Populist, opportunist… But still?
There is the communal context. We are at a time with Schaerbeek which is in full transformation. The town will undergo a forced urbanization and not always properly planned. We think of the Manhattan plan in the North district. A very violent transformation of Brussels with completely abandoned districts, which will become increasingly poor and welcome migrant populations… Nols will use this element to seek out a traditional, Belgian electorate, which opposes this migration. This, even if Roger Nols, who had a sense of contact, was able to discuss and get along well with immigrants…
There is also a broader context, that of Brussels in general…
Exactly, with the middle classes leaving Brussels and settling in the suburbs. Neighborhoods will therefore suffer. Then, there are measures at the national level which will allow the mayors to limit the registration in their municipality of non-Belgians. He will use this and he will not be the only one. He is not an isolated character. He has strong support from his constituents and he fits into a context. It has not always provoked widespread opposition.
Do you grant him other extenuating circumstances, forty or fifty years later?
Thanks to him – I say “thanks” with many quotation marks -, Schaerbeek has become a quite exceptional municipality in the development of progressive associations. We have seen extremely diverse organizations flourish there, helping immigrants and the most precarious. Schaerbeek had become a combat commune where they fought once morest the policies of Roger Nols. It also contributed to the development of the town.
That being said, Nols was a liberal, moved to the FDF, then to the PRL, created his own list bearing his own name before ending up with the National Front…
Just because he’s an opportunist doesn’t in any way absolve him of his opinions. There has been an evolution from a right-winger to the extreme right. At first, his speech allows him to capture a lot of voices. But his rapprochement with Jean-Marie Le Pen and the fact that he will totally espouse far-right ideas to the point of supporting it, this shows that he is sinking into this ideology. He believes in it. The end of his reign, of his political career, was marked by the extreme right. At that time, he lost a majority of his voters. As long as he was not directly linked to far-right parties, he still appeared as someone to be seen. But as soon as he makes his far-right commitments, the support he enjoys erodes very quickly.
You also want to highlight what he represented when he first became mayor in 1970. What is it regarding?
When he is elected, he embodies something new. The elected officials have been there for a long time in Schaerbeek. And this man, a former waiter, who comes from the hotel industry, who appears to be someone close to the people, gives an anti-elite image with the desire to shake up traditional policies. Some thought that a new wind was blowing on the town and he took advantage of it.
More than 30 years following his last mandate as mayor, he remains a figure who marked the history of Schaerbeek to the point of giving it a negative image still perceived today…
This is perhaps not the way the entire population of Schaerbeek would have liked to be spoken of at the time. Everyone knew Nols in those years when not everyone was able to name at least ten mayors in Belgium. Nolsism will have long-term marked the image of the town. Even if it is necessary, I remind you, to underline the dynamism of Schaerbeek associations. This is something that Nols has managed, in spite of himself, to make known. Schaerbeek, today, has detached himself from the personality of Nols. His successors distanced themselves, taking into account at the same time the evolution of the population of Schaerbeek. And concerning this bust, the objective is that today Schaerbeek reclaims its past. Destroying is not a way of analyzing this past, of understanding it, before deciding. The bust itself is not the heart of the debate. The most important thing is what Nols represented at the time.
