How workers almost made a revolution in France

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Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1968, France stood on the brink of a socialist revolution. A giant social upheaval had been touched off by a protest movement among university students. The movement rapidly spread to high-school Soon, two-thirds of the workforce was on strike. The red flag flew over schools, industrial plants, and several municipal offices. The Fifth Republic of Gen. Charles de Gaulle But most workers continued to look to the Communist Party (CP) and to the bureaucratized trade unions to provide leadership for their struggle. Unfortunately, the Stalinist CP was not a fighting party; it was opposed to the workers taking political power into their own hands. The capitalist government was allowed to regain the initiative and to remain 16 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1988 students and to young workers.

tottered-and almost fell. in power.

On March 22, 1968, police arrested five university and high-school students in Paris. The students, activists in the movement against the war in Vietnam, were charged with having detonated several small explosive charges outside the offices of U.S. corporations.

That evening, a meeting was called at the University of Paris at Nanterre to protest the arrests. The meeting was held in defiance of school officials, who had been trying to limit political activity on campus. When students took over a lecture hall to show a film on Che Guevara, the authorities closed down the university.

In a frantic speech before the National Assembly, the Minister of Education attacked the students. "What sort of machinations did these Nanterre 'madmen' carry on daily?" he cried out. "Under the label 'critical university, the most absurd lucubrations were voiced in auditoriums renamed, to serve the cause, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Leon Trotsky!"

On May 3, after several students at Nanterre were threatened with expulsion, students at the Sorbonne (in the center of Paris) organized a solidarity meeting. At the end of the meeting, police invaded the Sorbonne, beating and arresting hundreds of demonstrators.

The government, which had ordered the crackdown, gambled that it would meet no opposition from the Communist Party and the other major left parties. And true to expectations, the CP scathingly denounced the student movement as nothing but "grouplets" and "provocateurs."

But the activists at the universities took up the challenge. "We are all a grouplet!" they cheered as tens of thousands poured into the streets. On May 6, the student unions called an unlimited student strike. On May 9, high schoolers also walked out.

The "Night of the Barricades"

On the evening of May 10, the students and striking teachers organized a large march to demand freedom for the jailed activists, withdrawal of the police from the Sorbonne, and full political and trade-union rights. Other banners proclaimed, "End the police state!"

The march swelled to over 60,000 as bystanders-including many young workers-joined in. When the demonstrators reached the Sorbonne, they found it surrounded by police ready for battle. After a few clashes, barricades went up throughout the Latin Quarter.

The police attacked, using truncheons and chlorine gas. Finally, early the next morning, the final barricades had been breached. The government won the "battle," but public opinion was aroused against it.

The Communist Party had voiced its opposition to the student strike. But now the "grouplets" were clearly getting out of hand. The CP had to try to assert its control. During the "Night of the Barri'cades," word came that the CP had decided to support the students' struggle.

On May 13, the CGT (the major union federation, dominated by the Communist Party) and the CFDT (a union federation of left-Christian origins) called a one-day general strike and a mass demonstration. Over a half-million workers and students took part in a march through Paris.

That night, students occupied the Sorbonne and declared it an autonomous "people's university." A democratic general assembly met daily to manage the university and to carry on the struggle. This Sorbonne "soviet" became the prototype and the nerve-center of some 400 popular "action committees" that were set up in the neighborhoods of Paris alone.

Sit-down strikes

The Communist Party leadership continued to issue statements warning the workers and students against any "adventurist" acts. But it was too late to hold back the tide of rebellion. On May 14, workers began a sit-down strike at the Sud-Aviation plant near the city of Nante.

The following day, some 200 young workers occupied a Renault parts plant near Rouen. Delegates set off for the giant Renault manufacturing complexes at Flins in the Seine Valley and at the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. Workers there

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