The freshly cut inscription on the marble "tombstone" was savage and to the point: "Betrayal! Here lie the promises of F. Hollande which were made to workers and their families in Florange on 24 February 2012. From the steelworkers of Lorraine." With barely suppressed anger and bitterness, Frederic Weber, a local union official, explained why it was sitting in his office: "When Francois Hollande was campaigning for the presidency, he said to me: 'I will be the president of change.' He came to Florange and he said that he would fight a war against the kind of finance that closed our steelworks. But he has bowed down before the markets and screwed the workers instead."
Few countries do gesture politics with as much panache as the French. But the anger in recent weeks in this picturesque corner of north-eastern France, close to the German border, was palpable. After hundreds of years of steel production in the region, the famous blast furnaces of Florange were shut down for good April 24 by their billionaire owner Lakshmi Mittal.
The long passionate campaign against their closure, enthusiastically backed by Hollande before he won the presidential election a year ago, was over.