An insurrection in installments: France braces for another weekend of violence
In 1815, with the Battle of Waterloo turning against them following the arrival of Blücher’s Prussians, soldiers of France’s Grande Armée were devastated to learn that Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, never before beaten in battle, had been broken and were in full retreat.
“La Garde recule,” the cry went up. “Sauve qui peut.”
It may be something of an exaggeration to compare the final defeat of Bonaparte to this week’s rout of Emmanuel Macron at the hands of the gilets-jaunes – workers, mainly from the provinces, demanding that he pay them due attention and cease being exclusively the President of the Rich. But it is not entirely inappropriate.
The 40-year-old head of state vanquished the rail workers, who had vowed to take him down. He rode roughshod over the unions when they tried to prevent him from making it easier for employers to fire workers they no longer needed. Most recently, when introducing increases in fuel duties, especially on diesel – the lifeblood of the countryside – he stressed that there could be no turning back.
But now, Le Président recule. The carbon tax has gone, not even suspended but scrapped from the budget. There is talk, too, that the minimum wage will be raised and that planned increases in utilility bills will be “reviewed”. It is even being whispered that Macron’s much-vaunted tax reductions for the wealthy, designed to attract more inward investment to France in the wake of Brexit, could be scaled back, or else mirrored by cuts in the taxes levied on the middle class.
Macron has often been compared to Napoleon, in terms of his age, his arrogance and the scope of his ambition. As it happens, he preferred to liken himself to Jupiter, the king of the Gods, and took to the habit of introducing reforms, ex-cathedra, from the splendour of the Palace of Versailles. The idea, however, of a Napoleon-like Code Macron extending out from France to the whole of Europe was never far from his mind.
Where the image breaks down is in the implied dignity accorded to the gilets-jaunes, a motley army of protesters united only by the sense that their President was ignoring them, giving them nothing while feather-bedding the rich. These are not the sans-culottes of 1789. They are the products of 50 years of cradle-to-grave social and economic policy, whose core belief is that the state owes them a living.
In good times, the pact is honoured. Presidents of all shades have made sure down the years that their fellow citizens are guaranteed certain rights and protections. But more recently, with government borrowing soaring and the economy stuttering, keeping the show on the road has proved increasingly difficult.
Last year, the electorate endorsed Macron’s presidential programme by a margin almost unprecedented in modern times. Not only was the former investment banker elected President with two thirds of the vote in the second round, but his newly-created party, La République En Marche, won 313 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. Not since De Gaulle established the Fifth Republic in 1958 had a French leader promised so complete an overhaul of the system, and not since De Gaulle had the people responded with so much apparent enthusiasm.
Until, that is, he began to put flesh on the bones.
Last Saturday’s protests, culminating in an assault on the Arc de Triomphe, represented a serious escalation in the threat posed. The previous week’s disruption had been on a much smaller scale and more widely distributed across the country. This time, the gilets-jaunes, with anarchists acting as their shock-troops, rampaged through the capital, taking on the police and the gendarmerie and setting cars and buildings on fire before retreating into the night. Hundreds of arrests were made, but most of the ringleaders escaped. Having no recognised leadership and skilled in the art of melting away, those most responsible for what happened did not have to answer for their crimes.
Which brings us to the weekend ahead, characterised as Act III of a continuing drama. The Government, under the direction of prime minister Édouard Philippe, has promised a vigrous response to any repeat of last week’s violence. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, appointed in October following the shock resignation of his predecessor, Gerard Collomb, is a former Socialist and Macron loyalist. Tough and experienced, he is tasked with defeating what is becoming an insurrection in installments without alienating voters, especially those at or near the bottom for whom the last few years have been especially testing.
The gilets-jaunes have their own problem. They have struggled to throw up any kind of leadership. The best they can offer is a rumoured election on Facebook intended to yield regional representatives who can then sit down with Macron or, more likely, his acolytes. The anarchists, meanwhile, of both left and right, known as casseurs (breakers), have a very different agenda. They want to bring down the system and paralyse the economy. Ordinary provincial workers as they don their yellow vests do not so much want to go into battle as to wage a campaign aimed at enabling them more easily to pay their monthly bills. But the two have become inextricably linked.
Others have since been drawn into the conflict. Truckers have announced that they intend to go on strike, not merely withdrawing their labour but, if past form is any guide, using their vehicles in support of the protesters. Students, whose rejection of changes in the way in which they are graded came to nothing in the autumn, have also joined the fray, backed by high school pupils angered at a reform that makes it more difficult for them to obtain the university place of their choice. In short, everybody who is anybody in the protest business promises to be out and about over the next week or two (or three) with an outcome that is unpredictable.
All that can be said for sure is that La France Profonde has been roused from its slumber and looks to be ready for a rumble. Mob rule is the antithesis of what Macron stands for, and the fear is that if he is sufficiently provoked he will respond with brute force, opening the floodgates to God-knows-what. Moderates on all sides will be hoping for a little give and take, allowing tempers to cool and good sense to rise to the occasion. But if such a formula means, in effect, that the President gives in and the protesters back off, what hope then for a Code Macron?