A SMALL village in France has been split by the will left by its late butcher, who bequeathed his house and land to the local council on condition that they were used to help to plan the communist revolution.

Albert Le Roy, a hardline Marxist who died two months ago at the age of 80, amazed his native Goudelin, in Brittany, with a handwritten will discovered in a drawer at his home that said he was leaving his property, valued at €140,000 (£96,000), to the village council “to prepare for communism”.

M Le Roy, a member of the unreconstructed French Communist Party, forbade councillors from selling the stone house and the 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of fields around it.

Le testament rouge has sparked a fierce debate among the village’s 1,250 residents.

Some locals believe that the centre-right council should accept the property. Others say that Arsène Savidan, the Mayor, should have nothing to do with it. M Savidan himself is perplexed. “Donations of this sort to local communities are rather rare,” he said. “But this is a difficult present. We need to know what he meant by preparing for communism.”

M Le Roy’s family believes that he is laughing from beyond the grave at having sown discord among capitalist reactionaries. Pascal, his nephew who lives in southern France, said: “He had been a communist at least since the war and I don’t think he was deterred by the fall of the Berlin Wall. He always hoped that communism would come back.”

M Le Roy read L’Humanité, the French communist daily, and drove a Soviet-made Moscovitch car in the 1970s. He joined leftwing friends for a glass of red wine in the café opposite the village church every day. As an old-fashioned French butcher who went from farm to farm to slaughter pigs and calves, he was known as Le Saigneur, which means “the Bleeder” but is also a play on the similar sounding Le Seigneur (the Lord).

However, the unmarried M Le Roy never mentioned his will to his nephew or niece, who were his closest relatives after the death of his mother in 1991.

“When my sister and I found the testament, we wondered what we were going to do,” M Le Roy’s nephew said. “The house has been in our family for generations. But we thought we had to take the will to the solicitor for my uncle’s last request to be carried out.”

One idea is that the property could be used for social housing. After anguished debate by the village council, there were six votes for and six against accepting the property. M Savidan asked the local court to decide on the meaning of the bequest. It will give a ruling in 18 months.

M Le Roy, however, had already scored a victory. In the penultimate line of his will, he asked for the church bell to be tolled upon his death — a practice long abandoned. Another debate was held, and this time the vote was clear: from now on Goudelin will sound the knell for its dead.

FLYING THE FLAG

The party won 3 per cent of the vote in the 2002 presidential elections, but retains 22 MPs

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating