The
ninth and tenth days of rioting in poor suburbs around Paris saw
a spread of the riots to other cities around France. During the
tenth night 1300 cars were burnt across the country, and 320
people arrested. Other targets of rioters during the night
included police stations, unemployment offices, a factory, a
McDonalds restaurant and two primary schools.
The incident which sparked
the first riots ten days ago was the death of two young boys who
tried to hide in an electrical transformer while running from
the police. Young people understand that fear, and are used to
being treated like animals by the police. The mobs of police
sent into the estates in the following days just stoked up
further riots. Two days later a police tear gas canister was
fired into a mosque during Friday prayers. The message of
contempt was clear.
In any case many of the
housing estates were just powder kegs waiting to explode. Very
high rates of unemployment among young people, more and more
cuts in public services, no money for decent transport services
to poorer towns, and an interior minister who makes a habit of
calling for “a crackdown on the scum” and making other similarly
inflammatory declarations.
The thousands of young people
in revolt come, for many of them, from a new generation of
children of immigrants who are concluding that there is little
hope for them. Over recent years they have seen rising electoral
support for the fascist Le Pen, racist laws against muslims, and
in the last few weeks vicious police round-ups in different
parts of town under the excuse of clearing out clandestine
immigrants. This summer a series of fires in unsafe housing for
poor Africans in Paris where dozens were killed underlined how
low down a priority poor people, and particularly non-white poor
people, are for this government.
There is also a general
political background to the riots. The right wing government is
highly unpopular. After the governing party’s disastrous results
in regional elections last year, and the victory for the Left
in the referendum on the European Constitution six months ago;
the government appears as absolutely illegitimate. The Prime
Minister De Villepin is so distant from ordinary people he has
never even been elected MP, but was appointed by the president.
President Chirac is generally known to have been involved in a
whole series of shady business deals, and only his presidential
privilege is keeping him out of the courts.
Despite its unpopularity, the
Right wing government has continued vicious attacks on social
justice. Taxes on the rich have been slashed, and new labour
laws make sacking workers much easier. The interior minister -
debonaire Mr Sarkozy, who has his eyes on becoming in 2007 the
youngest French president for many decades - has been hoping to
attract a couple of million fascist votes to his party by strong
“law and order” talk.
High levels of cynicism among
poorer young people are only to be expected. The hopelessness
has led to violent reactions, sometimes against the police,
often against other young people or ordinary workers. Last year,
the school students demonstrations were attacked by disaffected
young people, causing tremendous problems and eventually making
it impossible to organize further demonstrations. And if the
target of the present riots is often the police, it is also
ordinary people’s cars and schools which are being destroyed,
and firemen trying to intervene have been stoned by rioters.
Among workers in general, the riots can be interpreted in many
ways - people are talking of little else - and the capacity of
the Left to offer explanations different from the repressive and
often racist arguments of the Right is crucial. The government,
already unsteady is in deep crisis. The Interior minister’s talk
of harsh repression can actually gain him some popularity among
the general population. It is vitally important that the Left
have something to say too. But the main opposition party, the
Socialist party, has been generally supportive of the
government.
The Communist Party has called
for a rally in front of the Prime Minister’s residence. The
demands are more money for housing, cultural resources in poorer
towns, the right to vote for immigrants, but also a “more
democratic control” of the police. “The government has shown
itself incapable of keeping order” claims the CP communiqué.
The LCR, a revolutionary
organization of a few thousand but with, for the moment, an
influence far beyond its ranks (recently the Socialist Party
leader was accused by journalists of wanting to form a
government with the LCR!) organized a meeting of Left
organizations with the aim of organizing a demonstration in the
poorer suburbs of Paris. The march would be to demand the
resignation of Sarkozy and bigger budgets for these areas. It is
not yet clear what will come out of this initiative. On the 9th
November there will be “meetings to demand respect” around the
country.
Lutte Ouvrière, the other
revolutionary organization who almost always prefers to stay
outside broader single issue alliances, has denounced Sarkozy’s
provocative police presence, and the degradation of living
conditions for the poor, and called for more community policing
The combination of absolutely
justified revolt against government contempt and police violence
and racism on the one hand, and cynical despairing violence
against our own people on the other, makes for a difficult
debate on the Left about what to do and what to say. But the
radical Left is bigger and more influential than it has been for
twenty years, boosted by the referendum victory earlier in the
year. The terrain will not be left to the Right wing this time.
The riots could help bring down this government, providing they
go further and find some sort of link with a political discourse
that another France is possible. Many towns are seeing this
weekend leaflets, meetings and posters trying to move in this
direction. Regional trade union federations are organizing to
join this kind of initiative.
A few quotations
Guy Tresallet. Regional
secretary of the FSU teachers union and teacher in a technical
college in a poorer suburb of Paris :
“Respecting young people
doesn’t mean that anything goes - burning cars and schools is
unacceptable. But when my students, young women who are twenty
years old, tell me that when they see a policeman they run off
as fast as they can, there is a real problem.”
Sophie Juste, primary
school teacher in a remedial class at La Courneuve
“I think Nicolas Sarkozy is
very much responsible for the development of this violence,
because every time he comes to the poor suburbs, it’s to insult
the people and sho what contempt he has for us. I’m not
surprized people threw stones at hime when he turned up at
Argentueil. What was he there for, at night in Argenteuil,
surrounde dby TV cameras. ... I’m against the escalation of the
riots of course. Last night there were fires and real bullets at
the Balzac estate ... all the drugdealers must have jumped at
the chance to show they were still boss. But the kids really
need us teachers to be around. We want them to be able to
succeed, have thesame opportunities as the rest of the
population.”
Marie-Rose Moro, child psychiatrist
“What I see in this violence
is two sides of the same thing. I see every day the suffering of
these young people, who hurt themselves, who destroy themselves.
... over the last few days, this destructiveness is turned
outwards. But it’s the same teenagers, whether the violence is
turned inwards or outwards. No one understands the need to put
much more resources into these young people.”
