Youth leads French libertarians

Some conservatives liken Sabine Herold, a 22-year-old student, to Joan of Arc, and others nickname her “Mademoiselle Thatcher” after she took on France’s left-wing labor unions this summer.

Many in France see her as a symbol of a growing revulsion among young French libertarians against a ruling class that punishes excellence and rewards mediocrity.

“A generation of reformers, who can’t bear the blocking of the [French] society anymore, is emerging. There will be soon an electoral power of people who really want to change the status quo,” said Miss Herold.

In March 2001, she co-founded the group Libert, J’Ecris Ton Nom, or “Liberty, I Write Your Name,” which now has about 2,000 adherents.

“We are in favor of the freedom of business, but we consider that the market is not an end in itself,” Miss Herold told The Washington Times. “It is a means in the duty of individual liberty.”

She first came to public attention in May during a nationwide strike that had paralyzed her hometown in France’s Champagne region, Reims.

In the shadow of the Notre Dame Cathedral — where Joan of Arc once crowned a king — Miss Herold began denouncing the bus drivers, schoolteachers and other union members who were striking for pension reform.

The French newspapers reported that about 2,000 people cheered and applauded as she spoke. Within a month, she stood before an estimated 80,000 cheering Frenchmen in Paris with the same message.

She castigated the trade unions as “terrorists of the social action” and “strongholds of egoist conservatism.”

“In France, we are unable to have negotiations before strikes,” she said. “The principle of preventive strikes prevails. The contract proposal is still not written, and there are already union members in the streets.”

When the British news media found out, they crowned Miss Herold the new symbol of the free-market conservatives in Europe. The London Daily Telegraph called her “the new Joan of Arc on a crusade to stop French unions’ causing misery to millions.” The Sunday Times hailed her as “Mademoiselle Thatcher.”

Asked in a telephone interview about the latter comparison, she praised former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for taking on militant trade unions, which Miss Herold called “the real mafias.”

“The aim is not to break trade unionism in general but the excesses,” she said, defending reformist trade unions, “who are conscious of realities.”

Last June, the London Telegraph invited her to the other side of the Channel, where she met politicians, including the now retired Mrs. Thatcher.

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