These friendly words “Merci pour Jeremy” were among the many congratulations for Morning Star stall volunteers this last weekend at the annual Fete de l’Humanite in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve, once Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning accession to the Labour Party leadership became known at lunchtime on Saturday.

Difficult as it may be for some to imagine the same thing happening here, half a million or more French people habitually flock to the celebrations organised around France’s independent daily socialist newspaper l’Humanite, founded in 1904 by that redoubtable anti-war socialist Jean Jaures, tragically murdered by a nationalist fanatic on the eve of WWI.

The fete is the biggest left festival in the world — a celebration of socialist ideals, and a tremendous symbol for struggle.

In recent times it has taken over La Courneuve’s Georges Valbon park, transforming it briefly into an extraordinary city of small and large white marquees, distributed along the edges of a collection of specially named “avenues,” of which those of Salvador Allende and Karl Marx were just two.

A walk around the whole complex can take hours. The visitor intake last weekend spanned the generations and it was hugely encouraging that young people, many new to politics, were present in great numbers.

Festival visitors are not expected to have to make their own way to the park, which is situated a mile or two from a Paris regional rail network station and from the end of one of the city’s many metro lines.

Throughout the celebrations visitors in numbers arriving at either station are met by an army of shuttle buses — navettes — which, one after the other, ferry them free of charge from station to park and, when they leave later, back from park to station.

As I settled into one people-packed navette a second navette slid into place to collect another just-arrived queue of visitors, and if my navette had not set off promptly I would soon have seen a third taking on another full complement of passengers. The charge for a three-day ticket to the festival and all its events was €32, if paid for online in advance, and €3 more, if not.

Situated at the point of arrival was a large building — the Nina Simone hall — reserved in part for talks and debates, but mainly for vast quantities of literature: fiction, history and politics, and at least one table supported a number of art books of enormous size and weight.

Hundreds of authors were present in this “village of the book,” sitting behind displays of their respective works, ever-ready to sign copies bought. A large section was given over to children’s literature.

Beyond the hall began a seemingly endless trail of marquees with pride of place for the more than 120,000-strong — and growing — French Communist Party (PCF), nationally, regionally and locally, and the named avenues snaked off in different directions, sometimes bewildering the newcomer whether equipped with a festival map or not.

The Parti du Gauche (PG) — the Party of the Left — also had a significant presence.

The British socialist presence occupied, in the “village of the world,” a small tent in Che Guevara Avenue, with volunteers representing the Morning Star, the Communist Party and the Marx Memorial Library.

A tent flap displayed a picture — visible from a good distance — of the head of Marx himself and tables offered literature and other items, including shots of whisky.

Though rain arrived in great and unwelcome quantities in lengthy phases on Saturday and Sunday, so that the Morning Star’s tent floor became alarmingly suggestive of a boat about to sink, our volunteers were not daunted. From Friday onwards they focused particularly on distributing thousands of copies of a specially prepared French edition of the Star to passing visitors, most of whom were French or French-speaking.

Not surprisingly, the lead story and headline of the “edition speciale” concerned the invigorating prospects for the working-class movement if Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader.

Stirring songs of militancy were to be heard during the weekend in various places, but the biggest musical draw was the late Saturday evening performance of the socialist Manu Chao, French-born globe-trotting singer-activist of Spanish origin. To see and hear him, a vast crowd gathered in front of the Grand Scene stage — some willing to enter a sloping sea of mud to get close.

A large central screen, with another on each side, offered less muddy viewing from a distance.

Sunday lunch-time there was a rival to this event when 88-year-old Juliette Greco gave an extraordinary singing performance.

Greek, Kurdish, Palestinian, Iranian, Iraqi, Cuban, Turkish, Algeria and Moroccan left-wing organisations were just some of those represented, while Germany had a Die Linke tent not much larger than our own.

Welcoming refugees and solidarity with them was a recurring theme. And the fete was not just about politics. Popular pieces of fairground machinery included a giant wheel, while the food range sold included couscous, tapas, fries and even oysters.

Messages of peace and anti-austerity were everywhere. A few slogans posted high on individual marquees, translated, read: “If you fight, you can lose. If you do not fight, you have lost already,” “Be realistic: demand the impossible,” “Those who live are those who struggle.”

On Saturday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s election was announced, and throughout Sunday there were many handshakes for our volunteers and expressions of delight — for which not much translation is needed — came thick and fast: “Excellent,” “formidable,” “superbe” were some of these.

Not to be forgotten was a longer compliment, spoken with great seriousness and friendliness: “Merci pour Jeremy … Vive l’Angleterre.”

Thousands gathered again — the rain having thankfully gone into remission — around the Grand Scene stage in the later afternoon on Sunday when Pierre Laurent, national secretary of the French Communist Party, gave a rousing closing address. He denounced the French government’s “gendarme” role in Africa, emphasised the importance of a welcome for refugees and characterised the struggle against austerity and the dismantling of social provision as the first struggle for the left in Europe.

This struggle will become all the stronger now, because a socialist genie is out of the bottle in Britain released by the Corbyn election campaign and its outcome. And, as indicated even by the enthusiastic welcome given at La Courneuve to Jeremy’s win, the impact is and will be international.

We express our gratitude to our French comrades for their hospitality and for the inspiration offered by the festival.
Merci pour la Fete … and Vive la France!

• The special French edition prepared for the Fete is available on our website to e-edition subscribers. Visit morningstaronline.co.uk/subscribe