Rise of far-right leader

Last updated at 15:42 26 April 2004


Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has visited the UK, once notoriously described the Nazi gas chambers as "a detail of Second World War history".

Comments such as this have seen the 75-year-old extreme French right-winger widely condemned - and convicted in the French courts.

But while Le Pen was once dismissed as a racist bully who lost an eye in a street fight, mainstream politicians across Europe have watched

anxiously as his influence has grown in recent years.

In his fourth presidential bid in the 2002 elections, the fiery National Front leader won his greatest success, sending shock waves that reverberated well beyond French borders.

Le Pen beat Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round and went through to the head-to-head contest with Jacques Chirac for the

presidency.

His message consisted of one key theme: France is in danger of being "submerged by massive immigration".

Le Pen blamed "foreigners" for crime, disorder and unemployment.

Denies being racist

He often compared immigration to invasion, claiming he was merely saying out loud what others thought in private.

But Le Pen has always denied being racist.

He once argued that he was "no more racist than Tony Blair, who does not want anything to do with the immigrants at Sangatte" - then a controversial refugee camp near Calais.

Although massive anti-Le Pen rallies were held in France, and he lost the presidential election by a huge majority, Le Pen's success stunned the left.

His achievement in the first-round, and resultant high-profile, boosted a wave of local and national election victories for the far right throughout Europe, including the BNP in Britain.

Policies denounced

Blair denounced Le Pen's "repellent" policies, and joined with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to call on all democratic people to reject extremists.

Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972 but had to wait 12 years before making a real impression, when the party won 11% of the vote in the European elections of 1984.

Presidential elections since then have seen Le Pen performing consistently, with about 15% support.

A veteran of the French political battlefield, Le Pen is also an ex-Foreign Legionnaire who saw action in Indochina and Algeria.

But this combative attitude saw him banned from public office in France for a year after he shoved a Socialist politician during the 1997 legislative elections.

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