WITH regard to some of the posts I prompted last week, there was something of an irony when we hosted a dinner party on Saturday night. The only other Englishman in the village, John, and his Polish wife, who lived in England for some 40 years, joined us along with a French couple, some 20-odd years younger than we are.

During the course of the dinner I was asked what I had been writing of late and I said I had tried to explain why I thought UKIP had done so well in the European elections and doubtless I would be branded racist and right-wing by those who either missed or chose to miss the point. I said the fact, to my mind that UKIP attracted Labour and Liberal voters, is significant but the politicians would reject it as a protest vote and there would be a tendency to brand anyone who said otherwise as a racist as a fall-back position. It took some translating, I can tell you.

Imagine my surprise when the French couple informed me that their village, St Amans-Valtoret, had just returned a National Front candidate. We are talking about a village of 750 souls and I would have thought at least 740 are indigenous French, whose families have lived there since the days of Asterix.

I have passed through it, but Valtoret is off the beaten track, just the other side of the river from our own, bigger village, St Amans-Soult, which has a population of 1,700. Then our next-door neighbour, Claude, informed me that our village has also voted National Front.

We had a few jokes at the dinner party about us immigrants soon being kicked out, which promoted serious denials from our dinner guests. We were baffled because there do not seem to be a significant number of immigrants in the two villages. There are the four of us, a Romanian doctor and I have seen an African couple that I know of and am on more than nodding terms.

Some three miles up the road is Mazamet and adjacent to that is Aussillon, which does have a significant sector of North Africans.

No, they stressed, and our next door neighbour backed them up, the vote is a reaction to the number of illegals (“sans papiers”) who are in the country, which is a major concern and, being in the south and with most of them arriving from Africa, it could affect us all, they argue.

To be honest, I was shocked. Two little villages in a quiet backwater of France voting for Madame Marine Le Pen, who heads a party from whom even UKIP have distanced themselves. We cannot vote in any election except those for the local French council and Mayor, but I decided it prudent to avoid revealing that if given the vote, I would not have voted for Le Pen or, as I wrote last week, UKIP.

I did not ask our French friends if they had voted for Madame but their explanation of the problems, suggested they were at least sympathetic to some of her views. “The main parties do not do anything about it,” they said.

I pointed out, France was quite brave in banning the burka and no one is supposed to be able to work without showing their working qualifications and permit. We have been struck these past eight years how the French are zealous about holding onto their French-ness, their national identity, which suggests they are more protective of French rights than some countries, such as the UK. So this reaction surprised me.

I do not pretend to understand why neighbours and friends should vote far right, any more than I would understand if they voted communist. I became disenchanted with politics and politicians some years ago and spent most of my voting life commuting between the central areas - a middle of the road, floating voter. I would certainly not vote for the extremists.

In fact, if we spend another seven years in France, we will forfeit our right to vote in the UK but will never be able to vote in French European or national elections, even though, having spent more than six months here, we have to pay taxes to France, as dictated by the UK in a reciprocal agreement.

We pay for 30 per cent of our health requirements and we are lucky France pays the 70 percent – another reciprocal agreement with the UK, which treats French nationals totally free of charge.

So effectively we pay into the system including our local council bills.

If Madame le Pen has her way, there will be punitive measure against illegal immigrants and doubtless she will get round to immigrants per se. There is resentment against the English in some areas – mostly where they take over and dominate, which sounds vaguely familiar. But if or when she gets round to us, I suspect we will be beyond her reach.

PS Last week I dipped my toes into the UKIP debate, trying to suggest why voters from all parties had switched to them. I received, as expected, a political riposte which used most of the artifices as laid down in their handbook: ridicule, labelling and proving as completely wrong, something that I did not actually say, and then pointing out I lived in France and so may not have a right to such opinions. All of which I found predictable, as I read through it with a knowing smile, for it is always easier to write like that when you hide behind a non de plume, but he has a right to his opinion just as I have a right to mine.

However, the smile was wiped off my face when I read that I had obviously made up (invented) an anecdote when I had claimed my wife had been reprimanded by a Herts County Council official, when in their employment, over her asking if someone wanted their coffee black or white, as opposed to the "correct" terminology: with milk or without.

Suggesting I had lied, and inferring my wife had lied of course was and is libellous and actionable, and no amount of subsequent bluster can alter that fact. It insulted my journalistic integrity and that of my wife. After receiving a couple of calls from friends over the weekend, I drew the Editor’s attention to the libellous sentence and he took down the entire posting, whereas I had stated I was quite happy if the sentence had been removed and the posting remain, but apparently the mechanics are such, it is all or nothing.

That is a pity but we have to watch the law of libel very carefully, so it is only fair our critics do so as well, For the record, I have never made up anecdotes. Start doing that as a local journalist and you would lose credibility quickly. I did not invent the anecdote about black and white coffee and neither did my wife, Ellie, who could provide several such examples along similar lines, involving different managers. Her colleagues even attended a council course during which the importance of such semantics was stressed. It happened: it’s true. Hopefully we can now draw a line under that.