Giant banquets rile radical left in France

Three-and-a-half-thousand hungry Alsatians wolf down platters of charcuterie and periodically burst into noisy chorus.

No, it is not the police dogs' annual convention, but the latest iteration of a feasting phenomenon that is sweeping provincial France.

The Alsace town of Colmar – famous for its half-timbered medieval centre – was the scene last weekend of one of the banquets géants – huge banquets whose popularity in the country has suddenly become a hot political issue.

Run by a company called Le Canon Français (The French Cannon), the banquets are massively attended – €81 (£70) buying you four courses of local gastronomy, all the wine you can drink, and several hours of sing-along camaraderie.

But not everyone is cheering. For the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI - France Unbowed), the banquets have a dark side.

LFI says it has evidence of racist chanting, and of immigrant staff being insulted. With pork regularly on the menu, they say the feasts are purposely designed to exclude Muslims and vegetarians.

And they point to the financial involvement of an ultra-conservative entrepreneur called Pierre-Edouard Stérin as evidence of a masked ulterior motivation - to promote the agenda of the hard right.

Stérin, a billionaire who made his money in the experience gift-voucher sector, set up a think tank pushing right-wing ideas such as rolling back immigration, stopping abortion and promoting France's Christian heritage.

"If they were in good faith, Le Canon Français would never have accepted Stérin as an investor. But they did - they took his money," says Emma Fourreau, an LFI member of the European Parliament.

"And that is because they share the same political ecosystem, whose aim is to bring the far right to power."

At the Colmar banquet, held in a vast hangar-like space on the edge of town, such accusations are dismissed out of hand.

In a festive atmosphere, the punters are seated on long tables with 50 down each side. Many men are in what has become a kind of Canon Français uniform of berets and braces. A few women are in traditional Alsace dress.

There is a brief address from management reminding diners of the "charter" committing them to behave with respect and decorum, and then the fun begins. An army of servers brings out platters with choucroute, then Alsace cheeses and the traditional kougelhopf pudding. Wine flows.

Periodically the revellers down forks and join in song. Old standards by performers like Michel Delpech and Joe Dassin are the favourites. These are songs from an earlier generation, but the participants - who look like they are mainly in their 20s and 30s - know them by heart.

"We come for four things: atmosphere, friends, alcohol and food," says one young man in a response which is echoed over and again. No-one wants to talk politics, except to say that they think the whole controversy has been blown out of proportion.

"None of this was an issue, but then Stérin became a shareholder and that gave the LFI an excuse to attack. Don't forget there are elections next year," says Quentin from Besançon.

The crowd in Colmar was predominantly – but not exclusively – white, and many said they were happy to be able to celebrate in a traditional way among friends. But the BBC saw no behaviour and heard no language that could be construed as offensive.

Le Canon Français is the brainchild of two entrepreneurs – Pierre-Alexandre de Boisse and Géraud de la Tour – who began selling wine over the internet to help a beleaguered winegrower friend during the Covid-19 pandemic. From there they started staging events to raise money for heritage projects – and success in that led to the banquets.

De Boisse says they are merely reviving an old French tradition of dining en masse with good local fare that goes back into the depths of medieval history. After the French Revolution, which led to the abolition of the monarchy, there were banquets républicains - marking the arrival of the new system - and, until recently, every village used to have its annual banquet populaire - a kind of people's feast.

"Nowadays people waste so much of their time alone, in their homes, on social media. They've lost the habit of being together and talking. What gives us the most pleasure is when we see the lawyer sitting next to the baker, chatting away," says de Boisse.

The accusations from the hard left have clearly nettled de Boisse, who insists they are unfounded.

"Of course we cannot police the minds of all the people who come. And occasionally maybe someone drunk says something stupid. But our rules are quite clear and set out in the charter, to which everyone signs up when they buy a ticket," he says.

He says the LFI is wrong to say they only serve pork. It happens regularly – because charcuterie is part of the French country tradition – but not exclusively. And he is angry at allegations that a Nazi salute was seen at one banquet. "I spoke to the guy and he said the accusation was total nonsense," he says.

Describing himself as a Catholic from the impoverished aristocracy and an entrepreneur, he says it would offend against both his ethics and his business sense to exclude people from the banquets. As for Stérin, he says he has never met the investor, who "bought a 30% stake purely because he could see we were very profitable".

For the LFI's Fourreau, the banquets are "backward-looking – a caricature".

"They don't represent modern France, which is a place rich in its diversity."

Her party is trying to get local authorities to stop the banquets, and has had an initial success in the Brittany town of Quimper.

In Caen, where a banquet was held in April, a preliminary investigation is being held by police into allegations of racial provocation by people attending.

De Boisse does not deny that many – maybe most – of his punters are probably from the right, or hard right. "But look at the elections. That is how more and more people in the countryside are voting," he says.

"Look, I create jobs, I create happiness for the people who come to the banquets. OK, these politicians don't like the shareholder, they don't like the people who come to the banquets, they don't like my name – but why do they have to go on the attack?

Race for French presidency sees ex-PM Philippe as early favourite to beat populists

Wave of arrests over killing of French nationalist piles pressure on far left

Why France is finding vegan croissants hard to stomach