The Mitterrand era
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While Mitterrand won a second mandate in 1988, Paris remained in the grip of the right – indeed, the town halls of all 20 of the city's arrondissements stayed under right-wing control through much of the 1980s. Nationally, Mitterrand's party failed to win an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections soon after the presidential vote, and although Mitterrand's new prime minister Michel Rocard halted Chirac's programmes, he did not reverse them. The Socialists also reneged on their electoral promise to tackle the social and economic deprivation of France's immigrant ghettos. Polls showed over two-thirds of the adult French population to be in favour of deporting legal immigrants for any criminal offence or for being unemployed for over a year. The leader of the far right Front National party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, proposed that immigrants should have second-class citizenship, segregated education and separate social security. He received widespread support.

In 1991, Mitterrand sacked Michel Rocard and appointed Édith Cresson as France's first woman prime minister. Her brand of left-wing nationalist rhetoric combined with centrist pragmatism made her highly unpopular at home and abroad. Furthermore, she jumped on the rampant racism bandwagon and said that special planes should be chartered to deport illegal immigrants. Shortly afterwards the International Federation of Human Rights published a highly critical report on racism in the French police force and said France "was not the home of human rights".

In 1992, Mitterand staked his reputation on the important Maastricht referendum. Parisians, on the whole, voted "yes", but the referendum was passed by a very narrow margin. Meanwhile, tent cities were erected by homeless Africans in the 13^e arrondissement and in the Bois de Vincennes to protest against discrimination in housing allocation. There was some public sympathy, but the issue was used as a political football between Mitterrand as president and Chirac as mayor of Paris. In the same year, following fresh scandals over cover-ups and corruption, Cresson was replaced with Pierre Bérégovoy. He survived a wave of strikes, but then news broke of a private loan from a friend of Mitterrand accused of insider dealing. Mitterrand distanced himself from his prime minister, the Socialists were routed in the 1993 parliamentary elections, and Bérégovoy shot himself two months later, on May Day, leaving no note of explanation.

Ushering in another period of cohabitation, Edouard Balladur, a fresh and fatherly face from the Right, was appointed prime minister. His government carried out a new privatization programme and relied more than ever on market forces. Balladur, however, soon lost the respect of his natural supporters after a series of U-turns following demonstrations by Air France workers, teachers, farmers, fishermen and school pupils, and the state's rescue of the Crédit Lyonnais bank after spectacular losses.

Mitterrand tottered on to the end of his presidential term, looking less and less like the nation's favourite uncle. Two months after Bérégovoy's suicide, Réné Bousquet, head of police in the Vichy government and responsible for the rounding up of Jews in 1942, was murdered. A personal friend of Mitterrand's, he was thought to have carried shady secrets about the president to his grave. A biography of Mitterrand, Le Grand Secret, stirred up further controversy, casting shadow on the president's war record as an official in the Vichy regime before he joined the Resistance. The book was banned in France but avidly read on the internet.

By now, allegations of corruption against mayors, members of parliament, ministers and leading figures in industry were becoming an almost weekly occurrence. Several mayors ended up in jail, but it seemed as if the Paris establishment was above the law. The Socialist Party needed a strong leader to take them into the forthcoming presidential elections and were disappointed when the popular Jacques Delors, chair of the European Commission, was unwilling to stand. Instead they had to make do with Lionel Jospin, the rather uncharismatic former education minister, who performed remarkably well in the first round, but lost out to Chirac by a small margin in the second.

By the time Mitterrand finally stepped down, he had been the French head of state for fourteen years, presiding over two Socialist and two Gaullist governments. During the period of his presidency, crime rose and increasing numbers of people found themselves excluded from society by racism, poverty and homelessness. Corruption scandals touched the president, politicians of all parties and business chiefs; terrorist bombs went off in Paris; and, as faith in old left-wing certainties foundered, support for extreme Right policies propelled the Front National from a minority faction to a serious electoral force. Despite this, when he died in January 1996, Mitterrand was genuinely mourned as a man of culture and vision, a supreme political operator, and for his unwavering commitment to the vision of a united Europe.

In the last few years, however, a number of further scandals have surfaced, badly tarnishing Mitterrand's reputation. These included the arrest in 2000 of his son Jean-Christophe, formerly his senior adviser on Africa, on suspicion of selling arms to Angola, and the jailing of his ex-foreign minister and close friend Roland Dumas for his part in a huge corruption scandal involving the Elf oil company. One of the most damaging accusations to come to light, however, is that Mitterrand ordered his anti-terrorist unit, formed in 1982, to secretly tap the phones of anyone he considered a potential threat to his public image. It is alleged that the phones of 150 people, including lawyers, journalists and rival politicians, were tapped between 1983 and 1986, and at the time of writing, twelve men, including Louis Schweitzer, current head of Renault, are standing trial.