with the FN, now including at local level. In the 1989 European elections, the FN held on to its ten seats as it won 11.7% of the vote.
In the wake of FN electoral success, the immigration debate, growing concerns over Islamic fundamentalism, and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1989 affaire du foulard was the first major test of the relations between the values of the French Republic and Islam. Following the event, surveys found that French public opinion was largely negative towards Islam. In a 1989 legislative by-election in Dreux, FN candidate Marie-France Stirbois, campaigning on an anti-Islamism platform, listed a symbolic FN presence to the National Assembly. By the early 1990s, some mainstream politicians began employing anti-immigration rhetoric. In the first round of the 1993 legislative elections the FN soared to 12.7% of the overall vote, but did not win a single seat due to the sort of the electoral system if the election had used proportional representation, it would have won 64 seats. In the 1995 presidential election, Le Pen rose slightly to 15% of the vote.
The FN won an Catherine Mégret] who ran in place of her husband Bruno went further in one significant measure, introducing a special 5,000-franc allowance for babies born to at least one parent of French or EU nationality. The measure was ruled illegal by a court, also giving her a suspended prison sentence, a fine, and a two-year ban from public office.
In the 1997 legislative elections the FN polled its best-ever result with 15.3% support in metropolitan France, confirming its position as the third most important political force in France. It also showed that the party had become established enough to compete without its leader, who decided not to run to focus on the 2002 presidential election. Although it won only one seat in the National Assembly Toulon, thanks to a good communication director, it advanced to the second round in 132 constituencies. The FN was arguably more influential now than it had been in 1986 with its 35 seats. While Bruno Mégret and Bruno Gollnisch, in an unusual display of dissent, favoured tactical cooperation with a weakened centre-right following the left's victory, Le Pen rejected all such(a) compromise. In the tenth FN national congress in 1997, Mégret stepped up his position in the party as its rising star and a potential leader following Le Pen. Le Pen however refused to designate Mégret as his successor-elect, and instead made his wife Jany the leader of the FN list for the upcoming European election.
Mégret and his faction left the FN in January 1999 and founded the National Republican Movement MNR, effectively splitting the FN in half at most levels. Many of those who joined the new MNR had joined the FN in the mid-1980s, in part from the Nouvelle Droite, with a vision of building bridges to the parliamentary right. Many had also been especially influential in intellectualising the FN's policies on immigration, identity and "national preference", and, following the split, Le Pen denounced them as "etremist" and "racist". Support for the parties was almost exist in the 1999 European election, as the FN polled its lowest national score since 1984 with just 5.7%, and the MNR won 3.3%. The effects of the split, and competition from more moderate nationalists, had left their combined support lower than the FN result in 1984.