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Nobody had foreseen the explosion of May 1968 in France, but, once over, everybody had an explanation for it: often enlightening, without however ever being really satisfactory. A false political revolution, a real social psychodrama, a liberating and ludic drive, cultural renewal: the French May is a little of all this, while preserving a mysterious or, at least, irrational side to it. Certainly, a retrospective look at it does not fail to find some premonitory signs. Suffice to say that, in autumn 1967, a film of Jean-Luc Godard, La Chinoise, the portrait of a revolutionary Maoist female student, appears in the cinemas; and that, in Le Monde of 15th March 1968, the leader writer Viansson-Ponté notes that "France is bored". For the want of anything better, we will follow these two tracks: on the one hand, the description of a rather dead landscape; on the other, the search for a radical change that develops among the young people. In 1968 General De Gaulle has been governing France for ten years: he is at the height of his second career. He has founded a stable regime that strengthens the executive without abrogating democracy, even if some continue to denounce the risks of his personal power. He has resolved, not without difficulty, the Algerian question; he has re-established the prestige of France in the world, placing his country in the club of the nuclear powers; he has taken advantage of the economic prosperity of his country for creating the Franco-German axis, a privileged collaboration with the enemy of yesterday in the framework of the construction of Europe. The French become rich, so being distracted from the recent disputes on the nature of their regime and on the destiny of their colonies. The return of Gaullism, due to its populist content, altered the traditional frontier line between right and left; and the left is slow to identify the new structures that might permit it to move with effectiveness in the political framework of the Fifth Republic. The Communist Party remains Stalinist, in spite of some fanciful signs of evolution; the SFIO pays the price of its oscillations between an ideology that remains revolutionary and a reformist practice that does not exclude compromise with the right. A free space is thus opened for the traditional republican spirit and the new social requirements: a flourishing of clubs, intellectual circles and various political laboratories (the PSU, for example) tries to compensate the lack of major parties. François Mitterrand, skilled political personage whom it would be difficult to classify, strives to unify some of these available forces (especially in the CIR) and the electoral potential of the Socialists, Communists and the Centre-Left. It is above all the youth component of the population that stirs up the situation; and that stirs it up outside the traditional scheme of things. The youth component, that has emerged from the post-war baby-boom, is particularly numerous.
Its vitality is expressed in the factories (as is seen in January 1968 at the Saviem of Caen), in the rock and pop concerts, in certain political organizations (the UEC, the Ceres, the small groups of the extreme left), but above all in the universities. The standardization of teaching, during recent years (50 university students in 1936, 250 thousand in 1960, 500 thousand in 1968), is not without its consequences. The university has extended outside the walls of the city, it has built its campuses in the countryside and on the abandoned land of the suburbs of Paris, without however abandoning its traditions: solemn courses, dominion of the mandarins, authoritarian transmission of knowledge, conventional customs (especially in sexual relations). In 1968, the young people are growing in a state of wealth without equality of the consumer society. They do not have the worry of finding a job and can indulge in the cultural suggestions of the time, freely choosing their course of studies and getting excited about the most radical ideologies. The claim of greater freedom in a strict society, the Third Worldism, the protest against the American war in Vietnam and, for the high-school students, the threat of choosing when entering the university: these are the themes capable of mobilizing them. If we can accept the comparison between May 1968 and a fire, it should be said that the fire seems to start in the month of March, at the faculties of Nanterre, to the west of Paris. The first sparks are born from the blend between claims regarding the relations between girls and boys in the student residences and militancy against the war in Vietnam. On 22 March a movement of solidarity is created in favour of a study companion, a Trotskyist activist, arrested for a few hours after the attack on the Paris office of American Express, symbol of the United States. On this occasion a leader is confirmed: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, from a German family but resident in France, of anarchical tendency, a remarkable orator. After having symbolically occupied the faculty of Nanterre, the "angry young men" (that is what they call themselves) participate on 29 March, in spite of the watchful presence of the police forces, in the occupation of the Sorbonne, the prestigious bastion of the French University. It is just a trial run. The scene will be played again in the spring, with the same characteristics, but on the increase: on the students’ side, a mixture of audacity, improvization and creativity, above all in their slogans, the posters, the speeches; on the side of the institutions (whether it was those of the power, of the university authorities or of the official left) a misunderstanding of the state of mind of the young people, the anxiety of avoiding the spreading of the fire and of not creating martyrs, the fear of an irresponsible overflowing. The feared fire will however occur starting from the 3 May, following the arrest for control of their identity of a few hundred students, among whom the leaders still unknown to the majority of the public, especially Jacques Sauvageot, of the Unef, the Trotskyist Alain Krivine and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. To the surprise of everyone, the students mobilize in great numbers against the "police repression", to the cry of "Crs=SS". It is the first day of disorders in the Latin Quarter, marked by the violence of the clashes between demonstrators and police. The condemnation of four students to prison without a suspended sentence will re-launch the escalation of the clashes, enlarging the area of the protestors (which includes the SneSup of Alain Geismar). The general assemblies of the faculties begin then to march through Paris, challenging the police forces behind make-do barricades, under the amazed and, in the beginning, conspiratorial eyes of the public. The radio transmits live the chronicle of the great confusion and the Parisians rush to watch the show of the debates that replace the university courses, of the face to face clashes (and subsequent pursuits) between demonstrators and police, in the midst of the smoke of the cars set alight and the tear-gas canisters.
On his return from an official visit to Afghanistan, the prime minister Georges Pompidou also joins the dance which, inasmuch as it regards the other people in charge of the government, Louis Joxe, Christian Fouchet, Alain Peyrefitte, seems more like a waltz of hestitations. Pompidou decides on pacification measures (the imprisoned students are freed; the police, after having occupied it, leave the Sorbonne) and negotiations on the social questions are prepared. The world of work takes up the baton of the student protest, already supported by the cultural environment (the Cannes film festival dissolved itself). Many factories are occupied by the workers, within a few days France is paralyzed by strikes and by the interruption of energy supplies. With the lack of petrol, the people walk in the streets, speak to one another, help each other, participate in the general recreation in a sort of spring fever. With the image of the "carnival time" (chienlit: it is thus defined by General De Gaulle), these are the memories of May 1968 – a violent crisis the balance of which is not, miraculously, very bloody – that will remain in the mind. The governing powers, which can no longer avail of their traditional instruments of communication seeing as how the public television (the only one existing then) is on strike, have difficulty in finding a political solution. De Gaulle promises a referendum on the theme of participation, but does not convince anyone. The demonstrations with an insurrectional nature – to be noted is the attempt to set fire to that temple of money that is the Stock Exchange of Paris – resume on 23 and 24 May, in the capital and in many other cities of the province. The plan of agreement offered by the negotiations of Grenelle is immediately rejected by the workers’ base, in spite of the conquests that it offers (and which will later be accepted). The parties of the left obtain no gain from the situation and even the recourse to a personality surrounded by respect such as Pierre Mendès-France ends up in nothing.
The situation changes suddenly when De Gaulle, encouraged, takes back the reins of the state, which Pompidou had held in cold blood. On 30 May, in a radio speech, De Gaulle announces, with his usual decisive and solemn tone, his intention to remain in power, to re-establish his authority, to dissolve the national assembly in order to undergo the democratic verification of elections. An impressive Gaullist demonstration on that same day in Paris, soon followed by others in the province, marks a turning point, ratified shortly afterwards by the votes of 23 and 30 June, even if, for most of the month, strikes and clashes in the squares will continue. The Fifth Republic continues, French society rediscovers its values and its week-ends, which cause a lot more deaths on the roads, but the seeds of numerous changes have been sown. De Gaulle will retire the following year, after the defeat of his referendum-test. The recomposition of the Socialist left will become possible, even if not easy, and the decline of the PCF is accelerated. The university will be reformed and the world of work will obtain some benefits from the crisis. The inheritance of May will be translated above all into the rapid evolution of customs, accepted on the legislative level, and the establishment in the public debate and in common sensitivity of the idea that, thanks to a freer and more inventive inspiration, there exists another way of living one’s life and other means for changing it. |
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The night of 10 May marks the climax of the clashes. It also marks the moment when the great trade unions up to then cautious and suspicious, enter the scene with the announcement of a general strike of 24 hours and a demonstration on 13 May.
The maximum of disorder is reached on 29 May with the disappearance, which lasted for a few hours, of General De Gaulle: the power of the state vacillates, but those who would desire to take it, are not capable; and those who could take it, do not want it.