Love of peace sparks a war in Provence

Residents of France's rural idyll find silence shattered and their loyalties divided by development plans

The sun is just setting into the purple haze that brushes the slopes of Mount Ventoux. The yellow walls of nearby village houses have turned golden in the evening light; a hare bounds across the road and into the lavender meadow beyond, and the only sound is the song of the nightingale. This is the idyllic Provencal landscape of Cezanne. It is home, or second home, for several hundred appreciative Britons, and just over the next ridge is the Luberon - popularised the world over by the books of Peter Mayle.

This rolling green countryside constitutes the Plateau d'Albion (an ironic name, given the number of Britons living here), which has been for the past 30 years the site of France's missile base. And with the missiles about to be dismantled and the base closed, the delicate question has arisen of what to do with some of the most spectacularly beautiful land in France.

The first tentative answers are threatening to split what has been a generally harmonious mix of natives and settlers, nature and development. This weekend, the divisions surfaced in two separate protests: one in the market town of Apt, the commercial centre for the region, which fears the loss of jobs and business; the second in the small town of Sault, where scattered local residents fear the loss of their peace and quiet.

This Saturday, as always, the market in Apt, a town of 10,000, packed up and left town at lunchtime. Unusually, though, the shops remained shut. Warning notices appeared in the windows of the cafes: "Out of community solidarity, we will not be serving customers today after 2pm." As 2.30 neared, people streamed towards the square; a forest of banners appeared with the names of villages, and trade unions from the hospital and local businesses.

A mock coffin was trundled in, with "jobs" written on one side, and "economy" on the other. A dozen or so town and village mayors followed, in theirtricolour sashes, and the regional councillor in his yellow and red sash. There began an almost silent march around a silent town to symbolise the "ville morte" that people in Apt fear their town will become if the base shuts down.

"Chirac, honour your promises", read the banner at the head of the demonstration, "don't kill our jobs". The campaign organiser, Jean-Jacques Sicre, said: "We know the base will close, but we need jobs."

Apt distrusts all options except one, first mooted last July, for a helicopter-training school on the site of the base. "The military accounts for 1,500 jobs. What private employer could provide that many jobs all at once?" asked Gabriel Trouchet, a member of the Apt organising committee.

Yet the very thought of a helicopter school is what has mobilised the Association for the Defence and Development of the Plateau d'Albion Area (ADDPPA) which organised yesterday's protest in Sault. It was an altogether bigger, more diverse affair, with balloons, posters and a couple of actors "buzzing" the crowd with recordings of helicopter noise.

This campaign is led by a redoubtable woman, Elisabeth Murat, who moved from Paris 11 years ago to farm goats. It involves environmental groups, farmers, hoteliers, and expatriate Britons, Germans and Italians. They fear the loss of the very reasons why they chose to settle in Provence: the landscape and the peace. They object to the idea of a helicopter school, but they also contest the pessimism in Apt, producing figures to show that the military contributes far less to the local economy than tourism or second home-owners.

Brian Featherstone, a professional interpreter and British member of the association, is concerned to stress that the group is not directed against the military. "I've lived alongside those missiles for the last 30 years. But helicopters flying day and night would ruin life, destroy the silence, which is what I came for and what I love.' He believes, like Ms Murat, that other solutions are possible: a listening station, or a cinema school and campus.

The "silence" argument is one to which the Apt campaigners are not insensitive. "We like silence as much as anyone, but we don't want it to be the silence of the grave," said Mr Trouchet.

Everyone is trying hard not to make too much of the divisions, at least in public; it would not be civilised, in such a landscape, and no one wants the real enemy, Paris, to get the idea that it can "divide and rule".

Needling comments, though, tell of the mutual suspicion. One local man is quoted as saying: "Let the helicopters come, then maybe we'll get rid of the foreigners."