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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

French students take to the streets!

by New Worker correspondent

Protest marches Barricades around schools. Tear-gas in the streets. The protests, led by French school students demanding more education funding that began last month have swept across the country. Now they’re kicking off in neighbouring Belgium as demands for more teachers and smaller classes lead to violent clashes with the riot police in Paris and many other cities in France.

France is witnessing one of its largest high-school student mobilisations in decades. What began with blockades over teach er shortages and deteriorating conditions has spread across the country, with hundreds of schools affected and thousands of students taking to the streets.

The movement is demanding more resources for public education, adequate staffing and better school infrastructure, while confrontations with police and the use of tear gas have led to further clashes on the streets. The Education Ministry say 375 schools have been fully or partially closed and more than 6,600 protesters have been arrested during the protests that are being backed by the unions and the communist and socialist movements of France.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has promised to address student concerns as growing protests force hundreds of schools to close. Students are demanding better school conditions and more teachers, while criticism grows over the violent response of the police at demonstrations. In parliament Lecornu said there can be “no room for tolerance of violence” as tens of thousands of students took to the streets nationwide to protest at the dismal state of the schools. “Burning down a high school does not improve the state of high school buildings. Attacking a teacher does not help replace teachers” he said, claiming it was a “lie” to suggest the government had ordered police repression against demonstrators.

But the Union of Communist Youth (UJC), the youth wing of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France (PCRF), is calling for the students’ struggle to be broadened and strengthened. “We salute this initiative and call on young people to join it and help expand it. Faced with these demands for decent education, police repression has been unleashed and continues: the use of tear gas, violent arrests and intimidation” the UJC said.

“The Union of Communist Youth stands in solidarity with these demands and calls for them to be broadened in order to strengthen mass, class-oriented trade unionism among working-class and popular youth, vocational high-school students and apprentices, while stepping up efforts to encourage young people to join trade unions and student unions.

“The Union of Communist Youth also calls for the demands to be extended to include an end to all forms of compulsory unpaid work, such as company intern ships undertaken by students in vocational high schools.

“As the successive bourgeois governments of Emmanuel Macron move towards a war economy, the repression of high school students demonstrates the predatory character of the French monopolies and their state. The violence being unleashed today is the violence of a mode of pro duction that prefers imperialist wars and anti-social offensives to education.

“Working-class and popular youth, organise your anger! Everyone into the struggle! Support and intensify the struggles of high-school students!”