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An article recently published in the Sunday Telegraph claims
that residents of Chamonix
are frustrated with 'the English' (Scots and Welsh as usual get
away with it!) taking over their ski resort and want to drive them
out.
While there can be a
certain amount of tension between nationalities in resorts, no one
we spoke to had heard of British businesses being vandalised, although
the problem of property prices rising to due to high levels of British
interest was widely recognised.
The article from the Sunday Telegraph appears
below:
 Anglo-French
conflict
In this pretty ski resort that hugs the foot of Mont Blanc, an ugly
Anglo-French conflict is brewing. Aggrieved with what they call
l'invasion Anglaise - a growing influx of Britons buying apartments,
setting up businesses and acting as if they own the place - local
residents are fighting back.
Until a few days days ago, the insult Putain Les Anglais (F*** the
English) could be read in black aerosol on a wall of the Passage
de L'Outa. Elsewhere, the sentiment is repeated: "English go home"
is sprayed on car bonnets and the walls of British-owned businesses.
Tyres are slashed, glue and matchsticks pushed into doorlocks.
'You've taken over and all you want us French for is to
cook'
The cause of the xenophobia and the vandalism is explained with
a fierce throwing up of his hands by Bernard Prud'homme. "It's English
economic imperialism," he declares. "The English have taken over
and only want the French to cook!" Mr Prud'homme is not just an
angry French resident, but the town's director of tourism. He'd
like the English to come on holiday and then go home - he does not
want them to stay permanently.
"They're taking over," he claims, citing the fact that 70 per cent
of clients on the books of estate agents are English, property prices
have risen 40 per cent in three years and one family in six out
of the 10,000 permanent residents is now British. "My message to
the French people of Chamonix is, 'Don't sell to the English',"
he adds. "It is the only way to stop the destruction of our identity."
English employing English
L'invasion of Chamonix, in south-eastern France, on the border with
Switzerland and Italy, however, continues. On Rue de Mougins, called
"Rue d'Anglais" by the locals, are the Queen
Vic, Dick's Tea Bar,
Bar d'Up, Cy Bar, Le
Terrace and Le Bumble Bee, all run by English people. Here,
the signs are in English, tea is served with milk and few speak
French. Many English companies recruit staff in the UK and pay wages
in sterling - avoiding crippling French taxes and rigid employment
laws (but also to cater for their UK guests, who often prefer English
staff when they go on a skiing holiday - home away from home).
"It is unjust," says Michel Charlet, the Mayor of Chamonix. "It
is not fair on French business for the English to come here and
operate under British commercial law. "We welcome the category that
speak French, live here all year, integrate and pay taxes," he adds.
"But the second category, well, that's different. They don't want
to be part of the community. They force prices up so high, buying
second homes to rent out taxfree, that local French can't afford
to live here."
Press interest
The French press has waded into the furore. Last week, an article
in Le Journal du Dimanche accused the English of knocking on doors
and offering reluctant French owners astronomical sums to sell.
Tensions have consequently intensified. "I am afraid to say anything,"
the Swiss wife of an English pub owner says. "The newspaper article
has made them hate us even more and I am not even English."
Other nationalities in the town believe that the conflict is born
of centuries-old animosity. Property prices have leapt because of
UK interest, flat prices almost doubling in the last three years,
French locals profiting from sales.
But who's using who?
Pietro Caputo, an Italian estate agent, admits that the French attitude
is sometimes contradictory. "I oversaw a transaction between a French
chalet owner and an English buyer. After the Frenchman had received
three times the value of his property, he sneered, 'Ah, bloody English'."
Such sentiments are certainly echoed on the streets. "The French
have left," insists a Gauloise-smoking taxi driver as he swung his
Peugeot into Avenue Mont Blanc. "They have been forced out. Now
you don't hear French in Chamonix."
 Le
plus grand Pub Anglais
It is certainly true in the Queen Vic pub, whose sign declares it
"a little corner of England in France". Inside, Emma Rutherford,
a 29-year-old from Oxford, fields orders from a rowdy English crowd.
"I haven't learnt French because I haven't had the opportunity,"
she explains. "I don't meet many French." A colleague, Ross Gorman,
32, agrees. "Many of the English are 'seasonaires' - they come just
for the skiing season and often don't see the need to speak French."
Integration and hard earned acceptance
Philip and Amanda Jones, who own a chalet business and have lived
in Chamonix for 12 years, only became accepted when their children,
Oscar, seven, and Rosie, five, began to attend a local school. Laughing,
Mrs Jones, originally from Winchester, added: "Now we don't have
a problem with the locals, we too find ourselves moaning about the
invasion of the English."
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