Mouvement Communiste report their impressions of the past several weeks of struggles in France.
This is based on eye witness accounts, testimony of comrades and friends and cross checking with the media. It cannot pretend to be a complete account but it gives you an idea of how we understand things.
Good you put this out, Red, but a few corrections and qualifications.....
Translation error:
should read:
" for two weeks the streets of Marseille has looked like the Third World and have been very pleasant places for rats." i.e.- the strike is still on and 8000 tons of rubbish have piled up (grammatical aside: the present perfect - the "has/have been" form which makes a link between the past and the present - doesn't exist in French, though there are other, slightly longer ways, to make it clear that you mean the present as well as the past in French; very convenient for Sarkozy - no-one can call him a "has-been"). Also, for some unknown reason, the translator (but maybe it's in the original also) only writes about the street sweepers, when it's the dustmen also. Moreover, there are dustmen's strikes in Toulouse, Belfort (both mentioned in the text) - but also Pau and Nantes, and probably elsewhere as well - certainly there've been dustmen's strikes in Ales and Sete, and they might still be going on there also. Half the trouble with these facts is that if you don't hear about something from someone local, you'd have to do a very thorough full-time internet search to find out what's going on elsewhere.
Though some of the Marseille strikers have been requisitioned (ie work or prison and a fine of up to 10,000 euros) the rubbish is still piled up high.
Don't quite know why this text only quotes Min of Education figures - and even then, under-quotes them - the highest figure they gave out was around 360. The lycee union gave out over 900 for one of the General Strike days (think it must have been a week ago - Tuesday 19th). Certainly if Montpellier is anything to go by, the strikes and blockades of lycees was closer to the union figure.
The reason they came back on Saturday was because the court overturned the Prefecture's requisition order, then on Sunday, the Prefect (appropriate name - treating workers like naughty schookids, threatening them with detention) re-issued the requisition order, which, akaik, is still being contested - but only in the courts. (see my hastily written when over-tired brief report here).
As for petrol stations, what's written here might be true for the Paris area - (which, since 1968, has become increasingly bourgeoisified, though obviously outside the peripherique - the massive ring road surrounding the main Paris area - it's still largely proletarian). But the information service for petrol stations says that 1 in 4 service stations are dry; and loads of others have particular types of petrol - 98, 95 or diesel - unavailable, and loads of stations limit drivers to no more than a certain amount (say, 35 euros worth).
Yesterday, however, 3 refineries returned to work....
But that's a problem with all slogans (I tried to get people to repeatedly chant "A bas les slogans!" - "Down with slogans!" - on one demo, but no-one took it up.). There's a Sorelian type ideology of consciously promoting the myth of the General Strike on the basis that if you call for it enough it'll happen. It's not entirely "stupid", but in the present domination of society by myth, by fiction, it usually tends to feed a general cynicism. However, to imply that this is just put out by the CNT and Sud is wrong - loads of people, even those who have no organisational links, chant it, and it doesn't help to contemptuously dismiss the chant (superficial dismissal has often been the style and content of Mouvement Communiste particularly in their attitudes to banlieux youth, rubbishing their contradictory expressions of desperate contestation often with coldly presented "facts", which in fact were not at all factually accurate). Perhaps we should chant "Indefinite Wildcat General Strike when the working class has organised itself autonomously outside and against the Union pimps" - but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue - even in French sung to the tune of "No regrets".
Thursday there's another Union-called one day General Strike, though, coming in the middle of a national holiday (All Saints, not known for a time of plentiful revolt), which in other countries is linked to Halloween, the demos etc. are likely to be used by the State to show people that the movement is over....
Cheers for comments, Sam.
Admins; a specific tag for all these related French articles - 'France anti-austerity 2010' or something - would be useful.
yeah, I was thinking about that earlier but couldn't think of a catchy name. Will do later today
How about "French Letters"? or "France:[i] La Belle et La Bete[/i]"?
sorry, it's a bit more pedestrian:
http://libcom.org/tags/france-against-austerity
A quick update from what i could hear or read, here or there:
The Senate has just approved the government's reform plan by 177 votes against 151. The bill will now go back to the assembly for a final vote tomorrow.
A small protest of about 1000 people took place outside the senate this afternoon.
The government is keen to announce that the movement is losing momentum but even with the school holiday, this is not quite true.
Yes the workers in 3 refineries decided to go back to work , but 1 of them (Reichstett) originally joined the strike mostly because they were threatened with redundancies. The site was due to be shut and pretty much everyone sacked. They have now got the guarantee (sic...) that the site will not be shut so decided to go back to work.
Now maybe it doesnt quite fit Mouvement Communiste's idea of why workers should be striking or what they should aspire to, but i wouldnt necessarily only regard it as a defeat.
The other two refineries decided go to back after management agreed to pay for the strike days.
Return to normal activity will take time anyway and the other 9 refineries are still on strike i believe.
See in French
The strike of the garbage workers in Marseille has now stopped (in Nantes as well). This was agreed mostly on heath and safety grounds.
Generally the movement is still going. In Toulouse protesters have organised a "one day, one action" series of events until the next planned strike day on Thursday. Today they blocked access to trucks in and out of the Banque de France.
37 universities (out of about 80) seem to have taken over from the Lycées and joined the movement in some way or another.
See in French
Some hold general assemblies and it looks like half a dozen have organized blockades, including in Nanterre.
See in French
Outside the French borders, Belgian workers in Feluy have blocked acces in and out an oil depot in solidarity, after noticing there were more trucks going to France than usual. Apparently they only wanted to block the French trucks at first but management refused so they re now stopping all trucks...
See in, eer, Belgian...
But anyway, despite this, and despite Mouvement Communiste's sometimes pessimistic-cos-i-know-better tone, we should not overestimate the scale of the movement, in terms of number of strikers and of how much the economy is actually blocked.
But again its all very hard to gauge from this side of the Channel...
How about "French Letters"? or "France:[i] La Belle et La Bete[/i]"?
Sorry about repeating the post just now - thought I hadn't clicked 'save' after returning to the computer after over 2 hours, since somehow it was still in the Post new Comment box.
In the 'France against austerity' bit, couldn't my blog be a bit more prominently displayed to connect to rather than stuck at the bottom in grey where many people don't even look ?
Just looked at nico's post:
Unfortunately 2 more refineries have gone back to work.
The dustmen's strike is continuing in Sete - where 900 tons of rubbish has piled up after the 8th day of the strike (hospital and retirement home bins are cleared).
In Ales, there was an occupation by all the unions (including the CNT Vignole) of the admin building of a large steel firm - UMM.
There have been lycee student demonstrations in Lille, Rouen, Lyon, Montpellier and elsewhere - this during the school holidays. At Montpellier lll (Paul Valery) university 1000 voted for a blockade up till Thursday (a big increase on all previous votes). Following a picnic in the main square of the town there was a brief occupation of part of the Chambre de Commerce in Montpellier this afternoon. Best slogan - a development from the lyceens "Au cul, Au cul, Aucune hesitation...- is "Au cul, Au cul Occupation". Unfortunately they're untranslateable in my opinon (nico, jef costello - can you help?). The first roughly translated - very roughly and not literally - is "up your arse up your arse up your arsk no questions...". The second ends with " occupation" instead of "up your arsk no questions...". Sounds pathetic in English, but it's funny in French.
La Reunion ( a department of France in the Indian ocean off the east coast of Africa) had a demo of thousands of lycee students during the holiday, stopping cars, etc.
But most important of all - there's been a call for a General Strike in Guadeloupe (another department of France, in the Caribbean) and for connecting to a possible one in nearby Martinique - mainly over the price of electricity and petrol. Guadeloupe was the scene of a massive General Strike almost 2 years ago, happening just after the social explosions in Greece in December 2008, and the strike was largely successful. Whether it happens or not - well, we shall see........
Samotnaf
Samotnaf - I've added the 'France against austerity' tag to all your old blog posts, so they should show up now. If you add the same tag to any new ones, they will also appear in the collection.
Samotnaf
Would “Move your asses, no hesitation–move your asses, make occupations“? be helpful?
Doesn't really get the phonetic word play - since "au cul" gets changed into "aucune hesitation" or "occupation", though I suppose you could very roughly translate the latter as "up your ass, up your ass, up your assembly!", though this sounds like a put-down of assemblies. Or perhaps “Move your ass, Move your ass, Move your assembly" might be better. Never mind - not important really, but thanks for the suggestion.
And Spassmachine - thanks for that.
Samotnaf
To be honest I'm not sure au cul au cul occupation has a meaning outside of the play on words which I don't think translation can really handle it. The best I can think of is
Up your arse, up your arse, no hesitation,
up your arse, up your arse, go occupation!
Which isn't great. I tended to just post French chants with a rough translation. I have form for getting them wrong, it took me a couple of goes before I realised that the strikers were chanting 'allez les blancs allez les beurs etc' in response to anti-bloceurs chanting 'allez les bleus' as the gendarmes attacked the blockade.
edit: Nanterre might be striking but when I checked their blog they were occupying buildings A-E which is what they did in 2007. The important buildings were F and G where business and law were taught and one of the failures was to blockade those buildings (the chants above were from an attempt). Buildings A& B are admin buildings, C & D have a few lecture theatres but are mostly sociology classrooms and building E held the english department. The general feeling at the last time was that they could leave the sociology students to freeze outside as long as the 'important' lessons carried on.
interesting leaflet from Caen: http://juralibertaire.over-blog.com/article-info-luttes-no-2-caen-26-octobre-59768481.html
nico
It's not only a defeat but surely if strikes are to go beyond issues particular to their workplace they will need to be in solidarity with other workers. So 3 refineries going back while 9 are still on strike is a weakness of the movement.
I thought about this passage a lot in Madison