Peter Gowan, who died in 2009, was a long-time editor of New Left Review and author of The Global Gamble - America’s Faustian Bid for World Domination (Verso 2000). He was a long-time supporter of the Fourth International.
The first round of the local elections took place against a backdrop of widespread creeping fascism in France and comes after a brutal offensive by the far right, during which the traditional ‘Republican’ right has decisively broken from much of its historical framework and values.