The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 23rd October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 23rd October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
French troops are pouring into Paris and other major French cities to back up police efforts to quell the student-led anti-government protests sweeping across the country. Demonstrations are being banned and curfews imposed on parts of Paris, Marseilles and Lyon. And President Macron has postponed a trip to Nigeria and Senegal to meet student representatives in a belated effort to end the crisis.
The current protests raging throughout France erupted in mid-September when high school students from the Paris suburbs took to the streets to demand better conditions in their schools. They were subsequently joined by people fed up with the soaring cost of living and the demonstrations spread to other regions. Thousands of protesters have been arrested and thousands more injured in clashes with the riot squads who have not hesitated to fire stun grenades and tear gas at the demonstrators, many of them school-kids protesting about the dismal state of the public education system. A 15-year-old in the northern city of Lens lost his hand to a grenade and a 16-year old in Tours was blinded in one eye. Over 500 police have also been injured and one protester died after suffering a cardiac arrest during demonstrations in Paris.
Anger exploded at the nationwide demonstration on 17th October when over a million demonstrators took to the streets amid calls for a general strike to bring down the government.
Meanwhile dockers across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas are preparing for a co-ordinated international anti-war strike and mobilisation next week. The second International Day of Action of Dock workers on Friday 30th October is expected to involve around 100 ports worldwide, as workers refuse to allow ports and trans port infrastructure to become vital links in the machinery of imperialist war. The mobilisation follows a one-day international strike in February that brought together dockers from 20 ports in seven countries.
The reactionary French government calls for calm while blaming the violence and the looting and arson that has followed on “agitators from far-left fringe groups”, vandals, anarchists and criminal elements. But the violence that has erupted here and there is primarily the result of police brutality that has enraged the masses who have now taken to the street in even greater numbers to demand change.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the left social-democratic La France Insoumise (LFI) party, blamed “ten disastrous years” of Macron’s policies for the crisis and accused Laurent Nunez, the Interior Minister and police commanders of complete incompetence. Melenchon said the protests were “the result of ten disastrous years during which President Macron has under mined the functioning of the state and public services”.
The PRCF (Pole of Communist Revival) movement says disagreements between left-wing forces must in no way limit solidarity in the struggle while warning the reactionary parties, and the bourgeoisie that they serve, against any attempt to exploit the situation to further restrict freedoms, manipulate the state of emergency or ban the LFI (France Unbowed) movement – the largest left party in the country.