• "Liberty leading the people" and the social struggle that becomes a symbol
• The French "passion" for the streets
• The strikes against Emmanuel Macron's pension reform
• The first strikes, as far back as the Middle Ages
• The twentieth century and the historic strike of 1936
• The post-war period and the moment the strike becomes legend: May 1968
• The 1995 strike against Alain Juppé's reforms
• Strikes: from social conquests to defensive movements

Paris, 1831. A painting exhibited at the Salon, the biennial exhibition held at the time at the Louvre, is purchased by the French government for three thousand francs. The reason: to display it at the Palais du Luxembourg, today the seat of the French Senate, as a warning to Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, the monarch who succeeded Charles X, who had been forced to flee. That painting was La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), the celebrated work by Eugène Delacroix. Over time it became an anthem to social mobilisation, to the right to protest, to the strike, to popular demands.

"Liberty leading the people" and the social struggle that becomes a symbol

Two years earlier, Charles X had entrusted Jules de Polignac, head of the Congregation, with forming a clerical and reactionary government. The executive, authoritarian in character, dissolved parliament, restored censorship, and passed an electoral law that favoured the aristocracy. Faced with this succession of liberty-crushing acts, the French people rose up. The so-called "Three Glorious Days" were born, from 27 to 29 July 1830, and with them the July Revolution.

First the marginalised, the workers, the students, then the traders, the craftsmen and the clerks rose up against authority. Paris was dotted with barricades. The insurgents emptied the armouries, singing the Marseillaise. By the morning of the 29th, the Hôtel de Ville, the seat of the Paris municipality, had already been seized by the demonstrators. Charles X was soon forced to dismiss his ministers, revoke the liberty-crushing ordinances, abdicate and flee abroad.

All of this was captured, precisely, in "Liberty Leading the People." And it was done masterfully. Delacroix brought together in the painting all the social classes that, united, rose up against the established power. Led by Marianne, the symbol of national unity and of liberty itself: a flag in her right hand, a rifle in her left, in the painter's depiction.

The French "passion" for the streets

Nearly two centuries have passed since then. Even longer since the Revolution of 1789. And any comparison with the popular demonstrations and social movements that have punctuated the political life of France throughout the twentieth century and beyond is obviously unthinkable. The street (or rather the rue), however, is something whose cultural roots run deep in French history. That resonance has carried through the great strikes of the 1930s, May 1968, the end of the twentieth century and right up to the present day.

In a recent article, admittedly critical of the French "passion" for the streets, the German social-liberal weekly Die Zeit offers a partial analysis, from which it is nonetheless clear how difficult those living in Berlin find it to fully understand what is happening in Paris, Marseille, Lyon or Bordeaux these days: "Hundreds of thousands of people," the weekly writes, "gather in the streets, sing, freeze and spend hours together, even though they could easily vent their anger with a post on Twitter."

The strikes against Emmanuel Macron's pension reform

The reference is to the enormous wave of protests and strikes sweeping France in recent weeks: three and a half million people took to the streets according to the trade unions. Across the country, to say "no" to the pension reform sought by President Emmanuel Macron, which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 (whose final approval is expected on Thursday the 16th). In the face of which, for the French, evidently, it is not possible to make do with a few tweets, whether Die Zeit understands this or not.

Véronique Genest Off ✓ @veroniquegenest

𝕏

Quoi qu’on tente de vous dire cette manifestation est énorme ! Deux trajets bondés jusqu’à Bastille. Les français savent encore se mobiliser Je les reconnais et ça fait plaisir à voir ! 👍👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

♥ 2374💬 129 7 feb 2023 · Apri su X →

Because for the French, la rue est la rue, the street is the street. "In no other country in Europe have demonstrations played such a central political role as in France," observed Danielle Tartakowsky, one of the most eminent historians of social movements, and long-serving president of the University of Paris 8.

The scholar highlights how, during the 1980s and 1990s, it was precisely thanks to strikes that numerous government plans were blocked. Claiming prominent political casualties along the way. It is as though every demonstration, according to Tartakowsky, had taken on the character of a "spontaneous referendum" at that time.

The strike, la grève in French, is indeed an integral part of life for the majority of French citizens. The word itself comes from the popular Latin grava, which can mean "gravel" or "beach." It is the name given to a square situated along the Seine in Paris (today the place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville – Esplanade de la Libération) where unemployed workers would gather in an attempt to find work. And which, from the nineteenth century onwards, became the site of protests, contestation and demands for better working conditions. Thus the very meaning of grève was reversed: hence the expression faire grève, to go on strike. Even though the first people to down tools in France did so many centuries earlier.

The first strikes, as far back as the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, a number of corporatist strikes broke out across Europe among certain categories of craftsmen and workers who wanted to defend the monopoly on their trades. In 1280, for example, in Rouen a drapers' strike ended with the killing of the mayor. In 1511, in Bordeaux, workers on the building site of Saint-André Cathedral refused to work and sabotaged the infrastructure in order to obtain better pay and better conditions from the clergy. During the same century, the printers of Lyon went on strike for years.

But it was under the reign of Louis XVI that cases multiplied. From carpenters to painters, bookbinders to hatmakers. It was the end of the Ancien régime. Paradoxically, however, the revolution of 1789 made striking illegal for a long time. The Loi Le Chapelier, passed in July 1791, banned guilds and every form of workers' organisation. Despite this, protests were recorded in the first decades of the nineteenth century: the most famous was the Canut Revolt (the silk weavers) in Lyon, in which the workers, together with part of the national guard, managed to seize military control of the city. Today in Lyon there is a broadcaster called Radio Canut that makes no secret of its "rebellious" vocation. Meanwhile, the story of the weavers was set to song by Aristide Bruant in 1894 in the celebrated Le chant des canuts.

The twentieth century and the historic strike of 1936

It was between the late nineteenth century and the twentieth, however, that the strike was transformed, embodying the hopes of trade unionism in the "insurrectionary general strike". The symbolic date of which is 1 May, following the bloody repression of the Chicago strike in the United States in 1886. In the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, attempts to overturn those in power multiplied across Europe. In France, at the outset of the First World War, women took part actively for the first time: these were the strikes of 1917.

In May and June 1936, as the winds of far-right dictatorship were already blowing strongly across Europe, the left-wing Popular Front triumphed in Paris. French citizens and trade unions organised general strikes that would lead to the Matignon Agreements, signed under the auspices of the President of the Council of Ministers Léon Blum, a historic figure of French socialism, by the State and the Confédération générale de la production, the Cgpf, together with the Confédération générale du travail, the Cgt, which still exists today and is the leading trade union on the other side of the Alps. Workers were granted paid holidays, a maximum working week of 40 hours, and substantial wage increases — in exchange for an end to the strikes.

The post-Second World War period and the moment the strike became legend: May 1968

After the Second World War, the major strikes of 1947 were violently suppressed by the government. And yet, two years later, the Cgt launched a general strike, followed by another major strike in 1953, against a proposed reform of public sector workers' pensions. A movement of epoch-making proportions swept through the whole of France for the first time in the post-Second World War period. And it literally brought the country to a standstill. Until it forced the government to withdraw the proposal.

Nothing, however, could compare with what would happen in 1968. The month of May has now entered the country's history: it is still regularly evoked to this day, not only by those who lived through it first-hand. It has become, in effect, a legend. Sparked by students, the protest quickly transformed into a general strike. Almost ten million people downed tools: nothing like it had ever happened before. France was, once again, completely paralysed in every sector: schools, local transport, the public administration, universities, the railways, major industries.

The demonstrators occupied factories and administrative offices. Assemblies and discussion forums were organised everywhere. In a surge of feeling against patriarchy, paternalism, authoritarian structures, capitalism, consumerism, and Gaullist power in government. Virtually the entire working class and almost every other category across the whole of the country joined the strike. The economic system was frozen. And it would remain so until the government and employers gave way: the demonstrators obtained a 35 per cent increase in the minimum wage, a 10 per cent rise in wages, a reduction in weekly working hours, the creation of workplace union branches and a union representative in every company with more than 50 employees.

The 1995 strike against Alain Juppé's reforms

During the 1970s the long wave of May 1968 — the famous Soixante-Huit — would still make itself felt, but the following decade would see the beginning of a decline in participation for French social movements. Was disillusionment gaining ground? Only in part, if one considers what then happened in November 1995. At the time, Prime Minister Alain Juppé (under the presidency of Jacques Chirac) launched a two-pronged offensive: on one side yet another pension reform, on the other a reform of the social protection systems of certain categories, including railway workers.