Daily Times

On May 31, 1968 France was in the grips of revolutionary fervour.It was an epoch of a revolutionary wave sweeping across the world. Belief in internationalist solidarity, the consciousness of being involved in a common fight against capitalism and imperialism were the striking feature of that epoch. By the autumn of 1968, this revolutionary fervour had also reached Pakistan. The entrance of Pakistan’s virgin proletariat created a revolutionary situation in this so-called conservative society. Socialist revolution was on the verge of victory.

The upheaval in France 1968 was punctuated by demonstrations and massive general strikes with the occupation of universities and factories across the country. At it’s peak, this rebellion brought the entire French economy and society to a standstill. The protests also spurred an artistic movement, with songs, innovative graffiti, posters, and slogans. This uprising began with a series of student protests. It then spread to factories with strikes involving 11 million workers, more than 22 percent of the total population of France at the time, for two continuous weeks. It was the largest general strike in the history of France and Europe.

In February 1968, the French Communists and Socialist parties had formed an electoral alliance. On March 22,students, several far-left groups along with some prominent poets, artists and musicians occupied an administration building at Paris University at Nanterre and started agitating against class discrimination in French society and universities. In the following weeks, conflicts erupted between students and police at universities across France.

On Friday, May 10, another huge mass demonstration took place on the Rive Gauche. When the elite state forces tried to block them from crossing the river, the crowd threw up barricades. The police viciously attacked the demonstration late in the night and clashes continued throughout the next day. Hundreds were injured.

The government’s ruthless reaction created a wave of sympathy for the strikers. Many of the nation’s more mainstream singers and poets joined in after the state’s brutality came to light. The leaders of main left union federations, the Confédération Générale du Travail and Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO) were forced to call a one-day general strike on May 13.Over a million people marched through Paris on that day; the police retreated as the upsurge escalated. Prime Minister (PM)Georges Pompidou ordered the immediate release of prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne. However, the strikes did not stop. Instead, the protesters became bolder and more confident.Workers had occupied roughly fifty factories by May 16, and 200,000 were on strike by the 17th. That figure soared to two million. The next week ten million, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, was on strike.

The union leaderships did not lead these strikes; on the contrary they tried to contain this revolutionary upsurge by restricting it to mere economic demands. Workers were putting forward a more radical agenda, demanding the ousting of the President de Gaulle’s government and workers management and control of the occupied factories continued. Despite the trade union leadership’s winning of huge wage increases and other benefits in negotiations with the regime, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work and jeered the union leaders. Top intellectuals were joining in solidarity.On May 27, 50,000 people gathered at the Stade Sebastien Charlety. The meeting was fired up by militant speeches demanding the regime’s overthrow and elections held for a worker’s government.

A historic opportunity to changing the course of history in France, Europe and beyond was lost. Yet fifty years later, a new workers’ and students’ revolt is rising in France again

On May 28, François Mitterrand, leader of the Socialist Party had to confess: “there is no more state”. On May 29, France’s war hero and bourgeois’ profound President Charles de Gaulle secretly removed his personal papers from Élysée Palace. He told his son-in-law Alain de Boissieu, “I do not want to give them a chance to attack the Élysée. I have decided to leave: nobody attacks an empty palace.” At 11:00 a.m., he conceded to his PM Pompidou, “I am the past; you are the future.”

The government announced that de Gaulle was going to his country home.But for more than six hours, the world did not know where the invincible French president was. State bureaucracy was panicking. One official asked an aide how far the President’s entourage could flee by automobile should revolutionaries seize fuel supplies. The masses were taking control of the socioeconomic centres. Withdrawing money from banks became difficult, gasoline for private automobiles was unavailable, and some bourgeois families tried to obtain private planes or fake documents to flee France.De Gaulle had infact gone to the French military base in Germany to meet General Jacques Massu to get his support. De Gaulle’s wife Yvonne gave the family jewels to their son and daughter-in-law for safekeeping in Germany, a potential refuge for the Presidential family.

On May 30, more than half a million protesters marched through Paris, chanting: “Adieu, de Gaulle!”However it’s a historic irony that the (Communist Party of France) PCF’s leadership refused to lead the revolution because their“ideological” belief was that the party must come to power through legal elections, not an armed insurrection.Had the PCF leadership been genuine communists they would have taken a revolutionary path and lead the movement, occupying key sectors of the economy and centres of power. The army would have inevitably split on a class basis had it been ordered to crush the revolution. This was not the France during the time of 1871’s Paris Commune.

The revolutionary students and workers were disillusioned, as the PCF and UNEF called off workers strikes and students demonstrations. Workers gradually returned to work or were ousted from their plants by the police. The government banned militant leftist student’s organisations. The PCF leaders agreed to the election and the revolution was derailed.An historical opportunity of changing the course of history of France, Europe and beyond was lost. Yet fifty years later a new workers’ and students’ revolt is rising in France. There are plenty of lessons for the new generation of communists to learn from the rise and fall of France’s 1968 revolution.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, June 4^th 2018.