France must face the consequences of its actions

A failure of the French model of racial integration (Explosion in the suburbs, November 7) or, more broadly a failure of politics? I have first-hand memories of social violence in France between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s and of demonstrations against educational reforms which turned ugly, with police sometimes injured, and authorities easily frightened.

However, one contrast between then and now is that at the same time as the authorities then were trying to restore order, they had bridges to interlocutors. Not only has Jacques Chirac notably not taken up the "tonton" (uncle) mantle of Mitterrand, Nicolas Sarkozy has not been reprimanded for insulting the local population at large. This government has weakened its local networks by ignoring local mayors and cutting funding to the voluntary networks which have supported elements of a "normal" social life in the cités. Where the class of the 1980s emerged from a political rite of passage, those in the cités look set for further isolation behind the barriers of race, Islam or the local mafia. And in part, that is a consequence of political choices.
Anne Corbett

Some five years ago, the French interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement called for 75 million migrants to be admitted to "Europe, a land of immigration" - thereby taking it upon himself to speak for this country, as well as his own, and to advance a proposition which not only flew in the face of historical truth but also ran counter to the views of many Europeans.

If the citizens of a state take a conscious decision that they wish to increase their numbers through immigration, and if new arrivals are welcomed and adequate efforts made to ease their full integration into that state, then all may be well.

But if the government of a state disregards opposition from the existing body of citizens, and encourages immigration merely to ensure a competing supply of cheap labour, then the most likely result will be ghettoisation - and eventually the kind of violent outbursts we now see in France.
Dr DR Cooper
Maidenhead, Berks

I read with dismay Naima Boutledja's article. What about the actions of those rioters who were responsible for the death of a man who was trying to put out a fire in a container near his apartment? What about the people (white, black and Arab) who live and work peacefully in the suburbs and are harassed by young thugs and whose cars and public institutions are attacked and burned? Her analysis is not connected to the reality. The onus is not on France and its police, it is on lawless thugs to come back to the right and civilised way of living.
Marc-Antoine Hamet