May 1968 in France
The French May or May 1968 is known as the chain of student protests, mainly university ones, and later union protests that took place in France and, especially, in Paris during the months of May and June 1968.
This series of spontaneous protests was initiated by student groups opposed to the consumer society, capitalism, imperialism, authoritarianism, and that in general disavowed the political and social organizations of the time, such as political parties, the government, unions or the university itself. The initial student movement was soon joined by industrial worker groups, unions and the French Communist Party, although with mainly labor objectives, not fully coincident in other respects with student groups. Both movements resulted in the largest student revolt and the largest general strike in the history of France, and possibly Western Europe, supported by more than nine million workers. The student movement was influenced by the hippie movement. > that extended then.
The magnitude of the protests had not been foreseen by the French government, and it put the government of Charles de Gaulle on the ropes, which came to fear an insurrection of a revolutionary nature after the extension of the general strike. However, most of the sectors participating in the protest did not come to consider the seizure of power or open insurrection against the State, and not even the French Communist Party came to seriously consider such an exit. The bulk of the protests It ended when De Gaulle announced the early elections that took place on June 23 and 30.
The events of May and June in France are part of a wave of protests carried out, mainly, by politicized sectors of the youth, whose ideology toured the world during 1968. These events spread throughout the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, the United States, Czechoslovakia and Italy, which expanded the scale of the old saying of the XIX century stating that when Paris sneezes, all of Europe catches a cold.
The novelty of 1968, with respect to other previous struggles, comes from the points of intersection and the crossing of commitments: from Vietnam to Japan, passing through Germany, there are ties and bridges built between the insurgent peoples, the dissident students and the rebellious workers. Globality and transmission operate in a circular way: the event is global, because its protagonists travel, transmit, appropriate and reveal the challenge beyond the homeland. Internationalism appeared as an active principle, a decisive political motor. That knowledge was impregnated with discoveries, with the circulation of information and transmissions. The students were more aware than the workers of their European neighbors, and even looked further out into that vast world, where they found similar commitments. This is explained due to practical reasons: originating from relatively privileged social backgrounds, they frequently enjoyed the financial means to travel; Their studies led them to take other cultures into account, to practice other languages, to receive peers from anywhere in the world on their own benches. This is how the circulation of practices, ideas and solidarities began.
Different contexts
Economic context
The May 1968 crisis in France came at the end of a decade of unprecedented economic prosperity. However, for a year the first serious symptoms of a serious deterioration in the economic situation had been manifesting themselves. The number of unemployed increased notoriously, and at the beginning of 1968 there were already 500,000. Youth were particularly affected, and circumstances had led the government to create the ANPE (Agence nationale pour l'emploi) in 1967. The industrial crisis was already threatening many sectors, and the long miners' strike of 1963 had shown the deep discontent of French mining in the face of an unstoppable decline. In 1968, two million workers received the SMIG (Salaire minimum interprofessionnel garanti, interprofessional minimum wage) and felt excluded from prosperity. Real wages were beginning to fall and concerns about working conditions were growing.
On the outskirts of the big cities, large irregular shanty towns, the bidonvilles, had sprawled since the mid-1950s. The most populous, Nanterre, had a population of 14,000 in 1965 and it was located right in front of the university where the first student protest movements were to emerge.
Political context
Internationally, the '60s saw a series of changes worldwide that led to the questioning of the system of European domination and, above all, the United States over the colonial or recently independent territories of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the rise of leftist movements in Latin America, and especially the Vietnam War, generated a broad movement of solidarity in much of Europe and the United States itself, which channeled opposition to imperialism.
In France these movements have their genesis during the Indochina and Algeria wars, which caused a strong polarization in French society since the beginning of the '60s. In October 1961, a peaceful demonstration by Algerians in Paris ended with a strong police repression that caused more than 200 deaths, whose bodies were thrown into the Seine in an action that was silenced in the first of the great information blackouts of this time. Also as a result of this event, a radical student current appeared publicly for the first time that will demonstrate against police action through two recently created organizations: the Anti-Colonial Committee and the Anti-Fascist University Front (FUA). The following year, in February 1962, a demonstration called by the French Communist Party and the General Confederation of Labor ended with nine crushed deaths in the Charonne metro station. These two events provoked a feeling of rejection towards the CRS (police riot gear). During this period, student groups such as the French National Student Union university union moved to the left in the context of opposition to the Algerian war, while new movements such as the Vietnam Grassroots Committee and the Vietnam National Committee were emerging. (appeared in 1967 and 1966 respectively) who organized important anti-imperialist mobilizations and were the protagonists of much of the university agitation prior to 1968. The development of the Cultural Revolution in China also generated a new reference for a part of the French leftist sectors, who saw in Maoism a new ideological base, far from the PCF and the Soviet Union, and less dogmatic and much more innovative with respect to classical Soviet Marxism.
Also as a result of the war in Algeria, important far-right movements arose that advocated the defense of French Algeria, such as the OAS (Organization of the Secret Army, for its acronym in French) and the groups Occident, Ordre Nouveau or Jeune Nation. These movements clashed during the 1960s with the leftist student and worker movements both in the universities and on the streets of the main cities, generating an increasing polarization in the different sectors of French society.
As for the French government, the figure of General De Gaulle, in power since 1958, suffers a palpable wear and tear in the electoral results. In the 1965 presidential elections, the first with universal suffrage since 1948, De Gaulle had not achieved the required absolute majority in the first round of voting, closely followed by François Mitterand to the general surprise. In the 1967 elections to the Chamber of Deputies, the majority of him had depended on a single seat. The opposition continued to reproach him for the way in which he had come to power in 1958, and the legitimacy of the Gaullist regime was increasingly overshadowed by accusations of a "coup d'état". Despite the economic boom of recent years, the political successes (end of the Algerian War of Independence and decolonization processes) and a certain acclimatization to the presidential regime of the Fifth French Republic, the authoritarian practices of General De Gaulle raised more and more criticism.
For its part, the French labor movement is going to experience a strong radicalization in this decade and a certain distancing from the majority union leaders such as the CGT. Since 1961 there will be violent strikes and factory occupations, on many occasions more or less spontaneously and against the agreements of the union leadership. In 1963 there was a violent miners' strike in which the unions' agreements were rejected; in 1964 there were strikes by the workers of Renault (under the slogan "we want time to live") and in the Nantes shipyards; the workers of the Rhodiaceta chemical group in Lyon and Besançon went on strike throughout the month of December 1967 and, in January 1968, there were riots in Caen involving workers, farmers and students, which resulted in more than 200 wounded. These were the first strikes since 1936 in which the workers occupied the factories, and throughout the decade much of France was affected by this labor movement. Student groups and intellectuals began a strategy of rapprochement with labor conflicts in this period., beginning to work in the factories as part of the militant activity and holding meetings in the houses of the workers. In this plane of rapprochement between the student movement and a radicalized labor movement outside the union leadership, the bases were laid for agitation of May and June.
Cultural Context
The 1960s in France - as in the rest of the West - were a time of rapid cultural change. The era was characterized by the acceleration of the rural exodus and the emergence of the consumer society, increasingly influenced by the mass media that generalized mass culture.
It is also in the 1960s when young people became a significant socio-cultural category, achieving their recognition as a social actor that established processes of ascription and differentiation between their options and those of adults. These processes develop through youth subcultures born from the late 1950s, within countercultural movements such as underground culture and the beatnik and hippie movements. This youth had their own musical idols like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Léo Ferré, etc. Many of these movements questioned and criticized the materialistic lifestyle offered by the postwar consumer market and capitalist organization.
On the philosophical level, various works and authors had great influence on one part of the movement: Wilhelm Reich, Freudo-Marxist, whose manifesto, The Sexual Revolution, gave its name to one of the most repeated slogans; Herbert Marcuse with The One-Dimensional Man, published in France in 1964 and which had to be reissued in 1968; Raoul Vaneigem, with the Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations of 1967; Guy Debord with The Society of the Spectacle, also from 1967. In 1965 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron published Les étudiants et leurs études where they acidly criticized the French educational system and its mechanisms of social reproduction, which allowed the elites to retain their power from generation to generation. Meanwhile, at the École Normale Supérieure, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser formed a generation of Marxist-Leninist thinkers who were the embryo of the first Maoist organizations.
Evolution of events
Previous events
On January 8, 1968, the Minister of Youth and Sports, François Missoffe, attends the inauguration of a swimming pool at the University of Nanterre. The students greeted the minister with a loud boo because of his White Paper on the state of student youth. During the event, a young sociology student, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, provoked the minister, reproaching him for not dealing with the sexual problem among young people in his book. Despite the fact that this incident remained a mere anecdote, it allowed the visualization of Cohn-Bendit as one of the media figures of the events of May. A few months later, on March 22, 1968, a group of students locked themselves in the University of Nanterre in protest against the internal regulations of the center, vacating the premises after some negotiations and the appearance of the police. This action would give rise to the March 22 Movement, which would be one of the referents of the mobilizations of May and June of that year.
Start of movement
On April 22, 1968, 1,500 students attended a new protest in Nanterre against the arrest of several students from the Vietnam National Committee, accused of attacking American companies, in which the police would intervene. On the 28th of that same month, the dean of the Faculty ordered its closure, while the students announced the boycott of the partial exams and there were clashes with members of the National Federation of Students of France, of right-wing ideology, the They would attack the university on May 2 and accuse the mobilized students of being terrorists. The right-wing and far-right student movements foresaw the development of the student movement and stated that it was the duty of the moderate students and the government to stop it dead in its tracks. At the same time, members of the far-right group Occident marched through the Latin Quarter chanting Vietcong murderers! in an effort to counter the growth of the movement.
On May 3, eight students involved in the protests, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, went to make statements in Paris while a large number of students began to gather in the Sorbonne square, watched by the police, who finally he would charge against the concentration. Faced with this situation, the National Union of Students and the Teachers Union called a strike demanding the withdrawal of the police and the reopening of the Sorbonne, closed by the dean the day before as a result of a march coming from Nanterre, as well as the release of the students detained so far, and advocating for "the eight of Nanterre" (including Daniel Cohn-Bendit), who were about to be expelled.
On Monday, May 6, the "eight of Nanterre" They went to testify before the Disciplinary Committee of the University. Upon leaving, a new demonstration was held that ended with major clashes between the barricades erected in the Latin Quarter. The police violence provoked a feeling of solidarity among the majority of French society (61% of the French sympathized with the students at the moment). The demonstrations were repeated the following day, reaching the vicinity of the Camps Elysees.
The turning point of the movement occurs on the night of May 10, known as "the night of the barricades". Tens of thousands of students flock to the barricades in the Latin Quarter. The negotiations that began with the rectorate of the Sorbonne fail, while the authorities continue not to accept the release of the detainees. The police dissolve the barricades by force, leading to the fiercest clashes of the entire month of May with hundreds of injuries. The next day, armored cars were deployed through the French capital.
The workers' strike
Given the events of the previous days, a general strike would be called for Monday, May 13. The demonstration that day brought together 200,000 people, while 9 million workers throughout France followed the strike call. After it, groups of students marched to the Sorbonne, which had reopened its doors after the arrival of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou from a trip to Central Asia, occupying it. The takeover of the Sorbonne will be directed by an Occupation Committee that will provide the University with a series of basic services for the raised students (infirmary, canteens and even nursery). The next day the workers of Sud Aviation in Nantes and those of Renault in Cleon, Flins, Le Mans and Boulogne Billancourt occupied their factories. Little by little the strike spread, paralyzing most of industrial France.
With the transformation of a student movement that emerged at a suburban university into a spontaneous strike, the students will try to create a union with the workers. Several thousand students marched to Boulogne-Billancourt on May 16 to meet the workers locked up in the factories but, although there will be reciprocal displays of solidarity (both groups will sing The Internationale at the factory gates occupied), the gates of the jobs that separated them will not open. On May 17, the Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations is created, which supports the wildcat strikes and opposes the moderation of the unions.
In the following days, air traffic controllers will join the strike as well as coal, transport, gas and electricity workers and radio and television journalists. In Nantes, workers and farmers blocked access to the city and controlled the price of products offered in stores, which could only open with the authorization of the Strike Committee. At this time, in many of the workplaces on strike, the question of workers' power in the companies is beginning to be raised, truly questioning the authority of the State and generating a true power vacuum.
Faced with this situation, the CGT General Secretary, Georges Séguy, declared the following: "The strike must continue to be a protest. Any irresponsible, adventurous and provocative slogan that appeals to the insurrection only serves to play into the hands of the government and the bosses".
On May 25, Pompidou's cabinet agrees to open negotiations with the representatives of the striking workers. These negotiations are raised in three bands: employers, unions and government. The negotiations conclude on May 27 with the Grenelle Agreements, which include a 35% increase in the industrial minimum wage and an average 12% increase for all workers. However, most of the striking workers reject the agreement. The following day François Mitterrand, at a press conference, asked the De Gaulle government for his resignation, stating that since May 3 there had been no State , and he ran as a candidate for the presidency.
De Gaulle's reaction
On May 29, De Gaulle disappeared without actually attending the Council of Ministers called for that morning. In the streets of Paris, demonstrators heading towards the Saint-Lazare railway station (the Gare Saint-Lazare), where the striking railway workers gathered under the slogan " For a political change of social progress and democracy", and shout slogans such as Goodbye De Gaulle! The Gaullists, for their part, call for a demonstration on May 30 "In defense of the Republic" on the Champs-Élysées, attended by more than 300,000 people showing their support for the President.[citation required ]
De Gaulle, for his part, had gone to Baden-Baden, in the Federal Republic of Germany, to meet with General Charles Massu, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces stationed in Germany, causing great concern about the possibility of that the president decided to resort to the army. On the 30th, De Gaulle returned to Paris and addressed the country on the radio announcing that he would not resign, while dissolving the Assembly and calling elections within 40 days.
With these statements, it is clear that the only way to overthrow the government is through an uprising that none of the sectors in struggle is willing to carry out. However, the riots continue, despite the fact that different companies start to return to work after various local conversations based on the Grenelle Accords, accepting payment for the days of the strike. The incidents moved from Paris to the industrial centers where the strikes continued. On June 7 in Flins there were violent clashes between the CRS, who came to evict the workers locked up in the factories, and the students and workers on strike. On the 10th, a young high school student dies in the clashes, which causes new riots in Paris. On June 12, De Gaulle decreed the dissolution and outlawing of extreme left groups and prohibited street demonstrations for eighteen months. In total, a dozen leftist groups are outlawed, their publications prohibited and several of their leaders arrested. which included far-right generals such as Raoul Salan (who had conspired to overthrow de Gaulle) with the aim of creating citizen action groups against "uncontrollable elements". During a violent month of June, all the work centers return to normality, either due to worker agreements or due to police intervention.
Elections
On June 23 and 30, the legislative elections would be held, from which the Gaullist Union of Democrats for the Republic would emerge strengthened with 38% of the votes and 293 deputies, counting on its allies. The Communist Party, for its part, suffered a sharp decline in its representation in the chamber, going from 22.51% of the votes and seventy-three representatives to 20.02% and thirty-four deputies. François Mitterrand's Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (FGDS, for its acronym in French) suffered the same fate, which lost half of its deputies (61 compared to the 121 obtained the previous year). The radicalization of the French students showed in practice a strong sympathy for anarchism and a rejection of the current political structures, including the unions and parties that already existed and whose discipline was not to the liking of the protesters. This state of mind made many workers and students, although united in rejecting Gaullist authoritarianism, rejected the leadership of the communist and socialist parties, denying the validity of their authority.[citation required]
Aftermath of May 1968
Following the June elections, the French government recognized the need to undertake a policy of profound reforms to deal with the existing social unrest in the country. In April 1969, a referendum was held on the regionalization project (one of the main political demands of those times was a greater decentralization of the State) and the reform of the Senate, which De Gaulle raised as a plebiscite on his management by announcing that he would abandon the presidency if the YES did not triumph. However, the French overwhelmingly voted no, causing de Gaulle's withdrawal from the political scene. These results showed that De Gaulle and his generation were not, for the French population, the ones who could carry out the social and political reform that the country needed. The Gaullist defeat marks the beginning of the end of the generation of political leaders who had led Western Europe since the end of World War II, while burying the model of personalist leadership that had marked the French Fifth Republic up to now.
For its part, trade unionism began in 1969 the talks provided for in the Grenelle Agreements. During the first years of the 1970s, there were new labor conflicts, sometimes violent, such as the Renault strikes in March and April 1973. There were also exceptional experiences, such as that of the Lip company, in which a thousand workers they occupied the watch factory threatened with closure and for 3,000 days continued production under workers' control, until reaching a final agreement that saved jobs. years after 1968, although the position of the main union centrals will not vary substantially during the confederal congresses that will be held between 1969 and 1970.