Arrêtez le monde, la France veut descendre

Imagine you are a boss considering giving a graduate her first job. Are you more or less likely to take the risk if you know that, however lazy and incompetent she turns out to be, the only way you can sack her is via a time-consuming, costly and stressful legal process in which you have no guarantee of winning?

A no-brainer, you think? For the students who took to the streets of France on Saturday, merely posing the question evdiently betrays a hopelessly Anglo-Saxon cast of mind.

I saw a man with a greying ponytail interviewed on TV; he said he was proud that his children were showing their generation was not apolitical after all. And which old lefty could resist a pang of nostalgia, seeing the streets of Paris packed with marching students and trade unionists? Sadly, appearances are deceptive.

Le mouvement de mai was a central political reference point for me for a long time. However many illusions I may now think I had, its exuberance, creativity and utopian idealism still hold a certain fascination.

The fear-driven conservatism of Saturday’s demonstrators could hardly be more different. And if the government caves in, as seems highly likely, France will have taken one more step towards the alternative to global capitalism tried and tested in North Korea. It is a sad spectacle for admirers of French culture and, as Will Hutton of the Observer points out, a big worry for Europe as a whole:-

'British Eurosceptics will delight, but a stagnant, angry, drifting Europe is not in Britain's interests. France and the French have lost the plot. This is not just a crisis for them, but for us. If France goes absent, the EU will lose its drive and purpose. And that is exactly what is happening.'

Garyniad

The wisdom of Gary Younge on the French riots:-

‘And the reality is that none of this would have happened without riots. There was no petition these young people could have signed, no peaceful march they could have held, no letter they could have written to their MPs that would have produced these results.’

‘These results’ including ‘10 boarding schools for those who want to leave their estates to study’ – good progressive stuff, eh, Gary?

How many petitions, peaceful marches and letter-writing campaigns did la yoof organize before turning to rioting? I take it the answer is 'not many'. So in fact we don't know what they would or wouldn't have achieved, do we?

‘When all non-violent, democratic means of achieving a just end are unavailable, redundant or exhausted, rioting is justifiable.’

And if rioting turns out not to have done the trick after all, what else will be justifiable? A bomb or two on the Métro, maybe?

That French riots story in full

Deep waters here, but the general drift appears to be as follows:-

Some oppressed youths began rioting in really quite a small sort of way, but then along came a very unpleasant government minister called Monsieur Sarky and told them they were scum. They were naturally dreadfully upset about this and set about proving him wrong. Score to date: one burnt-out synagogue, two burnt-out churches and one 61-year-old man beaten into a coma whilst trying to put out a fire in a rubbish bin. Whether Monsieur Sarky has got the message yet is not clear.

If anyone wants to call their blog Monsieur Sarky, pardon mon vieux, but I have asserted my moral right.