The Rest Is History - 353: Paris 1968: The Students' Revolt

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

May 1968 saw underlying tensions reach a climax in France, resulting in a period of civil unrest coloured by rioting, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. Join Tom and Dominic in the first part of our tour through the streets of Paris, as they tell the story of how France’s economy came to a halt at the hands of cobblestone-wielding students. Read more about Tom and Dominic's trip to Paris, in partnership with Wise: https://wise.com/campaign/restishistory *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome. Bonjour et bienvenue. To a very special episode of The Rest Is History. To a very special episode of The Rest Is History. Excellent translation.

So last week, Dominic, we were in Amsterdam. And today, as people can probably guess from Dominic's flawless French, we are in the City of Light in Paris. And we're continuing our European adventure thanks to WISE. Oh, yes. So WISE, Tom, I mean, we know what WISE is. It's the account that lets you send, spend and receive money internationally. It is.

That's why it's used by 16 million people, Dominic, all over the world. Yeah. It's built to save you money, Tom. You can probably hear some sirens in the distance. That's Parisian color, isn't it, Tom? It really is. And we've come here today to talk about one of the great scenic episodes in Parisian history, a topic that you've chosen, Les Événements,

the events of 1968. So students hurling cobblestones and people in polo necks dressing as clowns all that kind of thing yeah absolutely may 1968 so here we are we are literally sitting opposite the sorbonne the most famous university in france we're in uh samuel patty square we're facing the great facade of the Sorbonne. This ancient university founded, I think, in the 13th century, something like that. One of the oldest universities in Europe. And if you'd been here in May 1968, yes, the air would have been thick with the stench of tear gas.

There would have been barricades. Did you just say that? The air would be thick with the stench of tear gas. I did say that. Brilliant. I did say that. You. I did say that. You're a great writer. Yeah.

What? See, this is the color that people tune into The Rest is History for. So people would be throwing cobblestones at the police. There was the heady scent of revolution in the air, Tom. Or was there? Well, this is the thing. This is the question, isn't it? Yeah.

So to Anglo-Saxon listeners, what the French would call Anglo-Saxon listeners anyway, um, this is absolutely classic French behavior. I mean, this is all that we expect from sort of post-war France, but at the time, actually France didn't really have a reputation for youthful protests. So the revolutions of the 19th century were in the past. It's a long time since the Paris Commune, let alone the French Revolution. Since the Second World War, France had actually, or French youngsters, had actually been reasonably quiescent. So France had had constitutional turbulence in 1958 because of the war in Algeria,

Charles de Gaulle being brought to power. But that wasn't really driven by university students or anything like it. Well, I remember when the Beatles played in Paris, they were amazed. It was the only place where there was no screaming. Right, well, that tells the same story. So France's reputation in the 1960s or the reputation of French youngsters

and of the sort of mood of the French public was that it was actually quite stayed. Because there's this famous headline, isn't there, in Le Monde in March 1968, saying that what defines our public life today is boredom. It's boredom, exactly. And actually, even at that point, you know, there's been lots of protests in the United States. There's been the civil rights movement, marches against the Vietnam War. But all the coverage in France often says, well, French kids would never do this because they are actually much too busy getting degrees and going into the workforce. And we're not like that.

And actually de Gaulle, so Charles de Gaulle, the great hero of the liberation and of resistance to the Nazis in the Second World War. So he's president of France. We'll come on to him much later, in particular in the second episode. And sees himself as the embodiment of France. As the embodiment of France. Exactly. He's in his 70s. de Gaulle is the figurehead.

And he had said in 1966, he described the young layabouts in England is because England has lost its sense of responsibility, its sort of sense of moral discipline. He complains about the long hair. The long hair, exactly. But in France, his argument would be, well, in France, we don't have this problem.

We still have a sense of France and it's... A certain sense of France. A certain sense of france as julian jackson's a biography is called and that's the opening line of de gaulle's memoirs isn't it all my life i've had this certain sense of france and france in 1968 is a country actually that has done very well so it has decolonized i mean in a very bloody and turbulent fashion but that's a really important part of the story to come, isn't it? So they were the colonial power in Vietnam. Yes. And they skedaddled from that after a humiliating defeat.

Yeah, Dien Bien Phu. And then they also had to pull out of Algeria, which had been part of the fabric of the French nation. Yes. And very traumatic for all concerned. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what had brought de Gaulle to power, that he had resolved the Algerian crisis effectively by ending it,

by pulling out of France and a million people leaving Algeria and moving largely to the south of France or to the suburbs of Paris. But France has done well economically and socially since the end of the Second World War. We're sort of towards the end or sort of midway since the end of the Second World War. We're sort of towards the end, or sort of midway towards the end, of what they call the 30 glorious years. So every year the economy grew by about 5%. There's full employment.

There's a real sense that today's young generation will be far better off than their parents. We'll come onto this later, particularly when we get onto the strikes of 1968. Lots of people from rural France, which had long been far more agricultural than Britain, lots of people had moved to the cities and were in these suburbs that we're all very familiar with on the Bonlieu. The periphery. Yeah, exactly. And these suburbs are pretty grim, aren't they? They're kind of utilitarian, lacking the kind of joie de vivre of a charming French village, or indeed the center of Paris.

Well, Tom, we're sitting here facing the Sorbonne. It's a beautiful day, early summer day in Paris, blue sky. It's very, what's her name in Paris? Emily in Paris. Emily in Paris. That's not, I'd never thought of the rest of history in that light before. No, but Paris looks wonderful. And one reason it looks so wonderful, I would argue,

is because basically the city decanted all its problems to the periphery. And among those problems is the question of, it's not just workers, but of how do you house students? Because there's a kind of massive boost to the student population. Yeah, there is. So Bonn, this ancient medieval university, is inadequate. There's not enough space to house all the people

who want to come and study in Paris. Exactly, exactly. So there'd been a huge baby boom in France, far bigger than in Britain. They had raised the school-leaving age, so far more people in education. In 1968, the number of students in French universities had doubled since 1960 and trebled

since 1950 that's far greater rate of expansion than anything in britain so what had happened is that the french government had built annexes and over spills and things in basically porter cabins and kind of awful kind of 60s kind of tower blocks and things often on the edge of cities they recruited hastily lots of new lecturers and teachers who actually often weren't very good yeah and the students i mean this is this is a perennial problem by the way of french education i mean i remember when i lived in france in the 1990s students were complaining about this all the time that they were taught in overspill lecture theatres, the lectures were on loudspeakers,

they never even got to see, let alone to speak to, the lecturer or the professor. This is particularly an issue in the late 1960s. I came across an amazing statistic that even though the number of students in Britain in the 60s was a fraction of those studying in France, that France granted half as many degrees as British universities did in the 60s was a fraction of those studying in France, that France granted half as many degrees as British universities did in the 60s.

Basically because three quarters of French students just chucked their quarters in because they were so bad. And because they're so miserable. So are these students sort of radical? Some are. There's a small minority who are radical. And often one of the things that radicalizes them, you mentioned Vietnam. So Vietnam is definitely there in in the background they are influenced by what they're seeing on tv

um in in the united states because they presumably the french have a particular sense of of uh responsibility responsibility about vietnam i think they have an interest in it actually rather than a sense of responsibility it's fair to say i think they also there interest in it, actually, rather than a sense of responsibility, it's fair to say. I think they also, there's obviously a very, very, how should I put it, a pungent strain, Tom, of anti-Americanism. Yeah. By the way, we're competing with a bin. There's a bin lorry. This has plagued us, actually, since Amsterdam, Tom. It's always the way, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, everyone knows this, who does live recordings.

But there is also a mood more generally beyond the universities that people want to consign de Gaulle to the dustbin of history. Well, he's old. He's old. So there's this, a guy is fined 500 francs, I learned, for shouting at de Gaulle in his car as he went by. Retire. Right. So, I mean, that's fine for that. I mean, that's quite, it is harsh, isn't it? Seems quite repressive by British standards. That's one thing that people also, I mean, that's fine for that. That's harsh. I mean, that's quite, it is harsh, isn't it? It seems quite repressive by British standards. That's one thing that people also, I mean, they don't get about France today, even. France is a much more hierarchical society, much more paternalistic than often people sitting in Britain who have the fantasy of France believe.

So it's still a very Catholic country. It's sort of officially, officially at least not a diverse country i mean there are a lot of new immigrants and things but they don't they've all been parked on the periphery they've all been locked up in their tower blocks um there is a real sense of deference to authority far greater i would say than in britain or america and so therefore presumably rebelling against it becomes more fun. Exactly. So actually, even though at the beginning of 1968,

all the sort of talk is, well, there's stuff going on in America and so on, but it will never spread to France because, you know, we're not like that and our kids aren't like that.

I think particularly in these places where nobody really looks. So, out in the suburbs, in these kind of jerry-built sort of breeze block unfinished building site

universities there is a sense of discontent that is mounting and tom all it takes is the trigger and as we see the bin lorry go around the corner i think we should seize this moment to go and go to a cafe let's walk through the latin quarter and moment to go to a cafe. Let's walk through the Latin Quarter. And so perhaps in a cafe, we could have, just before we get on to the explosion, perhaps could we have just a brief chat about French philosophy and absurdist theatre? That sounds awful. We'll be sitting in a, you know, in a cafe on the reef coast. I knew you would try to bring that up.

So let's go and do that. Well, let's go to the cafe. So Tom, allo, let's go to the cafe. So Tom, here we are in the cafe. There's been a slight dispute about whether to sit inside or out. We're sitting outside. We're sitting outside,

which is as I wanted. It is. I wanted to sit inside because I always imagine philosophers in Paris sitting inside the cafe. Yeah. But as ever, you've bullied me.

No, that's absolutely wrong. True. I think there's a general sense that it's actually a lovely day. It is gorgeous, isn't it? A beautiful Parisian day. Because you don't like Paris. Or are you being converted now to the beauties?

I'm officially repenting. Are you? This is lovely. I'm really enjoying this. Paris is working her magic on you. I've never been in such nice weather. The city looks gorgeous, looks golden. The river Seine glistening in the sunlight.

So, Dominic, you may actually come back after this, and if you do, you would use your Wisecard, as we're going to do now, because we're going to order a coffee, aren't we? Absolutely. We're going to use our Wisecards for coffee. I will just say this, that whether you are taking on Rio or Rome, Miami or Mumbai, or in our case, Tom, Paris or Amsterdam, now here's good news. You will always get the mid-market exchange rate

when you convert currencies. And Tom, I know you're passionate about avoiding markups. I don't. I hate markups. You don't. You really don't like hidden fees. And there are neither of those things. So as usual, a large lorry has just turned up,

which always happens. And I knew this would happen, which is why I wanted to go inside. But I'm not going to say I told you. Tom, I will mollify you now with a lovely French coffee. What'd you like? I would like a café au lait. Bonjour, un café au lait pour... Pour le monsieur. Pour ce vieux gentilhomme et un café noir pour moi. Merci.

Okay. Let's talk philosophy. Go ahead. So part of the kind of the vibe in Paris in the 60s, they're very into their situationist, absurdist theater. The transfiguration of the absurdity of bourgeois life. I knew you were going to bring all this stuff up. So I know the answer to this. Yeah. Do you think that this has any influence on the course of Soir Son Huit?

No, see, I don't actually. I think it's absolutely true that people are staging happenings and they are i mean existentialism is old by the way at this point people often think existentialism and sartre camus all that stuff is one of the drivers of this but i'm talking about antonin yeah all that kind of thing and also the rising French philosopher Michel Foucault Michel Foucault so he's published

Les Moëles, Les Chose which I think is I can't remember what it's translated Words and Things yeah but it's not translated as that I think I can't remember Order of Things is it okay

I'm not as familiar with Foucault's words but anyway so in that in Les Moëles, Les Chose he is essentially arguing that everything is oppression yes of course that um that culture knowledge patriotism are merely discourses of power yeah i mean again i know that you because

i know your material is spent that you will poo-poo this but but does this idea that so the kind of the the the catch words for for goalism. Yeah. Patrie. Yeah. All that kind of thing. Well, La France. Yeah. That these are simply discourses of oppression. Does that kind of steal the student leaders?

Does it provide them with a kind of ideological backbone? I don't really think it does. I actually think that stuff becomes important after 68. Okay. And it does create the memory, I mean, it does become associated with the memory of 68, particularly in the 70s. Because Foucault himself is in Tunis at the time, isn't he? He is, exactly. He's in North Africa, and he is, I mean, he's the philosopher who's most identified, I suppose,

with the event of 1968, and the spirit of 68. But he's in North Africa, and as the events unfold, he's actually writing to friends saying, what's going on? I've got no idea what's going on i don't understand it you know that the influence of a philosopher isn't to be measured by whether the philosopher himself but this is not like rousseau in the french revolution during the event of may 1968 people aren't generally quoting fuko fuko's name does not appear in a lot of the coverage nobody is pointing the finger at...

I think this is something that actually... I mean, some listeners to this may say, oh, no, no, this is far too reductionist. But actually, I think a lot of this is actually generated afterwards by the people in Polonex, in cafes, trying to explain what has happened. See, I actually think when you get down to the... We talked about the trigger.

And you were talking about this... Well,, we talked about the trigger and you were talking about this, well, we were talking about the grimness of the suburbs and of the new university buildings and so on. The trigger is in many ways, very, very mundane. So the place it's, it's seven miles Northwest of Paris and it's a suburb called Nanterre and in nonterre uh they have started to build in 1962 basically one of these annexes one of these overspill buildings my overspill campuses for the sorbonne where we were earlier and there are about 12 000 students at nonterre and nonterre is the middle of nowhere it is basically a massive building site the buildings haven't been finished the students have kind of been lied to they've been told that all these tremendous facilities

but actually um as as the as the the guardian you know the british newspaper put it at the time on 7th of may 1968 it said non-terre uh was ironically meant as a model for the future but it's turned out to have the academic atmosphere of a railway station. Not even that. No. Because railway stations at least have kind of cafes. Right. So in Nanterre, there is nothing. And it feels you're a long way from,

you're seven miles out of the city. You can't get into the city. The transport links are rubbish. There are no facilities. These grim, unfinished kind of tower blocks. The lectures are really boring. And also, Dominic, I mean, again, the Anglo-Saxon sense of French life

is that everybody is engaging in sexual congress. This is just what the French are all about. Yeah. But actually, in Lanterre this time, it's pretty monastic. It is because you can't... Girls and boys are not allowed to... They're not allowed to mix, effectively,

at night after dark. So basically, you're not allowed to visit the opposite sexes halls of residence at night. You know, you're all locked up in your kind of rival, you know, your monastery or your nunnery. Now, there are some students who are left wing. There's no doubt about that. And those students will often go on about the police. And I mean, there is a kind of institutional memory in the sort of French student left of the extraordinary brutality of the French police.

So the French police had killed hundreds of Algerians at the beginning of the 1960s, throwing them into the River Seine, and then killed unionists, trade unionists, and protesters. So there is a sort of radical, a small radical group. That killing, I mean, how many was it, kind of 200? The figures are disputed. of radical, a small radical group. That killing, I mean, how long was it? Kind of 200? The figures, I mean, are disputed. A lot.

As many as 400 or possibly as few as 200 Algerians who were killed by the police and thrown into the river. It's a theme of Caché, that great film with Daniel O'Tayen. Which is extraordinary. It tells you something about the difference between France and Britain. That in France, the CRS, the riot police, are famously, they are really hard.

They are very hard men. And we'll come on to this later. The guy running the Parisian police, Moise Papon, who had been involved in Vichy, who has a very, very checkered record as deporting Jews from Bordeaux. And the chant is CRS SS. So there is this sort of sense that there are some

you know there are there are issues shall we say and there's one student in particular at nonterre who is synonymous with um i know you're a big fan of his uh tom danny the red danny the red danny le rouge daniel kern bendy yes so he is the son of two German Jews who took refuge in France from the Nazis. And then obviously when France becomes occupied, they have to live in hiding. Yes. So his background is very, you know, he lives under his whole life under the shadow of that.

Absolutely. You know what he's studying, of course. Sociology. Sociology, but of course. Of course. He has red hair, but when he comes to prominence, he is assumed to be basically communist, to be very much on the left.

But actually he isn't. He's a libertarian. Yeah, exactly. Well, he became a green MEP. And he has a brilliant run-in, doesn't he, with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Yeah. It's an act of François Misoff.

So Misoff arrives at Nanterre in January 1968 to finally open the long-awaited sports centre in Swingpool. And Daniel Cohn-Bendit is the leader of the radical students.

And he barracks Missoff. And he shouts at him. It was such a French bit of behaviour. He shouts at him and he says, your recent report on the problems of youth have said nothing about sexual problems.

Yeah. Which is exactly what I expect a French student needed to shout. And Misof replies, no wonder with a face like yours, you have these problems. And tells him to jump in the swimming pool to cool off. Yeah. And then Kumbhendi shouts back,

you're obviously a fascist because people who build swimming pools for young people, that's what Hitler did. Yeah. This is like the Hitler youth all over again. And it's just a ludicrously French exchange, isn't it? Even though he is German. Yeah. Well, Kumbhendi is kind of Franco-German, isn't he?

Right. But this will become important later on, won't it? Exactly. Whether he's French or German. But this is all quite, you know, lower league kind of stuff. But on the 22nd of March, a group of students, including all these sort of small far left groups, and pleasingly, Tom, a small number of poets and musicians. Yes, and theatre students.

Theatre students. So my mark is, yes, clowns. So these are the orages. They're enraged. The great thing about this story is everybody behaves precisely as they ought to. It's carry on French students. It is. So the myomatists, the clowns, the far leftists, whatever.

The absurdists, the situationists. They occupy an administration building at Nanterre. And they hold a sort of meeting. This is very late 60s behavior, isn't it? And they hold a meeting to discuss. This is very late 60s behavior, isn't it? And they hold a meeting to discuss, to attack the bureaucracy of the university and to talk about class discrimination at the university and also to talk about how they want to visit the girls.

Yeah, of course. D'accord. This is actually what's at the, basically at the root of this, I can see our producer, Theo, who's French, laughing at our pitiful Anglo-Saxon attempts to explain this very important moment in world history. Now, the administration of the university completely and utterly overreact.

They're very top-down. They're very autocratic. You know this brilliant slogan that the students in Ontario have? They shout, professors, you are as old as your culture. Which, of course, in the case of the Sorbonne, I mean, it is incredibly old. I mean, it's 700 years old. Yeah. And it's never been closed down, has it?

But that is what then happens. So Tom, our coffees are arriving. What a wonderful moment this is. Merci. Alors, I'll use my Wyze app. So easy. Merci bien. Merci.

So Dominic, you've used your WISE app. Yeah, I have. Couldn't have been easier. Let's get back to the story. So as we were saying before, the general culture is very authoritarian, very top-down, very paternalistic. And the administration of the university, and this is a common theme in so many European universities in the late 60s, they completely overreact. So even though actually the students then leave the building,

they are called in for disciplinary hearings, and they are suspended, the leaders of this. And what then that triggers is, of course, more protests by other students. So you get this building momentum throughout April 1968 of students at Nanterre protesting, bigger and bigger protests. And then on the 2nd of May, the rector of the Sorbonne, who's a Monsieur Roche, he shuts down the whole Nanterre campus. But not the Sorbonne. But not the Sorbonne in Paris, it's where we've just been. He thinks that will shut the whole thing down. Actually,

what that does is it just moves the protests from Nanterre, seven miles into the center, into the heart of Paris, where we are now. Because the students at the Sorbonne itself start to protest. They occupy a lecture theater.

The police are called in. Hundreds of people are arrested. You know, it's, again, completely heavy-handed. And hundreds of students are beaten by the riot police. And then the Sorbonne is shut down. For the first time in 700 years.

Yeah, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Over what is ultimately a pretty foucling thing. I mean, it tells you actually how quiescent French student society had been in the 50s and 60s, that basically the authorities see what's actually pretty, you know, classic student protest behavior, standard stuff, and they completely overreact to it, as though this is the beginning of the French Revolution. So a lot of historians say the big driver of May 1968 is really, it's not even the stuff on the on-air,

it's actually police overreaction and police violence. So we talked before about the killing of the Algerian protesters. They'd killed trade unionists at Sharon Metro Station in 1962. There is an awful lot of resentment of the heavy-handedness of the police. And when they start to do this to middle-class students, and that's the key, to students who have a bit of a sense of entitlement, quite rightly, they think they're entitled not to be beaten up by the police.

They react. So by about the 6th of May, it's quite interesting to go through the chronology because often people assume this is all one great blur, but actually, if you go through it, you can see the escalation. On the 6th of May, the student union plus the lecturers union call big marches.

They're planning big protest marches. Once again, the authorities completely overreact. They shut down large parts of the centre of Paris. Isn't part of the reason for that the fact that the Vietnam Peace Conference is going on in Paris? Right. And so de Gaulle is very worried about this. And de Gaulle magnificently says

that surely they're rioting because they're afraid of taking their exams. Well, this is the extraordinary thing. His Minister of Education is a man called Alain Pervit. He goes out and he gives a speech saying to the students, let me remind you, your exams start within days. This is a very important moment for you. Stop messing around and do some revision.

But de Gaulle is going so far as to say, well, they're rioting so that the exams will be cancelled because they're afraid of them. They're frightened of failure. Snape eggs. Yes, exactly. Very Sam Brookian approach from De Gaulle there. So the march is banned. Tens of thousands of people march anyway around

where we are now. So we are quite close to the river from our cafe. I'm across the admittedly the multiple lines of traffic and it's at this point that the students as the police kind of weighed in the students start building barricades and anybody who's seen les misrables will know that the idea of building barricades it goes to back to the paris commune and before that to the revolution you see dominic this this again just to go back to um absurd Commune and before that to the revolution. But you see, Dominic, this again, just to go back to absurdist theatre and the sense of people playing a part.

Yeah. I mean, are they not playing the part of French revolutionaries here? They are, absolutely. I believe, Tom, people on the internet would call this LARPing, wouldn't they? It's live action role playing. I prefer to think of it being absurdist theatre. Absurdist theatre. No, they're like... Well, it's kind action role playing. I prefer to think of it being... Absurdist theatre. Absurdist theatre. No, they're like...

Well, it's kind of situationist. You do something that then creates a situation that then becomes the drama. And then you feed into the drama. And so in this case, the drama that they're feeding into is a revolution. Yeah, they're playing the part of revolutionaries and then the revolution happens.

Exactly right. Everybody, I mean, that's what we said was the great thing about this story. Everybody is playing a part. Yeah. It's playing the part that's been assigned to them. So this is the first night of the barricades, the first night of violence. So what night is that, 7th of May?

6th and 7th of May. 6th and 7th of May. It's the first night where people are building barricades, where they are tearing up, pulling up bits of the street to throw at the police. There's a lovely report, actually, by the aptly named Peter Lennon in The Guardian, the next day on the scene in the Latin Quarter. And he says, buses with their tires slashed and windows broken were strewn across the street. Cars upended with windows smashed marked the spots where the hard core of the students put up fierce resistance to the police,

who with nerves shattered after a full day of rioting clubbed the demonstrators when they caught them, and sometimes bystanders with a sickening ferocity. Policemen and journalists with long years of experience of Paris riots almost disbelieved the evidence of their eyes as they viewed the scene of destruction. The roadway was torn up in numerous places where students had armed themselves with stones and pieces of tarmacadam. Shop windows were shattered and the blue pall of tear gas hung over the strangely silent Place Saint-Germain, usually the gayest of night spots, but tonight like a quarter in morning. So British observers as well are getting into the whole idea. They're loving it all as well. So I think actually, I mean, the most recent thing like this is the Paris Commune

in 1871 right and this idea so what had happened then france had lost a war again to the prussians um within paris itself sort of left-wing groups the communards had set up their own revolutionary administration this kind of you try to build their own utopia which had then been crushed by the french army from outside by by the forces of reaction and that shadow i think hangs over the whole story of 1968 feels to me like and as you would call it a situationist theatrical version or as i would put it a cosplaying yeah of of the paris commune of 18. I mean, comparing themselves to the commune is part of the slogan, right?

It is, absolutely. So this first day of the barricades does not end anything. There are more demonstrations the next day. On the 7th of May, tens of thousands of people are now marching against police brutality. So it's not just students,

it's also sympathizers. And they are chanting, long live the Paris Commune. But, so here's a question. One of the pieces of graffiti that appears on the streets of Paris at this time, it's kind of brilliant.

I have something to say, but I am not sure what. And one of the things that people talk about this period is that everybody is suddenly talking, that people are coming to cafes or sitting around and discussing things. Yeah.

But, I mean, to protest against, I don't know against i don't know the awesome regime or oppression or whatever i mean these are very abstract words do they do they have a kind of coherent body of so basically it's just a cry of anger and resentment at the man alarm yeah i mean Yeah. I mean, some listeners may think, oh, this is far too simplistic. They had genuine grievances. But remember. But are they asking, I mean, amid all this kind of generalized stuff

about we're against oppression and colonialism or whatever, are they saying we want to be able to mix with girls and boys after lights or something? That has slightly been lost. So they're not protesting about specific issues like that? Or saying,

we want better facilities at the campus. So now that the barricades have gone up, the stuff about like, we'd actually like access to the girls' halls of residence after dark,

that has slightly been lost. Because it's now... That's the tragedy of this, Tom. It's now a revolution. That's the tragedy of this story. Yeah. The original, perfectly reasonable demand

has been overwhelmed by nonsense. It's a French tragedy. Yeah. Yeah, so now it's become a protest against it's even not just de gaulle so de gaulle is kind of features sometimes people the old man enough of de gaulle but it's actually more a generalized protest against authority and against old men against old men i mean this is true most western european and indeed the united states the people in charge are old men you know old men. I mean, this is true of most Western European and indeed the United States.

The people in charge are old men. You know, Conrad Adenauer. I mean, it's the decade of Harold McMillan and Harold Wilson in Britain. It's Lyndon Johnson in the US. Sort of grey men. It's always men, isn't it? It's never women.

Who have lived through the Second World War. Yeah. And so isn't there also a sense that they are protesting against the legacy of the Second World War? Yeah. And so isn't there also a sense that they are protesting against the legacy of the Second World War, which in France has some currency that talk about the role played by the older generation

in the liberation, say, of France is so much hypocrisy. Because actually they were all collaborationists. That it's not merely suffocating. And the taint of Nazism hasn't been purged. Right, that it's not merely suffocating and stifling for the old men to be telling you about their own heroism, but it's a lie.

Let's say Maurice Papon has this hideous record of collaboration. I mean, this is even more the case, obviously, in Germany with the Baader-Meinhof group, the Red Army faction. There, it's even more overt that actually this regime that pretends to be a democratic regime is actually a successor state to the nazis yeah i mean when people are shouting crs ss in france it's literal i mean to go had a very good to go had a very good line he said he said basically if they really were the ss nobody would be around anymore to shout you know i know the ss yeah but

to go is off the stage at this point he's's the president, the all-seeing eye, as it were. So by this point, has he come to the conclusion that it's not just about students trying to avoid exams? I think he knows that something is going wrong. Because he goes off to Romania, doesn't he? He goes off to Romania on a trip later in May. We'll talk about de Gaulle a little bit in the next episode. Well, a lot in the next episode.

At this point, de Gaulle is veering between conciliation and repression. So sometimes he says, oh, we should just give the students what they want, tell them to go home. And then other times he says, just shoot them. You know, man up. This is what he's sort of saying to his aides. I mean, it's just idle chatter.

He doesn't mean it. But in the meantime, you know, more big demonstrations. The 10th of May is the really big night of the barricades. Hundreds of arrests, hundreds of shop windows smashed you know so we are looking we're right by the street and you can sort of see the cobbles so basically people are digging in into the street they're ripping up the cobbles and they're throwing them at the police there's the sort of the cloud of tear gas that hangs over everything the police are consistently behaving very badly so the same guardian reporter peter lennon a few

weeks later when he looks back at this he says you know i saw the police beating wounded demonstrators i saw them breaking into apartments looting but isn't this how violence escalates of course the the police are kind of getting brained by cobblestones and then they react so so losing it and beating up students and so the students get angrier and chuck more cobblestones. And then they react. So losing it and beating up students. And so the students get angrier and chuck more cobblestones. And so it goes on. Anyway, so this is all going on. And it's on TV, Tom. The one crucial thing we haven't mentioned. The two technological things that really matter in 1968 are one, radios and two, TV. So the students have cheap transistor radios. You know, they wouldn't have had them 20 years earlier they have them now that means they are listening to the news as it is happening and that is further radicalizing them and what also happens is because of tv the rest of france is watching it on the next day's news so they are watching

the pictures and they are seeing the violence and a lot of people are there some people are shocked by the students some people are shocked by the police and other people are enthused and excited and they want to join in and so you get this sort of wave of occupations elsewhere in the country it's now gone beyond paris um the goal at this point does start to think okay this is getting out of control he tells um well he and his prime minister george pompidou they agree to reopen the Sorbonne. They think maybe, okay, well, the university will calm it down. All that happens is they reopen it, the students occupy it,

and the students now set up, this is where you have all the stuff that you would love. The students are staging happenings. Brilliant. Absurdist theater. Great. Committees discussing the future of Vietnam. Yeah, a million flowers are blooming. A million flowers are blooming a million flowers are blooming exactly exactly so and actually at this point the police

have pretty much been driven out of the quarter where we are now so they've been they've been driven out of large parts of the left bank the barricades are up the students say you know we're running it now the revolutionary committee is running it so you might well say if you were of a san brockian bent well who cares about a of students? They'll just get bored and all go home. But it's this point that the French working class enter the story. So up to this point, I think they don't really give a damn about the students.

You know, the students are doing their thing. People who are working in factories. They're at a dirty theatre. Exactly, wearing their polo necks and, you know, talking about the crimes of imperialism. The people who work in Renault car factories don't give a damn about that. But this is a point i would

say in western europe generally when workers are restive across the board and that's why are they restive because the great economic miracle is stuttering inflation is rising but we're still in the the we're still in the 30 glorious years but you know they they don't know that they're still in the 30 glorious right okay so they think things are't know that they're still in the 30 glorious right okay so they think things are stuttering and i mean even a little bit of unemployment at this point even even an increase of a few thousand of tens of thousands seems to people absolutely disgraceful and unwarranted i mean also i think julian jackson who i think is probably the best english language historian of modern France,

author of the brilliant book on de Gaulle, he points out that one of the things that had really happened in France, away from the universities, away from the eyes of the newspapers, is that that economic miracle had been, as in Italy and other places, had been fueled by the movement of vast numbers of people who had previously been peasants. Right. And so this is why Britain has less of an economic recovery, because that process had already happened in the 19th century. Exactly. So that's why when you look at any chart of economic growth in the 50s and 60s,

Britain looks so much worse than Italy, than France, because this had happened in Britain generations earlier. But in France, the people who are moving in, who are fueling the economic boom, whose hard work is basically paying for it, they're immigrants or they are peasants, former peasants. And they are moving into the suburbs of the cities, as we know, if you've ever been through them on the train even yeah quite grim gray bleak places where they feel miserable and they feel a bit like the students actually and are they inspired by what they see of the students on tv i mean you said that they don't

care about the students but they must do a degree because i think otherwise they wouldn't be piling in yeah i think protests and well one of the lessons of what happens in 1968 across the world is that these things are infectious yeah that people think well if these pampered middle-class princelings can demand their rights why can't i yeah so it starts in nantes uh or near nantes there's a an aviation plant and there the workers go on strike they want better working it's often more about conditions than pay actually they want better working conditions better It's often more about conditions than pay, actually. They want better working conditions, better pay. They end up locking the management in their offices. And then partly because the news is traveling so fast

because of TV and radio, other workers nearby start occupying their factories. There's a strike at a Renault plant near Rouen. And then that spreads to the huge Renault manufacturing plants around Paris. So at a place called Flas, which is in the Valley de Seine, and at Bilancoeur, which is a suburb of Paris. I mean, these are massive, massive plants.

So to reiterate questions, so Red Danny, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, says later on that the workers and the students, they were never a joint force. And he said that the workers wanted a radical reform of the factories, wages, et cetera. Students wanted a radical change in life. So there is the kind of the nebulous demands that the students are making. Yeah. What on earth do the students want? But the workers, are their demands specific? Are they saying we want, you know, such and such a

pay rise? We want shorter hours. We want improved conditions. And these are the conditions we want improved. Or again, is it just a kind of general, we're going on strike because we want to overthrow the government? Do you know what, Tom? I think it's yes and no. So let me just answer that in a second. To give us some sense of how much this spreads. I said it starts on the 14th of May. By the 18th of May, 2 million workers are on strike. By the 23rd, 10 million workers are on strike. That's two thirds of the French workforce.

Now, why has this happened? I think their union reps absolutely want very specific. I mean, that's the job of a union rep. Yeah. They want very specific. You know, we want an increase in pay. We want a shorter working week, a shorter working day, more time off at lunch, all these little things, better health and safety, all the

stuff that basically you would want your union rep to ask for. But the workers themselves, I mean, go back to Julian Jackson. He says the strikes reveal they want not only better working conditions, but also to be heard and to be noticed. And I think that's really important, that these are people who are completely, you know, they are not glamorous, they're not fashionable, they're not very articulate, and they don't appear in the French culture of the 1950s and 60s.

You know, the sort of Jean-Luc Godard or the films about kind of cool students in, you know, Breton tops. Yeah, Maoist theater students. All of that stuff. These people don't appear in that at all. They are shut out, and they feel that they are living

in a very authoritarian, top-down society where you're expected to be deferential to the old men of the 1930s and 40s. Okay, and the representative of old men is de Gaulle. So is the aim of overthrowing de Gaulle as president and his government part of what this general strike comes to have as its object? Well, first of all, the Communist Party,

we'll come onto this in the second episode, the Communist Party do not want a revolution. They do not want... They must kind of want a revolution. I mean, they're communists. No, they're communists. Absolutely don't. Do they not want a revolution?

I mean, a lot of them do. They think this is bourgeois nonsense. They think it's not in keeping with their plan. It's not in keeping with the course of history. No, but in the long run, they want a revolution.

Oh, okay, fine, in the long run, but they want a revolution that they have planned and led and the conditions are right. They think, their reaction to this at first is they tell their people

they don't have anything to do with this. This is all just not bourgeois nonsense. This is mime artists. We are, you know, a true communist never interferes

with a mime artist. I think there is a sort of sense among ordinary French workers that it's not so much they want to overthrow de Gaulle. It's that they think de Gaulle is irrelevant,

actually. He really is irrelevant at this stage. As you said, he goes to Romania. He's out of the country. Because some of them are chanting, I see it in your notes,

the slogan, 10 years, sassi fi. Yeah, that's enough. That's enough. Exactly. And that's referring to the decade that de Gaulle has had in power as president. But I don't think that is driving it. I think they shout that almost as it were in passing.

I mean, just one last point about the, we'll touch on this again next time, in the next episode. The government does offer the trade unions basically everything they want. They get offered a few days later a 35% increase in the minimum wage, lots of pay for the strikers, pay increases all round,

better conditions, all this. And actually when the leader of the big union, the CGT, the big communist union, he goes to the big Renault plant at Bilanco, and he says, we've got this tremendous deal. They shout him down.

They say, not good enough. And at that point, I think what's happened is that the very specific demands of the kind of keen union activists have become overwhelmed. So again, a bit like the students. Yeah.

By the tragedy of the uh and one final question yeah um is cone bend it right when he says that basically the students and the workers are like parallel lines yeah i think so and i think that's actually not just french story that is a story everywhere in the Western democratic world where you have protests in the 60s and 70s. Now, normally what happens, and you see this in America a lot, but also in France and in Germany and in Italy, everywhere people try to, they dream of a worker-student alliance.

The students will say, say well we are oppressed proletarians just like you in a different way of course yeah you know okay mommy and daddy have a holiday home and uh yeah but but our oppression is is just as pernicious and people will try so students will go out to the factories this happens in france students go to the factories and they also do they stage um situation is drama probably probably factories and they also... Do they stage situation in drama? They probably do. But they also, they will get workers,

you know, car workers to come and address some of these sort of revolutionary committees they've set up in the sort of faculty buildings

of the Sorbonne. It's so soisant wheat. Well, it is. It's so soisant wheat. And these scenes actually often are quite painful. They're just quite embarrassing

because their demands are so different. Their life experiences are so stressful. And these scenes actually often are quite painful. They're just quite embarrassing because their demands are so different. Their life experiences are so different. However, I mean, we can laugh about this now, but at the time, you know, if we were here in May 1968 to sort of paint a bit of a picture for the listeners, we would have, the place would have been, there would have been students everywhere.

There would have been teachings theatrical shows and people talking this is what people remember people sitting and talking people talking slogans everywhere all those famous slogans it's forbidden to forbid the famous one we're talking about ripping up the cobbles um under the paving stones the beach sous la pavé la plage and they they did do a de gaulle poster so there'd be a picture of de gaulle covering the mouth of a young protester and the slogan says be young and shut up so this sort of sense that you don't have a voice um and and the most famous one the one that you still see we could go and buy a souvenir t-shirt if you're so inclined tom um be realistic demand the impossible well and that is the ultimate expression i would say

of the sort of amorphousness the meaninglessness i mean this is my anglo-saxon reductionism be realistic demand the impossible what does that mean lots of people listen to that will say that's very profound dominic don't be so mean spirited i mean it actually sounds like an advertising slogan. It does, doesn't it? It's the kind of thing that you would have on an advert.

Yeah. I think we should take a break at this point. So we'll do another episode on this. So what we will do next time, de Gaulle has been off stage. We'll bring him on stage. We'll look at his reaction.

We will look at arguably the most dramatic day in modern, certainly in post-war French history, at the end of May, when de Gaulle flees Paris, when it's not clear whether he's fleeing into exile or whether he's raising an army to march on the city,

to retake the city. And we'll look at what happens and the legacy of 1968 for France and indeed for the Western world more generally. Excellent. Excellent. Great stuff, Dominic. Thanks so much. And thank you also to Wise.

And Wise, Dominic, have actually created a travel guide to Paris. Oh, that's good. So if you want to visit the locations that we've been talking about. If you want to throw cobblestones and paint slogans on walls, this is your chance. Absolutely. So it includes lots of the locations that we've talked about in today's episode. And Dominic,

people want to learn more about how you can travel like you, a historian. Most people would want to travel, wouldn't they? And spend like a local. Yeah. And then they can visit

wise.com slash restishistory, wise.com slash restishistory, or click the link in today's episode description. But we will see you next time where we will finish off this extraordinary story, Les Événements,

the events of 68. Au revoir. Bye-bye.