by Michel Vastel
My May'68!
May 68 was the longest month in the history of France, and one in which my generation lived through a Revolution not as quiet as that of Quebec.
I was past the age of sit-ins on the steps of University buildings. I was working in the land of ordinary folks in a corner of France more akin to a Zola novel than a Léo Ferré song. I was a young journalist in the agglomeration of Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing when the strikes of May 68 happened.
Strikes? We were not used to seeing that in the textile industries. The plants were generally owned as family businesses. To give some idea of the prevalent atmosphere: at the beginning of each year, the workers male and female, would parade in front of the patron, and would greet him on a first-name basis: «monsieur Paul» or «monsieur Roger». And the owner would also know the names of his eldest employees.
This was not the situation in the coal mines of the Somme or Pas-de-Calais, very close, where the unions - usually communist - fueled an ongoing climate of conflict. These unions had unresolved issues with public authority: five years earlier, as the miners were on strike, the President of the Republic had ordered an end to the strike, no questions asked! He even called in the army, and there were a few deaths.
But there were a lot of deaths in those days. When the workers, in their blue overalls, would hit the streets, they were faced with the CRS - special police forces known as Republican Security Companies -, true elite forces ready to use clubs, tear-gas, and the occasional shot from a gun. These paramilitary forces were present at all demonstrations, and since the beginning of the 1960s, there were quite a few of those in France.
Naval works, mines and the steel industry were particularly affected by the coming into being of the European Community for Coal and Steel. Strikes would erupt everywhere but never with any results. And we experienced the first attacks from independence movements - first of all, Britanny, then Corsica. In the Universities, students were organizing in the footsteps of leaders such as Alain Krivine, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Alain Geismar and..., Jean-Paul Sartre who had refused the Nobel prize for literature for 1964.
In short then, in France, one had the impression that things were coming apart on many fronts while in Quebec, in July 1967, General de Gaulle was making a triumphant entry, projecting an image of France that was no longer accurate.
Agitation in the Colleges and at the University of Nanterre, the occupation of the Sorbonne, in Paris, the nights of barricades and overturned cars? Television - black and white - was only in its infancy, and the images of Parisian agitation did not seem to have much impact on the rest of France.
This is why the movement was slow to start in the North. So long as it merely occupied the sons of bourgeois who attended university, only the Parisian newspapers were much concerned. «Youthful exuberance», seemed to be the judgement from afar. Certainly there were hecto-numbered wounded, and even two dead in Paris, but we had seen worse.
May was already half-over, and it is very progressively that students, and then farmers joined the strikes of the workers. It is the occupation of major industrial plants - in particular those of Renault - that started to paralyse France. In industrial sectors such as textile or clothing manufacturers, many owners enabled the closing of their plants to avoid breakage or to follow the general movement.
These closings and the ensuing occupations revealed to the world working conditions from Germinal. In the north wee discovered some plants which employed clandestine workers from Africa or the Maghreb. An empty building served as a dormitory, in which one also brought meals. These workers toiled six days per week, sometimes for 12 hours, and it was forbidden to leave the compound on the seventh.
So, that too, was France in 1968. By bringing to light everything that wasn't working well in those plants, one was also shaming the owners. And «monsieur Paul» or «monsieur Roger» would make a show of offering excuses, sometimes pretending not to know what was going on under their noses. Certain employers were even sincerely sorry! I remember the story of one boss coming back from a week-end spent at his sea-side house. He had brought back a bag of those delicious grey shrimp which one eats, with a beer, in the restaurants of Ostende, in Belgium. He handed over the bag to the workers who were manning the picket lines, and everyone shook hands!
So why were there strikes in may 1968 in what Jean-Pierre Raffarin later called «the basement of France», that province of the country which Parisians often deride? This had nothing to do with Trotsky or Mao, whose writings one consulted on the stairways of the Parisian university buildings. Among the little folks, there are no slogans such as «It is forbidden to forbid» or «Be realistic, ask for the impossible»! And even if there were many more rocks paving the roads of the North than on the boulevards of Paris, demonstrators were not pulling them out to throw at shop windows.
In the North of France, a region in decline which interested neither the public authorities nor investors, many were quite simply depressed. In the West, it is agitation among farmers which led to the closing of roads. Here and there outside of the capital, workers would go on strike for a few days without getting anything and would then return to work.
This had been going on for some ten years. France had lost the war in Algeria. Decolonization had reduced provisions of cotton to the point where entire blocks of the textile industry were in danger. General de Gaulle, brought to power by the army, in turn used the armed forces to contain the strikes. For this man of rigft-wing persuasion, demonstrations were not to be endured. While a huge demonstration organized by the Communist Party was paralysing Paris, the Prime minister George Pompidou, had armoured vehicles parade in the suburbs.
This is when General de Gaulle sought refuge in Germany, protected by his friend general Massu, to prepare what the Left would later call his «overthrow of power». For everything almost flipped over at that point. The workers were still in the streets although not altogether sure why. They were awaiting orders from their Union leaders which were not forthcoming. Over two days, May 28 and 29, France came close to Civil War. In all the cities, there were still stocked arms for civil defence, a hold-over from the wars of the beginning of the century. The arms and munitions were very real and , some mayors, with the help of local police, has started distributing these to peace and order committees, spontaneously created by veterans and right-wing militants tired of general strikes. There was a real danger that these groups would assault demonstrators.
Happily, on-going negotiations at the Department of Labour, on Grenelle street, gave rise to the now famous «Grenelle-agreements», calling for a 25% augmentation of the minimum wage. And even though these accords were never signed, management agreed that salaries should increase, «by at least 10%». The Communist Party and the various unions then ordered people back to work.
Certain unions yet resisted , and occupations continued: three weeks after the end of May'68, a skirmish between Peugeot workers and the CRS, in the East of France, left two dead.
As for Charles de Gaulle, whose return to Paris was greeted by a huge demonstration of the Right - up to perhaps one million persons - on the Champs-Elysées, he dissolved the National Assembly. Elections are called and he is re-elected, end of June, with a large majority. Yet his day was over: less than a year later, he resigned when a majority of Frenchmen said no to his project for regionalization and Reform of the Senate. Gaullism as a political force will continue on for some 13 years!
Many historians are in agreement to hold that May'68 ended, in fact, on the 10th of May 1981, with the election of François Mitterand to the Presidency of the Republic with a majority of Socialist Members in the National Assembly. It will have taken some twenty years, after the end of the War in Algeria, to change France: that is a long time culminating in a mere month whose memory has marked the generations that followed...
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