Son of a mason and a worker who became a senator, a minister, but above all mayor of France’s second city for 25 years, Jean-Claude Gaudin, who died at the age of 84, dedicated his life to his two passions : politics and Marseille. It is “one of the last monuments of French politics”, greeted the leader of the socialist opposition in the municipal council, Benoît Payan, who nevertheless “fiercely opposed him” and whose left-wing coalition had put end in 2020 to the 25 years of power of the right in Marseille.
The slender boy with baby cheeks who joined the municipal council at the age of 25 had become a massive octogenarian with a hunched back, but his voice still carried just as loudly when the “monument” got carried away. His anger remained legendary, like the famous “take care of your children!” launched during the start of the school year to parents furious that the town hall had not planned anything to welcome students after classes. He was “made” from “beatings, violence, the horrors of politics”, analyzed Benoît Payan a few years ago to AFP, evoking “the story of a man who is done by itself.
He was born on October 8, 1939 in Mazargues, a village district in the south of Marseille, to a mason father and a mother who worked in a rope factory. Their only wealth: a cabin in a cove. A childhood marked by the Catholic religion which “meant that the desire to serve has always tormented me”, he confides to AFP. One of his last public appearances dates from the visit of Pope Francis to Marseille in September 2023.
“I want to do that”
Her political vocation arose in 1956, during a meeting of Germaine Poinso-Chapuis, a feminist resistance fighter who became Minister for Liberation, on a square in Mazargues. “I was captivated: she was dressed in black with a pearl necklace, she was haranguing the crowd,” he described to AFP. “When I got home I told my dad, ‘I want to do that!’.”
Professor of history and geography in a private college, he is close to the Christian right. At the age of 25, he entered the municipal council on a left-center-right alliance list led by Gaston Defferre (mayor from 1953 to 1986). “It’s the most important day of my political life,” he says.
Having become a deputy, he stood out during the municipal elections of 1983, supporting the Gaullist Jean Hieaux, candidate in Dreux, in Eure-et-Loire, at the head of the first RPR-National Front list of France. “We must beat the socialist-communist adversary,” he justifies.
The beginnings of a “pact” with the far right, whose votes would allow him, three years later, to win the presidency of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council. A co-management that “works”, he assured in 1990, asking “that we stop [lui] have a hard time with that.”
42nd mayor
In 1995, after two consecutive failures, Jean-Claude Gaudin became the 42nd mayor of Marseille, the role of his life. “Anyone who has not crossed Marseille in Jean-Claude Gaudin’s car, windows down, hearing passers-by say ‘Hello Mr. Mayor!’, has not known the link between a mayor and his city, this carnal link , visceral”, says the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher. Minister of the City (1995-1997), five times vice-president of the Senate, the man keeps Marseille at his heart.
Today, he praises his “great achievements”: “a brand new Vélodrome stadium, the tunnels and the Mucem (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations)”, but above all the drop in unemployment, from 22% to its arrival at 11% today, its “greatest success”.
Its opponents draw up a less rosy assessment: insufficient public transport network, city among the most polluted in France, neglected working-class neighborhoods, “dilapidated” schools. At the end of 2019, the Regional Chamber of Accounts overwhelms its management, from real estate to personnel. Already weakened by an investigation into the working hours of his agents, the mayor castigates “the most stigmatizing, imperfect, unfair and unfounded pamphlet”.
But the real turning point came a year earlier, on November 5, 2018. Two buildings in a working-class neighborhood – one of which is owned by the City – collapsed. Eight people died buried. The shock wave reveals the extent of unsanitary housing. The associations accuse the town hall of having ignored the alerts. Thousands of people are evacuated from homes declared in “imminent danger”.
“It haunts me every day, in 24 years I have never experienced such a tragedy,” assures Jean-Claude Gaudin. An admission that does not calm the anger: in front of the town hall, demonstrators scream for weeks “Gaudin, assassin!” Before bowing out from politics in 2020, this childless single admitted to dreading “the phone that no longer rings”.