Saturday showed us the last of the scheduled demonstrations against the Sarkozy government’s reform of the pension and retirement system–or, at least, of the current big change proposed by President Sarkozy: raising the retirement age from  60 to 62.   Now, the French unions and French workers are not delusional.  They too know that in this day and age retiring at 60 is a luxury few if any countries can afford.  But the unions are also all too aware that any change in the pension system passed into law this year will be only the first of a far more extensive set of concessions yet to come.  Rather than have the changes sprung on them one by one, the unions would like to be at the table negotiating the whole longterm package.

The series of impressive demonstrations put together by the major French unions over the last few months against the new laws–marches and strikes that were impressive both for the size of their participation and the breadth of public support–were more likely to have been aimed at leveraging an invitation to the unions to negotiate the new shape of the pension system than at stopping the passage of this first change.  Given the Sarkozy government’s majorities in both houses of the legislature, passage of the law was never in much doubt.  In fact, the law changing the retirement age from 60 to 62 received final approval on Tuesday, Oct. 26, when the Senate passed the final version of the bill.  This was more than a week before Saturday’s scheduled march, which would have made the march both futile and anti-climactic if its purpose had been to block passage of the law.

Seen in the context of a longer battle over the ultimate overhaul of the pension system, though, Saturday’s demonstrations took on their own appropriate strategic value, and in  this context were probably meant to be the culmination of the whole suite of demonstrations.   From that standpoint, they must have been something of a disappointment.  The weather certainly did not cooperate with the demonstrators.  Saturday dawned heavily overcast, and in Paris the rain began before noon–a steady, cold, and sometimes heavy rain.  Turnout was down, obviously, but in Paris at least, I’d say participation was still quite high.

The demonstration followed a familiar route: Place de la République to Place de la Bastille to Place de la Nation.  The organizers are real pros at this, knowing how to slow the marchers down so that the entire route is filled for hours; knowing when to hold marchers in place so that lines which may have gotten a little stretched and thin thicken up and seem more impressive.  As you can see from the photos, while umbrellas were de rigeur, the boulevards were pretty well filled, and for the more or less “standard” length of time for the itinerary.  (The photos were taken along the Boulevard Beaumarchais near the Place de la Bastille.)  The end of the marchers had still not filed through the Place de la Bastille more than two hours after the start of the march.

Spirits seemed good, despite the weather and despite the Senate vote which had already made the retirement age change law.  Many of the marching groups chanted calls for “tous ensemble, grève générale” (“all together now, general strike”).   While a general strike hardly seems likely at the present time–no noticeable public support for such a move, nor would this be the appropriate or most effective moment for it–Saturday’s marchers clearly recognized the need for some way of keeping the pressure on the government, and further agitation is no doubt being planned.

Today  (Tuesday 15th June), while walking to the Place de la Bastille, Carolyne and I literally stumbled upon the large demonstration by la Force Ouvrière, the largest French workers’ union, against the French government’s plans to raise the pension age and other austerity measures affecting workers and their rights and conditions of retirement. The government was to make its first recommnedations the following day, June 16th.

The large demonstration marched past the Bastille monument and continued along rue de Lyon towards the Gare de Lyon. I don’t know where it finished or where they assembled, but at the end the crowd was addressed by the FO’s leader, Jean-Claude Mailly, as shown on the organisation’s website. The FO estimated the attendance at more than 70,000 but the Police estimated about 25,000. It brought back many memories for me of large demonstrations in Melbourne, especially against the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago, and in support of Land Rights for Australia’s indigenous people. I remained in the area of the Bastille for 90 minutes, starting well after the march began, and my guess is that the crowd was far in excess of the Police’s estimate.

Demonstrators had come from all over France, mainly manual workers, but covering many different professions. They included metal-workers, agricultural workers, firemen, ambulance staff and police; all age groups and many ethnic groups were involved.

When we returned home several hours later we tried to find some commentary on the demonstration from news websites, but all we found was Le Monde describing it as a wasted effort which caused little disruption. Apparently the internecine disputes between the various labour organisations mean that the resistance to the government’s plans may well be splintered, but after what promises to be a long period of privation for many in Europe the demonstrations might become more populist and widespread, perhaps less peaceful.

I now know what it’s like to be caught in the middle of a huge demonstration, and be unable to move. Well, almost. I was walking along the rue du Faubourg St Antoine early this afternoon, on my way to BHV when groups of demonstrators, in support of the national strike, began marching past. They were all converging on the Place de la Bastille of course, and I was headed that way too. I was so intent on taking photos that it was too late by the time I realised I was caught in the middle of the Place, surrounded on all sides by the demonstrators, almost unable to move.

But what a peaceful, amicable affair it seemed to be. Sure, there was chanting and speeches (several simultaneously), but I saw nothing unruly, no pushing or shoving. It took me about an hour to cross the Place de la Bastille. There were no cars anywhere, just a dense throng of people, vans selling food and drink, balloons, people climbing on the Bastille column itself, television trucks, families with children, babies, and dogs.

The General Confederation of Workers (CGT) estimated the crowd at 300,000, and I wouldn’t be surprised, although the police claim the figure to be 65,000 (the unions claim a total of 1.5 million demonstrated all over France).

What struck me especially when I was in the middle of the throng was the atmosphere of calm solidarity, and the passion for social justice, that today’s strike was all about. We don’t see this sort of thing in Australia any more. We’ve long given up any hope that a strike will make any difference to anything. Today’s strike is to protest against the erosion of the standard of living, and also the so-callled ‘workplace reforms’ that we ‘enjoy’ in the Anglophone countries.

I was surprised, though, to hear that what had been reported on UK television, and probably elsewhere, was the conflict and car-torching that happened much later in the day near the Opera, and linked to the ‘dispersion of the demonstrators’. These could not have been the people I saw, and are much more likely to have been professional agitors, or disaffected troublemakers cashing in on the publicity.

I’m very glad I was right in the thick of it for an hour. It gave me a good insight into the passion of ordinary workers for social justice, and the calm and reasonable way in which they express it.

We’ve been hearing the idiom ‘d’un cheveu’ in the French news lately, so I decided to translate Yvan Amar’s explanation of it from his Les Mots de la Semaine column on Radio France:

In France they’ve been voting to elect the head of the Socialist Party. Of course, not everyone has voted, only the members of the party. And Martine Aubry has come first by a whisker (in French the idiom is ‘d’un cheveu’: by one hair). This is one of those expressions we hear often, and Abdalla Hamlaoui asked us what it means, and especially how it can be explained.

Everyone understands its meaning: Martine Aubrey had more votes than Segolene Royal, but very few! The difference was minimal, miniscule. So, we know that a hair is very fine, and often we use this word to express something which is so small as to be almost nothing.

But there is another reason for using this word. We say sometimes that one competitor has won by a head. This means that they have won by very little. So, one hair is even less than one head, but we are still using the same type of image because the hair is on the head. We also say quite often a ‘short head’, if we want to add that it’s only a little difference, or we might even say a ‘very short head’. And sometimes we keep only the adjective, as in a ‘short victory’, or a ‘very short victory’.

The photo is from German newspaper Die Welt.

There’s so much going on in PARIS political circles, I don’t know where to begin.

I think I’ll leave Mesdames Royal and Aubry to sort out who’s boss of the Socialist Party this week before I write about them, leaving me to concentrate on Madame le Ministre Dati.

Rachida Dati is Sarkozy’s Justice Minister and the first Muslim woman to hold a high government post. Since coming to office, she has pushed through many of Sarkozy’s law and order reforms, and is now facing opposition from the magistrates’ union on a number of issues, including overcrowded prisons with high suicide rates.

Now, at 42, Dati is to give birth to her first child in January, but has so far refused to name the father, saying her personal life is ‘complicated’, a descriptor that seems to have been lifted straight from Facebook. Dati has for some time, however, been wearing a large, expensive looking ring, on the fourth finger of her left hand. Until last week, anyway, when the so-called sympathetic-to-Sarkozy newspaper Le Figaro published an interview with Dati about her plans to reform criminal law.

This topic has been overshadowed, though, by the interest in her ring, or rather the disappearance of it. The photograph accompanying the interview was one that had originally appeared in Le Figaro in June, at that time complete with the ring, but this time with the ring photoshopped out. The motivations for this piece of journalistic creativity remain obscure. Was it a desire to de-bling a member of Sarkozy’s government, to detract attention from the fourth finger of her left hand, or something else? Whatever it was, it had the opposite effect.

No doubt everyone will be watching to see just who visits her next January. Mind you, she says she’ll only be taking a week’s maternity leave.

(Readers of German can also read the article in Die Welt from which the photo was taken.)

From Liberation:

Speeches, postcards, and an umbrella…

Three days of images from the heart of the Socialist Party…

And from Le Monde:

Direct from Reims: Royal slams the door, Hamon remains a candidate, Aubry and Delanoe keep quiet…

Three hours after the start of the meeting to decide which resolutions to adopt, Segolene Royal and her followers announced their departure. ‘The hand that we held out has not been grasped,’ said Royal. ‘We are taking action. I call on all the party members to choose next Thursday between a return to the methods of old, or a Socialist Party with alternative methods. The SP needs to change.’

I’ve always liked Royal, and thought she conducted a reasonable campaign back in 2007. Stylish and assertive, she even wears heels when visiting remote farms! A good debater, she was a match for Sarkozy in their final debate, perhaps too much so, since as Adam Gopnik remarked in his article, ‘this allowed Sarkozy to look wistfully harried and play the one part that he’d never had the chance to play before–a sympathetic, erring, middle-class French husband being blasted by a furious wife.’

It’s no secret that Royal, who campaigned for the party vote on promises of ‘renewal’, has her sights on nomination as the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in 2012. But her party seems fractured, to say the least, and she has to find a way to bring it together. One tactic is for her not to take the post of secretary-general for herself, but to strengthen her support by offering it to another of the leading figures, although that’s unlikely to be Delanoe. Perhaps the significantly younger Hamon, since Royal has been talking about needing a ‘new generation’ in the Socialist Party. Especially since Olivier Besancenot, youthful candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League in 2007 and very likely 2012, seems to be making huge strides in the popularity polls, as I’ve mentioned before.

One wonders how Hollande, who has been the secretary-general of the Socialist Party for 11 years, feels about all this. He apparently would have liked to have been the presidential candidate in 2007, but the party chose Royal instead.

On Hollande’s blog he is pictured calm and smiling, and in his post on November 8, he speaks of bringing everyone together, listening to the different messages, and translating them into success.

On verra

I don’t think I know anyone who is not elated about Obama’s win. A friend and I watched the election results on his i-phone during an all-day meeting in Melbourne today and held our breath until the votes moved beyond the point of no return.

Obama should, however, watch out for anyone phoning with a French accent. The Masked Avengers like calling the newly-elected (as well as the too-idiotic-to-ever-be-elected) and Chirac and Sarkozy have both been pranked. See the clip below, in which Sarkozy takes a call from the ‘Canadian President’…

‘SARAH PALIN piégée par un faux SARKOZY’ screamed Le Monde’s headline. But I’d already listened to the ‘interview’ myself, and read the story online, thanks to the Melbourne Age newspaper. It can also be found on YouTube.

Devised by Canadian comedy duo Les Justiciers Masques (the Masked Avengers), the fake Sarkozy was played by MARC-ANTOINE AUDETTE, with the ‘interview’ aired on a Quebec radio station.

Trust me, SARAH PALIN was completely taken in. How she could be so gullible is beyond belief, especially given the fake SARKOZY’S fluency in English, including his use of idiom (describing his wife as ‘so hot in bed’), and several clues, such as his ‘special adviser to the United States—JOHNNY HALLYDAY’.

When PALIN says at the end ‘Oh, have we been pranked’, there should have been no question mark after ‘pranked’ as inserted in the story in The Age. From my listening, her oral inflection was unmistakably on the ‘have we’, meaning ‘Oh dear, we have really been taken in’.

’Meanwhile, according to the report in The Age, AUDETTE is saying he hopes he won’t be given ‘a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay’.