(cont’d) Spontaneous student demonstrations erupted across Parisian suburbs, and they were met with brutal force: police fired tear gas and hit out with batons at anyone who looked like a student. The movement gained real momentum. The lecturers’ union called for solidarity strikes against these infringements on free speech; 30,000 lecturers, schoolchildren and students from around the country marched through Paris . They were met, once again, with police violence. An estimated 800 protestors were injured in attempts to break through police lines.
Media images of heroic student resistance brought something new to the movement: the support of young workers. Before, it was easy to dismiss students as the sons and daughters of the well-to-do. Now, it seemed clear that students and workers were fighting for the same causes. 50,000 participated in the next demo, and even normally conservative students from around the country were out on indefinite strike.
On May 10th 1968 students were blocked from crossing the river by riot police. So they took action: they built barricades and occupied surrounding streets. The authorities took what many regarded as excessive force. For the first time, the trade unions were forced to acknowledge the anger felt by young workers, and they called a strike in support of the students. The demonstration that day was the largest in Paris since the liberation of the city from the Nazi occupation in 1944. Trade unionists shared banners with the student movement; all the struggles – for student representation, for worker’s rights, against war – were suddenly joined up. De Gaulle’s government was paralysed.
When the Sorbonne was reopened, students immediately occupied it and proclaimed it a “free university” with student autonomy. There were spontaneous solidarity strikes around the country by young workers. These were condemned by the powerful Communist Party as the actions of “anarchists”. However, the strikes escalated beyond their control. Small actions by workers at Renault car plants spread around the country: the number of workers on all out strike mushroomed from 80,000 to ten million in a week. By May 30th, French society, its trains, buses, post offices, and banks, had ground to a halt.
In the end, for all its heady optimism, the May events achieved nothing more than a few victories here and there. The students had inspired a movement that brought France to the point of overthrowing the government; yet De Gaulle was re-elected a month later. For all their energy and initiative, the students could not bring about real change without joining with wider social forces. And, unfortunately, in 1968 trade union movements around the world were often dominated by the politics of Communist parties who were more interested in protecting Russian foreign policy interests than participating in struggles.
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On the positive side, the repeated betrayals of the Communist parties meant that the radical students of 1968 mostly broke with the notion that the Soviet Union offered a just and viable alternative to capitalism in the West. The politics of the Cold War no longer made sense in a world where Britain and the Soviet Union joined forces to crush the secessionist African state of Biafra; in which Soviet tanks smashed a worker’s uprising in Prague; and in which the West lectured the world about democracy while propping up dictators and assassinating elected leaders in the third world.
The student resistance of 1968 can be seen as having created the political environment we live in today. The events of that year brought everything into question: not only the domination of university management over students, but of bosses over workers, men over women, white people over black people, straights over gays. The rights and privileges we enjoy today are a result of struggles like this.
However, there is much still to win. Some things never change. After all, today we have a Labour government vigorously supporting an American war, cutting public services, and squeezing students- similar to the situation in 1968. For the first time in a generation, women are threatened with losing the right to control their bodies by the anti-abortion lobby. Muslim people are threatened by an increasingly sinister campaign of media vilification and government “security” measures. In these circumstances, we need to learn the lessons of 1968. We will only win victories when we break out of the politics of “my university first” and extend the hand of friendship and solidarity to everyone else who wants to fight for the same things: equality, peace, and democracy. Let us use the vitality of the student population to inspire others.
By James Foley
Photo: Francois Lafitte
