To mark the 50th anniversary of the 1968 May-June events that shook France and reverberated throughout Europe, the Kate Sharpley Library have brought out a excellent pamphlet, written by a participating eyewitness at the time, Flûtiste Le (the flute player). How have we moved forward in 50 years?
An anarchist eyewitness to the revolt of May-June 1968, Le Flûtiste ("the flute player") looks back on the highs and lows of Paris' student-worker rebellion. Topics covered include, student life before the revolt, the barricades of the Latin Quarter, the student and worker occupations and strikes and the part played by the anarchists in the upheaval.
"Having been hit by a grenade and come under gas attack, I had made up my mind to join the demonstration at Denfert-Rochereau. ... First I watched as the head of the demo paraded past, made up of trade union bigwigs and their henchmen; then came heaps of more or less unknowns such as the Situationist Guy Debord whom I spotted on his own, just him and a friend. Then, all of a sudden, my eyes were treated to the unbelievable spectacle of a forest of black-and -red flags, with a sprinkling of black flags! ... The public's curiosity about and interest in anarchist ideas was born right there and then. Anarchy, which the Stalinists and socialists generally - not to mention the bourgeois - had declared a dead duck in the land of Utopia, was rising like the phoenix from the ashes! Its burial licence had expired, to the great annoyance of all those respectable folk."First of all, on the outbreak of the fighting in Paris, between 300-400 anarchists were attending the gala of the Federation Anarchiste that evening in central Paris on May 10th. Members of other groups were present on that evening, including the Union of Anarchist Communist Groups, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Union and the anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT.These were on hand to reinforce the barricades that were set up that evening in the Latin Quarter, a culmination of weeks of unrest in the universities. To his credit Dany Cohn-Bendit of the March 22nd student movement used his megaphone to call for the taking over of the area. The writer describes this then anarchist as “hard to stick” as a person(more on that later).“Get this: what few leftwing or “leftist” students there were on hand tried to talk them of digging up the streets or building barricades and berated the barricade builders as “provocateurs”. They were promptly seen off…”The writer describes the lightning spread of barricades through the neighbourhood.”The clashes were violent in the extreme; many young people refused to give ground (to the police) and like out-and-out kamikazes, threw themselves into the hand-to-hand fighting”. He also notes that “local residents, outraged by the sight of the police brutality, sided with the students, tossing down buckets of water to dampen the effects of tear gas grenades and taking demonstrators into their homes”.As a result of the fighting and the vicious brutality the trade unions and left wing organisations were forced into calling a demonstration for May 13th. Over the coming days strikes broke out spontaneously around France.The leftists now attempted to hijack the movement, setting up literature stalls in the courtyard of Sorbonne university and token committees that they controlled.The demonstration on May 13th brought out between 500,000 to one million people. The writer notes the “forest of red-and-black flags with a sprinkling of black flags”.
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