Paris Breaks

This month of May marks the 40th anniversary of the events in Paris which have become known as the “Students Revolt” but was actually much more than that. Looking back at the full picture, below it is a period when the whole of France, not just Paris, breaks with slow, gradual reform and is on the verge of creating a whole new society based on common ownership and worker participation. General de Gaulle was for a time, convinced that the game was up for capitalism in France, and possibly all of Europe.

But the trades union leadership, although ‘communist’ by name called on their workers leaders on theshop floor to end their occupations and handed control back over to the bosses.

In the aftermath of France ‘68 the authorities clamped down on youth culture with an increased police presence in the capital with the CRS riot police walking around in groups of six or ten with machine guns slung over their shoulders and this continued into the 1970s right up until the creation of the Partie Socialiste and the eventual coming to power of an initially radical President Mitterand, which was a direct result of the tumultous events in Paris and the rest of France during the spring of 1968.

Diagram credit: Clare Doyle, author of “Month of Revolution”