Social Control
Breaking out of the Ghetto: Lessons from the CPE struggle
France was aflame with insurrectionary fervour again earlier this year as over 20 million people made perfectly clear their displeasure at the increasingly repressive social and economic policies of the French State.
The pretext this time was the introduction of new labour laws, and two in particular- the CPE and CNE, which threaten to 'liberalise' the economy, moving power away from the employee and shifting it into the hands of the employer. This will end the employment rights and the 'right to work' that many of those demonstrating saw their parents and grandparents fight to win on the picket lines of industrial relations during the 60's to 80's.
This widening of the notion of precarity- the shifting of power from the individual to the company, of emphasising in law a company's right to profit over the individual's right to a salary, demonstrates yet again Capitalism's raison d'etre, its wish and ability- its need- to conquer every dimension of social space in the pursuit of progress and profit.
The current shift to the right and authoritarianism under the guise of social democracy has been taking place in France, as in many other 'Western' countries, since the late 1960's. Accompanying civil unrest, as people become more and more alienated and atomised, as Capitalism attempts to transform them from spontaneous social animals into regulated units of production and consumption, has sprung up intermittently during this time. The most recent was last November, which saw a spate of anti-police, anti-State violence over the space of 3 weeks following the death of two banlieu* kids who were running, innocently, to escape an ID check by les keufs (cops); these controles are becoming increasingly racist and increasingly common. The most notable uprising is undoubtedly the infamous events of May 1968, which ignited insurrectionary waves all over the world, and whose (situationist) influence could still be seen amidst the smouldering cars and graffiti which littered France again this year.
These new employment laws, of which there are actually several, mark a new era in the relationship between individual, society, State and Capital in France. The most notorious are the CPE or First Employment Law, and the CNE or New Employment Law. The majority of the anger manifested in the March/April riots was directed primarily at the CPE, which in turn was directed at young people under 26. This law entitled an employer to sack any employee aged 26 years or under, without divulging the reason, at any time during the first two years of their employment. For the first time in many years both the workers' unions and students' unions, both with a strong tradition of organising in France, came out in open defiance to the government, along with the unemployed and otherwise generally disaffected, who also have a strong history of organising- although in a markedly different manner. The nature of this battle set in the social landscape was extremely interesting in terms of the ongoing struggle against all aspects of authority and control, with both sides (a reductionist term, used for simplicity in this context) evolving in a tactical sense within their individual paradigm. The following is a brief look at the nature of these changes.
One of the most significant aspects of this last uprising, which reflected the events of '68, was the widespread contribution of the student body. They formed the backbone of the entire movement, with virtually every university and a large number of lycee being occupied and reclaimed as space from which revolutionary propaganda was propagated and some sometimes quite complex direct action against the State was planned.
The major tactic employed, along with the use of blockading major roads and train stations, was that of the traditional demo, or manif. Every Tuesday a Greve Generale, or General Strike was called, which, although it did not quite live up to its name- consisting at best of a large proportion of the public sector, but hardly any significant amount from the private sector of the workforce- was still an impressive and formidable spectacle.
From the very beginning of the anti-CPE movement an important and unfortunate split was evident, and nowhere could this be more plainly seen than during the weekly manifs. The split was along the usual lines and is one that is surely doomed to hinder any true insurrectionary movement. On one side there were the 'fluffies'- the reformists, the bourgeois, the left liberals and communists- les pacifistes; on the other were the 'spikies', those committed to real change and those with nothing left to lose, the anarchists, insurrectionists, anti-capitalists and the other disempowered and disaffected enemies of the totality- 'les casseurs' (the breakers).
At the beginning of the movement, and during the first strike/demo, the ranks of les pacifistes formed the majority of those demonstrating against the CPE. The reformist opinions of the majority unions held sway, and the political line emerging from the student unions was equally reformist. There was a small anarchist/ insurrectionary/ situationist faction, which made its presence felt amongst the manifs with a scattering of black and black/red flags. The syndicalists, in the guise of the CNT, are still popular in France, although this school of anarchist thought is slowly on the wane as the general anarchist critique comes to terms with industrialism's role within the Totality. Propaganda, the majority of which was also anarchist or coming from an anti-State or anti-Capitalist stance, was rife; being distributed by a wide selection of groups covering the student, worker and anarchist/situationist milieux. The general political feeling however, at the beginning of the movement, was definitely reformist. The main critique, the main political question being posed, was on the issue of precarity; people could see that political power was being taken from them by the State under the guise of 'opening up the market' and the general response was that the State must be made to scrap these new laws- that the 'right to work' must be protected.
Amongst the workers and the majority of the students this concept of 'work' was sacrosanct. The notion of a safe, secure job with an adequate salary protected by law, the rights that were bitterly fought for and won towards the end of the last century were the main bone of contention. People saw that the CPE would take away this security and the anti-CPE movement was launched with these criteria in mind: people came out on strike, people occupied their places of work and of learning, in order to demand the right to remain a wage slave! Initially this was as far as peoples' critique went- that the CPE would take away their right to negotiate the terms of their own economic enslavement.
This determination by the leftist workers' unions and students' unions to use only peaceful civil disobedience to convince the government to change the law led to some rather disturbing scenes on the Tuesday of the first strike. There were several reports of students and union stewards/'officials' intervening in situations involving property damage and detaining comrades until they could be given over to the police. Basically, under some sort of twisted sense of social morality and worker ethics the left acted as a proxy police force, doing the State's job for it. There were several reports of this sort of incident taking place, usually occuring when somebody attempted some form of actual direct action, or simply manifested their anger, rage or frustration into any form of action outside of the passive protest deemed sufficient by the reformist left. People were detained and handed to the enemy for throwing stones or for attempting to damage or burn private property, usually under the misguided notion that property damage was in some way harmful to the 'workers'. The author personally witnessed students putting out a fire which anarchists attempted to start in a JCB as a diversionary tactic three times with the reasoning that burning the JCB was bad because it belonged to the workers, because it would put somebody out of a job. Many of the students seemed to be possessed of this mentality, but it was mainly the old guard of the leftist unions, particularly the stewards, with their high-vis vests and walkie-talkies, who were blatantly making the most of their deemed and self-imposed authority during the march.
This perception was, as always, reinforced by the mainstream media who portrayed any form of physical assertion as the work of the usual minority of rent-a-mob (although interestingly the French media are not as want as their UK contemporaries to use the word 'anarchists' in the pejorative tabloid sense), demonising any tactic outside of those deemed acceptable, i.e controllable, by the bourgeois media and the State. Once this paradigm has been created, named and represented (in this case as les casseurs), the concept becomes yet another form of control to be used by the State, media or any other interested party. Les casseurs were presented as the same 'mindless thugs' who created havoc at the end of last year torching countless cars, businesses and State buildings- an uncontrollable mob from the ungovernable banlieus* with no valid political stance, racaille (scum) according to Sarkozy, for whom the only solution is a taste of the police baton and the prison cell. This interpretation was gladly adopted by the left who took up the chant, 'casseurs, cassez-vous!' (rioters, get lost!) at the sight of any real confrontation with the forces of law and order.
However, at the end of the manif, after a fairly peaceful march with flags and banners waving, and anti-government chants chanted, the police changed their tactics and upped the ante in a move expected by many of us who understand the nature of these games, but a move which seemed to take the majority of students and unionists by surprise. After all had they not just played by the rules- demonstrating peacefully in a peaceful, orderly manner? I refer of course to the inevitable police assault. As is usually the way on demonstrations on the continent, the police were not even that visible during the march itself, just making their presence felt at any junctions and intersections along the route (although footage viewed later makes it clear that not only was the final assault itself planned, but there was a massive amount of undercover police infiltrated amongst the marchers, all masked up and blatantly there in the role of agent-provocateur, not simply in a observing or preventative role).
So, as people congregated at the end of the march,and slowly started to dissipate, lines of fully tooled-up CRS (riot squad) and BAC (Brigade Anti-Criminelle) appeared around the remaining demonstrators.Then, after a brief provocative wait and period of taunting on both sides, the inevitable missiles began sailing through the heady afternoon atmosphere. Suddenly the air was full of the dull thud of bricks and shrill staccatto laugh of breaking bottles raining down from one side, and the 'zip, zip,zip' of numerous CS gas canisters trailing their graceful arc from the other, all interspersed with the random ear-shattering cacaphony of disorientation grenades.
People reacted quickly to this sudden change; some were obviously awaiting this very turn of events, although the amount of people screaming and running around like headless poulets showed that the majority were caught off guard, creating the very situation that les keufs desired- total confusion and the destruction of any form of existing organisation on the side of the demonstrators. However, many produced masks and joined their already covered comrades. Existing street furniture was requisitioned- crowd control barriers, wheelie-bins- and makeshift barricades thrown up, sometimes being set alight, to slow the advancing police lines. This gave people time to adapt to the change in circumstance, to avoid the snatch squads which were suddenly active, to get their bearings and decide whether to join in the confrontation or to leave the field, safely and under their own volition.
The police soon settled into an obviously well practiced routine, after all they had just manufactured a 'hot' situation where they they could put their paramilitary tactics into real-time practice. They would line up 20-30 metres in front of a barricade, lob in a volley of tear gas, wait for the gas to disperse slightly, and advance rapidly up to the barricade whilst sending out snatch squads to mop up any stragglers. In this situation the barricades served mainly to slow the police advance rather than as a device to hold onto a piece of land for any amount of time.
The development of the police tactics during the main 3-4 weeks of the disturbances was particularly interesting. There was a marked change between their approach at the beginning and at the end. At the start of the movement the police tactics could be viewed as 'conventional' continental style- the police kept a low profile during the march, only to turn up at the end and face off the marchers in a head-on confrontation which resulted in classic stylee running battles. By the second week police lines were appearing at the sides in a sort of pincer movement, causing any gathered crowd to disperse quickly and reform elsewhere. By the third week, however, the polices tactics appeared to develop into something more akin to UK style policing. At the place where the march was supposed to end there was the usual concentration of troops; however this time they were not only blocking the direction in which the march was heading, but were already in place in large numbers down the sides aswell. Then, as soon as all of the demonstrators had caught up with the main body, the police also formed up at the rear, surrounding the march by forming the classic kessel, or kettle. Anybody inside the kessel was then refused permission to leave, the police making no distinction between those who were demonstrating and other members of the public. What happened next I don't know, as our group decided that that was a good time to leave. Luckily there was a Metro entrance inside the kessel which provided a quick escape route, and not a flic in sight- although I'm not sure whether this was an oversight or a deliberate ploy by the police.
Certainly, this development of the tactics of the French police is interesting, and this slow transition towards something similar to UK policing makes me wonder whether there were advisors there from London's Finest.
Another new tactic employed by the police was the use of fluorescent pink paint balls to mark individuals deemed to be 'troublemakers', and there was also the usual plethora of video cameras, both with the officers on the ground and at strategically placed vantage points in first floor windows. Interestingly there was no use of helicopters.
The generally reformist and leftist view held by those comprising the anti-CPE movement did appear to slowly dissipate somewhat during the few weeks of its existence. As previously noted, the critique held by the majority was, at first, largely aimed at the issue of precarity, and was directed toward the end of forcing the government to not implement the new liberalising labour laws, but to instead keep the current ones. In this respect the movement was largely reactive and conservative.
However, as the movement progressed and matured into its second and third weeks, so did the level of critique. As people actually came into real, direct contact with the true nature of the State in the form of the police/CRS, and as the masses of street propaganda became more critical of the entire status quo, the general feeling surrounding events became more revolutionary. This change of feeling manifested itself in many ways; it is hard, if not impossible, to actually pin it down to any single criterion or phenomenon. For example, by the second 'general' strike many more students appeared masked-up, a week or more of exposure to police tactics whilst posing as pacifistes convincing them to become casseurs; the influence of the unions appeared to have dwindled; and the voice of the banlieus began to make itself heard, with some kids as young as 11 or 12 just blatantly fronting up lines of CRS and attacking them. The chant on the street also changed to 'pacifistes, cazzez vous!'
Another important phenomena were the 'general assemblies'. These appeared to be the main method of mass consensus decision making and were used all over the country, some centred in the occupied universites, some elsewhere. Essentially non-heirarchical in form, some decisions involving thousands of people, from all sectors of the community, were made in this way. A statement of action would be posed, then discussed in small autonomous groups in the assembly and any questions or queries raised against it, if possible the statement of action, or plan, would then be modified to accomodate. Although not perfect, this system worked remarkably well for some of the more rapid decisions that needed to be made and there was something quite exhilirating about participating in decisions made in this way.
Unfortunately, one of the initial strengths of the movement, the students, was also its downfall. After the unions had been bought off with some minor concessions in the law, many of the students who formed the movement followed- conceding defeat whilst attempting to cry victory. But it was a phyrric victory, if at all. The government delivered its concessions just before the final exams of some students, and with a small change in the law to ease their conscience they held ballot-box elections, decided to end the strike (the vote was extremely close in some areas, leading to several violent confrontations between those for and against the occupation), and returned to their ivory towers to graduate and perpetuate the very system they had just denounced.
A broad overlook of the unrest shows that a strong similarity can also be drawn with the Thatcherism of the 1980's in the UK. Back then the British government played the same game, destroying community values, dismantling the unions, criminalising dissent and handing power over to the private sector through the privatisation of the economy. Interestingly it was only after one wave of particularly effective strike action by the miners in 1981 caused the Conservative government to back down, that Thatcher asserted herself and the British government finally took off the gloves and changed the British social and economic landscape for once and all in 1984. An analogy can be drawn here, I suggest, with current events in France. Although the last wave of unrest could be argued to be successful from a reformist point of view in that it forced the French government to change the terms of the CPE, the fundamental terms, criteria and goals of the new laws remain- the liberalisation of the economy. And it could be argued that these changes were only forced because of a relatively weak political situation- because of a prime-minister, Dominic Villepin, who has a reputation for being rather soft, effete and ineffectual when it comes to imposing both discipline and his own will.
However, waiting in the wings of French politics we also have Nicholas Sarkozy (Sarko), an extremely authoritarian right-wing politician with an unbridled thirst for power. Sarko was, quite shrewdly, rather quiet during the recent troubles, being quite happy to let Villepin, his arch-rival, take the flak. This Machiavellian solipsist is an expert in the modern political art of media-spin, manipulating the media to ooze slimy charismatic spectacles like those of his contemporaries Blair and Berlusconi. He is also quick to utilise the full power of the state in order to achieve his political ends; he being responsible for the recent zero tolerance approach to tackling crime, the current explosion in new prisons (esp. youth prisons), and the protagonist of the French equivalent of the Criminal Justice Act which virtually wiped out free party culture in France with the brutal suppression of parties and teknivals by the paramilitary CRS. Sarko's seemingly direct approach to politics, i.e saying what he is going to do and doing it without wrapping everything up in rhetoric, has won him the confidence of the French people. He is also standing in the Presidential elections next year. If he wins this election he can be expected to perform the same role as Thatcher, 'modernising' the French state to fit better within the global hegemonic neo-liberal project. If he wins we can also expect the banlieus, where he is a figure of hate, to explode.
In conclusion then: although mainly reformist, these recent events opened lots of eyes, and spread the idea of resistance to the totality of capital and civilisation, not just resistance and reform inside of it. New links were made both in France between students, anarchists and those from the banlieus and between other countries who can all see the product of these forms of policies both in the US and the UK. In effect both sides come out stronger- the police have more practice at urban warfare as do the insurgents, but les casseurs have built many bridges between different forms of struggle. Expect the next round soon.
* banlieus- ghettoes of high rises and poor quality housing on the edge of the city centre where immigrants and the underclass are dumped to keep them out of the way