6.30 PM at Place Denfert-Rocher- lowed to the very end; barricades cau demonstration called by UNEF were defences and all participants and 22 MARCH GROUP collects merely defended themselves from police attacks. We just wanted to 30,000 people blocking traffic for two miles. The crowd is asked by hold the Latin Quarter to show Cohn-Bendit and other leaders police who had been occupying the where it wants to go. They decide Sorbonne for five days that they upon the Prison de la Sante, the must leave.
Ministry of Justice then the ORTF • We will occupy the Latin Quarter (the French BBC) which has been without bothering the police, until insulting and disgustingly untruth- the police are gone' said Cohnful in its reporting. While marching Bendit. This statement was supat least 5 or 6,000 more join in. We circle the Sante Prison which is defended by thousands of armed police then turn towards the right bank and the ORTF. By clever stationing of police, we are forced to turn up the Boulevard St Michel instead of down St Germain. This was our big mistake, not to push through there and then. We realised then we were falling into a trap.
The enormous demonstration was halted in Boulevard St Michel by gigantic forces—-we were encircled.
STATE 22ND MARCH: Militants begin to It must be clear that what happendig up cobblestones. Some UNEF people and bystanders try to stop us. Dean of University asks to see preparation, very representatives, of professors and students. Cohn-Bendit and four explosion.
work at our barricade that I don't know what happened elsewhere.
Witnesses say it all happened at the same time and more or less in the same way all over the Latin Quarter. Our barricade is double: one three foot high row of cobble stones, an empty space of about 20 yards, then a nine foot high pile of wood, cars, metal posts, dustbins.
Our weapons are stones, metal, etc, found in street. Of course the majority of people simply look on.
We organise a cordon to keep photographers and bystanders away from us.
A great deal of spontaneous help is we're students too! ported by most of the university given from inhabitants of nearby houses who offer water, sugar and cloth as protection against gasses ed on this historical night was and warn us of police movements. totally improvised: no direction, little co- It is their support which keeps our enthusiasm from flagging in the seemordination. It was a spontaneous ingly endless time of waiting for the inevitable police attack.
on the barricades a new mo PARIS CITY THE BLACK DWARF Since last summer a new Gaullist. | in order 1 led to growi ployment in the name or ning" , a steep rise in prices tion exists here similar to the Britain with the Prices developing In but they petty bourgeois they chale non in no way must lucy trade unions, cial system that they were incapab imagining any alternati hat the students did at the barricad nOL snowed a determination win, it also demystified the system. It Not all powertul. Tr police were decision: asic. The was not PATRICK PROCKTOR barricades. was forged between students and the masses nong vanguard workers there is w sense of liberatio workers united with students to decide Togetner wnal must De done and ine autories tremore and promise con I ne question is wnetner tne masses will trumon and bring down the wall tnat the students have breached. It is here where the crisis of the revolution in France now resides A revolution 1s gatnering momentun nong the rotting garbage piles aroun the abandoned cars. LOU ICCE IE HU France will workers have challenged the monolith or capitalisi ind have brought it to is knees 1k sagging old woman who for years mascucracins as a spritery young AIr Have found that the power th the peole, thar the students important than Parliament, tha short mental revolution of their society the redundancy of lutionary but even old are WCTC оссирси py strike here becam the French TUe any and the core ecision had nothir with the French Union. You see a lot of people think we're cunts and can't run anything but Al tne sam‹ time the CoT agreed PROVED THAT WE CAN RUN IT OUR- BOSSES, WE VE negotiate CGT. now occupying their best summed up the situation w factories. spoke crowded 5 this , comedy of irrelevance, an exercise in broadcast on the radio wa movement. unite to form their own party. Fuck Workers and students he lack of it. By the paled le rules of clectoralism and the assur silence the crowd and began to sir rose: and joined him.
The nny side. tuae to die.
controlled by the he regime demanded freder the regime news is full come in from the means of mass communication.
terest:
state. They are discredited and exposed The students and workers uprising in their true nature. against whe directive ontane unine against leadership. The a fee occupied s Soviet the emand for worker ractories i our on this here mai at this moment people is the Communist Party orthodox and int Two of the main centres of insurFrance has confidence union leadersnip ROGER SMITH rectionary activity in Paris are the sorbonne (ars University) and the Odeon (French National Theatre).
They have both been taken over by students and are in permanent 24 hour a day session. Anyone can enter, anyone can speak. they are the power house of thought and the command centres of activity in this revolution The atmosphere is intense and extraordinary.
The Sorbonne is packed with people, red flags, slogans. In every classroom and often spilling onto the landings and corridors Acuon committees si debating their next moves. These committees cover every aspect of revolufor co acting he wateria upe for contacting. workers to What is interesting about your action is that it puts imagination plies. Some, I was assured, are begin- organisation or lood and medical supin the seats of power. You have a limited imagination like ning to go underground in preparation everyone else, but you have a great many more ideas than your for the long struggle ahead. In almost elders. We have been made in such a way that we have a precise every faculty building in Paris it is idea of what is possible and of what is not. A professor will say: ane same scene. 'Do away with the exams? Never. One can rearrange them but In the middle of the Sorbonne is the one cannot do away with them! ' Why? Because he has taken vast amphitheatre. It must hold about exams for half his life. nve mousand people. All dav and night The working class has often imagined new means of struggle, the debate on the future of the revolution goes on. The speeches were calls but always as a function of the precise situation in which it for greater unity amongst the factions, found itself. In 1936, it invented the takeover of factories demands for the students to declare because that was the only weapon which it had to consolidate their objectives, assurances from miliand to exploit an electoral victory. You have an imagination tant workers that whatever the Union which is much more rich, and the slogans chalked up on the leadership might say they were behind Sorbonne corridors hundreds of young people work talk plan. It looks chaotic but things get done. There seems to be no leadership.
In the auditorium the debate goes on The audience is less academic and more bourgeois than the Sorbonne and thi discussions are aften rowdier and jol lier. But the atmosphere is the same: De Gaulle's stable regime has blown its lid. For the first time everyone feels they have something to say and a place to say it This is a young revolution and most of the work is done at night. The best speech 1 neard was at two in the morn ing delivered to the packed amphitacarre. It was given by a typical young revolutionaire; pullover, black trousers, long untidy hair, eyes gleaming with augue and lack or taod This revolution', he said, referring to the flags behind him, 'is for the red flag of Socialism and the Workers' state and for the black nag of Anarchy and the individual. There was a joyous shout of approval.
I spoke to him afterwards but he colla naray mik tor exnaustion an the hacking cough that betrays all those who were brave enough to stand up to the MACE fumes of the night of 10 May.
These young revolutionaries may not win this time but they have StrUCK happened in France marvellous and enchanting, except of course to the Times which naturally regards a sunke at the bank of France as conclusive evidence of the breakdown of civilisation. For us old mem Ders of the lan-club, it proves that Paris still has star quality. It is more than a place with three-star Michelin restaurants, traffic jams, cleaned buildings and the kind of dress shops which the Duchess of Windsor goes to. T can still put up the barricades, often on the very same spots where they went up in in and in 1944. It is great moment for sentimental Francophiles. But even the most sentimenta among them must wonder whether the whole business is merely a gallic freak. Does it show the way to the rest of the world? It would not be the first time that Paris has done so. I think it may do so now.
The events in France are totally unexpected and totally unprecedented That is the first thing to grasp about them. Practically all serious observers of politics have long taken it for granted that classical revolutions will no fonger nappen in the advanced westerr countries, either because there is unlikely to be no massive revolutionar discontent, or because such discontent is likely to be confined to marginal minories such as students and backs isolated from the rest of the people. Exceptions were conceivable, but none of them seemed to have much bearing on the present situation. Least of all on France, which until three weeks ago seemed at peace, rather successful in its international affairs, with a stable government, solid hances, and prosperity, which means that the poor were al any raic not notably worse on than they usually expect to be, A revolution has never yet broken out under I SUCH circumstances. Yet in rams it did. Or
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