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.

  On Friday, I did a little work at the Biblio­thèque Na­tion­ale, very un­en­thusi­astic­ally. On Satur­day, how­ever, I got very inter­ested in a par­ticu­lar edi­tion of a novel which seemed mat­ter for an art­icle, and worked madly all day. I was at the Sor­bonne again that evening; that was the night I went on to the Odéon.

  The Odéon Théâtre de France was taken over by stu­dents, in­clud­ing drama stu­dents, and was thrown open 24 hours a day as a free forum for dis­cus­sion. It is a re­mark­able sight, the house packed with people, and three or four organ­is­ers in the centre aisle try­ing to di­rect the dis­cus­sion. I say try­ing, be­cause it is an ap­pal­lingly dif­fi­cult task. What hap­pens roughly is that every­one is in­vited to put forward his views, and at any given moment, in a crowded theatre, a number of people would like to air their opin­ions, whether from de­light in hear­ing their own voice, pleas­ure in show­ing off before a large audi­ence, viol­ent dis­agree­ment with the last speaker or the one three before him, dis­agree­ment with some other aspect such as the whole idea of a free forum unless it al­lows only the ex­pres­sion of the cor­rect views, dis­agree­ment with the hand­ling of the pro­ceed­ings, desire to beat the last speaker’s head in, wish to break up the pro­ceed­ings, desire to help along the argu­ment, or a wish to si­lence every­one who is mak­ing such a racket and spoil­ing the whole af­fair for every­one, and why do all these people yell so that you can’t hear the speaker, so you bawl at the top of your voice “SILENCE”.

  And yet there is—to use one of the key words, even if it is over­worked, of this period—a dia­logue. Work­ers do manage to stand up and say their piece, people do listen, people do start to try to see other

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people’s posi­tion, even learn from them. I stayed at the Odéon for four hours, till four in the morning.

  Then I slept on Sunday till nearly mid­day, got up and went to the ména­gerie at the Jardin des Plantes. I fed pea­nuts to the ele­phant, ad­mired the alli­gators, croco­diles, turtles ant tor­toises, flamin­goes, saw a just-born baby bison lying on the ground pant­ing, saw several fine go­rillas and some heavily moulted camels.

  I contin­ued to the Bois de Vin­cennes, and there, in search of some green and per­haps a goose or two, fail­ing which, a mal­lard, I passed through quite the largest func­tion­ing fair­ground I ever saw. Well, it was marked green on the map. How­ever, I got to the other end and found green—in fact, for Paris, an enorm­ous ex­panse of green: you can walk quite a hundred yards before coming to a “Keep off the Grass” sign. Well, anyway, ninety yards. I walked this, and then came to a lake, with an island in the middle and a cause­way to the island, so that people can saunter across to the island and walk round on the paths ad­mir­ing the ele­gant “Keep off the Grass” signs. I pre­ferred to walk around the lake, eye­ing the ten yards of water between the main­land grass and the island grass, each equally combed, brushed, barbered, groomed, tit­iv­ated, beau­ti­fied, rolled and beaten into a state of supine sub­mis­sion. How­ever, there are ducks and some swans, who do not Keep off the Grass at all, but walk flatly on it, their large flocks of off­spring quack­ing behind. There are a great number of duck­lings, many of them swim­ming in blocks of twenty to thirty, each ac­com­panied by several ducks.

  I stopped near a rather short middle aged man who, at a spot where the grass had been swept away to allow the gravel path to go to the edge of the water, was com­plain­ing bitterly. It ap­pears that the gentle­man was feed­ing the ducks, and had thrown bread near one of two cygnets. When a duck­ling had gone after it, one of the swan parents had at­tacked him—the duck­ling. The gentle­man did not like this, and was try­ing to hit the swan with a stone. He sent his little girl—about six—grand­daughter I think—to get him stones, but she came back with a branch, with which he tried to reach the swan, with much ex­plan­a­tion to the people around. I en­gaged a dia­logue with him, ex­plain­ing that the swan was only trying to pro­tect its young; that it was per­fectly natural; that the duck­ling was unhurt; that if he (the gentle­man) con­tinued to try to hurt the swan, I (the speaker) would push him (the gentle­man) into the water. He yelled and shouted and in­sulted me, and then stopped and went on feed­ing the ducks. The swan came a little closer in search of food, and the gentle­man reached out waving his branch and trying to hit the swan, and as I had prom­ised him, I pushed him in the lake.

  That evening I dis­covered the anarch­ists at the Sor­bonne. They are much more organ­ised in France, much more polit­ic­ally active, and they have played a large part in the whole struggle. Since then I have had some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions with them, and often drop in there. They hold forums similar to those at the Odéon, ex­cept that theirs are held to tell people about anarch­ist ideas, to answer questions, and to

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allow debate on their the­or­ies. Un­for­tun­ately, these three func­tions in one meet­ing live very un­easily together. If you are going to tell people about your ideas, you stand up and ad­dress them. If you are answer­ing ques­tions about anarch­ism, someone asks a ques­tion, say, “What, com­rade, is the place of bird-watching in the fu­ture liber­tar­ian so­ciety after the re­volu­tion has de­stroyed the state, com­rade?” and you stand up and answer, say­ing unto him, “In a liber­tar­ian so­ciety, com­rade, bird-watch­ing will be one among many activ­ities en­joyed by free­dom-loving anarch­ists living in an inter­na­tional feder­a­tion, and there will be no fron­tiers to hinder birds from migrat­ing from time to time to ther places for the pleas­ure of other anarch­ist bird-watchers in those other places, com­rade.” And if you are al­low­ing debate on anarch­ist ideas, then the chair­man should di­rect the argu­ment without enter­ing into it. The func­tions are in­com­pat­ible, the con­se­quences obvi­ous and the forums less useful than they might be. How­ever, when things do not get mixed up, they do in fact give the people who come a lot of useful in­form­a­tion on anarch­ist ideas. Usually there is a brief sum­mary of the idea of a feder­al­ist so­ciety and how it might be organ­ised, as well as an at­tack on the par­lia­ment­ary “demo­cracy” in which the sole polit­ical activ­ity of the mass, and its sole power, is to mark a cross on a piece of paper once every few years, and in France today, to say a blind un­quali­fied yes or no to an elderly pa­ter­nal­ist auto­crat. Also, the forums may do a little to help dispel the aura of terror which in France still sur­rounds the words “anarchy” and “anarch­ist”.

  On Monday I went to the BN, but they were short-staffed be­cause of the Métro strike and were not open­ing the Réserve, where my books were. I went to the Biblio­thèque de l’Arsenal, but they were not issu­ing books for the same reason. So I went back to the Sor­bonne. That after­noon I met an Amer­ican law teacher and free­lance journal­ist called Joe, who was try­ing to get some per­sonal stories on the “nuit des bar­ri­cades” of 10-11 mai; as he speaks no French, I went along with him for the evening, and heard a re­mark­able ac­count by the daughter of a French ambas­sador, a first-year med­ical stu­dent, about seven­teen, tiny, with a very young face; she told of what had hap­pened and how she had got on, and I was moved and ap­palled at the barbar­ity of the events, but much more at their juxta­pos­i­tion to this little girl. I was con­scious not so much of her sex, but of her youth; at the total in­con­gru­ity of this tender thing, and the shields, the yard-long weighted trun­cheons, the nerve-jump­ing crack of gren­ades and the blind­ness and tears of the gas, the noise and the dirt of the street, and the fear. The fear of the CRS.