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2022
168

Roger Nols: a mayor to be forgotten?

Notes de la rédaction

This is the press release related to the article from Serge Jaumain and Joost Vaesen, published on 2 May 2022. Read the article.

In the large foyer of the Schaerbeek town hall, busts of the former mayors are displayed. Among them, the bust of Roger Nols has unleashed passions. Should we keep this representation of the man who served four successive terms at the head of the municipality (1970-1976-1982-1988), under the banners of the FDF, N.O.L.S. and PRL, while regularly appearing in national headlines? In the collective memory, Roger Nols is associated with community conflicts, his xenophobic stances and his drift towards the extreme right. However, reducing his political career to these elements alone does not allow us to understand his longevity and above all his sweeping electoral victories. The debate on the presence of his bust in the town hall of Schaerbeek therefore prompts a retrospective gaze and a contextualisation of his mandates, taking into account the evolution of a municipality which was very much marked by rapid urban and social transformations as well as by the national debates on linguistic and migratory issues. This is what historians Joost Vaesen (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) and Serge Jaumain (Université libre de Bruxelles) invite us to do in the 168th issue of Brussels Studies, by presenting the results of a Brussels Studies Institute (BSI) research commissioned by the municipality of Schaerbeek.

Through the analysis of works relating to the history of the municipality and of Belgium during the “Nolsist” period, in addition to a number of interviews with key witnesses, the authors recall and attempt to understand the adherence to Nols' radical discourse by a significant proportion of the voters in Schaerbeek as well as in Brussels (92 969 votes in the 1984 European elections). Yet his popularity should not obscure the fact that his actions also gave rise to fierce opposition. With the “separate counters affair” (for Dutch-speaking people and foreign nationals, from 1971 to 1976), his arrival on the back of a camel at the town hall (December 31, 1986) and the invitation of the French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1984, the Schaerbeek politician has given rise to the most heated controversies. They contributed to the mobilisation of many inhabitants of Schaerbeek within a vast and particularly dynamic fabric of associations in the fight against racism and social exclusion, which are requesting the removal of the bust today.

For both historians, the ongoing debates surrounding Roger Nols – like those surrounding our colonial past – raise the question of the complex interactions between the past and the present. The current proposals regarding the fate of the bust range from the request for “nothing at all to be done” (fearing a certain form of historical revisionism and/or an opening up of the wounds of the past) to the wish to have the bust removed (to clearly mark the disapproval of Nolsist politics today). Between these two extremes lie a variety of options which should be discussed in depth within the municipality, such as the addition of some historical background information or an obvious sign of protest with regard to the bust (e.g. via a transformation or relocation of it). All of these strategies ultimately raise the question as to how we deal with the past when it is controversial and sensitive, while illustrating the complexity of having a reasoned dialogue with the past and the danger of applying the principle of “historical oblivion”.

References
Jaumain, S. and Vaesen, J, “Roger Nols: a mayor to be forgotten?”, Brussels Studies [Online], General collection, No 168, 2 May 2022. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/brussels/6074
Contact
Tatiana Debroux, Editor in chief:
tdebroux[at]brusselsstudies.be

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