Paris
The immense May 13 demonstrations ended without any other direction from the union leaders except to disperse. The vanguard which met on the Champs de Mars decided to continue the SNES [Syndicat National d'Enseignement Superieur -- National University leachers UnionJ and UNEF LUnion National des Etudiants Fran- çais -- French National Student Federation] strike. However, no decision was made for the workers.
On Tuesday, May 14, the workers went into the factories with a higher consciousness and a clearer conception of their power. What would they do? On Wednesday it was learned that an airplane factory, Sud-Aviation in Nanterre, lad gone on strike and that the workers had occupied the plant and shut the manager up in his office.
Early Thursday morning, a strike and factory occupation broke out at the Renault plant in Cleon (in the department of Seine-Maritime), then in FlIns, Le Mans, and finally, in the late afternoon, in the big factory in the Parisian suburb of Billancourt, the pilot_ plant for all France, which has about 30,000 workers.
From then on the movement could not fail to spread. Big metallurgical, automobile, and airplane factories followed suit. On Saturday, the trains stopped, along with mail and telegraph service. The postal savings office struck, and the subway and bus lines in the Paris area stopped one after the other. The strike hit Air France, shipping, the mines, etc.
On Sunday, May 19, the Paris sanitation services went on strike. The Paris
Opera was occupied by its personnel. On Monday the workers were preparing to strike many other industries and services. This week will see a general strike throughout the entire French economy.
Thus, the determined struggle of the university students and teachers broke down the barriers and unleashed movement surpassing 1936 and the Liberation.
By its dimensions and power this movement naturally poses the question of power and challenges the system. In a radio broadcast where the CGI [Confédération Générale du Travail -- General Federation of Labor -- the Communist-led union] and the CFDT [Confédération Fran-
çaise et Démocratique du Travail -- French Democratic Federation of Labor] leaders were asked questions by people calling in, most of the questions were of this type: "What is it you want?" "Where are you headed?" And when these leaders answered only by listing demands for higher wages ana more Iringe benelits, their question-
'But what about the political rs repliea:
issues? What is your position on the government?"
Friday and Saturday the CGT and CFDT leaders thought they could get by with only economic and social demands (wage increases, reduction of the workweek, lowering of the retirement age). By Saturday, however, it proved difficult to hold the line there. The CFDT moreover pulled a small fast one on the CGI on trade-union rights in the plants and, in confused terms, workers' participation in management, which in turn forced the CGI to make a slight left turn.
On the political front, after several days, the FGDS [Fédération de la Gauche Démocrate et Socialiste -- Federation of the Democratic, Socialist Left] called for the government's resignation. The CP leadership, however, limited itself to calling on the FGDS quickly to establish a common program with it. Here also the CP leadership hesitated to put forward political slogans, for example to declare itself on the question of the government.
Seeking to prevent the strikes from taking on too dangerous a character for the bourgeois order, the CGI leaders moved abruptly to block the students from going into the factories. The workers, they said, had no need of tutelage -- except of course from the bureaucrats. They waved the scarecrow of police intervention, but in reality what they feared was a linkup between the revolutionary intellectuals and the workers in the factories.
The bureaucrats saw the students occupy the Sorbonne and initiate running debate and workers democracy, letting all political groups display their publications in the Sorbonne courtyard. Pictures of Lenin, Trotsky, Che, Fidel, and Mao were pasted on the walls. And over the sorbonne floated the red and black flags alongside the flag of Vietnam. Comparisons come easily to mind, the Commune, Smolny...
It was enough to see how the bureaucrats received the students Friday evening to comprehend the magnitude of their fear. A column of 2,000 to 3,000 students headed up by a red flag and singing the "Internationale" marched from the Sorbonne to the Place Nationale in Billancourt, about six miles. When they arrived in front of the Renault gate guarded by CP stalwarts they were greeted by a CGT official who delivered a colorless little speech:
"We thank you, here are our demands... and we have decided for this and that reason not to let anybody enter the factory." He did not even offer the microphone to the students for them to respond to his greeting.
After about ten minutes, the UNEF: leader spoke. He saluted the strikers, expressed revolutionary views, and then called on the students to march around the factory. A line of workers and
.. students formed, two or three times stronger than the column which had come to Billancourt, and it marched around the factory, chanting the slogan "Workers to Power!"
It was greeted by the strikers in windows and on the factory walls.
On Saturday evening the pressure was so strong that the CT leaders began to move toward blocking the movement. They proposed a joint meeting of the CP, the FDS, the CGT, the CFDT, FO [Force Ouvrière -- the social democrat, pro- American union], and FEN [Fédération de 1 'Education National -- the National
The ruling classes of Europe are trembling at the specter of the French upheaval. This was clearly expressed in a May 25 speech by Anthony Wedgwood Benn, member of the British Labour government and minister of technology.
"If adjustments are not made to the parliamentary system, discontent expressing itself in despairing apathy or violent protest could engulf us all in bloodshed," Benn predicted mournfully.
As il in confirmation of his words, militant demonstrations broke out in Liverpool and london, as the spirit of Paris seemed to reach across the Channel.
In Liverpool a reported 400 supporters of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign clashed with police in front of a building housing both the French and American consulates.
"The demonstrators," reported the London Observer, "carrying banners in support of Ho Chi Minh and shouting 'Victory for the NF,' kicked in two panels on one of the building's main doors and then started throwing bricks....
"Bags of flour were thrown at the police by the demonstrators and detectives were punched and their hats knocked
Teachers Union] to discuss the situation. It was obvious that they wanted to find a common formula of agreement to keep the movement from taking them too far.
Where will the movement go? What will be the results? Will de Gaulle be forced to resign? Or will he replace the Pompidou government by an interim cabinet that will hold elections, which inevitably, under present conditions, will produce an FGDS-CP majority?
The situation will evolve from day to day and some days even from hour to hour. A crucial stage has already begun. In any case, the end of Gaullism as well as an FGDS-CP coalition government are on the agenda.
Fascist reactions or army intervention is not likely considering the relationship of forces and the fact that discontent is great even among the police (there has been talk of the possibility of a police strike).
The week of May 20-26 will decide the fate of the government and perhaps the fate of the Fifth Republic.
off...Ihe students, with their arms linked together, retreated aiter the clashes, followed by marching policemen."
"The demonstrators were mostly students from Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and lork universities. International Socialists were also there."
In London the same day a crowd estimated at 1,000 marched on the French embassy "in support of French workers and students."
Police vans were used to bar access to the embassy, and clashes occurred as demonstrators tried to break through. Iwenty were arrested.
Anthony Wedgwood Benn's declaration was hastily denounced by his more staid colleagues, who assured the press that "it could never happen here."
Nevertheless they were worried enough over the possible effects of his remarks to insist that he "should have consulted his Cabinet colleagues, if not those on the national executive committee of the Labour Party," as the one government official said to the London Times May 26.