INDEX

This blog is dedicated to the translation and circulation of documents and communiques from the international response to the austerity just now settling in. For the moment we’re focussing on France.

A blog is not an ideal platform for the circulation of texts of lasting interest. New translations – we can hope for substantial analysis now that the movement’s past its first peak – will continue to appear as blog posts; but this headline post will be continually updated with the most relevant links and documents.

LIENS 1: An 11-page PDF, including articles translated by others, which aims to be an accessible and practical tool for facilitating reflection on the character of the movement passing in France and its relation to the UK (and maybe other Anglophone countries.)

FRANCE FALL: a bulletin issued at the height of the French events in daily tranches; a huge amount of detail is offered on all sorts of un- and under-reported events in those weeks. Important source material for developing a sense of what occurred there and its significance for us and for history. Written by a Francophone comrade, errors in the english should be overlooked for the sake of the radical content.

The Rennes ‘Address’, directed to everyone in Europe facing austerity measures, and featured in LIENS 1, is worth reading: as representative of a certain part of that movement, and as having a few good arguments on the way, too.

Can dialectics break sheet glass?

The following text, published collectively by a Parisian assembly, deals with the unhappy events at Place de la Bastille, where an occupation of the opera there was liquidated by the police with astonishing efficiency which led many to speculate that they’d provoked the whole thing in the first place. It also touches on ‘comrade ninja’, so-called for having been filmed launching a flying kick into the back of a ‘good citizen’ trying to stop a hooded guy from smashing a window. All of them were widely denounced as police, too.

Really the last edition to this first number of LIENS (page 13).

From Jusqu’ici: interview with a striking worker at Saint-Nazaire

There should be more material on what’s coming up in France – as everyone in the struggle tries to hang on through the school holidays after the CGT went back to work. But here’s something about the moment that just passed. The following is from the new weekly strike bulletin Jusqu’ici (‘hitherto’ or ’til now’), whose first issue was released on Friday the 28th of October [PDF]. It doesn’t have a website yet. We’ve translated the editorial from the first page – for context – and an interview with a striking FE college teacher at Saint-Nazaire [Lyceens, enseignants, cheminots, greveurs des rafineries, nous sommes tous en reseau, page 8 of Jusqu’ici], which is interesting for its slightly finer-grained than usual account of the way the movement was organising itself in the last few weeks in that ‘last bastion of the worker’s movement’. Here’s a PDFof the english translation. (This blog format is dumb.)

After the ‘end of the movement’

As the national and international media lines up with Sarkozy in announcing the movement over after the main CGT strikes wound up (in the refineries and ports), we’d like to offer a few obstinate declarations from the last couple of days. Not to prejudge anything, naturally.

In this post, a communique from an assembly in Toulouse on the 28th [Nous sommes lies a ce mouvement] and a statement from the journalist’s union brance at Ouest-France denouncing their own paper’s collaboration with the state’s preferred narrative of the movement.[Enrayer la declin editorial] After the break.

Le front commun des casseurs

A few notes on the following: erudite and isolated, this ‘free electron’ offered a few days ago (french original) a few thoughts on the material reality of the media-construct ‘casseur’ (literally ‘breaker’, meaning hooligan, vandal, parasite, almost psychopath) in the current moment. The following text isn’t so much a document of the current movement as a real-time critical assessment of its scope and possibilities. Since the ‘vandal’ has been such a central figure in the English-language reportage of events in France, we thought it’d be useful to circulate. So: PDF(nothing special) and plaintext after the break.

(we didn’t translate the title: ‘front commun’ means something like ‘shared front’ but the echo of ‘communisme’ was worth too much to take out. ‘casseur’, as will become clear, means almost nothing. There were two things that we couldn’t translate, too: one sentence left in French, in full, in the text body; and the acronym ‘SO’, some sort of mainstream leftist body. Corrections welcome.)

A pretty important manifesto. RENNES.

There’s increasingly a solid flow of documents from France, (the best English-language source is libcom) but the following contribution’s worth a special mention for its international focus. If you’re going to read one thing from that burning country then, etc. PDF for printing and circulation; liens post.

Address to the wage-earners, unemployed and precarious workers of all the countries in the European Union

There’s more forthcoming, but this ‘Address’, issued a few days ago by some guys around the various assemblies in Rennes (“Some participants in the general assembly of the students of the University Rennes 2, in the movement of unemployed and precarious workers, and in the inter-professional general assembly of Rennes”) is pretty important. The following is a modification of the translation of the original French posted on libcom a day or so ago. As usual, a plaintext version below the break; a two-page PDF is also available and not ugly. Really this is for distribution: circulate it as widely as you think it can have an impact, it’s not dumb. Or, as we say in a note at the end of the PDF:

(we’re circulating this text as the most advanced and serious effort at practical reflection that’s come out of the French movement so far. We hope, with its authors, that it will inspire discussion and action this side of the channel – even perhaps, across this whole stricken continent, which could in our opinion do with more striking).

MORE WHEN IT’S BROKEN.

“Maintaining order is an extremely political science”: Interview with Patrice Ribeiro, General Secratary of the French Police Officer’s Union.

The following was published a couple of days ago in the Catholic-linked French newspaper La Croix [FRENCH ORIGINAL]. It’s a quite startlingly direct account of the challenges of policing the current movement. More coming up this evening, hopefully.

Survey of the first week of indefinite strike, blockades and other small pleasures, preceded by an incomplete analysis of the current situation.

The following text, published in French on the morning on Monday the 18th of October, is an effective summary of events in the development of the struggle against pension reform up to that date. Other materials will supercede it rapidly, but it will retain, one trusts, some of its interest – as a document of its moment, collecting the detritus of the first week of movement and displaying it for discussion. One hopes it might support serious conversation elsewhere in the world, too. Not tremendously pretty but readable PDF. An ugly plaintext version follows under the break.

Two Days of struggle in Rouen (October 15th and 16th)

Rouen: 24 hours of all sorts of blockades and demos. [original]

From now on, each day at 11 in front of the prefecture, the different sectors in struggle [secteurs en lutte] assemble to organise blockades [actions de blocages.]

Wednesday the 13th: the assembly turned into a demonstration which blocked successively (and briefly) two bridges.

In the afternoon, around 200 people (train drivers, postmen, hospital workers, electricians, students, teachers etc) blocked the eastern industrial zone for an hour.

Thursday the 14th: at 5 am the sorting office was blocked for more than two hours, with the aim of preventing the lorries from leaving to distribute the post to the smaller offices. The students and railway workers went to support the struggling postmen.

At 11 am the interprofessional assembly was cut short by the arrival of masses of lyceens[1]. Many high schools were blockaded in the morning. At one of them the police intervened, making some arrests.

At this assembly it was decided to leave all together in order to go and interrupt the Europe 1 [2] live radio broadcast (live in Rouen today) with the aim of broadcasting our own message [prendre parole a l’antenne].

The heterogenous cortege was invited to follow the CGT’s truck towards Place de la Pucelle (where Europe 1’s tent had been pitched) which proved to be protected by numerous CRS. An soon as the place came into view, a group of lyceens set off towards it, as planned. Eggs were thrown at the police. During this time the sound-system lead the rest of the demo a little further on, where they all dispersed: contrary to what had been announced those who were leading the demo visibly didn’t intend to go to the agreed destination.

At 1 pm, as announced in the morning, a blockade was installed (by more than a hundred people) at a fuel depot. The nearest refinery is one of the 10 refineries on strike in France (the two not striking not in any case receiving crude oil from the ports.re-write this) Production was stopped. The region was therefore supplied by the small reserves of the fuel depot. To stop the lorries entering this depot therefore amounted to depriving the petrol stations of their last supplies. After an hour of blockade, it was suggested to stay all day – and even all night. Against this idea another was proposed: to reimpose the blockade later to allow us time to organise materially. We still didn’t know if this ‘later’ would happen or not – but nothing could be decided, and the blockade was lifted around 6 pm.

There are other meetings planned for the days to come.

Indymedia Nantes,14th October 2010.

 

The bridge periodically barricaded by guys in Rouen lately.

 

Rouen, October 15th: Blockades of roads, bridges, petrol depots… [original]
Today, October 15th, the movement carried on in Rouen.

4 am: Start of a blockade of the fuel depot. The blockade started yesterday afternoon but was lifted for the night. This morning it was the truck drivers who’d just come on strike who initiated the blockade. They were quickly joined by workers from different sectors and many strudents. The truckers left to block another depot just next door.

8 am: a blockade was organised by students close to the university of Mont-Saint-Aignan. The idea: to block the road from the bottom of the bottom of the valley, main route of access to the uni from town. Forty people undertook the action: tree trunks were dragged onto the road, along with palettes and tyres. The fires were lit. Tracts were distributed to drivers – who turned around – or to people who parked their cars and climbed by foot. The participants left the blockade towards the end of an hour, leaving the barricade and setting fire to the piles of tyres before they left.

11 am: Since the last few days the interprofessional assembly has been systematically attended by lyceens. That’s to say that where before we had to block Mathilde bridge with 300, now we find ourselves heading there with 2000. A cortege [3] (evidently, like everywhere in France) lively and worked up: that runs, drags, blocks, throws, hurls, leaves the agreed route etc. Nevertheless the demonstraters arrive at Mathilde road bridge (which has 4 lanes), which they invade. A huge mess right at the heart of the circulation system. From now on the lyceens lead the cortege. Later, at a crossroads, the cops get out of their vans and get their helmets on. Stones thrown. Builder’s fences are piled up in front of the police. The order to disperse is given. One lyceen (at least) is arrested by the Bac [4]. The “tense face-off”, as they say on telly,
carries on for a while.

5 pm: the blockage of the petrol depot still holds on. Now it’s expected to be permanent. The blockaders expect to spend the night there, and to take shifts. There’s a fire of palettes to keep them warm, a tent to keep the rain off, a barbecue.

Indymedia Nantes, 15th October 2010.

footnotes.

1. The lycee (wikipedia) is a specifically French institution, something like our sixth-form colleges or high schools (UK). 15-18 year-olds attend. The lyceens, a particular social force in France, systematically have a central role in the development of struggles there.
2. French news radio station
3. The word cortege, which exists in English (as in ‘funeral cortege’) is used extensively in French. It marks a group that’s broader in composition than a ‘block’ but still moving somewhat coherently; and that’s more practical than a mere ‘demonstration’ – with all its political assonances in English – since it’s often – as in this context – on the way to some act or another of economic sabotage. So we’ve used the odd English word.
4. Brigade Anti-Criminalite (wikipedia, fr) a section of the French National Police, a plain-clothes unit that acts in the context of demonstrations as a sort of informal skirmishing unit operating fluidly around relatively static lines of CRS, riot police. When they intervene they have to put on orange arm-bands; they also often carry helmets, batons, pepper spray etc.