Students at the university occupied buildings university was shut down when students at the sorbonne protested in support violent clashes broke out with police the revolt exploded and so every factory in france with 10000000. 00 workers go out on wildcat strikes schools were shut down barricades were erected blocking city Streets Police were attacked with bricks stones and molotov cocktails and yet this nationwide revolt failed unable to finally radicalize workers are offer a governing alternative to the authoritarianism of french president Charles De Gaulle the uprising open space culturally for new forms of selfexpression and space for the oppressed including women and gays it provided some benefits for workers raising wages and improving working conditions but because it never seriously threatened or altered the capitalist structures of power it collapsed under its own. On the way the question of how revolution succeed and fail is one i will discuss with mitch abbott or the author of may made me an oral history of the 1968 uprising in france the book is important for those on the left you pick the right people and whats even more important you ask the right questions. And so i want to kind of go through this popular revolt. Which unlike revolt in the United States berkeley. Was a nation wide phenomena which included the working class of the working class was possible in the 1960 s. To the progressive radical anywhere movements. But lets begin with i think one which i mentioned in the intro this idea that what triggers. A revolt of this magnitude is often so but all right because as you said. It begins its known to be the real activism begin to let me just for people who dont know a non tear so just a quick is in the west of paris its a solace horrible like most French College campuses and. If you had had up until world war 2 only a tiny percentage of the French Public had a College Education and that was almost exclusively for the only 6 in a lead institutions like e. N. S. O. And so they expanded these big universities so you have but its not like an American University the conditions are awful. Terrible overcrowding both in the classrooms everywhere else so so so the you know the university military is open to offload some of the crowding from the from the Latin Quarter as you said sold this campus was to paris in the middle of a slow but what happens is unlike people who are in the Latin Quarter of. Where they had many opportunities to go to bookstores they can go to millions of cafes where you sit youre out they have take the suburban trade to get there so what happens is the people who are like on the left of a certain left all gather together and they spend all their time together so the 1st issue that comes up in 1967 was in ontario but also in a couple of the universities was the right to visit each others dorms male female male female so so this is like the beginning of like real activism then theres a number of small incidents that follow there is a future january of 68 the ministry of youth and sport is really a ministry of youth and sport goes to inaugurate a pool. Can be indeed to at the time is still not that the big celebrity confronts the minister for ignoring the youth sexuality the minister says well you would need to go take a swim in the pool and then you would have to worry about sexuality because of because im a fascist so now things are really bubbling up there is the incident at the cinematheque where morrow 5. 1000 a little bit eric minister of culture and regional culture fires the head of the city particularly long while theres demonstrations there can be details pardon it then comes march and on march 20th antiwar demonstration near the opera. Just for the vietnam war is a huge issue and they have just come out of a horrific war without duryea right and they have been in every walk of european every war congress in february in berlin where people have shared methods in french youve been there so those that this is demonstration it turned sour when those get smashed people from the get arrested. 2 days later march 22nd the students occupy the administrative tower so this is where the march 22nd movement which would become a central part of the student activism got its name and got its beginnings months go by this stuff continues to go on Little Things here and there and then finally on may 3rd. The students gather in the courtyard of the sorbonne it is in the center of power in the senate in the heart of the left bank and the police are called in and i interviewed a number of people who were there and they cant explain why but this was just like one thing too many and they started throwing stones and it was from there that everything set off that was a series of Little Things plus the International Context that got everything going and yet these pressures that erupted. In these series of Little Things as you call them the pressures were formatting underneath within french society. Very similar to whats building in the kind of subterranean bowels of American Society i think including. Extremely difficult time for University Graduates to find employment so talk a little bit about what was happening in france at the time so at this point its with 10 years into the goals rule and even though france is a middle of whats what they call the 30 glorious years. Of the expansion of the economy nevertheless france remains a surprisingly repressive society and it was something that frankly i was surprised when i interviewed people it was almost uniform across france were where women talked about how. There were gatherings every year every year from there in their schools where they were assigned a future husband you know and what you would you could wear when you could go all of this was. Weighing on fun french youth just as it was weighing on youth all over the all of europe and in the in the u. S. Now the french though were also very much aware of what was going on here with the counterculture and the Student Movement berkeley the at the war movement and in april of the occupation of colombia and all of this is showing them that is a different way to be in to act so all of this fed into french discontent of this compared to the french young towards this old man de gaulle who is ruling them as one of the people interviewed said as if france it was as if france was salazars portugal sellers are the kind of fascist ruler of a very catholic portugal they had a degree of fascism and. Well you know i think that only authoritarian authoritarianism be a threat. And so erupts without a clear agenda i mean theres a point in the book where. Youre interviewing workers and they take over a factory and nobody knows what their demands are. You talk about 3 different types of movements in the may uprising because we do see unlike in the United States i would call it worker solidarity because you make it very clear from the interviews in the books that there was a huge disconnect and even animosity between the Student Leadership the Student Movement and the working class and yet nevertheless workers do it paralyze france. To talk about those 3 different strains within the uprising. First 1st and foremost there was the Student Movement we just discussed them and the workers when things begin in france when the mood begins on may 3rd and its quickly spreads across the universe whos a friend its the workers dont do anything in fact on the very day the. The uprising began on may 3rd the there was a lead editorial money to the French Communist Party newspaper that talked about was intitled the the fake revolutionaries to be unmasked attacking the students already had begun and there was with a famously called can be indeed a german anarchist theres a common deed is danny the red it is the red headed to rid the leader and on terror right and who become the symbol full for good and evil of me 68 so so the work is really dont do anything in the in that 1st week and then on may 10th 1068 a friday night demonstration. Goes on and ends with the famous night of the barricades the images that we have that are for example on the cover of the book where theyre ripping down the trees the trees and burning cars and building barricades all through well for the most part. On a couple of streets in the Latin Quarter and so this goes on its a violent night but this leaves the workers finally to say we need to join the fray they meet over the weekend and on may 13th the following monday a general strike is called is a correct and. In many of these factories it was not necessarily led by the Union Leadership while youre here just there it was kind of spontaneous well you know the situation was different in every factory even in different workshops within the same factory and in different regions but was on may 30th that all the Union Federations call for a general strike and so may 30th of these massive demonstrations of workers and students so now you would think we have the workers in the students marching together but it was as was pointed out to me by the founder of the main trotskyist group. That even though the workers in the students were marching at the same time in the same place they were marching for the same thing and they were large and separately well as and it is a they may have been one but i think you are right in the book about how the workers would have all their own banners and the students would be an income in another part of and it was terrible there were terrible fights every time there was a mass demonstration over who would lead it right where it would go and who would speak where and it was one of the you know one of the things that can be indeed said was he was really happy that i think was the main 13th demonstration i was walking at the head of the demonstration and those stalinist scoundrels will work walking in the back referring to the communists and when will continue with us when we come back when we come back well continue our conversation about rebellion revolt with mitch. You cannot be both with the yeah you like. The collapse of the russia game host has exposed yet again the unprofessionalism and bias of the corporate looking media the same media consistently project their own claim values to political preferences in even the truth or conspicuously absent in their news reporting. You are no offense but you no longer a young woman in fact you are one of the last living survivors of the nazi ellis past im aware of it. Leverage. All you like. And you can never forget. No i was really like to be inhaled close you would never believe it. If you met him dont you as an operating cost for 30 years if he could prevent it all seems so locked off by the time i make it. When i get out on the farm saw you i want to take my song to the next deal so he can piss in hopefully bless her. Join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and ill be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see you then. The world is driven by a dream shaped by one person. Who dares thinks. We dare to ask. Welcome back on contact we continue our conversation with mitch abbott or about the 1968 paris uprising so we have so the workers and the students seemingly marching together but in fact they really werent so they occupy the same space but not really there for the same thing because where is the students had all these utopian demands be realistic demand the impossible. The workers who are they with when theyre finally on strike. And then in the coming days that we occupy asians would start very really fighting for. Material demands for bread and butter demands for an end to the goal and for increased human union rights and so this really this failure to connect between the 2 of you know you in the book you say the differences between the quantitative demand right workers and the students want to completely change society right and v as it was explained to me by. A group of communists that i interviewed in the in the center there in britain the that. The communists for the from the companys point of view this is the 3rd or are another communist company so within the word bias one sure but you said 3 may get to the 3rd one and i just want to say that in the eyes of the students the communist party is seen as a reactionary absolute reactionary. Obstructionist absolutely absolutely and explain why well because then we should also be clear the communist party in france is a powerful powerful special in the labor unions it gets 20 percent of the vote still at the time and so for them the cut for the students the communists were preventing the workers from being as radical as they could be whereas. As ive come to view it as my conversation with communism for the reading on the topic that i think that the that the communists saw that the situation was the workers were simply not interested in overthrowing society and given that it was the goal that was in power what they even with they could get as material gains was limited in 1936 there have been smacks of strikes was a popular front government led by leo bloom and they got into riff normas concessions from the from the government and the employers but that was a socialist government under the goal as far as the commies were concerned there was a limit to what they could get and also the situation wasnt nearly as revolutionary as the students saw at the b. Because there was the 3rd france that you mentioned which is what we came will be called in america the silent majority who and we should who become not so silent example may 30th may 30th may 30th so they just kind of explain what happened right so there is so were not hearing much from this other france be and always seeing on the news a whole image of it is the students in this stones and the workers with the red flags over the factories on may 30th after much activity. De gaulle dissolves parliament but on that same day there are already been plans for a pro diggle demonstration and it turned out to be the single largest demonstration during the events of me in june half a 1000000 people on the shelves in these a in support of the goal. And there were people who i interviewed who said well you know they really wanted to have a 1000000. People would come around the back and walk around the roundabout but but in fact there were never will you watch the films of it its really white you know is that astounding thing and it was an astounding thing for most of the people i interviewed who were convinced that all of france was behind them and so it was really. A shock to them to see a half a 1000000 people coming out who had said nothing over the course is now part of that has to do is there those are the 3 francis and in the end it would be that 3rd france that we carry the day well there in france after this whole event swings right well right if what happens is when it with the elections are held because the goal has dissolved Parliament Elections are held at the end of june and every of the hole left loses power to go all gains again seats in parliament because some of this was doubtless because. The people the silent majority of many people of france felt the choice to come june in the elections is the goal of the anarchy right and given the choice even though you know many people even people on the right were tired of the goal i mean 10 years of the goal is a long time but given the choice and given the choice of cause burning every couple of weeks and order the mess of the majority of the population when for no more cause burning but i think you have a line in there you quote somebody who says theres in the beginning of may there is somebody who says go ahead and write our exact and end of may he says im a vote forever protect my car exactly so you you posit this question which is an important one you say its the central question and it is and that is whether revolution in the west is possible right. If we were to say that a revolution is an uprising that results in the overturning of the power structure and a change in the ownership of the means of production that may obviously wasnt one not only because it failed to accomplish either of these things but because there is no indication that the seizure of power was ever even seriously considered right. And that for me is the Crucial Point here as to why this uprising was doomed from the start to talk about that issue and whether revolution in the west is possible will be. Several people spoke about was when these marches would go through paris they will walk past government buildings some of the very lightly guarded a lot of easily takes the exact minister of Drug Ministry draft a couple of cops striding in front of it and thats it and yet a lenin would have known what to do but didnt have a live in and you know although in one of these books he talks about how. You know we should have done it just as an example react but the fact is it didnt occur to people in the because some of this. Is got to do with the fact that there was such a strong and of his presence in may 68. 00 so the state is not the thing that theyre going to be focused on but it was even tried an entry of in the leader of the trotskyist spoke about how it never even occurred to us. To do this. Because like so many revolutions it just starts up and it didnt moves under its own power in a certain direction and the direction of this one was really not toward state power if you look at the student demands they was so focused on the individual it on freeing the individual and on freeing speech. That notion of seizing power which is real it is sort of like the movement in the 1960 s. Having a significant cultural fact right in liberating people for exact strictures of i mean that gave rise to the feminist movement more understanding and tolerance for the Gay Community except. And i think it one point in the book you talk about it starting as a cultural event becoming it was a political issue and going back to being right it has a cultural effect but as you point out somewhere here capitalism adapts quite effectively to cultural changes as long as you dont touch the means of production. They if they can. Accommodate and thats precisely what happened