http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/ Gnome kidnappers strip French gardens By William Langley in Strasbourg A WAVE of garden gnome kidnappings has forced police in France to issue a general security alert to anxious suburban homeowners. Hundreds of gnomes have been snatched in a series of raids that have been carefully planned and executed by at least two shadowy groups. An exhibition of more than 2,000 gnomes at the Bagatelle gardens in Paris was broken into last month and several dozen stolen. The next day an organisation calling itself The Garden Gnome Liberation Front claimed responsibility. "This odious exhibition must be closed immediately. Or we will strike again." Since then, incidents of gnome-napping have increased to the point where a senior police officer declared that "no gnome can now be considered safe". Last week in Lingolsheim, a well-heeled suburb of Strasbourg, 43 gnomes were found dumped in the grounds of the public library. In Rouen, 68 were recovered from the basement of a house after a week-long police surveillance operation. Many gnome-owners have resorted to taking their sculptures indoors at night. Householders in Gignac, near Montpellier, enraged by the loss of their gnomes, have formed a vigilante patrol using a truck with an elevated platform and a powerful searchlight to peer over garden walls. A variety of fates await the stolen gnomes. Some have been resettled in remote forest dells, while in one macabre incident in Alsace, 11 gnomes were found hanged by their necks from a bridge over a river, with a suicide note that said: "By the time you read these few words, we will no longer be part of your selfish world, which it has been our unhappy task to decorate." Prof Patrick Boumard, an anthropologist at the University of Rennes, who has been tracking the phenomenon, believes it stems from "an expanding anti-bourgeois bias in our society". France has an estimated 12 million gnomes - most of them adorning the neat lawns, fish-ponds and flowery terraces of the suburban middle classes. Prof Boumard said: "The people behind this, by targeting gnomes, are attacking the wider values that gnome-owners hold dear. Gnomes began to appear in Europe at the start of the 15th century. Their arrival coincided with the emergence of the bourgeoisie. They may appear kitsch to us now, but they have a historic and cultural provenance. Stealing gnomes is part mockery, part insurrection." Kitsch or not, French gnomes tend to be a notch higher up the social order than their British counterparts. Many are hand-sculpted, and lovingly painted by their owners. Some have been in the same family for generations. Prof Boumard said: "I have known people who talk to their gnomes every day, who even put them to bed at night. They are treated almost as members of the family." The authorities have been accused of refusing to take the problem seriously, and in the country's gnome-studded suburbs there have been warnings of "direct action" unless something is done. "If these were works of art being stolen from the homes of the wealthy, the people doing it would be in jail by now," said Marc Lepalle, a retired Strasbourg fishmonger and owner of one of the gnomes recovered at Lingolsheim. "All we get is condescension. We are told: 'They're only gnomes.' " A spokesman for Strasbourg police said: "It is a national problem and our force is working with others in the country. There is clearly some degree of organisation behind these incidents." Next month, Prof Boumard will host a three-day conference in Rennes to examine what he describes as the "socio-cultural-economic" implications of gnome-napping. "We need to find answers before it is too late," he said. The Garden Gnome Liberation Front is the more militant of two groups believed to be in the vanguard of the rights-for-gnomes movement. Its masked commandos are credited with dozens of attacks. It is thought to have up to 100 members and has a loosely anarchist, anti-capitalist agenda. Less menacing, but probably larger, is the Garden Gnome Emancipation Movement, which runs a web site devoted to the promotion of gnomes' interests. It says: "Garden gnomes are often seen as pointless beings without personality - idle and ugly. The purpose of our movement is to rehabilitate them." The group officially disassociates itself from the activities of its rival but that has not stopped it being bombarded with threats and insults from angry gnome owners. 3 May 2000: 'Liberated' gnomes recovered 6 November 1998: Roaming gnomes locked up 28 June 1997: Gnomes found in wood 24 May 1997: Gnome population kidnapped © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000. Terms & Conditions of reading. 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