Anarchy 89/Overtaken by events: a Paris journal

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Overtaken by events:
a Paris journal

ROY PRIOR

Wednesday-Thursday, May 15th-May 16th. The Paris dis­turb­ances have been very poorly re­ported in the English press. First, the dis­turb­ance may have arisen out of com­plaints about the Uni­vers­ity sys­tem, but it has gone far beyond that now. It started with a row at Nan­terre, a uni­vers­ity out­side Paris, when the uni­vers­ity was close for an in­defin­ite period, and seven stu­dents were sum­moned to ap­pear before a uni­vers­ity board. The Sor­bonne started to get active, in the big main court­yard; the recteur called in the police to clear out the stu­dents who had gathered to dis­cuss mat­ters. The police carted the stu­dents off and there were demon­stra­tions against this action, and against the police. The Sor­bonne was closed, and the uni­vers­ities pro­posed to strike on Monday, May 6th, demon­stra­tions all day long, fin­ish­ing with 20,000 march­ing. The police charged the march at St. Germain des Prés, and the bar­ri­cades started to go up. The police use gas. It fin­ishes up with police hunt­ing stu­dents through the streets, beat­ing them with trun­cheons. On Tuesday, another long march, about 40,000-50,000 people, stu­dents and work­ers. The red flags lead the march and the Inter­na­tion­ale is sung at the Arc de Triomphe. More demon­stra­tions on Wednes­day, when the left wing parties, hostile hitherto, jump on the band­wagon. Thurs­day, the Sor­bonne is to be re­opened: the police are on the scene, and the stu­dents de­mand with­drawal of police, open­ing of all the col­leges again, and the free­ing of the ar­rested stu­dents. The Trotsky­ists hold a meet­ing where the whole af­fair begins to open out into a re­volu­tion­ary move­ment. On Friday comes the ex­plo­sion: thou­sands of stu­dents on a demon­stra­tion march are stopped by a dam of police: the stu­dents re­tire into the Latin Quarter, filling the Bou­levard St. Michel up to the Luxem­bourg. They spread out and start erect­ing bar­ri­cades to fight the police if they charge. At 2 in the morn­ing, the police at­tack, using gas

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gren­ades, tear gas, trun­cheons … fight­ing goes on until 5:30, around about 60 bar­ri­cades: many stu­dents are in­jured and seven are still miss­ing, no one knows where. On Satur­day, tension: the trade unions call for a gen­eral strike. The stu­dent milit­ants oc­cupy an annex of the Uni­vers­ity, and use the premises for dis­cus­sions and de­bates. On Sunday, the unions dis­cuss and pre­pare their demon­stra­tion. On Monday the strike takes place, and work­ers and stu­dents march to­gether to demon­strate against the police and the gov­ern­ment. On Tues­day the gov­ern­ment gives in, and says that the stu­dent de­mands for as­soci­a­tion in the organ­isa­tion of the Uni­vers­ity will be met: and the news­papers give the im­pres­sion that this is what it is all about.

  So it was, per­haps, in the first in­stance, but things have changed. The stu­dents have taken over the Uni­vers­ity com­pletely. The lec­ture rooms are crowded with com­mit­tees dis­cuss­ing the whole move­ment—for it is a movement: the whole struc­ture of western so­ciety is being called into ques­tion. The groups of the left are of course very pro­min­ent in this ques­tion­ing: Mao­ists, Trotsky­ists, Com­mun­ists and Anarch­ists have plas­tered the Sor­bonne with posters, de­clar­a­tions, ex­hort­a­tions; a flood of bro­chures, leaf­lets, pamph­lets and broad­sheets, as well as im­pro­vised news­papers, pours out. The great court­yard of the Sor­bonne is crowded with people: stu­dents and work­ers, and some bour­geois, argu­ing, form­ing groups where people stand and dis­cuss, dis­pute, bellow, dis­agree, create an atmo­sphere where one feels that they are awake! This goes on twenty-four hours a day, while people pass in and out of the build­ing, the lec­ture halls wit­ness con­tinu­ous meet­ings and com­mit­tees and in the court­yard people go on argu­ing. Around the court­yard are the pla­cards and pro­clam­a­tions, people sell the news­papers and hand out the sheets: trestle tables along the walls are oco­cu­pied by vari­ous groups selling their lit­er­ature—Trotsky­ists, Com­mun­ists, Mao­ists: I haven’t run across the Anarch­ists yet but I know they are there: their posters are edged in black. Walking out across the Place de la Sorbonne, you can see the same thing—groups, dis­cus­sions, every­where per­fect strangers join­ing argu­ments, ex­chan­ging views, in an atmo­sphere of charged ex­cite­ment which is im­pos­sible for me to com­mun­icate. The level of dis­cus­sion is re­mark­ably high, on the whole, and if you can imagine the sort of energy the French put into an argu­ment be­tween two drivers whose cars have col­lided, trans­ferred to an argu­ment about the organ­isa­tion of the Uni­vers­ity, the class strug­gle, the whole organ­isa­tion of our so­ciety, the pos­sibil­ity of re­volu­tion: all this con­ducted by a free-float­ing crowd of liter­ally thou­sands of people, in the Sor­bonne, in the street, in the cafes—this all going on day and night—then you may get some idea of the Quartier Latin at the moment.

  The moment being 2.15 in the morn­ing (Thurs­day), and the place being a crowded (at this hour!) cafe in the Place de la Sorbonne. If I were rather younger and a great many il­lu­sions richer, I might be tempted to be­lieve in the re­volu­tion­ary atmo­sphere all around me. For

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the atmo­sphere, if not the situ­a­tion, is cer­tainly one of re­volu­tion—it reminds me a little of ac­counts I have read of the so­ciety in Spain in the first days of the re­volu­tion, feel­ing of ex­cite­ment, of ten­sion, of all sorts of pos­sibil­ities for the future, the il­lu­sion that these people might, just might, put a really big crack in the struc­ture of the so­ciety which they are ques­tion­ing so fiercely. In the spec­trum of opin­ion you can re­cog­nise the pos­sible chrono­lo­gical pat­tern of hypo­thet­ical re­volu­tion, from re­form­ists whose ideas are lim­ited to the grant­ing of cer­tain con­ces­sions within—well within—the format of the set-up as it is, through others who advo­cate a far greater degree of change in the status of the stu­dent, those who look for the fall of the pres­ent govern­ment without think­ing much further (even those who would be satis­fied with the resig­na­tion of a few min­is­ters), those who want to see the stu­dents de­clare their solid­ar­ity with the work­ers, aban­don­ing their pres­ent privi­leged posi­tion as those who are des­tined to be the bas­tions of cap­it­al­ism, through to those who look to a total de­struc­tion of cap­it­al­ist so­ciety and the estab­lish­ment of a so­cial­ist so­ciety of one sort or another, and those who talk as if the re­volu­tion were sched­uled for to­morrow, or the day after at the very latest. Here it all is, in words at least.

  And what will come out of it? Not much perhaps: in fact, my guess would be, con­ces­sions in words from the gov­ern­ment, soothing noises, a few re­forms, a scape­goat or two—the Préfet of Paris, for in­stance, who did not want to send the police in to the Sor­bonne in the first pace—and then, nothing. For a while, the ques­tion is: is the feel­ing under­ly­ing this re­volt so strong that it will break out again? I be­lieve it is: this is abso­lutely not a ques­tion of mild stu­dent dis­con­tent within the frame­work of the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, although it may ap­pear that way, and may have started that way. It looks to me like a deep-rooted dis­con­tent and dis­like of the whole struc­ture of so­ciety together with a total dis­trust of the dis­cred­ited lead­ers of the left. Those of the right are scarcely men­tioned, even de Gaulle and Pompi­dou are not names one hears often, and when one does it is in tones of dis­missal. There is no need to at­tack them in words: they are there, that’s all. In fact, there is a very re­mark­able lack of names—plenty of ini­tials of left wing parties, but no names. No “Leaders” in the old sense: no­body’s lead­ing.

  4.10 a.m. Les Halles, always a sight worth seeing—Paris’s belly, Zola called it, with its almost blocked streets, its furi­ous activ­ity, its enor­mous arti­cu­lated lorries bring­ing in fish from Brittany and the <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: south-west">south-west, cheese from Normandy, milk from all over the place. How very far from the atmo­sphere of the Sor­bonne: the stu­dents may ex­press solid­ar­ity with the work­ers, but how much solid­ar­ity do these work­ers feel for the stu­dents? A cer­tain amount, per­haps, since one of the stu­dent griev­ances—not one that is well pub­li­cised however—is that so few chil­dren of the work­ing class get to uni­vers­ity.

  9.20 a.m. This morn­ing I have been with Sor­bonne stu­dents ef­fect­ing li­aison with the med­ical stu­dents, who are not so enthu­si­astic or so

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well organ­ised. In fact, the Sor­bonne people were on picket duty, per­suad­ing the med­ical stu­dents to keep up the strike and not enter into dis­cus­sions with the teach­ing staff. It is re­mark­able to see: dis­pute, argu­ment, per­sua­sion, but never the faint­est sug­ges­tion of a fist raised in anger. If in normal times Sor­bonne stu­dents went to the Fac­ulty of Medi­cine and dared to try to tell them what to do, they would be thrown out, but now the stu­dents must above all stay to­gether, other­wise the move­ment is done for.

View from the Island   On Satur­day the Stu­dents’ Union held its defi­ant demon­sra­tion. Boy­cot­ted once more by the com­mun­ists, dis­missed as point­less folly or crazy ad­ven­tur­ism by many well-wishers, it never­the­less mustered a good 30,000 march­ers. I join in near the head of the column, be­hind the proudly waving red and black flags. I’ve never marched under anarch­ist colours before, but what the hell. Stu­dents are laugh­ing at the Human­ité re­port of a speech by <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Waldeck-Rochet">Waldeck-Rochet: “Our flags are not those of anarchy but the red flag of so­cial­ism and the tri­colore, the flag of the na­tion.” But this week the tri­colore and the Mar­seil­laise belong to de Gaulle; they’ve never been so clearly the symbols of con­serv­at­ism. —Mervyn Jones, new statesman, 7.6.68.

  I am writ­ing this in the court­yard of the Sor­bonne. I look up to the roof, and there flying in the wind is a sight I have never seen before: a flag with no dec­or­a­tion, no ad­di­tion, no na­tional symbol: a plain red flag. And I can’t stop myself from shed­ding tears.

  8.45 p.m. Satur­day, May 25th. I ought to have kept a de­tailed day-by-day ac­count of what I have been doing and what has been hap­pen­ing, but I have been very busy. I have just filled in notes for the last week in my tiny diary, and this helps, but there are still la­cunae. I slept most of Thurs­day, pro­mis­ing myself I would start work the next day, and spent the even­ing at the Sor­bonne talk­ing to people and join­ing in the argu­ments in the court­yard. Several times I was asked by stu­dents what I, as a for­eigner coming fresh to these events, thought of all that I saw; they seemed heart­ened by the fact that I was im­pressed. One girl said, “You see, we have been in it all the time, and some­times we wonder if it isn’t all just talk, talk, talk.” I told her that one of the things that had im­pressed me most was the talk, the fact that people, all sorts of people, were argu­ing, and par­ticu­larly that the argu­ments so often started from prem­ises which, although I ac­cepted them, I was startled to find the jump­ing off point of argu­ments. It was not a ques­tion of “Is there some­thing wrong that can be put right?”, “Should we change our so­ciety and if so in what way?”. No: so many people seemed to ac­cept that the so­ciety had to go, and the ques­tion was, what sort of a so­ciety was to take its place, and how could the change be brought about.

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Cer­tain key ideas re­curred again and again; the two most im­port­ant as far as I could see were “auto­ges­tion” and a re­jec­tion of the con­sumer so­ciety. The ori­ginal stu­dent de­mands had in­cluded par­ti­cip­a­tion in the run­ning of uni­vers­ities, but now it was a ques­tion of work­ers’ con­trol of the factor­ies as well as stu­dent con­trol of the col­leges. As for the con­sumer so­ciety, I was amazed at the vehem­ence both of the posters and slo­gans plastered all over the build­ing, and of the people who spoke of it. Every­where, it seemed, the idea of prosper­ity and pro­gress seen in terms of con­sumer goods, money, af­glu­ence, tele­vision and the motor car was de­nounced and at­tacked. Some­times the argu­ments against it were based on the con­cept of af­flu­ence as the weapon of a cap­it­al­ist so­ciety; but quite as often, no such ana­lysis was made, the speaker or writer seem­ing to ex­press himself from the point of view not of left-wing polit­ics but of deep per­sonal aware­ness that money and ma­terial things do not bring happi­ness. Oh yes indeed, quite the most banal and anti-cli­mactic of plat­it­udes, isn’t it? I too cringed when I first heard it that Thurs­day evening, but one of the re­mark­able aspects of the whole busi­ness was the re­sus­cita­tion of the plat­it­ude. Solid­ar­ity be­tween worker and stu­dent, unity of the left, com­rade­ship be­tween man and man, be­tween man and woman, the spirit of the bar­ri­cades, were con­cepts which had reality and truth. Many might sneer—few did, in fact; for me, cer­tainly, the tired old ideas were reborn.