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Title: Paris: May 1968
Author: Maurice Brinton
Date: 1968
Language: en
Topics: Paris, May 1968, 1968, 1960s, France, solidarity, diary, history
Source: Retrieved on 9th February 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/May-68-Solidarity
Notes: First edition published by Solidarity, June 1968. This edition published jointly by Dark Star Press and Rebel Press, 1986

Maurice Brinton

Paris: May 1968

Introduction

(Written for the original edition, published by Solidarity In June

1968.)

This is an eye-witness account of two weeks spent in Paris during, May

1968. It is what one person saw, heard or discovered during that short

period. The account has no pretence at comprehensives. It has been

written and produced in haste, its purpose being to inform rather than

to analyse — and to inform quickly.

The French events have a significance that extends far beyond the

frontiers of modern France, They will leave their mark on the history of

the second half of the 20^(th) century. French bourgeois society has

just been shaken to its foundations, Whatever the outcome of the present

struggler we must calmly take note of the fact that the political map if

Western capitalist society will never be the same again. A whole epoch

has just come to an end: the epoch during which people couldn’t say,

with a semblance of verisimilitude, that ‘it couldn’t happen here’.

Another epoch is starting: that in which people know that revolution is

possible under the conditions of modern bureaucratic capitalism.

For Stalinism too, a whole period is ending: The period during which

Communist Parties in Western Europe could claim (admittedly with

dwindling credibility) that they remained revolutionary organisations,

but that revolutionary opportunities had never really presented

themselves. This notion has now irrevocably been swept into the

proverbial ‘dustbin of history’. When the chips were down, the French

Communist Party and those workers under its influence proved to be the

final and most effective ‘brake’ on the development of the revolutionary

self-activity of the working class.

A full analysis of the French events will eventually have to be

attempted, for, without an understanding of modern society, it will

never be possible consciously to change it. But this analysis will have

to wait for a while until some of the dust has settled. What can be said

now is that if honestly carried out, such an analysis will compel many

orthodox revolutionaries to discard a mass of outdated slogans and myths

to reassess contemporary reality; particularly the reality of modern

bureaucratic capitalism. its dynamic, its methods of control and

manipulation, the reasons for both its resilience and its brittleness

and — most important of all — the nature of its crises. Concepts and

organizations that have been found wanting will have to be discarded.

The new phenomena (new in themselves or new to traditional revolutionary

theory) will have to be recognised for what they are and interpreted in

all their implications, The real events of 1968 will then have to be

integrated into a new framework of ideas, for without this developmental

revolutionary theory, there can be no development of revolutionary

practice — and in the long run no transformation of society through the

conscious actions of men.

Rue Gay-Lussac

Sunday 12 May

The rue Gay-Lussac still carries the scars of the ‘night of the

barricades’. Burnt out cars line the pavement, their carcasses a dirty

grey under the missing paint. The cobbles, cleared from the middle of

the road, lie in huge mounds on either side. A vague smell of tear gas

still lingers in the air.

At the junction with the rue des Ursulines lies a building site, its

wire mesh fence breached in several places. From here came material for

at least a dozen barricades: planks, wheelbarrows, metal drums, steel

girders, cement mixers, blocks of stone. The site also yielded a

pneumatic drill. The students couldn’t use it, of course — not until a

passing building worker showed them how, perhaps the first worker

actively to support the student revolt. Once broken. the road surface

provided cobbles, soon put to a variety of uses. All that is already

history.

People are walking up and down the street, as if trying to convince

themselves that it really happened. They aren’t students. The students

themselves know what happened and why it happened. They aren’t local

inhabitants either, The local inhabitants saw what happened, the

viciousness of the CRS charges, the assaults on the wounded, the attacks

on innocent bystanders, the unleashed fury of the state machine against

those who had challenged it. The people in the streets are the ordinary

people of Paris, people from neighbouring districts, horrified at what

they have heard over the radio or read in their papers and who have come

for a walk on a fine Sunday morning to see for themselves. They are

talking in small clusters with the inhabitants of the rue Gay-Lussac.

The Revolution, having for a week held the university and the streets of

the Latin Quarter, is beginning to take hold of the minds of men.

On Friday 3 May the CRS had paid their historic visit to the forborne.

They had been invited in by Paul Roche, Hector of Paris University. The

Rector had almost certainly acted in connivance with Alain Peyrefitte,

Minister of Education, if not with the Elysee itself. Many students had

been arrested, beaten up, and several were summarily convicted.

The unbelievable — yet thoroughly predictable — ineptitude of this

bureaucratic ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of student discontent triggered

off a chain reaction. It provided the pent-up anger, resentment and

frustration of tens of thousands of young people with both a reason for

further action and with an attainable objective. The students, evicted

from the university, took to the street, demanding the liberation of

their comrades, the reopening of their faculties, the withdrawal of the

cops.

Layers upon layers of new people were soon drawn into the struggle. The

student union (UNEF) and the union representing university teaching

staff (SNESUP) called for an unlimited strike. For a week the students

held their ground, in ever bigger and more militant street

demonstrations. On Tuesday 7 May 50,000 students and teachers marched

through the streets behind a single banner: ‘Vive La Commune’, and sang

the Internationals at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Arc de

Triomphe. On Friday 10 May students and teachers decided to occupy the

Latin Quarter en masse. They felt they had more right to be there than

the police, for whom barracks were provided elsewhere. The cohesion and

sense of purpose of the demonstrators terrified the Establishment. Power

couldn’t be allowed to lie with this rabble, who had even had the

audacity to erect barricades.

Another inept gesture was needed. Another administrative reflex duly

materialised. Fouchet (Minister Of the interior) and Joxe (Deputy Prime

Minister) ordered Grimaud (Superintendent of the Paris police) to clear

the streets. The order was confirmed in writing, doubtless to be

preserved for posterity as an example of what not to do in certain

situations. The CRS charged...clearing the rue Gay-Lussac and opening

the doors to the second phase of the Revolution.

In the rue Gay-Lussac and in adjoining streets, the battle-scarred wails

carry a dual message. They bear testimony to the incredible courage of

those who held the area for several hours against a deluge of tear gas,

phosphorous grenades and repeated charges of club-swinging CRS. But they

also show something of what the defenders were striving for...

Mural propaganda is an integral part of the revolutionary Paris of May

1968. It has become a mass activity, part and parcel of the Revolution’s

method of. self-expression. The walls of, the Latin Quarter are the

depository of a new rationality, no longer confined to books, but

democratically displayed at street level and made available to all. The

trivial and the profound, the traditional and the esoteric, rub

shoulders in this new fraternity, rapidly breaking down the rigid

barriers and compartments in people’s minds. ‘Désobéir d’abord: alors

écris sur les murs (Loi du 10 Mai 1968)’ reads an obviously recent

inscription, clearly setting the tone. ‘Si tout le people faisait comme

nous’ (if everybody acted like us...) wistfully dreams another in joyful

anticipation, l think, rather than in any spirit of self-satisfied

substitutionary. Most of the slogans are straightforward, correct and

fairly orthodox: ‘Libérez nos camarades’ ; ‘Fouchet, Grimaud,

démission’; ‘A bàs l’Etat policier’; ‘Grève Générale fundi’;

‘Travailleurs, étudiants, soldaires’; ‘Vive les Conseils Ouvriers’.

Other slogans reflect the new concerns: ‘La publicity te manipule’;

‘Examens = hiérarchie’; ‘L’art est mort, ne consommes pas son cadavre’;

‘A bàs la society de consummation” ‘Debout les damnes de Nanterre . The

slogan ‘Baisses-toi et broute’(Bend your head and chew the cud) is

obviously aimed at those whose minds are still full of traditional

preoccupations. ‘Centre Ia fermentation groupusculaire’ moans a large

scarlet inscription. This one is really out of touch. For everywhere

there is a profusion of pasted up posters and journals; V’oix Ouvrière,

Avant-Garde and Revoltes (for the Trotskyisls), Servir Ie Peuple and

Humanity Nouvelle (for the devotees of Chairman Mao), Le Libertaire (for

the Anarchists), Tribune Socialiste (for the PSU), Even odd copies of

l’Humanité are pasted up. It is difficult to read them, so covered are

they with critical comments.

On a hoarding, I see a large advertisement for a new brand of cheese; a

child biting into an enormous sandwich. ‘C’est bon Ie fromage So-and-so’

runs the patter. Someone has covered the last few words with red paint.

The poster reads ‘C’est bon la Revolution’. People pass by, look, and

smile.

I talk to my companion, a man of about 45, an ‘old’ revolutionary. We

discuss the tremendous possibilities now opening up. He suddenly turns

towards me and comes out with a memorable phrase:“To think one had to

have kids and wait 20 years to see all this...” We talk to others in the

street, to young and old, to the ‘political’ and the ‘unpolitical’, to

people at all levels of understanding and commitment. Everyone is

prepared to talk — in fact everyone wants to. They all seem remarkably

articulate. We find no-one prepared to defend the actions of the

administration. The ‘critics’ fall into two main groups’.

The ‘progressive’ university teachers, the Communists, and a number of

students see the main root of the student ‘crisis’ in the backwardness

of the university in relation to society’s current needs, in the

quantitative inadequacy of the tuition provided, in the semi-feudal

attitudes of some professors, and in the general insufficiency of job

opportunities. They see the University as unadapted to the modern world.

The remedy for them is adaptation: a modernising reform which would

sweep away the cobwebs, provide more teachers, better lecture theatres,

a bigger educational budget, perhaps a more liberal attitude on the

campus and, at the end of it all, an assured job.

The rebels (which include some but by no means all of the ‘old’

revolutionaries) see this concern with adapting the university to modern

society as something of a diversion. For it is modern society itself

which they reject. They consider bourgeois life trivial and mediocre,

repressive and repressed. They have no yearning (but only contempt) for

the administrative and managerial careers it holds out for them. They

are not seeking integration into adult society. On the contrary, they

are seeking a chance radically to contest its adulteration. The driving

force of their revolt is their own alienation, the meaninglessness of

life under modern bureaucratic capitalism. It is certainly not a purely

economic deterioration in their standard of living.

It is no accident that the ‘revolution’ started in the Nanterre

faculties of Sociology and Psychology. The students saw that the

sociology they were being taught was a means of controlling and

manipulating society, not a means of understanding it in order to change

it. In the process they’ discovered revolutionary sociology. They

rejected the niche allocated to them in the great bureaucratic pyramid,

that of ‘experts’ in the service of a technocratic Establishment,

specialists of the ‘human factor’ in the modern industrial equation. In

the process they discovered the importance of the working class. The

amazing thing is that, at least among the active layers of the students,

these ‘sectarians’ suddenly seem to have become the majority’, surely

the best definition of any revolution.

The two types of ‘criticism’ of the modern French educational system do

not neutralism one another. On the contrary, each creates its own kind

of problems for the University authorities and for the officials at the

Ministry of Education. The real point is that one kind of criticism what

one might call the quantitative one — could in time be coped with by

modern bourgeois society’. The other — the qualitative one — never. This

is what gives it its revolutionary potential. The ‘trouble with the

University’, for the powers that be, isn’t that money can’t be found for

more teachers. It can. The ‘trouble’ is that the University is full of

students — and that the heads of the students are full of revolutionary

ideas.

Among those we speak to there is a deep awareness that the problem

cannot be solved in the Latin Quarter, that isolation of the revolt in a

student ‘ghetto’ (even an ‘autonomous’ one) would spell defeat. They

realise that the salvation of the movement lies in its extension to

other sectors of the population. But here wide differences appear. When

some talk of the importance of the working class it is as a substitute

for getting on with any kind of struggle themselves, an excuse for

denigrating the students’ struggle and ‘adventurist’. Yet it is

precisely because of its unparalleled militancy that the students’

action has established that direct Action works, has begun to influence

the younger workers and to rattle the established organizations. Other

students realise the relationship of these struggles more clearly. We

will find them later at Censier (see page 31 ), animating the

‘worker-student’ action committees, But enough, for the time being,

about the Latin Quarter. The movement has already spread beyond its

narrow confines.

May 13th :From Renault to the streets of Paris

Monday 13 May

6:15am, Avenue Yves Kermen. A clear, cloudless day. Crowds begin to

gather outside the pates of the giant Renault works at Boulogne

Billancourt. The main trade union ‘centrales’ (CGT, CFDT and FO) have

called a one day general strike, They are protesting against police

violence in the Latin Quarter and in support of long-neglected claims

concerning wages, hours, the age of retirement and trade union rights in

the plants.

The factory gales are wide open. Not a cop or supervisor in sight, The

workers stream in. A loud hailer tells them to proceed to their

respective shops, to refuse to start work and to proceed, at 8am, to

their traditional meeting place, an enormous shed-like structure in the

middle of the Ile Seguin (an island in the Seine entirely covered by

parts of the Renault plant).

As each worker goes through the gated, the pickets give him a leaflet,

jointly produced be the three unions.Leaflets in Spanish are also

distributed (over 2000 Spanish workers are employed at Renault). French

and Spanish orators succeed one another, in shod spells, at the

microphone. Although all the unions are supporting the one-day strike,

all the orators seem to belong to the CGT. it’s their loudspeaker...

6:45am, Hundreds of workers are now streaming in. Many look as if they

had corpse to work rather than to participate in mass meetings at the

plant. The decision to call the strike was only taken on the Saturday

afternoon, after many of the men had already dispersed for the weekend.

Many seem unaware of what it’s all about. l am struck by the number of

Algerian and black workers. There are only’ a few posters at the gate,

again mainly those of the CGT. Some pickets carry CF DT posters. There

isn’t an FO poster in sight. The road and walls outside the factory have

been well covered with slogans: ‘One day strike on Monday’; ‘Unity in

defence of our claims” ‘NO to the monopolies’.

The little café near the gales is packed. People seem unusually wide

awake and communicative for so early an hour, A newspaper kiosk is

selling about three copies of l’Humanité for every copy of anything

else. The local branch of the Communist Party is distributing a leaflet

calling for ‘resolution, calm, vigilance and unity’ and warning against

‘provocateurs’.

The pickets make no attempt to argue with those pouring in. No-one seems

to know whether they will obey the strike call or not. Less than 25% of

Renault workers belong to any union at all. This is the biggest car

factory in Europe. The loud hailer hammers home its message: The CRS

have recently assaulted peasants at Quimper, and workers at Caen, Lyon

and Dassault. Now they are turning on the students. The regime will not

tolerate opposition. It will not modernize the country. It will not

grant us our basic wage demands. Our one day strike will show both

Government and employers our determination. We must compel them to

retreat.” The message is repeated again and again, like a gramophone

record. I wonder whether the speaker believes what he says, whether he

even senses what lies ahead.

At 7am a dozen Trotskyists of the FER (Fédération des Etudiants

Révolutionaires) turn up to sell their paper Revoltes. They wear large

red and white buttons proclaiming their identity. A little later another

group arrives to sell Voix Ouvriere. The loudspeaker immediately

switches from an attack on the Gaullist government and its CRS to an

attack on”‘provocateurs” and “disruptive elements, alien to the working

class”. The Stalinist speaker hints that the sellers are in the pay of

the government, As they are here, “the police must be lurking in the

neighbourhood”. Heated arguments break out between sellers and CGT

officials. The CFDT pickets are refused the use of the loudhailer. They

shout “dèmocratie ouvriêre” and defend the right of the ‘disruptive

elements’ to sell their stuff. A rather abstract right, as not a sheet

is sold. The front page of Revoltes carries an esoteric article on

Eastern Europe.

Much invective (but no blows) are exchanged. In the course of an

argument I hear Bro. Trigon (delegate to the second electoral ‘college’

at Renault) describe Danny Cohn-Bandit as “un agent du pouvoir” (an

agent of the authorities). A student takes him up on this point. The

Trots don’t. Shortly before 8am they walk off, their ‘act of presence’

accomplished and duly recorded for history.

At about the same time, hundreds of workers who had entered the factory

leave their shops and assemble in the sunshine in an open space a few

hundred yards inside the main gate. From there they amble towards Ile

Seguin, crossing one arm of the river Seine on the way. Other

processions heave other points of the factory and converge on the same

area. The metallic ceiling is nearly 200 feet above our heads, Enormous

stocks of components are piled up high right and left. Far away to the

right an assembly line is still working, lifting what looks like rear

car seats, complete with attached springs, from the ground to first

floor level.

Some 10,000 workers are soon assembled in the shed. The orators address

them through a loudspeaker from a narrow platform some 40 feet up. The

platform runs in front of what looks like an elevated inspection post

but which I am told is a union office inside the factor. The CGT speaker

deals with various sectional wage claims. He denounces the resistance of

the government “in the hands of the monopolies”, He produces facts and

figures dealing with the wage structure, Many highly skilled men are not

getting enough. A CFDT speaker follows him. He deals with the steady

speed-up, with the worsening of working conditions, with accidents and

with the fate of man in production. “What kind of life is this? Are we

always to remain puppets, carrying out every whim of the management?” He

advocates uniform wage increases for all (‘augmentations

non-hiérarchisées’), An FO speaker follows. He is technically the most

competent, but says the least. In flowery rhetoric he talks of 1936, but

omits all reference to Léon Blum. The record of FO is bad in the factory

and the speaker is heckled from time to time, The CGT speakers then ask

the workers to participate en masse in the big rally planned for that

afternoon. As the last speaker finishes, the crowd spontaneously breaks

out into a rousing ‘Internationale’, The older men seem to know most of

the words. The younger workers only know the chorus. A friend nearby

assures me that in 20 years this is the first time he has heard the song

sung inside Renault (he has attended dozens of mass meetings in the lle

Seguin). There is an atmosphere of excitement, particularly among the

younger workers.

The crowd then breaks up into several sections. Some walk back over the

bridge and out of the factory. Others proceed systematically through the

shops where a few hundred blokes are still at work. Some of tees: men

argue but most seem only too glad for an excuse to stop and join in the

procession. Gangs weave their way, joking and singing, amid the giant

presses and tanks. Those remaining at work are ironically cheered,

clapped or exhaled to “step on it” or “work harder”. Occasional foremen

look on helplessly, as One assembly line after another is brought to a

halt.

Many of the lathes have coloured pictures plastered over them: pin-ups

and green fields, sex and sunshine. Anyone still working is exhorted to

get out into the daylight, not just to dream about it, in the main

plant, over half a mile long, hardly 12 men remain in their overalls.

Not an angry voice can be heard. There is much good humoured banter. By

1l am thousands of workers have poured out into the warmth of a morning

in May. An open-air beer and sandwich stall, outside the gate, is doing

a roaring trade.

Monday 13 May 1 , 15 pm.

The streets are crowded, The response to the call for a 24-hour general

strike has exceeded the wildest hopes of the trade unions. Despite the

short notice Paris is paralysed. The strike was only decided 48 hours

ago, after the ‘night of the barricades’. It is moreover ‘illegal’. The

law of the land demands a five-day notice before an ‘official’ strike

can be called. Too bad for legality. A solid phalanx of young people is

walking up the Boulevard de Sébastopol, towards the Gare de I’Est. They

are proceeding to the student rallying point for the giant demonstration

called jointly by the unions, the students’ organization (UNEF) and the

teachers’ associations (FEN and SNESup).

There is not a bus or car in sight. The streets of Paris today belong to

the demonstrators. Thousands of them are already in the square in front

of the station, Thousands more are moving in from every direction. The

plan agreed by the sponsoring organizations is for the different

categories to assemble separately and then to converge on the Place de

Ia République, from where the march will proceed across Paris, via the

Latin Quarter: to the Piace Denfert-Rochereau. We are already packed

like sardines for as far as the eye can see, yet there is more than an

hour to go before we are due to proceed. The sun has been shining all

day, The girls are in summer dresses, the young men in shirt sleeves. A

red flag is flying over the railway station. There are many red flags in

the crowd and several black ones too.

A man suddenly appears carrying a suitcase full of duplicated leaflets.

He belongs to some left ‘groupuscule’ or other. He opens his suitcase

and distributes perhaps a dozen leaflets. But he doesn’t have to

continue alone. There is an unquenchable thirst for information, ideas,

literature, argument, polemic. The man just stands there as people

surround him and press forward to get the leaflets. Dozens of

demonstrators, without even reading the leaflet, help him distribute

them. Some 6000 copies get out in a few minutes. AII seem to be

assiduously read, People argue, laugh, joke. I witnessed such scenes

again and again.

Sellers of revolutionary literature are doing well. An edict, signed by

the organizers of the demonstration, that lathe only literature allowed

would be that of the organizations sponsoring the demonstration” (see

I’Humanité, 13 May 1968, page 5) is being enthusiastically flouted. This

bureaucratic restriction (much criticised the previous evening when

announced at Censier by the student delegates to the Co-ordinating

Committee) obviously cannot be enforced in a crowd of this size. The

revolution is bigger than any organization, more tolerant than any

institution ‘representing’ the masses, more realistic than any edict of

any Central Committee. Demonstrators have climbed onto walls, onto the

roofs of bus stops, onto the railings in front of the station. Some have

loud hailers and make short speeches. All the ‘politicos’ seem to be in

one part or other of this crowd. I can see the banner of the Jeunesse

Communiste Révolutionaire, portraits of Castro and Che Guevara, the

banner of the FER, several banners of ‘Servir le Peuple’ (a Maoist

group). and the banner of the UJCML (Union de Ia Jeunesse Communiste

Marxiste-Léniniste), another Maoist tendency. There are also banners

from many educational establishments now occupied by those who work

there. Large groups of lichens (high school kids) mingle with the

students as do many thousands of teachers. At about 2pm the student

section sets off, singing the ‘Internationale’. We march 20–30 abreast,

arms linked. There is a row of red flags in front of us, then a banner

50 feet wide carrying four simple words: ‘Etudiants, Enseignants,

Travailleurs, Solidaires’. It is an impressive sight.

The whole Boulevard de Magenta is a solid seething mass of humanity. We

can’t enter the Place de la République, already packed foil of

demonstrators. One can’t even move along the pavements or through

adjacent streets. Nothing but people, as far as the eye can see. As we

proceed slowly down the Boulevard de Magenta, we notice on a third floor

balcony, high on our right, an SFIO (Socialist Party) headquarters, The

balcony is bedecked with a few decrepit-looking red flags and a banner

proclaiming ‘Solidarity with the students’. A few elderly characters

wave at us, somewhat self-consciously, Someone in the crowd starts

chanting “O-pur-tu-nistes”. The slogan is taken up, rhythmically roared

by thousands, to the discomfiture of those on the balcony who beat a

hasty retreat, The people have not forgotten the use of the CRS against

the striking miners in 1958 by ‘socialist’ Minister of the Interior

Jules Moch, They remember the ‘socialist’ Prime Minister Guy Mollet and

his role during the Algerian War. Mercilessly, the crowd shows its

contempt for the discredited politicians now seeking to jump on the

bandwagon. “Guy Mollet, au musée”, they shout, amid laughter. It is

truly the end of an epoch. At about 3pm we at last reach the Place de Ia

République, our point of departure, The crowd here is so dense that

several people faint and have to be carried into neighbouring cafes,

Here people are packed almost as tight as in the street, but can at

least avoid being injured, The window of one café gives way under the

pressure of the crowd outside, There is a genuine fear, in several pads

of the crowd, of being crushed to death. The first union contingents

fortunately begin to leave the square. There isn’t a policeman in sight.

Although the demonstration has been announced as a joint one, the CGT

leaders are still striving desperately to avoid a mixing-up, on the

streets, of students and workers. In this they are moderately

successful. By about 4.3Opm the students’ and teachers’ contingent,

perhaps 80,000 strong, finally leaves the Place de Ia République,

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have preceded it, hundreds of

thousands follow it, but the ‘left’ contingent has been well and truly

‘bottled-in’. Several groups, understanding at last the CGT’S manoeuvre,

break loose once we are out of the square. They take shod cuts via

various side streets, at the double, and succeed in infiltrating groups

of 100 or so into pads of the march ahead of them or behind them. The

Stalinist stewards walking hand in hand an. hemming the march in on

either side are powerless to prevent these sudden influxes. The student

demonstrators scatter like fish in water as soon as they have entered a

given contingent. The CGT marchers themselves are quite friendly and

readily assimilate the newcomers, not quite sure what it’s ail about,

The students’ appearances dress and speech does not enable them to be

identified as readily as they would be in Britain.

The main student contingent proceeds as a compact body. Now that we are

past the bottleneck of the Place de la République the pace is quite

rapid. The student group nevertheless takes at least half an hour to

pass a given point. The slogans of the students contrast strikingly with

those of the CGT. The students shout “Le Pouvoir aux Ouvriers” (All

Power to the Workers); “Le Pouvoir est dens Ia rue” (Power lies in the

street)’,”‘Libérez nos camarades”. COT members shout “Pompidou,

démission” (Pompidou, resign). The students chant “de Gaulle, assassin”,

or ‘ICRS-SS”. The CGT: (‘Des soul, pas de matraques” (money, not police

clubs) or “Défense du pouvoir d’achat” (Defend our purchasing power) The

students say “Non à l’Université de classe”. The CGT and the Stalinist

students, grouped around the banner of their paper Claret reply

“Université Démocratique”. Deep political differences lie behind the

differences of emphasis. some slogans are taken up by everyone, slogans

such as “Dix ens, c’est assez” ,“A bas I’Etat policier”, or “Bon

anniversaire, mon Général”. Whole groups mournfully intone a well-known

refrain: “Adieu, de Gaulle”. They wave their handkerchiefs, to the great

merriment of the bystanders. As the main student contingent crosses the

Pont St Michel to enter the Latin Quarter it suddenly stops, in silent

tribute to its wounded. All thoughts are for a moment switched to those

lying in hospital, their sight in danger through too much tear gas or

their skulls or ribs fractured by the truncheons of the CRS. The sudden,

angry silence of this noisiest pad of the demonstration conveys a deep

impression of strength and resolution. One senses massive accounts yet

to be settled.

At the top of the Boulevard St Michel I drop out of the march, climb

onto a parapet lining the Luxembourg Gardens, and just watch. l remain

there for two hours as row after row of demonstrators marches past, 30

or more abreast, a human tidal wave of fantastic, inconceivable size,

How many are they? 600,000? 800,000? A million? 1 ,500,000? No-one can

really number them. The first of the demonstrators reached the final

dispersal point hours before the last ranks had left the Place de Ia

République, at 7pm. There were banners of every kind: union banners,

student banners, political banners, non-political banners, recordist

banners, revolutionary banners, banners of the ‘Mouvement contra

-Armement Atomique’, banners of various Conseils de Parents d’Elèves,

banners of every conceivable size and shape, proclaiming a common

abhorrence at what had happened and a common will to struggle on. Some

banners were notedly applauded, such as the one saying

‘Libérons’information’(let’s have a free news service) carried by a

group of employees from the ORTF. Some banners indulged in vivid

symbolism, such as the gruesome one carried by a group of artists,

depicting human hands. heads and eyes, each with its price tag, on

display on the hooks and trays of a butcher’s shop. Endlessly they filed

past, There were whole sections of hospital personnel, in white coats,

some carrying posters saying ‘Où sent les dispartls des hopitatlx?’

(where are the missing injured?). Every factory, every major workplace

seemed to be represented, There Were numerous groups of, railwaymen,

postmen, printers, Metro personnel, metal workers, airport workers,

market men, electricians, lawyers, supermen, bank employees, building

workers, glass and chemical workers, waiters, municipal employees:

painters and decorators, gas workers, shop girls, insurance clerks, road

sweepers, film studio operators, busmen, teachers, Sharkers from the new

plastic industries, row upon row upon row of them, the flesh and blood

of modern capitalist society, an unending macs, a power that could sweep

everything before it, if it but decided to do so, My thoughts went to

those who say that the workers are only interested in football, in the

‘tiercé’ (horse-betting), in watching the telly and that the working

class , in their annual ‘conges’ (holidays), cannot see beyond the

problems of its everyday life. It was so palpably untrue. I also thought

of those who say that only a narrow and rotten leadership lies between

the masses and the total transformation of society. It was equally

untrue. Today the working class is becoming conscious of its strength.

Will it decide, tomorrow, to use it?

I rejoin the march and we proceed towards Dented Rochereau. We pass

several statues, sedate gentlemen now bedecked with red flags or

carrying slogans such as ‘Libérez nos camarades’. As we pass a hospital

silence again descends on the endless crowd. Someone starts whistling

the ‘lnternationale’, Others take it up. Like a breeze rustling over an

enormous field of corn, the whistled tune ripples out in all directions.

From the windows of the hospital some nurses wave at us.

At various intersections we pass traffic lights which by some strange

inertia still seem to be working. Red and green alternate, at fixed

intervals, meaning as little as bourgeois education, as work in modern

society, as the lives of those walking past. The reality of today, for a

few hours, has submerged all of yesterday’s patterns. The part of the

march in which l find myself is now rapidly approaching what the

organizers have decided should be the dispersal point. The CGT is

desperately keen that its hundreds of thousands of supposers should

disperse quietly, It fears them, when they are together. It wants them

nameless atoms again, scattered to the four corners of Paris, powerless

in the context of their individual preoccupations. The COT sees itself

as the only possible link between them, as the divinely ordained vehicle

for the expression of their collective viii. The ‘Mouvement du 22 Mars’,

on the other hand, had issued a call to the students and workers, asking

them to stick together and to proceed to the lawns of the Champ de Mars

(at the foot of the Eiffel Tower) for a massive collective discussion on

the experiences of the day and on the problems that lie ahead.

At this stage I sample for the first time what a ‘service d’ordre’

composed of Stalinist stewards really means. AII day, the stewards have

obviously been anticipating this particular moment. They are very tense,

clearly expecting ‘trouble’. Above all else they fear what they call

‘débordement’, ie being outflanked on the left. For the last half-mile

of the march five or six solid rows of them line up on either side of

the demonstrators. Arms linked, they form a massive sheath around the

marchers. CGT officials address the bottled-up demonstrators through two

powerful loudspeakers mounted on vans, instructing them to disperse

quietly via the Boulevard Arago, ie to proceed in precisely the opposite

direction to the one leading to the Champ de Mars. Other exits from the

Place Denfert Rochereau are blocked by lines of stewards linking arms On

occasions like this, l am told, the Communist Party calls up thousands

of its members from the Paris area. It also summons members from mites

around, bringing them up by the coachload from places as far away as

Rennes, Orleans, Sens, Lille and Limoges. The municipalities under

Communist Party control provide further hundreds of these ‘stewards’ not

necessarily Party members, but people dependent on the goodwill of the

Party for their jobs and future. Ever since its heyday of participation

in the government (1945–47) the Party has had this kind of mass base in

the Paris suburbs. It has invariably used it in circumstances like

today. On this demonstration there must be at least 10,000 such

stewards, possibly twice that number. The exhortations of the stewards

meet with a variable response. Whether they are successful in getting

particular groups to disperse via the Boulevard Arago depends of course

on the composition of the groups. Most of those which the students have

not succeeded in infiltrating obey, although even here some of the

younger militants protest: “We are a million in the streets. Why should

we go home?” Other groups hesitate, vacillate, start arguing. Student

speakers climb on walls and shout: “‘AII those who want to return to the

telly, turn down the Boulevard Arago. Those who are for joint

worker-student discussions and for developing the struggle, turn down

the Boulevard Raspail and proceed to the Champ de Mars”. Those

protesting against the dispersion orders are immediately jumped on by

the stewards, denounced as ‘provocateurs’ and often man-handled. I saw

several comrades of the ‘Mouvement du 22 Mars’ physically assaulted,

their portable loud hailers from their hands and their leaflets torn

from them and thrown to the ground. In some sections there seemed to be

dozens, in others hundreds, in others thousands of ‘provocateurs’. A

number of minor punch-ups take piece as the stewards are swept aside by

these particular contingents. Heated arguments break out, the

demonstrators denouncing the Stalinists as ‘cops’ and as ‘the last

rampart of the bourgeoisie’.

A respect for facts compels me to admit that most contingents followed

the orders of the trade union bureaucrats. The repeated slanders by the

CGT and Communist Party leaders had had their effect. The students were

“trouble-makers” “adventurers” “dubious elements”. Their proposed action

would only lead to a massive intervention by the CRS’ (who had kept well

out of sight throughout the whole of the afternoon). “This was just a

demonstration, not a prelude to revolutions” Playing ruthlessly on the

most backward sections of the crowd, and physically assaulting the more

advanced sections, the apparatchiks of the CGT succeeded in getting the

bulk of the demonstrators to disperse, often under protest. Thousands

went to the Champ de Mars, But hundreds of thousands went home. The

Stalinists won the day, but the arguments started will surely

reverberate down the months to come.

At about 8pm an episode took place which changed the temper of the last

sections of the march, now approaching the dispersal point. A police van

suddenly came up one of the streets leading Into the Place Denfert

Rochereau. It must have strayed from its intended route, or perhaps its

driver had assumed that the demonstrators had already dispersed. Seeing

the crowd ahead the two uniformed gendarmes in the front seat panicked.

Unable to reverse in time in order to retreat, the driver decided that

his life hinged on forcing a passage through the thinnest section of the

crowd. The vehicle accelerated: hurling itself into the demonstrators at

about 50 mikes an hour. People scattered wildly in alt directions.

Several people were knocked down and two were seriously injured. Many

more narrowly’ escaped, The van was finally surrounded. One of the

policemen in the front seat was dragged out and repeatedly punched by

the infuriated crowd, determined to lynch him. He was finally rescuers

in the nick of time, by the stewards. They more or less carried him,

semi-conscious, down a side street where he was passed horizontally,

like a battered blood sausage, through an open ground floor window.

To do this, the stewards had had to engage in a running fight with

several hundred very angry marchers. The crowd then started rocking the

stranded police van. The remaining policeman drew his revolver and

fired. People ducked. By a miracle no-one was hit. A hundred yards away

the bullet made a hole, about three feet above ground level, in a window

of ‘Le Belfort’, a big café at 297 Boulevard Raspail. The stewards again

rushed to the rescue, forming a barrier between the crowd and the police

van, which was allowed to escape down a side street, driven by the

policeman who had fired at the crowd.

Hundreds of demonstrators then thronged round the hole in the window of

the cafe. Press photographers were summoned, arrived, duly took their

close-ups — none of which, of course, were ever published, (Two days

later l’Humanité carried a few lines about the episode, at the bottom of

a column on page 5.) One effect of the episode is that several thousand

more demonstrators decided not to disperse. They turned and marched down

towards the Champ de Mars, shouting “lls ont tiré à Denfert” (they’ve

shot at us at Denfert). If the incident had taken place an hour earlier,

the evening of 13 May might have had a very different complexion.

The Sorbonne Soviet

On Saturday 11 May, shortly before midnight, Mr Pompidou, Prime Minister

of France, overruled his Minister of the Interior, his Minister of

Education, and issued orders to his ‘independent’ Judiciary. He

announced that the police would be withdrawn from the Latin Quarter,

that the faculties would re-open on Monday 13 May, and that the law

would ‘reconsider’ the question of the students arrested the previous

week. It was the biggest political climb-down of his career: For the

students, and for many others, it was the living proof that direct

action worked. Concessions had been won through struggle which had been

unobtainable by other means. Early on the Monday morning the CRS

platoons guarding the entrance to the Sorbonne were discreetly

withdrawn. The students moved in, first in small groups, then in

hundreds, later in thousands. By midday the occupation was complete.

Every ‘tricolore’ was promptly hauled down, every lecture theatre

occupied, Red flags were hoisted from the official flagpoles and from

improvised ones at many windows, some overlooking the streets, others

the big internal courtyard. Hundreds of feet above the milling students,

enormous red and black flags fluttered side by side from the Chapel

dome, What happened over the next few days will leave a permanent mark

on the French educational system, on the structure of French society and

— most important of all — on the minds of those who lived and made

history during that hectic first fortnight. The Sorbonne was suddenly

transformed from the fusty precinct where French capitalism selected and

moulded its hierarchs, its technocrats and its administrative

bureaucracy into a revolutionary volcano in full eruption whose lava was

to spread far and wide, searing the social structure of modern France.

The physical occupation of the Sorbonne was followed by an intellectual

explosion of unprecedented violence. Everything, literally everything,

was suddenly and simultaneously up for discussion, for question, for

challenge. There were no taboos. It is easy to criticise the chaotic

upsurge of thoughts, ideas and proposals unleashed in such

circumstances. ‘Professional revolutionaries’ and petty bourgeois

philistines criticised to their heart’s content. But in so doing they

only revealed how they themselves were trapped in the ideology of a

previous epoch and were incapable of transcending it. They failed to

recognise the tremendous significance of the new: of all that could not

be apprehended within their own pre-established intellectual categories.

The phenomenon was witnessed again and again, as it doubtless has been

in every really great upheaval in history.

Day and night, every lecture theatre was packed out, the seat of

continuous, passionate debate on every subject that ever preoccupied

thinking humanity. No formal lecturer ever enjoyed so massive an

audience, was ever listened to with such rapt attention — or given such

short shrift if he talked nonsense. A kind of order rapidly prevailed.

By the second day a noticeboard had appeared near the front entrance

announcing what was being talked about, and where. l noted’.

‘Organisation of the struggle’; ‘Political and trade union rights in the

University’; ‘University crisis or social crisis?’. ‘Dossier of police

repression’; ‘Self-management’; ‘Non-selection’ (or how to open the

doors of the University to everyone); ‘Methods of teaching’; ‘Exams’,

etc. Other lecture theatres were given over to the students-workers

liaison committees, soon to ‘assume great importance. In yet other

hales, discussions were under way on ‘sexual repression’, on ‘the

colonial question’, on ‘ideôlogy and mystification’, Any group of people

wishing to discuss anything under the sun would just take over one of

the lecture theatres or smaller rooms. Fortunately there were dozens of

these. The first impression was of a gigantic lid suddenly lifted, of

pent-up thoughts and aspirations suddenly exploding, on being released

from the realm of dreams into the realm of the real and the possible. In

changing their environment people themselves were changed. Those who had

never dared say anything suddenly felt their thoughts to be the most

important thing in the world and said so. The shy became communicative.

The helpless and isolated suddenly discovered that collective power lay

in their hands. The traditionally apathetic suddenly realized the

intensity of their involvement. A tremendous surge of community and

cohesion gripped those who had previously seen themselves as isolated

and impotent puppets, dominated by institutions that they could neither

control nor understand. People just went up and talked to one another

without a trace of self-consciousness. This state of euphoria lasted

throughout the whole fortnight I was there, An inscription scrawled on a

wall sums it up perfectly’. ‘Déjà dix jours de bonheur’ (ten days of

happiness already).

In the yard of the Sorbonne, politics (frowned on for a generation) took

over with a vengeance. Literature stalls sprouted up along the whole

inner perimeter, Enormous portraits appeared on the internal walls:

Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Guevara, a revolutionary resurrection

breaking the bounds of time and place. Even Stalin put in a transient

appearance (above a Maoist stall) until it was tactfully suggested to

the comrades that he wasn’t really at home in such company.

On the stalls themselves every kind of literature suddenly blossomed

forth in the summer sunshine: leaflets and pamphlets by anarchists,

Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists (three varieties), the PSU and the

non-committed. The yard of the Sorbonne had become a gigantic

revolutionary drug-store, in which the most esoteric products no longer

had to be kept beneath the counter but could now be prominently

displayed. Old issues of journals, yellowed by the years, were unearthed

and often sold as well as more recent material. Everywhere there were

groups of 1 0 or 20 people, in heated discussion, people talking about

the barricades, about the CRST about their own experiences, but also

about the commune of 1871 , about 1905 and 1917, about the Italian left

in 1921 and About France in 1936. A fusion was taking place between the

consciousness Of the revolutionary minorities and the consciousness of

whole new layers Of people, dragged day by day into the maelstrom of

political controversy. The students were learning within days what it

had taken others a lifetime to learn. Many lichens came to see What it

was all about. They too got sucked into the vortex. I remember a boy of

14 explaining to an incredulous man of 60 why students should have the

right to depose professors.

Other things also happened. A large piano suddenly appeared In the great

central yard and remained there for several days. People would come and

play on it, surrounded by enthusiastic supposers. As people talked in

the lecture theatres of nee-capitalism and Of its techniques of

manipulation, strands of Chopin and bars of jazz, bits of La Carmagnole

and atonal compositions wafted through the air. One evening there was a

drum recital, then some clarinet players took over. These ‘diversions’

may have infuriated some of the more single-minded revolutionaries, but

they were as much part and parcel of the total transformation of the

Sorbonne as were the revolutionary doctrines being proclaimed in the

lecture hails. An exhibition of huge photographs of the ‘night of the

barricades’ (in beautiful half-tones) appeared one morning, mounted on

stands. No-tine knew who had put it up. Everyone agreed that it

succinctly summarised the horror and glamour, the anger and promise of

that fateful night. Even the doors of the Chapel giving on to the yard

were soon covered with inscriptions: ‘open this door — Finis, le

tabernacles’,‘Religion is the last mystification’. Or more prosaically:

‘We want somewhere to piss, not somewhere to pray’. The massive outer

walls of the Sorbonne were likewise soon plastered with posters —

posters announcing the first sit-in strikes, posters describing the wage

rates of whole sections of Paris workers, posters announcing the next

demonstrations, posters describing the solidarity marches in Peking,

posters denouncing the police repression and the use of CS gas (as well

as of ordinary tear-gas) against the demonstrators. There were posters,

dozens of them, warning students against the Communist Party’s

band-wagon jumping tactics, telling them how it had attacked their

movement and how it was now seeking to assume its leadership. Political

posters in plenty. But also others, proclaiming the new ethos. A big one

for instance near the main entrance, boldly proclaimed ‘Défense

d’interdire’ (Forbidding forbidden). And others, equally to the point:

‘Only the truth is revolutionary’, ‘Our revolution is greater than

ourselves’, ‘We refuse the role assigned to us, will not be trained as

police dogs’. People’s concerns varied but converged. The posters

reflected the deeply libertarian prevailing philosophy: ‘Humanity will

only be happy when the last capitalist has been strangled with the guts

of the last bureaucrat”, ‘Culture is disintegrating. Create!’,‘I take my

wishes for reality for I believe in the reality of my wishes’; or more

simply, ‘Creativity, spontaneity, life’. In the street outside, hundreds

of passers-by would stop to read these improvised wall-newspapers. Some

gaped. Some sniggered Some nodded assent. Some argued, Some, summoning

their courage: actually entered the erstwhile sacrosanct premises, as

they were being exhorted to by numerous posters proclaiming that the

Sorbonne was now open to all, Young workers who ‘wouldn’t have been seen

in that place’ a month ago now walked in groups, at first rather

self-consciously, later as if they owned the place, which of course they

did.

As the days went by, another kind of invasion took place — the invasion

by the cynical and the unbelieving, or — more charitably — by those who

‘had only come to see’. It gradually gained momentum. At certain stages

it threatened to paralyse the serious work being done, part of which had

to be hived off to the Faculty of Letters, at Censing, also occupied by

the students. It was felt necessary, however, for the doors to be kept

open, 24 hours a day. The message certainly spread. Deputations came

first from other universities, then from high schools, later from

factories and offices, to look, to question, to argue, to study.

The most telling sign, however, of the new and heady climate was to be

found on the wails of the Sorbonne corridors. Around the main lecture

theatres there is a maze of such corridors’, dark, dusty, depressing,

and hitherto unnoticed passageways leading from nowhere in particular to

nowhere else. Suddenly these corridors sprang to life in a firework of

luminous mural wisdom — much of it of Situationist inspiration. Hundreds

of people suddenly stopped to read such pearls as: ‘Do not consume Marx.

Live it’; ‘The future will only contain what we put into it now’; ‘When

examined. we will answer with questions”, ‘Professors, you make us feel

old’ ; ‘One doesn’t compose with a society in decomposition”, ‘We must

remain the unadapted ones’; ‘Workers of all lands, enjoy yourselves’ :

‘Those who carry out a revolution only half-way through merely dig

themselves a tomb (St Just), ‘Please leave the PC (Communist Party) as

clean on leaving as you would like to find it on entering ‘; ‘The tears

of the philistines are the nectar of the gods’,’ ‘GO and die in Naples.

with the Club Mediterranée’; ‘Long live communication, down with

telecommunication’ ‘ ‘Masochism today dresses up as reformism ; We will

claim nothing. We will ask for nothing. We will take. We will occupy’;

‘The only outrage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was the outrage

that put him there”, ‘No, we won’t be picked up by the Great Party of

the Working Class’, And a big inscription, well displayed’. ‘Since 1936

l have fought for wage increases, My father, before me, also fought for

wage increases. Now I have a telly, a fridge, a Volkswagen. Yet all in

all, my life has always been a dog’s life. Don’t discuss with the

bosses. Eliminate them.’

Day after day the courtyard and corridors are crammed, the scene of an

incessant bi-directional flow to every conceivable part of the enormous

building. It may look like chaos, but it is the chaos of a beehive or of

an anthill. A new structure is gradually being evolved. A canteen has

been organised in one big hall, people pay what they can afford for

glasses of orange juice, ‘menthe’, or ‘grenadine’ and for ham or sausage

rolls. l enquire whether costs are covered and am toad they more or less

break even. In another part of the building a children’s creche has been

set up, elsewhere a first-aid station, elsewhere a dormitory. Regular

sweeping-up rotas are organised. Rooms are allocated to the Occupation

Committee, to the Press Committee, to the Propaganda Committee, to the

student- worker liaison committees, to the committees dealing with

foreign students, to the action committees of Lyceens, to the committees

dealing with the allocation of premises, and to the numerous commissions

undertaking special projects such as the compiling of a dossier on

police atrocities, the study of the implications of autonomy, of the

examination system, etc. Anyone seeking work can readily find it. The

composition of the committees was very variable. It often changed from

day to day, as the committees gradually found their feel. To those who

pressed for instant solutions to every problem it would be answered:

“patience, comrade give us a chance to evolve an alternative. The

bourgeoisie has controlled this university for nearly two centuries. It

has solved nothing. We are building from rock bottom, We need a month or

two...”

Confronted with this tremendous explosion which it had neither foreseen

nor been able to control the Communist Party tried desperately to

salvage what it could of its shattered reputation. Between 3 May and 13

May every issue of I’Humanité had carried paragraphs either attacking

the students or making slimy innuendoes about them. Now the line

suddenly changed, The Party sent dozens of its best agitators into the

Sorbonne to ‘explain’ its case. The case was a simple one. The Party

‘supported the students’ — even if there were a few ‘dubious elements’

in their leadership. It ‘always had’. It always would. Amazing scenes

followed. Every Stalinist ‘agitator’ would immediately be surrounded by

a large group of well-informed young people, denouncing the Party’s

counter-revolutionary role. A wall-paper had been put up by the comrades

of Volà Ouvrière on which had been posted, day by day, every statement

attacking the students to have appeared in I’Humanite- or in any of a

dozen Party leaflets. The ‘agitators’ couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

They would be jumped on (non-violently). “The evidence was over there,

comrade. Would the Party comrades like to come and read just exactly

what the Party had been saying not a week ago? Perhaps I’Humanité would

like to grant the students space to reply to some of the accusations

made against them?” Others in the audience would then bring up the

Party’s role during the Algerian War, during the miners’ strike of 1958,

during the years of ‘tripartisme’ (1945–1947). Wriggle as they tried,

the ‘agitators’ just could not escape this kind of ‘instant education’.

It was interesting to note that the Party could not entrust this

‘salvaging’ operation to its younger, student members. Only the ‘older

comrades’ could safely venture into this hornets’ nest. So much so that

people would say that anyone in the Sorbonne over the age of 40 was

either a copper’s nark or a stalinist stooge. The most dramatic periods

of the occupation were undoubtedly the ‘Assemblées Générales’, or

plenary sessions, held every’ night in the giant amphitheatre. This was

the soviet, the ultimate source of all decisions, the fount and origin

of direct democracy. The amphitheatre could seat up to 5000 people in

its enormous hemicycle, surmounted by three balcony tiers. As often as

not every seat was taken and the crowd would flow up the aisles and onto

the podium, A black flag and a red one hung over the simple wooden table

at which the chairman sat. Having seen meetings of 50 break up in chaos

it is an amazing experience to see a meeting of 5000 get down to

business. Real events determined the themes and ensured that most of the

talk was down to earth.

The topic having been decided, everyone was allowed to speak. Most

speeches were made from the podium but some from the body of the hall or

from the balconies. The loudspeaker equipment usually worked but

sometimes didn’t. Some speakers could command immediate attention,

without even raising their voice. Others would instantly provoke a

hostile response by the stridency of their tone, their insincerity or

their more or less obvious attempts at manoeuvring the assembly. Anyone

who waffled, or reminisced, or came to recite a set-piece, or talked in

terms of slogans, was given shod shrift by the audience, politically the

most sophisticated I have ever seen. Anyone making practical suggestions

was listened to attentively. So were those who sought to interpret the

movement in terms of its own experience or to point the way ahead.

Most speakers were granted three minutes, Some were allowed much more by

popular acclaim. The crowd itself exerted a tremendous control on the

platform and on the speakers. A two-way relationship emerged very

quickly. The political maturity of the Assembly was shown most

strikingly in its rapid realization that booing or cheering during

speeches slowed down the Assembly’s own deliberations. Positive speeches

were loudly cheered — at the end. Demagogic or useless ones were

impatiently swept aside, Conscious revolutionary minorities played an

important catalytic role in these deliberations, but never sought — at

least the more intelligent ones — to impose their will on the mass body.

Although in the early stages the Assembly had its fair share of

exhibited nests, provocateurs and nuts, the overhead costs of direct

democracy were not as heavy as one might have expected.

There were moments of excitement and moments of exhortation. On the

night of 13 May, after the massive march through the streets of Paris,

Daniel Cohn-Bandit confronted J M Catala, general secretary of the Union

of Communist Students in front of the packed auditorium. The scene

remains printed in my mind. “Explain to us”, Cohn-Bandit said, “why the

Communist Party and the CGT told their militants to disperse at Denfed

Rochereau, why it prevented them joining up with us for a discussion at

the Champ de Mars?” “simple, really” sneered Catala. “The agreement

concluded between the CGT, the CFDT, the UNEF and the other sponsoring

organizations stipulated that dispersal would take place at a

predetermined place. The Joint Sponsoring Committee had not sanctioned

any further developments...” “A revealing answer”, replied Cohn-Bandit,

“the organizations hadn’t foreseen that we would be a million in the

streets. But life is bigger than the organizations. With a million

people almost anything is possible. You say the Committee hadn’t

sanctioned anything further. On the day of the Revolution, comrade, you

will doubtless tell us to forego it ‘because it hasn’t been sanctioned

by the appropriate sponsoring committee’...”

This brought the house down. The only ones who didn’t rise to cheer were

a few dozen Stalinists. Also, revealingly, those Trotskyists who tacitly

accepted the Stalinist conceptions — and whose only quarrel with the CP

is that it had excluded them from being one of the ‘sponsoring

organisations’. That same night the Assembly took three important

decisions. From now on the Sorbonne would constitute itself as a

revolutionary headquarters (‘Smolny’, someone shouted). Those who worked

there would devote their main efforts not to a mere re-organisation of

the educational system, but to a total subversion of bourgeois society.

From now on the University would be open to all those who subscribed to

these aims. The proposals having been accepted the audience rose to a

man and sang the loudest, most impassioned ‘Internationale’ I have ever

heard. The echoes must have reverberated as far as the Elysee Palace on

the other side of the River Seine...

The Censier revolutionaries

At the same time as the students occupied the Sorbonne, they also took

over the ‘Centre Censier’ (the new Paris University Faculty of Letters).

Censier is an enormous, ultra-modern, steel-concrete-and-glass affair

situated at the south-east corner of the Latin Quarter, Its occupation

attracted less attention than did that of the Sorbonne. It was to prove,

however, just as significant an event. For while the Sorbonne was the

shop window of revolutionary Paris — with art that that implies in terms

of garish display-, Censier was its dynamo, the place where things

really got done.

To many, the Paris May Days must have seen an essentially nocturnal

affair: nocturnal battles with the CRS, nocturnal barricades, nocturnal

debates in the great amphitheaters. But this was but one side of the

coin. While some argued late into the Sorbonne night? others went to bed

early for in the mornings they would be handing out leaflets at factory

gales or in the suburbs, leaflets that had to be drafted, typed,

duplicated, and the distribution of which had to be carefully organised.

This patient, systematic work was done at Censier. It contributed in no

small measure to giving the new revolutionary consciousness articulate

expression.

Soon after Censier had been occupied a group of activists comandeered a

large part of the third floor. This space was to be the headquarters of

their proposed ‘worker-student action committees’. The general idea was

to establish links with groups of workers, however small: who shared the

general libertarian- revolutionary outlook of this group of students.

Contact having been made, workers and students would cc-operate in the

joint drafting of leaflets. The leaflets would discuss the immediate

problems of particular groups of workers, but in the light of what the

students had shown to be possible. A given leaflet would then be jointly

distributed by workers and students, outside the navicular factory or

office to which it referred, In some instances the distribution would

have to be undertaken by students alone, in others hardly a single

student would be needed, What brought the Censing comrades together was

a deeply-felt sense of the revolutionary potentialities of the situation

and the knowledge that they had no time to waste. They all felt the

pressing need for direct action propaganda, and that the urgency of the

situation required of them that they transcend any doctrinal differences

they might have with one another. They were all intensely’ political

people. By and large, their politics were those of that new and

increasingly important historical species: the ex- members of one or

other revolutionary organization.

What were their views? Basically they boiled down to a few simple

propositions. What was needed just now was a rapid, autonomous

development of the working class struggle, the setting up of elected

strike committees which would link union and non-union members in all

strike-bound. plants and enterprises, regular meetings of the strikers

so that the fundamental decisions remained in the hands of the rank and

file, workers’ defence committees to defend pickets from police

intimidation, a constant dialogue with the revolutionary students aimed

at restoring to the working class its own tradition of direct democracy

and its own aspiration to self-management (auto- gestion), usurped by

the bureaucracies of the trade unions and the political parties, For a

whole week the various Trotskyist and Maoist factions didn’t even notice

what was going on at Censier. They spent their time in public and often

acrimonious debates at the Sorbonne as to who could provide the best

leadership. Meanwhile, the comrades at Censier were steadily getting on

with the work. The majority of them had ‘been through’ either Stalinist

or Trotskyist organizations. They had left behind them all ideas to the

effect that ‘intervention’ was meaningful only in terms of potential

recruitment to their own particular group. AIl recognised the need for a

widely-based and moderately structured revolutionary movement, but none

of them saw the building of such a movement as an immediate, all

important task, on which propaganda should immediately be centred.

Duplicators belonging to ‘subversive elements’ were brought in.

University duplicators were commandeered. Stocks of paper and ink were

obtained from various sources and by various means. Leaflets began to

pour out. first in hundreds, then in thousands, then in tens of

thousands as links were established with one group of rank and file

workers after another, On the first day alone, Renault, Citroen, Air

France, Boussac, the Nouvelles Messageries de Presse, Rhone- Poulenc and

the RATP (Métro) were contacted. The movement then snowballed.

Every evening at Censier, the action committees reported back to an

‘Assemblée Générale’ devoted exclusively to this kind of work. The

reactions to the distribution were assessed, the content of future

leaflets discussed. These discussions would usually be led off by the

worker contact who would describe the impact of the leaflet on his

workmates. The most heated discussion centred on whether direct attacks

should be made on the leaders of the CGT or whether mere suggestions as

to what was needed to win would be sufficient to expose everything the

union leaders had (or hadn’t) done and everything they stood for. The

second viewpoint prevailed. The leaflets were usually very short, never

more than 200 or 300 words. They nearly ail started by listing the

workers’ grievances — or just by describing their conditions of work.

They would end by inviting workers to call at Censier or at the

Sorbonne. “These places are now yours, Come there to discuss your

problems with others. Take a hand yourselves in making known your

problems and demands to those around you.” Between this kind of opening

and this kind of conclusion, most leaflets contained one or two key

political points. The response was instantaneous. More and more workers

dropped in to draft joint leaflets with the students. Soon there was no

lecture room big enough for the daily ‘Assemblée Générale’. The students

learned a great deal from the workers’ self-discipline and from the

systematic way in which they presented their reports. It was all so

different from the ‘in-fighting’ of the political sects. There was

agreement that these were the finest lectures held at Censier!

Among the more telling lines of these leaflets, I noted the following’,

Air France leaflet “We refuse to accept a degrading ‘modernisation’

which means we are constantly watched and have to submit to conditions

which are harmful to our health, to our nervous systems and an insult to

our status of human beings... We refuse to entrust our demands any

longer to professional trade union leaders. Like the students, we must

take the control of our affairs into our own hands.” Renault leaflet “If

we want our wage increases and our claims concerning conditions of work

to be secure, if we don’t want them constantly threatened, we must now

struggle for a fundamental change in society... As workers we should

ourselves seek to control the operation of our enterprises. Our

objectives are similar to those of the students. The management

(gestion) of industry and the management of the university should be

democratically ensured by those who work there...” Rhone-poulenc leaflet

“Up till now we tried to solve our problems through petitions, partial

struggles, the election of better leaders. This has led us nowhere. The

action of the students has shown us that only rank and file action could

compel the authorities to retreat... the students are challenging the

whole purpose of bourgeois education. They want to take the fundamental

decisions themselves. So should we.We should decide the purpose of

production, and at whose cost production will be carried out.” District

leaflet (distributed in the streets at Boulogne Billancoud) “The

government fears the extension of the movement. It fears the developing

unity between workers and students. Pompidou has announced that “the

government will defend the Republic. The Army and police are being

prepared, De Gaulle will speak on the 24^(th). Will he send the CRS to

clear pickets out of strikebound plants? Be prepared. In workshops and

faculties, think in terms of self- defence,..” Every day dozens of such

leaflets were discussed, typed, duplicated, distributed. Every evening

we heard of the response: “The blokes think it’s tremendous. It’s just

what they are thinking. The union officials never talk like this”. “The

blokes liked the leaflet. They are sceptical about the 12%. They say

prices will go up and that we’ll lose it all in a few months. Some say

let’s push all together now and take on the lot,” “The leaflet certainly

staged the lads talking. They’ve never had so much to say. The officials

had to wait their turn to speak...”

I vividly remember a young printing worker who said one night that these

meetings were the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. AII

his life he had dreamed of meeting people who thought and spoke like

this. But every time he thought he had met one all they were interested

in was what they could get out of him. This was the first time he had

been offered disinterested help. I don’t know what has happened at

Censier since the end of May. When I left, sundry Trots were beginning

to move in, “to politicize the leaflets” (by which I presume they meant

that the leaflets should now talk about “the need to build the

revolutionary Party”). If they succeed — which I doubt, knowing the

calibre of the Censier comrades — it will be a tragedy.

The leaflets were in fact political. During the whole of my short stay

in France I saw nothing more intensely and relevantly political (in the

best sense of the term) than the sustained campaign emanating from

Censier, a campaign for constant control of the struggle from below, for

self-defence, for workers’ management of production, for popularizing

the concept of workers’ councils, for explaining to one and all the

tremendous relevance, in a revolutionary situation, of revolutionary

demands, of organised self-activity, of collective self-reliance.

As I left Censier I could not help thinking how the place epitomized the

crisis of modern bureaucratic capitalism. Censier is no educational

slum. It is an ultra-modern building, one of the showpieces of Gaullist

‘grandeur’. It has closed-circuit television in the lecture theatres,

modern plumbing, and slot machines distributing 24 different kinds of

food ,in sterilized containers and 10 different kinds of drink. Over 90%

of the students there are of petty bourgeois or bourgeois backgrounds.

Yet such is their rejection of the society that nurtured them that they

were working duplicators 24 hours a day, turning out a flood of

revolutionary literature of a kind no modern city has ever had pushed

into it before. This kind of activity had transformed these students and

had contributed to transforming the environment around them. They were

simultaneously disrupting the social structure and having the time of

their lives. In the words of a slogan scrawled on the wall: ‘On n’est

pas If pour s’emmerder’ (you’ll have to look this one up in the

dictionary).

Getting together

When the news of the first factory occupation (that of the Sud Aviation

plant at Nantes) reached the Sorbonne — late during the night of Tuesday

14 May — there were scenes of indescribable enthusiasm. Sessions were

interrupted for the announcement. Everyone seemed to sense the

significance of what had just happened. After a full minute of

continuous, delirious cheering, the audience broke into a synchronous,

rhythmical clapping, apparently reserved for great occasions.

On Thursday 16 May the Renault factories at Cléon (near Rouen) and at

Flins (North West of Paris) were occupied. Excited groups in the

Sorbonne yard remained glued to their transistors as hour by hour news

came over of further occupations. Enormous posters were put up, both

inside and outside the Sorbonne, with the most up-to-date information of

which factories had been occupied: the Nouvelles Messageries de Presse

in Paris, Kléber Colombes at Caudebec, Dresser-Duiardin at Le Havre, the

naval shipyard at Le Trait...and finally the Renault works at Boulogne

Billancourt. Within 48 hours the task had to be abandoned. No

noticeboard — or panel of noticeboards — was large enough. At last the

students felt that the battle had really been joined.

Early on the Friday afternoon an emergency ‘General Assembly’ was held.

The meeting decided to send a big student deputation to the occupied

Renault works. lts aim was to establish contact, express student

solidarity and, if possible, discuss common problems. The march was

scheduled to leave the Place de la Sorbonne at 6pm. At about 5pm

thousands of leaflets were suddenly distributed in the amphitheaters, in

the Sorbonne yard and in the streets around. They were signed by the

Renault Bureau Of the CGT. The Communist Party had been working...fast.

The leaflets read: “We have just heard that students and teachers are

proposing to set out this afternoon in the direction of Renault. This

decision was taken without consulting the appropriate trade union

sections of the CGT, CFDT and FO. “We greatly appreciate the solidarity

of the students and teachers in the common struggle against the ‘pouvoir

personnel’ (ie de Gaulle) and the employers. but are opposed to any

ill-judged initiative which might threaten our developing movement and

facilitate a provocation which would lead to a diversion by the

government. We strongly advise the organizers of this demonstration

against preceding with their plans. “We intend, together with the

workers now struggling for their claims, to lead our own strike. We

refuse any external intervention, in conformity with the declaration

jointly signed by the CGT, CFDT and FO unions, and approved this morning

by 23,000 workers belonging to the factory.”

The distortion and dishonesty of this leaflet defy description. No-one

intended to instruct the workers how to run the strike and no student

would have the presumption to seek to assume its leadership. AlI that

the students wanted was to express solidarity with the workers in what

was now a common struggle against the state and the employing class.

The CGT leaflet came like an icy shower to the less political students

and to all those who still had illusions about Stalinism. “They won’t

let us get through.” “The workers don’t want to talk with us.” The

identification of workers with ‘their’ organizations is very hard to

break down. Several hundred who had intended to march to Billancoud were

probably put off, The UNEF vacillated, reluctant to lead the march in

direct violation of the wishes of the CGT. Finally some 1500 people set

out, under a single banner, hastily prepared by some Maoist students.

The banner proclaimers ‘The strong hands of the working class must now

take over the torch from the fragile hands of the students’. Many joined

the march who were not Maoists and who didn’t necessarily agree with

this particular formulation of its objectives.

Although small when compared to other marches, this was certainly a most

political one. Practically everyone on it belonged to one or other of

the ‘groupuscules’: a spontaneous united front of Maoists, Trotskyists,

anarchists, the comrades of the Mouvement du 22 Mars and various others.

Everyone knew exactly what he was doing. It was this that was so to

infuriate the Communist Party. The march sets off noisily, crosses the

Boulevard St Michel, and passes in front of the occupied Odeon Theatre

(where several hundred more joyfully join it). It then proceeds at a

very brisk pace down the rue de Vaugirard, the longest street in Paris,

towards the working class districts to the South West of the city,

growing steadily in size and militancy as it advances. It is important

we reach the factory before the Stalinists have time to mobilize their

big battalions...

Slogans such as “Avec nous, chez Renault” (come with us to Renault), “Le

pouvoir est dans la rue” (power lies in the street), Le pouvoir aux

ouvriers” (power to the workers) are shouted lustily, again and again.

The Maoists shout “A bàs Ie gouvernement gaulliste anti-populaire de

chomage et de misère” — a long and ‘politically equivocal slogan, but

one eminently suited to collective shouting. The Internationals bursts

out repeatedly, sung this time by people who seem to know the words —

even the second verse! By the time we have marched the five milks to

Issy-les-Moulineaux it is already dark. Way behind us now are the bright

lights of the Latin Quarter and of the fashionable Paris known to

tourists. We go through small, poorly-lit streets, the uncollected

rubbish piled high In places. Dozens of young people join us en route,

attracted by the noise and the singing of revolutionary songs such as

‘La Jeune Garde’, ‘Zimmerwald’, and the song of the Partisans, “chez

Renault, chez Renault” the marchers shout. People congregate in the

doors of the bistros, or peer out of the windows of crowded fiats to

watch us pass. Some look on in amazement but many — possibly a majority

— now”’ clap or wave encouragement. In some streets many Algerians fine

the pavement. Some join in the shouting of CSCRS — SS”’ “Charonne”’ “A

bàs I’Etat policier” They have not forgotten. Most look on shyly or

smile in an embarrassed way. Very few join the march.

On we go, a few miles more. There isn’t a gendarme in sight. We cross

the Seine and eventually stow down as we approach a square beyond which

lie the Renault works. The streets here arc very badly-lit. There is a

sense of intense excitement in the air. We suddenly come up against a

lorry, parked across most of the road, and fitted with loudspeaker

equipment. The march stops. On the lorry stands a CGT official. He

speaks for five minutes. In somewhat chilly tones he says how pleased he

is to see us. “Thank you for coming, comrades. We appreciate your

solidarity. But please no provocations. Don’t go too near the gated as

the management would use it as an excuse to call the police. And go home

soon. lt’s cold and you’ll need all your strength in the days to come.”

The students have brought their own loud hailers. One or two speak,

briefly. They take note of the comments of the comrade from the CGT.

They have no intention of provoking anyone, no wish to usurp anyone’s

functions, We then slowly but quite deliberately move forwards into the

square, on each side of the lorry, drowning the protests of about a

hundred Stalinists in a powerful ‘lnternationale’. Workers in

neighbouring cafes come out and join us. This time the Party had not had

time to mobilize its militants. It could not physically isolate us.

Part of the factory now looms up right ahead of us, three storeys high

on our left, two storeys high on our right, In front of us, there is a

giant metal gate, closed and bolted. A large first floor window to our

right is crowded with workers. The front row sit with their legs

dangling over the sill. Several seem in their teens’, one of them waves

a big red flag. There are no ‘tricolores’ in sight — no ideal

allegiance’ as in other occupied places I had seen. Several dozen more

workers are on the roofs of the two buildings. We wave. They wave back.

We sing the ‘Internationale’. They join in. We give the clenched fist

salute. They do likewise. Everybody cheers. Contact has been made. An

interesting exchange takes place. A group of demonstrators stabs

shouting “Les usines aux ouvriers” (the factories to the workers). The

slogan spreads like wildfire through the crowd. The Maoists, now in a

definite minority, are rather annoyed. (According to Chairman Mao,

workers’ control is a petty-bourgeois, anarcho- syndicaiist deviation.)

“les usines aux ouvriers”..10, 20 times the slogan reverberates round

the Place Nationals, taken up by a crowd now some 3000 strong.

As the shouting subsides, a lone voice from one of the Renault roofs

shouts back’. “La Sorbonne aux Etudiants”. Other workers on the same

roof take it up. Then those on the other roof. By the volume of their

voices they must be at beast 100 of them, on top of each building. There

is then a moment of silence. Everyone thinks the exchange has come to an

end. But one of the demonstrators starts chanting’. “La Sorbonne aux

ouvriers”. Amid general laughter, everyone joins in.

We start talking. A rope is quickly passed down from the window, a

bucket at the end of it, Bottles of beer and packets of fags are passed

up. Also revolutionary leaflets. Also bundles of papers (mainly copies

of Server Ie Peuple — a Maoist journal carrying a big title ‘Vive la

CGT’). At street level there are a number of gaps in the metal facade of

the building. Groups of students cluster at these half-dozen openings

and talk to groups of workers on the other side. They discuss wages,

conditions, the CRS, what the lads inside need most, how the students

can help. The men talk freely. They are not Party members. They think

the constant talk of provocateurs a bit far-fetched. But the machines

must be protected. We point out that two or three students inside the

factory, escorted by the strike committee, couldn’t possibly damage the

machines. They agree. We contrast the widely open doors of the Sorbonne

with the heavy locks and bolts on the Renault bates — closed by the CGT

officials to prevent the ideological contamination of ‘their’ militants.

How silly, we say, to have to talk through these stupid little slits in

the wall.

Again they agree. They will put it to their ‘dirigeants’ (leaders),

No-one seems, as yet, to think beyond this. There is then a diversion. A

hundred yards away a member of the FER gets up on a parked car and

starts making a speech through a Ioud hailer. The intervention is

completely out of tune with the dialogue that is just starting. it’s the

same gramophone record we have been hearing all week at the Sorbonne.

“CaII on the union leaders to organism the election of strike committees

in every factory. Force the union leaders to federate the strike

committees. Force the union leaders to set up a national strike

committee. Force them to call a general strike throughout the whole of

the country” (this at a time when millions of workers are already on

strike without any call whatsoever). The tone is strident, almost

hysterical, the misjudging of the mood monumental. The demonstrators

themselves drown the speaker in a loud ‘Internationale’. As the last bar

fades the Trotskyist tries again. Again the demonstrators drown him,

Groups stroll up the Avenue Yves Kermen, to the other entrances to the

factory. Real contact is here more difficult to establish. There is a

crowd outside the gate, but most of them are Party members. Some won’t

talk at all, Others just talk slogans.

We walk back to the Square. It is now well past midnight. The crowd

thins, Groups drop into a couple of cafes which are still open. Here we

meet a whole group of young workers, aged about 18, They had been in the

factory earlier in the day. They tell us that at any given time, just

over 1000 workers are engaged in the occupation. The strike started on

the Thursday afternoon, at about 2pm, when the group of youngsters from

shop 70 decided to down tools and to spread into all part: of the

factory asking their mates to do likewise. That same morning they had

heard of the occupation of Cléon and that the red flag was floating over

the factory at Flins. There had been a int of talk about what to do. At

a midday meeting tile CGT had spoken vaguely of a series of rotating

strikes, shop by shop, to be initiated the following day. The movement

spread at an incredible pace. The youngsters went round shouting

“Occupation! Occupationl”. Half the factory had stopped working before

the union officials realized what was happening. At about 4pm, Sylvain,

a CGT secretary, had arrived with loudspeaker equipment to tell them

“they weren’t numerous enough, to start work again, that they would see

tomorrow about a one-day strike”. He is absolutely by-passed. At 5pm

Halbeher, general secretary of the Renault CGT, announces, pale as a

sheet, that the “CGT has called for the occupation of the factor”. “Tell

your friends”, the lads say. “We started it. But will we be able to keep

it in our hands? Cà, c’est un autre problème...”

Students? Well, hats off to anyone who can thump the cops that hard! The

lads tell up two of their mates had disappeared from the factory

altogether 10 days ago “to help the Revolution”. Left family, jobs,

everything. And good luck to them. “A chance like this comes once in a

lifetime.” We discuss plans, how to develop the movement. The occupied

factory could be a ghetto, ‘isolant Ies durs’ (isolating the most

militant). We talk about camping, the cinema, the Sorbonne, the future.

Almost until sunrise... ‘Attention aux provocateurs’

Social upheavals, such as the one France has just been through, leave

behind them a trail of shattered reputations. The image of Gaullism as a

meaningful way of life, ‘accepted’ by the French people, has taken a

tremendous knock. But so has the image of the Communist Party as a

viable challenge to the French Establishment, As far as the students are

concerned the recent actions of the PCF (Parti Communiste Français) are

such that the Party has probably sealed its fate in this milieu for a

generation to come, Among the workers the effects are more difficult to

assess and it would be denature to attempt this assessment. All that can

be said is that the effects are sure to be profound although they will

probably take some time to express themselves. The proletarian condition

itself was for a moment questioned. Prisoners who have had a glimpse of

freedom do not readily resume a life sentence.

The full implications of the role of the PCF and of the CGT have yet to

be appreciated by British revolutionaries, They need above all else to

be informed. In this section we will document the role of the PCF to the

best of our ability, It is important to realise that for every ounce of

shit thrown at the students in its official publications, the Party

poured tons more over them at meetings or in private conversations. In

the nature of things it is more difficult to document this kind of

slander.

Friday 3 May

A meeting was called in the yard of the Sorbonne by UNEF, JCR, MAU and

FER to protest at the closure of the Nanterre faculty. It was attended

by militants of the Mouvement du 22 Mars. The police were called in by

Rector Roche and activists from all these groups were arrested. The UEC

(Union des Etudiants Communistes) didn’t participate in this campaign.

But it distributed a leaflet in the Sorbonne denouncing the activity of

the ‘groupuscules’ (abbreviation for ‘groupes miniscules’, tiny groups).

“The leaders of the leftist groups are taking advantage of the

shortcomings of the government. They are exploiting student discontent

and trying to stop the functioning of the faculties, They are seeking to

prevent the mass of students from working and from passing their exams.

These false revolutionaries are acting objectively as allies of the

Gaullist power. They are acting as supporters of its policies, which are

harmful to the mass of the students and in particular to those of modest

origin.” On the same day I’Humanité had written: “Certain small groups

(anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists) composed mainly of the sons of the

big bourgeoisie and led by the German anarchist Cohn-Bandit, are taking

advantage of the shortcomings of the government...” etc... (see above).

The same issue of l’Humanité had published an article by Marchais, a

member of the Party’s Central Committee. This article was to be widely

distributed, as a leaflet, in factories and offices:

Not satisfied with the agitation they are conducting in the student

milieu — and agitation which is against the interests of the mass of the

students and favours fascist provocateurs — these pseudo-

revolutionaries now have the nerve to seek to give lessons to the

working class movement. We find them in increasing numbers at the gales

of factories and in places where immigrant workers live, distributing

leaflets and other propaganda. These false revolutionaries must be

unmasked, for objectively they are serving the interests of the Gaullist

power and of the big capitalist monopolies.”

Monday 6 May

The police have been occupying the Latin Quarter over the weekend. There

have been big student street demonstrations. At the call of UNEF and

SNESUP 20,000 students marched from Denfert Rochereau to St Germain des

Prés calling for the liberation of the arrested workers and students.

Repeated police assaults on the demonstrators’. 422 arrests, 800

wounded. L’Humanité states: one can clearly see today the outcome of the

adventurous actions of the leftist, anarchist, Trotskyist and other

groups. Objectively they are playing into the hands of the government...

The discredit into which they are bringing the student movement is

helping feed the violent campaigns of the reactionary press and of the

ORTF, who by identifying the actions of these groups with those of the

mass of the students are seeking to isolate the students from the mass

of the population...”.

Tuesday 7 May

UNEF and SNESUP call on their supporters to start an unlimited strike.

Before discussions with the authorities begin they insist on: ‘ a. a

stop to all legal action against the students and workers who have been

questioned, arrested or convicted in the course of the demonstrations of

the last few days! b. the withdrawal of the police from the Latin Quaker

and from all University premises, c. a reopening of the closed

faculties.

In a statement showing how completely out of touch they were with the

deep motives of the student revolt, the ‘Elected Communist

Representatives of the Paris region’ declared in I’Humanité:

“The shortage of credits, of premises, of equipment, of

teachers...prevent three students out of four from completing their

studies, without mentioning all those who never have access to higher

education... This situation has caused profound and legitimate

discontent among both students and teachers. It has also favoured the

activity of irresponsible groups whose conceptions can offer no solution

to the students’ problems. It is intolerable that the government should

take advantage of the behaviour of an infinitesimal minority to stop the

studies of tens of thousands of students a few days from the exams...”.

The same issue of I’Humanité carried a statement from the

‘Sorbonne-Lettres’ (teachers) branch of the Communist Party: “The

Communist teachers demand the liberation of the arrested students and

the reopening of the Sorbonne. Conscious of our responsibilities, we

specify that this solidarity does not mean that we agree with or support

the slogans emanating from certain student organizations. We disapprove

of unrealistic, demagogic and anti-communist slogans and of the

unwarranted methods of action advocated by various leftist groups.”

On the same day Georges Séguy, general secretary of the CGT, spoke to

the Press about the programme of the Festival of Working Class Youth

(scheduled for May 17–19, but subsequently cancelled):

“The solidarity between students, teachers and the working class is a

familiar notion to the militants of the CGT.., It is precisely this

tradition that compels us not to tolerate any dubious or provocative

elements, elements which criticise the working class organisations---”.

Wednesday 8 May

A big students’ demonstration called by UNEF has taken place in the

streets of Paris the previous evening. The front page of I’Humanité

carries a statement from the Party Secretariat:

“The discontent of the students is legitimate. But the situation favours

adventuring activities, whose conception offers no perspective to the

students and has nothing in common with a really progressive and

forward-looking policy,” In the same issue, J M Cabala, general

secretary of the UEC (Union des Etudiants Communistes) writes that: “the

actions of irresponsible groups are assisting the Establishment in its

aims... What we must do is ask for a bigger educational budget which

would ensure bigger student grants, the appointment of more and better

qualified teachers, the building of new faculties...”

The UJCF (Union des Jeunesses Communistes de France) and the UJFF (Union

des Jeunes Filies Françaises) distribute a leaflet in a number of

lycees. L’Humanité quotes it approvingly’..

“We protest against the police violence unleashed against the students.

We demand the reopening of Nanterre and of the Sorbonne and the

liberation of all those arrested. We denounce the Gaullist power as

being mainly (!) responsible for this situation. We also denounce the

adventuring of certain irresponsible groups and call on the Iycéens to

fight side by side with the working class and its Communist Party...”.

Monday 13 May

Over the weekend Pompidou has climbed down. But the unionsr the UNEF and

the teachers have decided to maintain their call for a one-day, general

strike. On its front page l’Humanité publishes, in enormous headlines, a

call for the 24-hour strike followed by a statement from the Political

Bureau’.

The unity of the working class and of the students threatens the

regime... This creates an enormous problem. It is essential that no

provocation, no diversion should be allowed to divert any of the forces

struggling against the regime or should give the government the

flimsiest pretext to distort the meaning of this great fight. The

Communist Party associates itself without reservation with the just

struggle of the students...”

Wednesday 15 May

The enormous Monday demonstrations in Paris and other towns — which

incidentally prevented L’Humanité as well as other papers from appearing

on the Tuesday — were a tremendous success. In a sense they triggered

off the ‘spontaneous’ wave of strikes which followed within a day or

two. L’Humanité publishes, on its front pages a statement issued the day

before by the Party’s Political Bureau, After taking all the credit for

May 13, the statement continues:

The People of Paris marched for hours in the streets of the capital

showing a power which made any provocation impossible. The Party

organizations worked day and night to ensure that this great

demonstration of workers, teachers and students should take place in

maximum unity, strength and discipline... It is now clear that the

Establishment confronted with the protests and collective action of all

the main sections of the population, will seek to divide us in the hope

of beating us. It will resort to all methods, including provocation. The

Political Bureau warns workers and students against any adventuress

endeavours which might, in the present circumstances, dislocate the

broad front of the struggle which is in the process of developing, and

provide the Gaullist power with an unexpected weapon with which to

consolidate its shaky ruIe...”

Saturday 18 May

Over the past 48 hours, strikes with factory occupations have spread

like a trail of gunpowder, from one corner of the country to the other.

The railways are paralysed, civil airports fly the red flag.

(‘provocateurs’ have obviously been at work!) L’Humanité publishes on

its front page a declaration from the National Committee of the CGT:

From hour to hour strikes and factory occupations are spreading. This

action, started on the initiative of the CGT and of other trade union

organizations (sic), creates a new situation of exceptional

importance... Long- accumalated popular discontent is now finding

expression. The questions being asked must be answered seriously and

full notice taken of their importance. The evolution of the situation is

giving a new dimension to the struggle... While multiplying its efforts

to raise the struggle to the needed level, the National Committee warns

all CGT militants and local groups against any attempts by outside

groups to meddle in the conduct of the struggle, and against all arts of

provocation which might assist the forces Of repression in their

attempts to thwart the development of the movement..”

The same issue of the paper devoted a whole page to warning students of

the fallacy of any notions of ‘student power’ — en passant — attributing

to the ‘Mouvement du 22 Mars’ a whole series of political positions they

had never held. Monday 20 May The whole country is totally paralysed.

The Communist Patly is still warning about ‘provocations’. The top right

hand corner of I’Humanité contains a böx labelled ‘WARNING”:

Leafiets have been distributed in the Paris area calling for an

insurrectionary general strike, it goes without saying that such appeals

have not been issued by our democratic trade union organizations. They

are the work of provocateurs seeking to provide the government with a

pretext for intervention... The workers must be vigilant to defeat all

such manoeuvres...”’

In the same issue, Etienne Fajon of the Central Committee, continues the

warnings’..

“The Establishment’s main preoccupation at the moment is to divide the

ranks of the working class and to divide it from other sections of the

population... Our Political Bureau has warned workers and students, from

the very beginning, against venturing slogans capable of dislocating the

broad front of the struggle. Several provocations have thus been

prevented. Our political vigilance must clearly be maintained...”.

The same issue devoted its central pages to an interview of Mr Georges

Séguy, general secretary of, the CGT, conducted over the Europe No 1

radio network. In these live interviews, various listeners phoned

questions in directly. The following exchanges are worth recording:

Question Mr Séguy, the workers on strike are everywhere saying that they

will go the whole hog. What do you mean by this? What are your

objectives?”

Answer,The strike is so powerful that the workers obviously mean to

obtain the maximum concessions at the end of such a movement. The whole

hog for us trade unionists, means winning the demands that we have

always fought for,but which the government and the employers have always

refused to consider. They have opposed an obtuse intransigence to the

proposals for negotiations which we have repeatedly made. “The whole hog

means a general rise in wages (no wages less than 600 francs per month),

guaranteed employment, an earlier retirement age, reduction of working

hours without loss of wages and the defence and extension of trade union

rights within the factory. I am not putting these demands in any

particular order because we attach the same importance to all of them.”.

Question If I am not mistaken the statutes of the CGT declare its aims

to be the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. In

the present circumstances, that you have yourself referred to as

‘exceptional’ and ‘important’, why doesn’t the COT seize this unique

chance of calling for its fundamental objectives?”

Answer “This is a very interesting question. I like it very much, It is

true that the CGT offer: the workers a concept of trade unionism that we

consider the most revolutionary insofar as its final objective is the

end of the employing class and of wage labour. It is true that this is

the first of our statutes, It remains fundamentally the CGT’S objective.

But can the present movement reach this objective? lf it became obvious

that it could, we would be ready to assume our responsibilities. It

remains to be seen whether all the social strata involved in the present

movement are ready to go that far”

Question Since fast week’s events l have gone everywhere where people

are arguing. I went this afternoon to the Odeon Theatre. Masses of

people were discussing there, I can assure you that all the classes who

suffer from the present regime were represented there. When I asked

whether people thought that the movement should go further than the

small demands put forward by the trade unions for the last 10 or 20

years, I brought the house down. l therefore think that it would be

criminal to miss the present opportunity, It would be criminal because

sooner or later this will have to be done. The conditions of today might

aglow us to do it peacefully and calmly and will perhaps never come

back. I think this call must be made by you and the other political

organizations. These political organizations are not your business, of

course, but the CGT is a revolutionary organization. You must bring out

your revolutionary flag. The workers are astounded to see you so timid”

Answer While you were bathing in the Odeon fever, I was in the

factories. Amongst workers. l assure you that the answer I am giving you

is the answer of a leader of a great trade union, which claims to have

assumed all its responsibilities, but which does not confuse its wishes

with reality”

Caller I woul like to speak to Mr Séguy. My name is Duvauchel. l am the

director of the Sud Aviation factory at Nantes.”’ Séguy “Good morning,

sir.”’

Duvauchel “Good morning, Mr General Secretary. ! would like to know what

you think of the fact that for the last four days I have been

sequestrated, together with about 20 other managerial staff, inside the

Sud Aviation factory at Nantes” Séguy “Has anyone raised a hand against

you”’

Duvauchel “No. But I am prevented from leaving, despite the fact that

the general manager of the firm has intimated that the firm was prepared

to make positive proposals as soon as free access to its factory could

be resumed, and first of all to its managerial staff” Séguy Have you

asked to leave the factory?”

Duvauchel “Yes!”

Séguy Was permission refused?”

Duvauchel “Yes!”

Séguy “Then I must refer you to the declaration I made yesterday at the

CGT’S press conference. I stated that I disapproved of such activities.

We are taking the necessary steps to see they are not repeated”.

But enough is enough. The Revolution itself will doubtless be denounced

by the Stalinists as a provocation! By way of an epilogue it is worth

recording that at a packed meeting of revolutionary students, held at

the Mutuality on Thursday 9 May, a spokesman of theTrotskyist

organization Communiste Internationalists could think of nothing better

to do than call on the meeting to pass a resolution calling on Séguy to

call a general strike!!!

France, 1968

This has undoubtedly been the greatest revolutionary upheaval in Western

Europe since the days of the Paris Commune. Hundreds of thousands of

students have fought pitched battles with the police. Nine million

workers have been on strike. The red flag of revolt has flown over

occupied factories, universities, building sites, shipyards, primary and

secondary schools, pit heads, railway stations, department stores,

docked transatlantic liners, theatres, hotels. The Paris Opera, the

Folies Bergères and the building of the National Council for Scientific

Research were taken over, as were the headquarters of the French

Football Federation — whose aim was clearly perceived as being “to

prevent ordinary footballers enjoying football’.

Virtually every layer of French society has been involved to some extent

or other. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages have discussed

every aspect of life in packed-out, non-stop meetings in every available

schoolroom and lecture hall, Boys of 14 have invaded a primary school

for girls shouting “Liberté pour les filles”. Even such traditionally

reactionary enclaves as the Faculties of Medicine and Law have been

shaken from top to bottom, their hallowed procedures and institutions

challenged and found wanting. Millions have taken a hand in making

history. This is the stuff of revolution.

Under the influence of the revolutionary students, thousands began to

query the whole principle of hierarchy. The students had questioned it

where it seemed the most ‘natural’: in the realms of teaching and

knowledge. They proclaimed that democratic self-management was possible

— and to prove it began to practice it themselves. They denounced the

monopoly of information and produced millions of leaflets to break it.

They attacked some of the main pillars of contemporary ‘civilisation’:

the barriers between manual workers and intellectuals; the consumer

society, the ‘sanctity’ of the university and of other founts of

capitalist culture and wisdom. Within a matter of days the tremendous

creative potentialities of the people suddenly erupted. The boldest and

most realistic ideas — and they are usually the same — were advocated,

argued, applied. Language, rendered stale by decades of bureaucratic

mumbo- jumbo, eviscerated by those who manipulate it for advertising

purposes, suddenly reappeared as something new and fresh. People

re-appropriated it in all its fullness. Magnificently apposite and

poetic slogans emerged from the anonymous crowd, Children explained to

their elders what the function of education should be. The educators

were educated, Within a few days, young people of 20 attained a level of

understanding and a political and tactical sense which many who had been

in the revolutionary movement for 30 years or more were still sadly

lacking.

The tumultuous development of the students struggle triggered off the

first factory occupations. It transformed both the relation of forces in

society and the image, in people’s minds of established leaders. It

compelled the State to institutions and of established reveal both its

oppressive nature and its fundamental incoherence. It exposed the utter

emptiness of Government, Parliament, Administration — and of ALL the

political parties. Unarmed students had forced the Establishment to drop

its mask, to sweat with fear, to resort to the police club and to the

gas grenade. Students finally compelled the bureaucratic leaderships of

the ‘working class organisations to reveal themselves as the ultimate

custodians of the established order.

But the revolutionary movement did still more. It fought its battles in

Paris, not in some under-developed country, exploited by imperialism. In

a glorious few weeks the actions of students and young workers dispelled

the myth of the well-organised, well-oiled modern capitalist society,

from which radical conflict had been eliminated and in which only

marginal problems remained to be solved. Administrators who had been

administering everything were suddenly shown to have had a grasp of

nothing. Planners who had planned everything showed themselves incapable

of ensuring the endorsement of their plans by those to whom they

applied. This most modern movement should allow real revolutionaries to

shed a number of the ideological encumbrances which in the past had

hampered revolutionary activity. It wasn’t hunger which drove the

students to revolt. There wasn’t an ‘economic crisis’ even in the

loosest sense of the term. The revolt had nothing to do with

‘under-consumption’ or with ‘over-production’, The ‘falling rate of

profit’ just didn’t come into the picture. Moreover, the student

movement wasn’t based on economic demands. On the contrary, the movement

only found its real stature, and only evoked its tremendous response,

when it went beyond the economic demands within which official student

unionism had for so long sought to contain it (incidentally with the

blessing of all the political parties and ‘revolutionary’ groups of the

‘Left’). And conversely it was by confining the workers’ struggle to

purely economic objectives that the trade union bureaucrats have so far

succeeded in coming to the assistance of the regime.

The present movement has shown that the fundamental contradiction of

modern bureaucratic capitalism isn’t the ‘anarchy of the market’. It

isn’t the ‘contradiction between the forces of production and the

property relations’. The central conflict to which all others are

related is the conflict between order-givers (dirigeants) and

order-takers (éxécutants). The insoluble contradiction which tears the

guts out of modern capitalist society is the one which compels it to

exclude people from the management of their own activities and Which at

the same time compels it to solicit their participation, without which

it would collapse. These tendencies find expression on the one hand in

the attempt of the bureaucrats to convert men into objects (by violence,

mystification, new manipulation techniques — or ‘economic’ carrots’ and,

on the other hand, in mankind’s refusal to allow itself to be treated in

this way.

The French events show clearly something that all revolutions have

shown, but which apparently has again and again to be learned anew.

There is no ‘inbuilt revolutionary perspective’, no ‘gradual increase of

contradictions’, no ‘progressive development of a revolutionary mass

consciousness’. What are given are the contradictions and the conflicts

we have described and the fact that modern bureaucratic society more of

less inevitably produces periodic ‘accidents’ which disrupt its

fuctioning These both provoke popular intervention and provide the

people with opportunities for asserting themselves and for changing the

social order. The functioning of bureaucratic capitalism creates the

conditions within which revolutionary consciousness may appear. These

conditions are an integral part of the whole alienating hierarchical and

oppressive social structure. Whenever people struggle, sooner or later

they are compelled to question the whole of that social structure. These

are ideas which many of us in Solidarity have long subscribed to. They

were developed at length in some of Paul Cardan’s pamphlets. Writing in

Le Monde (20 May 1968) E Morin admits that what is happening today in

France is “a blinding resurrection: the resurrection of that libertarian

strand which seeks concilation with marxism, in a formula of which

Socialisme ou Barbarie had provided a first synthesis a few years

ago...”. As after every verification of basic concepts in the crucible

of real events, many will proclaim that these had always been their

views. This, of course isn’t true.’ The point however isn’t to lay

claims to a kind of copyright in the realm of correct revolutionary

ideas. We welcome converts, from whatever sources and however belated.

We can’t deal here at length with what is now an important problem in

France, namely the creation of a new kind of revolutionary movement,

Things would indeed have been different if such a movement had existed,

strong enough to outwit the bureaucratic manoeuvred, alert enough day by

day to expose the duplicity of the ‘left’ leaderships, deeply enough

implanted to explain to the workers the real meaning of the students’

struggle, to propagate the idea of autonomous strike committees (linking

up union and non-union members); of workers’ management of production

and of workers’ councils. Many things which could have been done weren’t

done because there wasn’t such a movement. The way the students’ own

struggle was unleashed shows that such an organization could have played

a most impotent catalytic role without automatically becoming a

bureaucratic ‘leadership’. But such regrets are futile. The

non-existence of such a movement is no accident, If it had been formed

during the previous period it certainly wouldn’t have been the kind of

movement of which we are speaking, Even taking the ‘best’ of the small

organizations — and multiplying its numbers a hundredfold — wouldn’t

have met the requirements of the current situation. When confronted with

the test of events all the ‘left’ groups just continued playing their

old gramophone records, Whatever their merits as depositories of the

cold ashes of the revolution — a task they have now carried out for

several decades — they proved incapable of snapping out of their old

ideas and routines, incapable of learning or of forgetting anything.

The new revolutionary movement will have to be built from the new

elements (students and workers) who have understood the real

significance of current events. The revolution must step into the great

political void revealed by the crisis of the old society. It must

develop a voice, a face, a paper — and it must do it soon. We can

understand the reluctance of some students to form such an organization.

They feel there is a contradiction between action and thought, between

spontaneity and organization. Their hesitation is fed by the whole of

their previous experience, They have seen how thought could become

sterilizing dogma, organization become bureaucracy or lifeless ritual,

speech become a means of mystification, a revolutionary idea become a

rigid and stereotyped programme. Through their actions, their boldness,

their reluctance to consider long-term aims, they had broken out of this

straight-jacket. But this isn’t enough.

Moreover many of them had sampled the traditional ‘left’ groups. In all

their fundamental aspects these groups remain trapped within the

ideological and organizational frameworks of bureaucratic capitalism.

They have programmes fixed once and for all, leaders who utter fixed

speeches, whatever the changing reality around them, organizational

forms which mirror those of existing society. Such groups reproduce

within their own ranks the division between order-takers and

order-givers, between those who ‘know’ and those who don’t, the

separation between scholastic pseudo-theory and real life. They would

even like to impose this division into the working class, whom they all

aspire to lead, because (and I was told this again and again) “the

workers are only capable of developing a trade union consciousness”.

But these students are wrong. One doesn’t get beyond bureaucratic

organization by denying all organization. One doesn’t challenge the

sterile rigidity of finished programmes by refusing to define oneself in

terms of aims and methods. One doesn’t refute dead dogma by the

condemnation of all theoretical reflection. The students and young

workers can’t just stay where they are. To accept these ‘contradictions’

as valid and as something which cannot be transcended is to accept the

essence of bureaucratic capitalist ideology. It is to accept the

prevailing philosophy and the prevailing reality. It is to integrate the

revolution into an established historical order. if the revolution is

only an explosion lasting a few days (or weeks), the established order —

whether it knows it or not — will be able to cope. What is more — at a

deep level class society even needs such jolts. This kind of

‘revolution’ permits class society to survive by compelling it to

transform and adapt itself. This is the real danger today. Explosions

which disrupt the imaginary world in which alienated societies tend to

live — and bring them momentarily down to earth help them eliminate

outmoded methods of domination and evolve new and more flexible ones.

Action or thought? For revolutionary socialists the problem is not to

make a synthesis of these two preoccupations of the revolutionary

students.It is to destroy the social context in which such false

alternatives find root.