Salut!

Two days in Ecquevilly, the French town where Salafists sought control

A Muslim woman whose children attended the Mosaique youth centre in the small town of Ecquevilly, 35 minutes by train from Paris, wanted to go, too. But this was at a time when the town's Muslim community was under the influence of a charismatic but radical preacher. She insisted that there should be no music and no men present. The director of the centre explained that she would be most welcome provided she accepted the inclusive rules that applied to everyone. It was a clash of two strong minds, but the director's view prevailed and the woman started attending anyway.

That anecdote offers a bright footnote to the way Ecquevilly's more open-minded residents have coped with its unwanted status as a centre of dangerous Salafist indoctrination. I spent two days there trying to make sense of it all for The National, Abu Dhabi.

If attempts to rid Ecquevilly of a negative image are to succeed, that will in no small part be the result of the strength of character of that director of Moasique, Idriss Amazouz, quoted blow. The National, as ever, consents to the reproduction of my work here ... but I would also like to thanks two fine journalists from the French daly newspaper La Croix, Flore Thomasset and Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner, whose epic coverage stretching to several pages was the insertion for my own visit ...

Troubling times: the sorrows and rewards of reporting Northern Ireland

A new book has just come my way. Reporting the Troubles brings together the stories of journalists who covered 30 years of civil conflict in Northern Ireland. It was edited by two outstanding practitioners of the reporting trade, Deric Henderson and Ivan Little, and is a valuable addition to the great body of published work on those sad times and the struggle to achieve and then maintain what the late Mo Mowlam, when NI secretary, used to call a 'flawed peace' ...

Just over half a century ago, an October Saturday in the city of Derry began in unseasonal sunshine but degenerated into deep gloom with a shameful attack by baton-wielding RUC officers on civil rights marchers.

Awful an event as this was, no one present is likely to have guessed that he or she was witnessing what many feel was the starting point of 30 years of bloody conflict in, according to taste or allegiance, Northern Ireland, Ulster, the Six Counties or simply "the North".

Armistice: reflections on the war to end wars - that didn't - and respect for the fallen

I shall do three things in respect of this weekend's 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War. I shall reproduce two articles written many years ago which touched the horrendous events of 1914-1918, and I post (above) a clip of June Tabor singing the finest version I have heard of Eric Bogle's superb song, No Man's Land. If I wear poppies this weekend, there'll be two, red and white ....

On the streets of London for a forlorn rejection of Brexit

Leave means Grieve. Others may have thought of my slogan first but I didn't see it on any of the placards held by marchers on the great anti-Brexit rally in central London.

I have witnessed scores of marches and rallies in my career as a journalist. I have been insulted, threatened and jostled, endured the effects of police tear-gassing, feared for my personal safety and, looking at the marchers and their varied causes, felt emotions ranging from sympathy to disgust.

Yesterday, for the first time in three score and 10 years of life, I attended a march as a marcher. My wife, French, joined her first since the Paris spring of 1968 and even that was in a provincial town, Le Mans, not at the Bastille or Place de la Republique in the capital.

This one mattered to both of us ... the great uprising against the looming catastrophe of withdrawal from the EU.

Meet Jain, a French singer whose music travels

Buy the album using Salut!s Amazon link - just click on this caption

Over at Salut! Live, you will find - at this link - a transcript of the interview with the French singer Jain on which the following feature, for The National, Abu Dhabi, was based ...

Sometimes a city gets under the skin.

So it was for Jeanne Galice, a French teenager in her final year of high school at the Abu Dhabi Lycee. Eight years on, Jeanne is Jain, an exciting young talent demonstrating that French pop and rock can travel after all.

And in the most striking song of the follow-up to a successful debut album, Jain pays tribute to a city that gave her both pleasure and inspiration.

She already knew Dubai from her childhood. But Abu Dhabi left a special mark on a girl already convinced, for all her sensible plans to study art, that her future lay in music.

Macron and Benalla: when security gorillas try to do their job too well

For a journalist covering France, it is - as my guitar-playing neighbour Jean-Louis put it between his trio New Deal's superb sets at the Gecko bar - 'un cadeau'. President Emmanuel Macron's trusted security chief is caught administering summary justice to a couple of protestors at the May day demo in Paris. The Elysee, in turn, is caught - or at least suspected of being caught - in flagrant cover-up mode.

What the unfortunate pair had done to warrant Alexandre Benalla's heavy-handed treatment is unclear; a photographer who witnessed the events from his nearby flat said they seemed peaceful enough, Benalla may feel they were a threat to civilisation as we know it. We'll see (update: new footage shows them acting like voyous; their lawyer insists they were just a couple out for a drink and threw whatever came to hand when they felt the police were attacking them).

As usual, my thanks to the editor of The National for allowing me to reproduce my work here ...

France, un-deux-trois (now quatre without zéro): World Cup glory and social dividends

This might be seen part two of the observations I offered after France's semi-final win against Belgium. It is reproduced with the consent of the editor of The National, for which I wrote the piece at dawn on Monday.

Le Figaro's post-final headline borrowed the second line of La Marseillaise - le jour de gloire est arrivé - and I do not think translation is necessary. But can that glory have its own translation, inspiring decent and enduring relations between all of the people who make French society today? It's a tough question - the Black-Blanc-Beur (black/white/Arab) spirit of 1998 evaporated within a few weeks of the famous un-deux-trois-zéro victory over Brazil - but we can, and must hope, 4-2 against Croatia yields better results ...

A much-travelled young Emirati friend, with a lifelong passion for top-level football, neatly captured one of the heartening truths of France’s admirable 4-2 World Cup victory over Croatia.

As the match approached the end, with Les Bleus leading in reasonable comfort, she posted a telling social media message: “Africa is about to win the World Cup.”

Le Pen, fictitious jobs and mainstream politicians rallying to aid a party they detest

As has been observed here previously, what was until recently called the Front National - a hideous far right political beast unleashed by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972, but oh so cuddlier now under his daughter, Marine - draws support from a wide range of French voters: from the merely disenchanted to those who, on balance, regret the outcome of the Second World War.

Now those voters are being asked to dig into their pockets to rescue the party from a self-inflicted cash crisis ... from my writing for The National , reproduced with consent ...

Black Blanc Beur. Can France's World Cup melting pot work this time?

I wrote this for The National (Abu Dhabi) after France's semi-final win and before England's exit. The final is now easy for me - an Anglo-French household will find common cause ...

When President Emmanuel Macron entered the French dressing room in St Petersburg after Les Bleus’ winning World Cup semi-final against Belgium, a moment of mutual respect offered a glimmer of hope that sport can generate a sense of unity.

“Bravo, gentlemen,” he told players representing several strands of France’s multicultural society. “France is drowning in happiness thanks to you.”

An A-Z of music from Altan to Zimmerman

Over at Salut! Live, I have been running a series comparing and contrasting different versions of the same songs. It has reached number 39 with a friend's look - below - at three interpretations of Birmingham Sunday, which tells of the horrific Ku Klux Klan killing of four girls at a Baptist church in the 1960s.

You do need to have some liking for, or interest in, folk music, roots music, the blues or vaguely related forms. Move on if not. But if that is for you, or you have a sense of musical adventure, take a tour though the archive at http://www.salutlive.com/cover-story/. And read on - it starts with an explanation of why Salut! Live has not been updated for some time ...

Image: by Appalachian Encounters (Rhiannon Giddens) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons