25.01.1996

New possibilities

Strikes in France

SEVERAL ISSUES are still unresolved following last year’s upsurge of strikes in France. In spite of some notable concessions on the part of the government, the struggle has not come to an end. The main retreat for the government has been over the retirement age for public sector workers. It will remain at 55 for train drivers and 60 for teachers - for new workers as well as those already in service. In addition to this the government has withdrawn the cuts in the rail services. Workers were paid for half the days lost in the period of the strikes.

 The prime minister visited Marseilles last Wednesday and was met by a strike, and a demonstration of over 15,000. The government is determined to press on with its programme of dismantling the social security system and argues that this has been agreed by parliament and is thus not negotiable. In response unions are calling for a mass demonstration on February 11. However this is on a Sunday, and therefore represents a lower level of struggle than previously.

Action in the Marseilles area was more intense and protracted than in other areas of France and local communist René Barthes compared this to the situation in 1945: “The workers seized the factories,” he told me. “They had taken a much more active role in driving out the Nazi occupying forces than was the case in other parts of France.”

The Communist Party recently called a debate in which 3,000 people had participated in his area. This included the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (the French SWP), Lutte Ouvriere, plus greens, radicals and socialists: in fact all the left. Questions were raised of a united struggle against capitalism, not merely some election alliance.

René Barthes believes new possibilities are developing in France, perhaps in the same way as the development of Socialist Forums and the SLP is opening up British politics.

John Bayliss