WHEN the people of Strasbourg woke up yesterday morning, a huge black flag was waving from the steeple of their cathedral. During the night, someone climbed 142 metres to hang the banner, a sign of mourning that the right wing National Front (FN) will open its 10th congress in the Alsatian capital today.
Each time the FN's 2,200 delegates enter the Palais des Congres they will walk over graffiti newly, spray painted on the pavement: "F like Fascist, N like Nazi," it says. More than 50 anti FN events were scheduled, beginning with concerts last night in the Place Kleber, the city's main, square.
The very names of the rock and rap groups were enough to make Ms Catherine Megret - the FN's mayor of Vitrolles and its new Joan of Arc - shudder: Yeux Noirs, Tambours du Bronx, Les Garcons Bouchers, Noir Desir.
There will be outdoor dances, film and theatre festivals, picnics and even an Easter weekend hunger strike organised by Protestant pastors.
So far, protests against the FN congress have been good natured, but in case the mood turns violent, 15 extra riot police units have been brought in. Flowerbeds and lawns are dotted with black paper flowers, and black ribbons have been tied to street signs. An anonymous group rented 115 bill boards on the city's, main thoroughfares to post this message: "Between March, 29 and March 31, Palais des Congres - a meeting of people whose ideas are foreign to us.
Other posters around the city proclaim "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite in Arabic, Hebrew, French, Chinese, English and Spanish.
Writers, actors and intellectuals are in the forefront of the anti FN demonstrations. The British writer Salman Rushdie presided over a two day meeting of the international writers' parliament in Strasbourg. Mr Rushdie told the group that "even Mr Le Pen [the FN's boisterous leader] should enjoy freedom of expression".
"You cannot ban fascism by banning a party," Mr Rushdie said. "We must let Mr Le Pen express his dangerous opinions. It's up to writers to criticise him."
Denouncing the FN's censorship of libraries in the four French cities it controls, a statement from the writers parliament said: "Lists are circulating in France. One word is enough to get you on the banned, cosmopolitanism, a Jewish name, an Arab tale."
The FN has invited foreign visitors too - about 20 leaders of extreme right European movements, several of whom have territorial designs on neighbouring countries these include Vlaams Block, which is campaigning for a "greater Netherlands" and Romania Mare, which wants to bite off Moldavia and part of the Ukraine for Romania.
Among the FN's guests will be Mr Franz Schtinhuber, a former Waffen SS officer and president of the tiny Nation Europa Verlag, accompanied by the revisionist historian Harald Neubauer, who questions the Nazi holocaust against the Jews. The Italian Pino Rauti, president of the Movimento sociale Fiamma tricolore - the heirs of Benito Mussolini's fascist party - will also attend.
Why is this left right showdown taking place in Strasbourg?
Five years ago, Jean Marie Le Pen sued Catherine Trautmann, the city's Socialist mayor, when she refused to allow him to hold a congress there. Rather than face a second fine and conviction, Mrs Trautmann this time allowed the Palais des Congres to be rented to the FN.
The mothers of both Mr Le Pen and the party's secretary general, Mr Bruno Gollnisch, came from Strasbourg, and the FN has 11 members in the European Parliament, which convenes in Strasbourg. Mr Le Pen received his highest score in the 1995 presidential election in Strasbourg - 25% of the vote.
This weekend's congress will heighten the political polarisation of the Alsace Lorraine region. Anticipating violence, many shopkeepers pulled down their metal shutters yesterday, and announced they would stay closed all, weekend.
A left wing pamphlet circulating in the city says that next Tuesday morning, when the frontistes have gone home, residents should "bring brooms, brushes and disinfectants to the Palais des Congres, for Osterputz". Osterputz is the Alsatian word for spring cleaning.
