If ever proof was needed that Sarkozy is a tool and his minions are idiots, his education minister provided it today. Interviewed on French TV about Thursday's general strike--a reaction to to Sarkozy's reforms attempted destruction of the French safety net--said:
"The government will not stop reforming a country that needs it."
What does it look like when an entire nation does the equivalent of "down tools, everybody out?" More beneath the fold.
Today's Guardian was my source for the French education minister's quote, and provides a short round-up of the day's events. From tourist attractions like the Palace of Versailles to factories and schools, the country stayed home from work and took to the streets. For the most part it was peaceful (though police tangled with protesters late in the evening.)
According to the leftish (but not as left as it used to be) newspaper Liberation, at least 2.5 million French people hit the streets in mass demonstrations. That's bigger than the London protest against the Iraq war, which was a mass of humanity that stretched from one side of one of the world's largest city to the other. You can find photos here.
Liberacion provides a few further details of the late-night clashes, stating that most of the protesters involved were young, probably students, as the area concerned is near some universities. My apologies for my bad high-school French, it's more suitable for Tin Tin than proper newspapers but I can puzzle out a fair bit. Almost every union in the country was involved in the earlier marches, along with many other civil organisations: youth groups, women's groups, political groups, etc.
At around half a million, the protest in Paris was huge, even by French standards, but regional cities also saw very large numbers: 300,000 in industrial Marseilles, 30,000 in Lyon, 18,000 in Orleans, 60,000 in Bordeaux, and big numbers elsewhere. University campuses outside of the greater Paris area were also the scene of several large protests (those unfamiliar with the events of May 1968 may not know that it was action at these suburban/regional universities that got the ball rolling, not the more famous events in Paris itself, which happened rather later.)
Video of the events is available on the Web site of the CGT (one of the biggest French unions) here, as is a map showing the locations of the demonstrations they were aware of yesterday. For those who want to save the trouble of clicking the link: we're talking EVERY city of any size in France. You can click on each city to see who was on the streets and how many of them there were. The map only includes the union-related actions; there were others organised by youth and activist groups.
What does it all mean? Well, it means what a general strike always means: it's the workers/the people saying "we can stop you if we want to." In French, a demonstration is called a "manifestation." And that is a very good word: it is a manifestation of potential power, a demonstration of numbers and of public opinion. In this case, 70 percent of the French public approve of a different direction from neo-liberalism--and a government that thinks it can continue down its favoured track when 70 percent approve of a different one, is a government that either feels comfortable with being autocratic, or that is on the same path down as the government that just fell this week in Iceland.