Issues of immigration and racism in France are inevitably controversial, thanks to the prominence of the far-Right National Front Party of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

At the first round of voting in the last general election in May 1997, the Front won just over 15% of the vote, making it the third largest political party.

It beat both the Communists and the mainstream conservative formation, the UDF. Only the Socialist Party and the other mainstream conservative party, the neo-gaullist RPR, gained more votes than Mr Le Pen.

For the past 20 years, the National Front has peddled a strident anti-immigrant message, arguing that too many immigrants means too few jobs for French people and that immigrants should be despatched back from where they came.

This, of course, ignores the fact that many of the people that the Front would describe as "North African immigrants" were born in France.

The National Front unashamedly insists on a policy of "France for the French", encapsulating its views in a term known as "National Preference": a belief that social security benefits, educational grants and so on, should go only to what it sees as authentic French citizens.

The National Front's rise has been facilitated by the inability of mainstream politicians from both the Left and the Right to come together to fight its contagion. Indeed, in two fundamental ways they have assisted its rise.

Successive governments of both Left and Right have enforced tough anti-immigration policies, effectively acknowledging the salience given to immigration by the National Front.

The mainstream Right in particular has also shown a total inability to marginalise Mr Le Pen's formation.

There have been grass-roots political deals. And efforts to address the concerns of National Front voters - most recently the former Prime Minister Eduard Balladur's call for a full-scale debate on the concept of "National Preference" - tend only to legitimise Mr Le Pen's views.

The National Front is responding to a widespread sense of unease in France; about the nature of its society and its place in the post Cold War world.