On 19 November around 30,000 people demonstrated in defence of public services and against privatisations. The turnout reflected the fact that the main union federation, the CGT, effectively boycotted it.
This explains why it fell so short of the last day of action on 4 October that mustered one million people. It most certainly was not a sufficient expression of anger given the blows presently raining down on workers and the repression against the rebellious youth in the banlieues, the run down suburbs of Paris.
The declaration of a state of emergency and the absence of any response to the attacks since 4 October have allowed the government to broaden its offensive, to repress struggles and to organise a real provocation against the youth on the housing estates and in the popular neighborhoods, areas which have been transformed into ghettos of unemployment and repression.
The government’s objective is to move the offensive onto the terrain of “law and order", to divide the working class from the ethnic minority youth, just when it was re-launching the struggle over wages and unemployment. Thanks to the complicity of the reformist leaders, who have refused to launch any struggle against the state of emergency, the government has partially succeeded.
We need a genuine program of action that strongly links the fight against the state of emergency and police repression and racism, to the fight for a general strike, which is the only way to kick out this reactionary government. Only a response, approaching the scale of November 1995, will enable us to defeat the attacks, whose overall aim is to wipe out all the gains working class has made since the Second World War.
Yes, the French bourgeoisie is going for the knock out. One of its representatives, Nicolas Sarkozy, does not hesitate to carry out such a policy against the most repressed part of the working class: to mount provocations, threaten deportations, impose daily police checks.
We should also learn the lessons of the 1995 struggles. We need to establish our own co-ordinations to control the movement, not just mobilize for the days of action – to occupy the factories on strike and to organise solidarity. Without such a plan, it is empty to talk about an “emergency programme” as Lutte Ouvriere and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire regularly do.
Their programmes do not advance the workers and youth in their current struggles and do not challenge the reformist misleaders. To do this we need to mobilise the workers both around the attacks on their conditions and around the following demands:
· Down with the state of emergency and the repression!
· Solidarity with the youth in struggle!
· We must reply tous ensemble against the attacks of the government and the employers. We need fighting bodies uniting the whole working class, we must organise a strike to unify all the sectors in struggle.
· Let’s finish with their “order” and their system of exploitation!