Nanterres University in Paris was closed by its administration to stop a
second day of "anti-imperialist study". In the courtyard of the
Sorbonne, the university in central Paris, 500 left-wing students rallied to
protest against the closure and the disciplinary action being taken against
several Nanterres students.
The closure of Nanterres followed the seizure of a lecture theatre by
students the previous day to show a film on Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
This was only the most recent action of the enrages, as student militants at
Nanterres called themselves.
This group of students emerged in the fight for reforms to the higher
education system that had developed in a number of universities. French
universities were overcrowded and understaffed. Students were subjected to
paternalistic control. Every decision was made at the Education Ministry in
Paris.
At Nanterres a strike involving up to 10,000 students had resulted in the
formation of a committee allowed to discuss reform but not empowered to enact
it. The most radical students began organising demonstrations. Often they were
small -
no more than 50 strong.
Solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution and its fight against US
imperialism was another factor beginning to get the French university students
politically active. Through the National Vietnam Committee (the Comit Vietnam
National -
CVN) they linked up for the first time with high school students.
Among the 500 at the Sorbonne were a number of the radical student
organisations and groups, including those with Trotskyist and Maoist
backgrounds. The leadership of the National Students Union of France (the Union
National des studiants de France -
UNEF), mostly older activists radicalised in the struggle against France's war
in Algeria, supported the demonstration. Others there were members of the March
22nd Movement. This had been formed at an occupation of the Nanterres
administration building in protest at the arrest of students for bomb attacks on
US companies' offices in opposition to the Vietnam War. Its most prominent
leader was Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
Students began to mass outside the Sorbonne. The cops were called, then
ordered to surround and disperse the demonstrators.
The demonstrators agreed to leave. But as they walked out, they were bundled
into waiting police vans. The students began to jeer and chant. A stone was
thrown. Students ran up to vans and pounded on them with their fists. Gas began
to swirl. Fighting broke out and went on all evening. Hundreds were wounded; 596
were arrested.
The Sorbonne administration closed the university. The UNEF called a student
demonstration for May 6, the following Monday, and the university teachers'
union called a strike.
For three days before May 9, 20,000 to 30,000 students demonstrated in Paris,
while elsewhere in France still more marched.
On May 9, however, Paris students formed discussion groups in the streets.
From there perhaps 5000 moved to the Salle de la Mutualit, where a mass meeting
was organised by the Revolutionary Communist Youth (Jeunesses Communistes
Revolutionaires -
JCR) to consider the tactics and strategy to be followed. At the meeting,
there were speakers from many of the left- wing student groups of Europe. Cohn-Bendit
spoke. Ernest Mandel, the Belgian Marxist economist, called for the struggle to
be opened out from the students to "the general struggle of the working
class for a socialist revolution".
The meeting showed in concentrated form the role the JCR would play in the
opening weeks of May 68. On May 19 two journalists for the London weekly
Observer wrote that the JCR "can claim to have provided the chief
inspiration and political direction of the insurrection of the past two
weeks". The JCR provided marshals for the students' rally, formed the
backbone of the barricades and played a directing part in the various student
groups and committees.
Students rallied on the evening of May 10 to demand the reopening of the
universities and the freeing of students still in jail following May 3. Five to
ten thousand secondary students, on strike that day, arrived at the meeting
place first. They were joined by a larger number of university students.
The students marched towards the prison holding the jailed students, but were
turned back by police, who blocked their way again and again. Soon they were
back in the Latin Quarter, the area around the Sorbonne where many students
lived, and surrounded by the police.
Now the first barricades went up, made from the paving stones of the streets,
iron gratings and traffic signs. The police sat back, expecting that the cold
would send the students home soon enough. But the students stayed.
After midnight the police were ordered to clear the students away. Gas
grenades were fired into the ranks of the demonstrators massed behind the
barricades. Then the police charged. Those on the barricades set fire to them,
to give the others time to retreat. The battle lasted four hours.
Many followed the reports of this on the radio. Students and young workers
too raced to join those on the barricades.
The people of the Latin Quarter helped the demonstrators, giving them food,
bandaging their wounds and tossing out buckets of water in an attempt to
neutralise the thick clouds of gas. For their trouble, the police fired gas
grenades into houses, entered homes and smashed up the cafes.
In the morning the government gave in to the students' demands. But the
movement had already begun to develop beyond this. The powerful French Communist
Party (Parti Communiste Francais -
PCF) had at last come out in support of the students, and the major union
organisations had called a general strike for May 13.
Not all students were involved in the demonstrations of the first days of
May. In the minds of the students at the Institute of Political Studies (
Institut d'Etudes Politiques), there was no question of their taking part in the
demonstrations, especially as they prepared for their exams.
The exams were at 8 a.m. on May 11. But the students were met by a group from
the barricades. They appealed for the students to strike in sympathy. One turned
to the other. There was a cry of "liberez nos camarades" ("
liberate our comrades", a chant of the student demonstrations). The
students were on strike.
The institute's students joined the struggle with enthusiasm. Exams were set
aside. The institute was occupied. The halls and libraries were renamed after
revolutionary figures. Internal planning was organised by a committee of
organisation, coordination and liaison. Open commissions debated reforms which
were then put to an elected students' council.
At one point the occupied institute was stormed by thugs from a right-wing
group. The students went to the Sorbonne for help, then retook the building
under the leadership of a popular professor.
The unions had called the general strike of May 13, but the student leaders
stood at the head of the 800,000 workers and students who marched through Paris.
The march strongly opposed the government of President Charles de Gaulle.
The students' confidence rose. "The strike will go on!" declared
UNEF leader Jacques Sauvegot. Twenty-five thousand students moved on to the
Champs de Mars for an open-air meeting. Then, under the cry of "Everyone to
the Sorbonne!", they occupied it.
This opened up the wave of university occupations. Sixteen of the 18
universities were occupied. The various colleges were also occupied. The arts
school became a revolutionary poster factory. The student occupations ended only
on July 3, when the red flag was lowered at the Medical Faculty of Paris
University.
The occupation of the Sorbonne lasted more than a month. Twenty to thirty
thousand students crammed into its buildings, putting every room to some use. In
the courtyard were dozens of tables of political literature.
The night of the occupation, the general assembly of students meet in the
main hall of the Sorbonne. It discussed issues and elected an occupation
committee, subject to new elections each day.
The general assembly continued to meet, although the occupation committee did
tend to assume more and more actual authority. As well as the occupation
committee, there were scores of subcommittees running services, handling room
allocations and the like.
The May 13 general strike and demonstration had also suggested something to
the workers about their power. On May 14 workers at an aircraft factory near the
city of Nantes, an area with a long tradition of labour militancy, struck and
occupied the factory, welding the manager into his office.
A strike wave began, however, when workers at a Renault plant struck and,
after failing to bring out the other shifts, occupied the factory. The strikers
sent delegations to other Renault factories.
By the time they got to the 25,000-worker Renault factory of Boulange-
Billancourt in Paris, the Communist Party leadership of the CGT trade union
federation was ahead of them. The union leaders initiated occupations there and
elsewhere to forestall the further spontaneous development of the occupation
movement.
The PCF leaders also wanted to prevent contact between the radical students
and the workers. Signs were posted warning against student "
provocateurs". When students marched to Boulange-Billancourt on May 16,
they were refused entry. Instead they passed a red flag and cigarettes through
the windows and talked to strikers in the streets outside.
Two million workers were on strike. There was no air or rail traffic and no
postal service. In the cities public transport stood still.
The general assembly of the "comitis d'action" (action committees)
was held in Paris on May 19. At least 250 were represented. By the last week of
May, there were at least 450 action committees in Paris alone.
Some action committees were based on workplaces or represented occupations.
Others were residentially based. Usually they were not representative bodies but
groups of activists perhaps 10 to 50 strong.
The action committees undertook a huge variety of tasks. Some acted like
municipal authorities. Others acted more like political committees. A
coordinating committee exerted a loose control over them.
The action committees were an expression of direct, extra-parliamentary
action. At the general assembly they declared themselves ready to "pass
from spontaneous violence to the preparation of organised violence".
The same day the high school action committees (Comiti d'Action Lycennes
- CAL) held their general
assembly at the Sorbonne. These groups had grown out of the high school
anti-Vietnam War groups as the student strike movement developed. By early June
there were about 470 CALs, some several hundred strong.
The CALs had played an important part in the student mobilisations. In Paris
following May 13, the high schools were occupied. On May 19 the CALs called for
a student general strike and occupation of the high schools. The next day many
schools were occupied, with teachers sometimes joining in. For the first time,
politics was discussed in the high schools, and students retained the right to
do this even after May '68 came to a close.
Ten million workers, two-thirds of the work force, were on strike. They
included merchant seamen, undertakers, hotel workers, department store staff and
municipal clerks. Workers at the Finance Ministry and the Bank were on strike.
But the government's confidence was growing. Union leaders had agreed to hold
national wage negotiations. A censure motion against the government was defeated
in the National Assembly. Cohn-Bendit was declared " undesirable in
France", and riot police marched into the Latin Quarter.
The students mobilised against the banning of Cohn-Bendit. They fought the
police for three days.
By May 24 the street fighting reached a new level. In Paris many young
workers came from a CGT demonstration to join the students. All were spurred on
by de Gaulle's derisory offer of a referendum on his rule.
The stock exchange and a police station were attacked. A student was killed,
hundreds were injured and about 1500 were arrested.
But the students were also better prepared. A few had slingshots. In Lyons a
truck was rolled into the police lines.
The radicalisation of May '68 was not confined to workers and students.
Doctors, parts of the clergy, painters, writers, lawyers, astronomers,
architects, journalists, footballers and newsreaders all struck or challenged
the old structures.
The farmers also supported the strike. Their first solidarity demonstrations
were on May 22. On May 24 there was a mass tractor parade through the city of
Nantes, in Brittany.
In Nantes, and its twin city of St Nazaire, the uprising took a further step
on May 26 when the old authorities collapsed completely and power was assumed by
a central strike committee, which set itself up in the town hall.
The committee controlled transport throughout the area. Roadblocks were
established, and petrol coupons and travel permits were issued.
Workers, students and the wives of strikers organised in district committees
worked with the farmers in the area to pick the crops and supply the cities with
food, through newly established outlets and small shops. Prices fell
dramatically because the middlemen had been eliminated. Price controls were
maintained by inspectors from the committee.
The revolutionary experiment of Nantes did not spread, however. The isolation
of this development meant it could last only a few days.
Government, business and union negotiators had hammered out the "Grenelle
Agreement". It promised considerable benefits in wages and working
conditions, the most significant gains for 20 years. The low wages of most
French workers, and especially the very low minimum wage, would be greatly
increased.
But the workers were also conscious that their mobilisation was by far the
greatest they had ever achieved. Much more could be won, they thought. At
Boulange-Billancourt, the speech of CGT and PCF leader George Seguy was stopped
by cries of "Don't sign it!" Across the country, workers gave the
proposal the thumbs down.
The rejection of the government's offer meant the strike took a more
political turn. This was something the CGT leaders had tried to prevent. They
had never issued the call for a general strike, despite the fact that the
largest strike in French history was taking place, because that might serve to
unify and politicise the strike. Workers were even sent away from the factory
occupations in order to prevent them being together and therefore able to
discuss politics.
The student revolutionaries, however, did not know what to do in the face of
this development. A UNEF rally in Paris drew 35,000. Thousands of young workers
came, demanding the resignation of Seguy. All called for de Gaulle's
resignation. But as for strategy, the platform was left open for discussion.
De Gaulle flew secretly by military aircraft to the French army headquarters
in West Germany. With the generals, he worked out a plan for French troops to
return to France to put down a possible uprising.
The army minister had told de Gaulle that the troops in France could not be
relied on to fire on civilians. Soldiers' committees had sprung up at barracks
in towns like Vincennes.
The police officials too said their subordinates' morale was dangerously low.
In Paris at least half a million workers and students marched in a CGT-
organised joint demonstration. For the first time, political slogans were
allowed to take priority. The demand was for "a popular government and a
democratic union".
But while the PCF leaders had sanctioned a turn from economic to political
demands by the CGT, their perspectives for achieving a "popular
government" had not changed since the reformist Popular Front days of the
mid-'30s and late 1940s. They still wished to achieve power through
parliamentary means. Perhaps this was the real content of the difference between
the official PCF demand and that on the students' banner, "For a socialist
revolution", and the chants of "power to the workers".
At 4.31 in the afternoon de Gaulle gave a speech. He refused to resign.
Instead he dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections for June 23
and June 30. He hinted at the use of troops if the revolt continued. That day
troops and tanks were seen on the move in the countryside.
The Gaullist party held a rally that afternoon. Estimates of its size ranged
from 400,000 to a million. Buses brought many from the provinces. The most
reactionary elements of French society were incorporated in the rally. Some
shouted "Cohn-Bendit to Dachau!" (Cohn-Bendit had German- Jewish
refugee parents.)
The PCF claimed that the offer of elections fulfilled the demands it had
made. In a day, the "popular government" slogan was dropped. All the
unions offered to talk with the government about their economic claims, thus
stripping the strike of political demands.
The students responded to de Gaulle's speech with a demonstration of 20, 000
to 30,000. The students' chants expressed their view that the events of May were
only a beginning.
But more notable was the absence of most of the young workers who had swelled
the ranks of the demonstrations in previous weeks. The CGT had instructed its
ranks to stay away.
Among the workers there was no revolutionary leadership such as the students
had, one whose authority was to a certain extent established even before May.
The authority of the PCF and the trade union bureaucracy had begun to be
challenged in May. It had not been broken. Thus, while the students were led to
a new demonstration, the workers were led to the parliamentary elections.
But if the workers did not take a step forward, they did not take a step back
either. Government-sponsored secret ballots and riot police forced some strikers
back to work, at the cost of three dead. But for the most part, they returned to
work only with agreements for which the Grenelle Agreement formed the base for
further gains. Many workers, such as those at Renault, were still on strike in
mid-June.
The death of a student demonstrating in solidarity with striking workers
fighting the riot police on June 10 again brought out the students. They
attacked police stations. Two days later all demonstrations were banned. This
was supposedly the period of a campaign before a "free election".
The radical organisations of the students
- Trotskyist, Maoist and
anarchist -
were declared illegal that day. Attempts were made to seize their funds.
The following day a number of revolutionary parties were outlawed. The
leaders of these groups were hounded underground. On July 16 the police caught
and imprisoned Alain Krivine, leader of the JCR.
The creation of right-wing paramilitary groups was encouraged, though. As
well, within days of the banning of the left groups, leaders of the terrorist
Secret Army Organisation (Organisation de l'Armee Secrurite
- OAS) were released.
Police entered the Sorbonne and expelled the student occupiers. In many ways
this signalled the end of May '68.
Two weeks later the Gaullist regime was re-elected with an increased
majority. Many students abstained from voting or were unable to, having been
disqualified or being under the voting age. But probably more important in the
decline suffered by the parliamentary left, principally the PCF, at the polls
was the way they had accepted the "law and order" framework de Gaulle
put on the elections, while the right-wing parties and the bourgeois media
continued to raise a hue and cry about a supposed " communist
conspiracy" to stage an insurrectionary bid for power.
Nevertheless, de Gaulle's prime minister, Georges Pompidou, remarked,
"Nothing will be the same again".
He was right. "Mai 68" showed that even after 20 years of
capitalist boom and relative quiescence in radical political activity, a
revolutionary situation could develop, very rapidly, in an advanced capitalist
country.
