[page 28]
FRANCE '68
On the 25th anniversary of France '68 Ruth Gordon looks at
Off
the
shelfi
Clare Doyle's
The morning after the Night of the Barricades?
FRANCE 198B
MONTH
REVOLUTION
France 1968: Month of Revolution, by Clare Doyle. £2 - 50. Available, post free, from World Socialist Books, 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB.
Month of Revolution.
NE BLACK YOUTH who
• had been walking normally
when he was put in the 'Salad Basket' (Black Maria) emerged fifteen minutes later with his face covered in blood. He staggered and collapsed. They laid him out on a stretcher and took him away. I suppose the colour of his skin had warranted him being 'taken care of inside the van"
This could have been a description of scenes this April when riots erupted in Parisian streets after the death of three young people in French police custody. But it is not. It is the horrified
voice of a doctor watching as the CRS, the hated French riot police, waded into student demonstrators on 6 May 1968. It was the Night of the Barricades'.
It is with descriptions such as this that Clare Doyle's book, Month of Revolution, vividly describes the revolution that took place in France 25 years ago.
Using newspaper cuttings, radio and television reports from 1968, we are treated to a day-by-day account of how the barricades were built on the Paris boulevards; how student demonstrations were filled out with workers who brought along their pneu-
France '68 • 27
[page 29]
AL EURS A mass demonstration in Paris.
matic drills; it made digging up cobble stones for barricades easier!
By 13 May 1968 one million were marching in Paris in response to the 24-hour general strike call from the CGT (the Communist-led trade union federation). The next day just 200 workers were on strike but by 19 May two million were out and two days later ten million workers had downed tools. The one-day general strike had given workers and students their first taste of their own strength and their appetite grew with the eating. Signboards were posted on factory gates: En greve, usine occupee, 'On strike, factory occupied'.
In Corsica agriculture workers begin an occupation. Weather forecasters join the strike; iron ore miners block the Route Nationale (motorway) for an hour as part of their action; women take over a clothing factory for a week. In the west of France, electricity, transport, engineering and building workers, fishermen, post office workers, even clergy and nuns, stop work. Shops shut in solidarity.
The CGT and the
28 • France '68
Catholic trade union federation) hope in vain that the 24-hour strike would release sufficient steam to let the workers' leaders off the hook. Instead the workers feel the power of their collective steam.
By 16 May all six Renault plants where under workers' occupation. They locked their factory managers in offices and played the Internationale over loudspeakers until they learnt the words!
UT MONTH OF REVOL-
B UTION is more than just
a commentary. Not in the dry language of an academic, but colourfully, Clare Doyle analyses how these events broke onto the apparently calm waters of a capitalist world basking in economic boom. Most importantly, she explains how the workers' leaders, particularly the Communist Party and CGT leaders, failed to acknowledge the revolution taking place.
The mood had shifted from workers' individual grievances to the chants that echoed around the demonstrations: 'Students, teachers, workers, together, 'De Gaulle: resign', 'Farewell Charlie'.
Strikes were spreading. There was no doubting the strengtn of the movement, nor the aspirations of the workers. The national organisation of young farmers called for a general strike on farms and for Teal economic and social democracy.
What failed the workers' aspirations was the absence of a backbone amongst the leadership of the workers' organisations. At every point they shied away from taking power. When it was offered on a plate, they politely replied: Non, merci.
In the south of France the markets were under the control of the unions. The Berliet lorry workers changed their company's name to read Liberte. Posters and placards read: 'On strike indefinitely and We are the power. One young worker from the SNECMA Aero Engine factory is quoted: "We are fully ourselves, owning ourselves... we feel we are living socialism".
Even the professors from the universities began to see life differently: 'All of a sudden my thesis at the Sorbonne on The Verbal Joke in the Middle Ages seems ridiculous to me. In Nantes workers controlled the flow of traffic, organised the distribution of food and welfare; trade union officials checked the prices in the shops.
But according to those grandees of revolution - the Communist Party leaders - these struggles were merely economic not political! Their leading theoretician, Andre Gorz, had predicted in January, 1968 that "there will be no crisis of European capitalism so dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general strikes" '. Proved so dramatically wrong just months later, the Communist Party leaders fell over each other to deny the revolutionary movement shaking French capitalism.
ILITANT, IN THOSE days
M a monthly paper, called
for a parliament of the masses. Workers' councils in every factory and workshop could combine as district and national bodies to form a workers' gov-
[page 30]
De Gaulle plots with Massau.
ernment.
But the CP warned workers off attending student demonstrations: The students want to come in and smash up the machines, they told Renault workers. The general secretary of the CGT tried to frighten workers into restricting their demands: "Any slogan calling for insurrection would change the character of your strike. Precisely so! The CGT, he said, must be perceived as the great tranquil force!
The transformation of society along socialist lines was posed as being far into the future. A stage after the establishment of democracy. This was simply a struggle over wages and conditions, they maintained.
Meanwhile, the French constitutional committee was told to prepare for De Gaulle's resignation. But the union leaders merely entered talks, and for two days and nights negotiated with a government which had no power base left in France.
As Clare Doyle puts it: "A class facing its own destruction will summon up every last ounce from its reserves to placate the enemy. It will buy time and then devise a way of clawing back what it has given" ". What was required was workers leaders who, seeing the enemy paralysed, were able to deal the final blow.
Instead, a deal was accepted. Under other circumstances it would have been a very good deal: 7% pay increases; the minimum wage up by one-third - 56% in agriculture; some shop assistants to get 72% increases; strikers to receive half their normal wage for the period of the occupations! But this was just a slice of cake that was offered when the whole bakery was for the taking.
The Renault workers turned down the deal chanting, 'people's government. In plant after plant the offer was rejected. The ruling class thought the game was up. The price of gold shot up. Traffic jams were reported on the road to Switzerland. The regime was paralysed.
Posters and lacards read:
"We are the
power".
On 29 May cabinet meeting was scheduled. It did not take place. De Gaulle had disappeared. He had fled to Baden-Baden for talks with General Massu, who commanded 70,000 French troops in Germany. In the event of
revolution De Gaulle told the general he would form a government on the West bank of the Rhine.
The troops informed the Communist Party of the plans but they did nothing. Twenty-four hours later De Gaulle was able to return to Paris, his power unchallenged.
The total armed force of 300,000 could not compel 10 million people to work, especially when the majority of soldiers were conscripts and would have brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles on strike. In the Fifth Army soldiers committees erupted, prepared to move against the officers if necessary. In truth the French government could rely on nobody but a handful of nationalist right-wing paramilitaries.
The press speculated how France was on the verge of civil war. Civil servants discussed how to transfer power to the workers' committees. But as Month of Revolution shows, the Communist Party leaders: "put their hands across their eyes and maintain that they see no revolutionary situation" • Huge concessions had been wrung from the bosses but power was back in the hands of the old rulers.
Militant in June 1968 stated: "If ever there was time when the working class could take power peacefully, that time is now". But the CP and the CGT ran away from power and in so doing led the workers to defeat.
A genuine workers' democracy in France would have been followed by revolution across Europe - East and West. It would have led to the overthrow of capitalist and Stalinist regimes alike across Europe.
Whatever apparent independence from Moscow the French CP feigned, they operated in the interest of Stalinist foreign policy: appeasement of its capitalist allies. A great opportunity was lost. The face of Europe could have been changed beyond all imaginings. Workers' governments running society for need and not profit would have inspired the whole of Europe to rise up and follow the example.
France '68 •