France gears up for a week like no other… again

Autumn, as it slowly gives way to winter, casting a mantle of mist over clear-thinking, is the traditional time for malcontents in France – maybe a third of the country – to launch into a season of grandly-styled manifs. 

In 2017-2018, we had the gilets-jaunes. In 2019, the rail workers. In both cases, with the “ultras” and anarchists pitching in, the result was smashed windows, burned out cars and injuries to both demonstrators and police officers. 

Then came Covid, throwing a dampener over most open-air agitation. Today, with the pandemic in abeyance (though not yet defeated), the Far Left and the unions, with backing from the populist Right, are bent on a season of defiance aimed at bringing the government to its knees and forcing a fresh round of parliamentary elections. 

The agenda is big. The question is, do the protesters and their would-be political masters have the stomach for a fight to the death, or will the government, relying on the innate small-c conservatism of a majority of voters, gradually impose its will on the situation and restore order in advance of Christmas. 

We shall see. On the fuel front, striking workers, in pursuit of a 10 per cent-plus pay claim, are holding firm. Three out of five refineries and at least five provincial fuel depots have been brought to a standstill, causing shortages at the pumps in several key regions. For its part, the government, using controversial emergency legislation, has requisitioned key refinery staff to return to their jobs. President Macron says he will do whatever it takes to bring the strike to an end. 

The first test of the public mood came on Sunday, when upwards of 30,000 demonstrators (the Left says 140,0000) took to the streets in Paris to protest about inflation and the cost of living. Some, but not many, of those taking part, wore yellow vests, which almost seems quaint. But most were trade unionists and their backers, which these days come as much from the far-right as the far-left. 

The Ultras, dressed in black, wearing balaclavas, were responsible for most of the damage caused. They threw paving stones and other sharp objects at the police and even ransacked a bank. In response, the CRS fired tear gas and launched baton charges. But there were few arrests and, in retrospect, the event was a bit of a damp squib. 

Tuesday’s “nationwide strike,” called by the unions  and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Insoumise (France Unbowed), the most radical component of the political Left, could unfold differently. If heads are broken, shops are looted and lots of police officers are injured, Mélenchon’s prediction of “a week the likes of which we don’t see very often” may yet be borne out. 

Taking part, along with the usual suspects, will be rail workers, refinery workers, other trade union members, gilet jaunes and assorted eco-warriors, numbering, quite possibly, in the hundreds of thousands. It is even possible that health workers, including representatives of doctors and nurses, will join in, as well as food workers and supermarket staff. 

The ostensible aim is to force a government re-think on pension reform, the state retirement age and, most pressingly, prices in shops and garages across the country. People want to earn more and pay less, and they want to retire, as now, at 62 or sooner, on full pensions. After two-and-a-half years of restraint occasioned by Covid, they want those things and they want them now. 

Politically, the divide is between the President and his centrist allies (including, on pensions and retirement) the Republicans, and the rest. In the June elections to the National Assembly, the Left-Green alliance known as NUPES, won a total of 151 seats, 75 of which went to France Insoumise. Macron’s La République en Marche (since rebranded La Renaissance) took 172, with a further 78 going to various centrist groupings and 59 to the Republicans. Adding to the combustibility, the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, ended up with 89 seats, which in accordance with the age-old laws governing populism, can sometimes be loaned to the Left. 

Mélenchon knows that he may never have a better chance to topple Macronisme. But there is a problem. He gave up his Assembly seat last May in the vain hope that he, rather than Macron, might end up in the Élysée. As a consequence, more moderate Socialists and others in the NUPES alliance have often chosen to go their own way. The France Insoumise leader is thus obliged to take his politics onto the streets if he hopes to be noticed, with the risk that he comes across more as a rabble-rouser than a man of ideas. 

By contrast, Le Pen, as leader of a substantial bloc in the Assembly, likes these days to project herself as President-in-waiting, for whom immigration, her signature concern, is only one issue among many. While sharing Mélenchon’s vision of an end to centrist muddle, she has to show that she is now a functioning democrat whose support for mass unrest is given only so long as matters do not not get out of hand. A little blood on the streets – especially if most of it flows from the heads of protesters – is one thing, reflecting the intensity of the people’s insistence on change. But buckets of blood and smashed-up shops and business are something else. Le Pen, as a stateswoman, needs to make clear that she stands with the hard-pressed in society (other than Muslims), but not to the extent that millions of voters turn away in fear and disgust.  

For Emmanuel Macron, it is déjà-vu all over again, but on a stage that has been reset, with his opponents playing larger roles. His fear has to be is that the protesters might just break through this time and steal what little limelight remains to him in the run-up to a difficult winter. 

Macron, like every other European leader, is firmly up against it in circumstances that are largely beyond his control. He has put a cap on energy bills paid by household consumers and businesses; he has ordered EDF, the state energy giant, to make sure its 54 nuclear reactors will be fully fired up by the end of November; he has made a significant offer to striking refinery workers; and he has worked closely (it not always amicably) with NATO to bolster the West’s support for Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion.

But Presidents do not always get what they want. The refinery workers have dug in their heels, supported by the unions. The rail workers and others in France’s bloated public sector are continuing to resist his proposed increase in the state retirement age, with its knock-on effect on public pensions. With Mélenchon and the unions pushing for a series of Days of Rage reaching deep into the winter, the stage could be set for the sort of concerted turmoil that has long been a hallmark of the Fifth Republic. 

Yet nothing is certain until it happens and there is a better than evens chance that Tuesday’s manif will come and go like so many others before. Today’s headlines are history’s footnotes. Severe disruptions in the transport sector might almost be the worst of it. As ever, the hardliners will be hoping, just one more heave, mes gars, and the revolution will be here. But, just as likely, the demonstrators will grow weary; motorists will demand an end to the refinery strike; the government will offer compromises on all fronts; and France will carry on, bruised but unbroken. It is the French way. It should not be forgotten that even 1968 was not 1968. Very little changed. Will it be any different this time? The odds are against it, but watch this space. Maybe this time, the historians will have to pay heed to the headlines.