Conrad Black: France Has a Long History of Rowdy Mass Protests

 

Turned-over cars cover Gay-Lussac Street in Paris on the morning of May 11, 1968, after violent fights between students and police the night before. AFP via Getty Images

The riots in France are following a traditional pattern in that country. It is a part of the political nature of the French republics that every 20 or 30 years, discontent suddenly bubbles up uncontrollably. All who know France know that it is a beautiful country with magnificent landscapes almost everywhere, where the French language is spoken beautifully even by apparently uneducated people, and where it is almost impossible to get a bad meal or a poor glass of wine.

From Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s founding of his Fifth Republic in 1958 up until the 1980s, the per capita French standard of living rose steadily to about 90 percent of the American average. It has dwindled from there to about 72 percent. The public sector share of the GDP is approximately 57 percent, more than 20 points higher than the United States, even with its immense military establishment. There are identifiable causes for this comparatively undistinguished performance. But underlying it all is the ancient cleavage between the French rankling under any sort of authority and who at the same time have a bourgeois dislike of anything that costs them money.

Like a reliable geyser, the French rise up every generation or so and for a time hurl paving stones at the police, pile up barricades in the streets, set cars and piles of garbage on fire, and obstruct normal movement. A classic case of this tendency, still within the memory of many people including myself, was the famous events of May 1968. The president, de Gaulle, was in Romania at the time urging that country to slough off the yoke of the Soviet Union while the prime minister, Georges Pompidou, was selling the Gaullist message in, of all places, Afghanistan. University students marched out of their classes, denouncing conditions in the universities and in the country generally. Their antics stirred up a sympathetic response from organized labor, and a general strike was announced by the private and public sector unions.

De Gaulle and Pompidou returned in due course, and de Gaulle departed Paris for his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises 180 kilometres east of the city. There he remained, in sphinx-like incommunicability, for two weeks as disorder reigned around the country, garbage wasn’t collected, and the fun of the chaos gradually declined. The Paris police chief told the prime minister that he could no longer be sure of the loyalty of his force. Rumours were rife that de Gaulle was about to resign. The BBC headlined its world newscast in the midst of these events with ill-concealed cheerfulness: “Day by day, we see the proud facade of Gaullism crumbling into dust.”

Firefighters extinguish a fire outside Jean-Louis Cyffle high school during a nationwide student protest over learning conditions in Nancy, France, on Oct. 5, 2026. Jean-Christophe Verhaegen / AFP via Getty Images

Finally, it was announced that de Gaulle had visited the commander of the main French army, the Army of the Rhine, was returning to Paris, and would address the nation the following day. Rumors circulated that he had assured himself of the loyalty of the army for any contingency, while the left, which had completely prevailed in the public discourse for weeks, predicted the president’s resignation. When de Gaulle spoke to the country, the state radio and television network was on strike and all viewers got was a still picture of him, though his voice was transmitted accurately. He had judged exactly when the French love of disorder and fundamental dislike for authority would give way to the avaricious bourgeois concern that these antics might actually cost them something.

De Gaulle spoke for only eight minutes. “As the holder of the legitimacy of the nation and of the Republic, I have over the past 24 hours considered every eventuality, without exception, which would permit me to maintain that legitimacy. I have made my resolutions,” he said.

“In the present circumstances, I will not step down. I have a mandate from the people, and I will fulfill it. I will not change the prime minister, whose value, soundness, and capacity merit the tribute of all. … I am today dissolving the National Assembly. … As for the general elections, these will be held within the period provided for under the Constitution (which he had written), unless there is an intention to gag the entire French people to prevent them from expressing their views as they are being prevented from carrying on their lives, by the same methods being used to prevent students from studying, teachers from teaching, workers from working. … France is threatened with dictatorship. There are those who would constrain her to abandon herself to a power that would establish itself in national despair, a power that would then obviously and essentially be the power of totalitarian communism.” (He was referring to former premier Maurice Mendès-France and future president Francois Mitterrand.)

It was clear that the public right to vote would be upheld by whatever means of force was necessary, and that de Gaulle would not hesitate to assume emergency powers, as the Constitution permitted.

At midday on the day of de Gaulle’s speech, 500,000 people marched up the Champs-Élysées demanding his resignation. He spoke at the end of the afternoon, and 90 minutes later a March of over 700,000 proceeded back down the Champs-Élysées demanding that he remain. The strikes collapsed. The bourgeois spirit of France asserted itself; all violence ended. Everyone went back to work and to their place of study, and on election day in June, de Gaulle won the greatest victory in the 175 intermittent years of French democracy through all five republics. (Mendès-France and Mitterrand suffered personal defeat.) As in 1944 when he outsmarted the communists after the Liberation, and in 1958 and 1962 when civil war threatened from Algeria, de Gaulle again completely routed the left.

The current French president, Emmanuel Macron, has nothing like the prestige or record of achievement of Charles de Gaulle, but as he demonstrated in the “yellow vest” disturbances of several years ago (disorder on the right caused by increased costs and taxes as a result of excessive climate change measures), he is little inclined to bow to rioters. The students, unlike the workers, are a shower: easy to disperse and little supported by public sympathy, given the money society deluges on them. As of now, there’s no sign that the workers’ organizations are inclined to make the current protest a general strike, which would re-create a 1968 scenario.

But it is clear that this disorder is being encouraged by the ultra-left coalition France Undefeated (“La France Insoumise”), and the conservative Ralliement National led by Marine Le Pen is steadily strengthening its position in the polls. Whatever happens, this is another nail in the coffin of the overbearing federal Eurostate, and the companion causes of social democratic, Davos-like government. For Prime Minister Mark Carney and Canada, such an approach would be like boarding a ship that cannot sail and will sink if it tries.

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