The Legacy of Roger Nols: A Critical Look at Schaerbeek’s Mayoral Years

2023-12-05 19:07:26

This turnaround is the culmination of a long process aimed at drawing up an objective and lucid assessment of Roger Nols’ mayorship which spanned from 1970 to 1989, the year of his resounding resignation. Electoral leaflets calling for the expulsion of immigrants, the reception in 1984 of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the French National Front, his camel ride to criticize the presence of North Africans without forgetting the closure of schools, disastrous financial management … The passage of Roger Nols at the head of Schaerbeek will have tarnished the image of the town and caused serious damage, the impacts of which are still felt today.

An opportunist

Born in 1922 and died in 2004, Roger Nols was always driven by the ballot box. The intoxication of power for a politician who is almost untouchable thanks to his preferred votes. But one “opportunistic” all in all. No need to beat around the bushsay the conclusions of the Brussels Studies Institute, a collective of university professors, mandated by the team of the mayor in office Bernard Clerfayt (DéFi) in order to draw up an inventory of the Nols years and the legacy that he leaves more than 30 years after his departure.

When this analysis was launched, we were in the middle of a debate around the place in public space of statues representing problematic characters linked to Belgian colonization in the Congo. We are also shortly after the arrest of MRAX, the Movement to Fight Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia. In 2017, its president requested the removal of the bust of Roger Nols. A bust installed on the first floor of the municipal hotel after its disappearance, as previous mayors of Schaerbeek were entitled to (Reyers, Colignon, Dailly, Meiser, Williot, etc.).

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