France

This year marks the 90th anniversary of a wave of mass strikes in France, following the election of a Popular Front government. To mark the occasion, we publish an article written by PETER TAAFFE, which […]

The second round of the municipal elections confirms and amplifies the trends observed in the first round (read our statement): deep social anger, a massive rejection of austerity policies, and a political polarisation that is […]

The results of the first round of the municipal elections on Sunday 15 March confirm one thing: there is a lot of anger against the rotten policies carried out in the towns and cities against […]

Solidarity with LFI! How to push back the far right? Last Thursday in Lyon, a young nationalist activist was killed following a clash between “autonomous” activists and far-right militants, notably from the racist and identitarian […]

Character, programme and methods of the new radical left This year has seen France plunged into one of the most serious political and social crises since the founding of the 5th Republic by Charles De […]

The following statement by Gauche Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Left- CWI France) is in response to the 18 September strike action by French workers against the budget plans of the government of President Emmanuel Macron. The budget […]

On Monday 8 September, as expected, French prime minister François Bayrou lost a confidence vote in France’s National Assembly. Meanwhile, a groundswell from below has been growing towards a day of strikes and protests across […]

With French president Emmanuel Macron at a record low level of popularity, he faces the prospect of losing his third prime minister within a year – as prime minister Francois Bayrou has called a confidence […]

Three short months and then it’s gone! President Emmanuel Macron only managed to keep in place his stopgap, appointed prime minister, Michel Barnier, and his government, for only three months. His roadmap was clear: to […]

President Macron’s party was beaten in the European Elections in France. It was an anti-Macron referendum that resulted in a victory for the far right Le Pen’s party Rassemblement National (RN) in an election with […]

The New Popular Front (NPF) received the most seats in the recent parliamentary elections in France, 182 out of the 577 total in the National Assembly. Standing on a programme of reducing the pension age […]

Let’s get rid of Macron and his policy for the ultra-rich with it! Through our struggles, let’s demand a real salary, a real job and decent and accessible housing for all! On September 7 and […]

French President Emmanuel Macron had “thrown [his] unpinned grenade in our legs” [in his own words] on 9 June, by dissolving the Assembly. He gave Jordan Bardella’s RN (far-right National Rally), winner of the European […]

The majority did not vote for RN or Macron: let’s show it! Unite! Let’s mobilize in the streets! Against Bardella and the RN against Macron’s policies on July 7 vote New Popular Front! Not a […]

The first round of parliamentary elections in France saw Marine Le Pen’s far right RN taking the largest vote, at 33.2%, ahead of the New Popular Front on 28% and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance […]

The European elections were like a referendum against Macron. His party did not reach 15% of the vote, with 48.5% abstaining! The workers and youth who did vote severely sanctioned his policies of continuous attacks […]

The following resolution was adopted by the National Conference of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI in France) over the weekend of 23-24 March 2024. Since the end of the Covid-19 crisis, the capitalist world economy has not […]

Despite the mass strike and June’s explosive revolt, Macron is continuing to roll out his programme. The substance has not changed: attacking the living conditions of the majority of the population to allow the top […]

Nahel: another 17-year-old dead, after so many others: Alhoussein, Zineb, Adama, Cédric, Zyed, Bouna… Nahel’s death both shocks and revolts us. The policies of Macron and Darmanin (and Valls and Sarkozy before them) are constantly […]

The mood of outrage across France at the pension age being raised is not subsiding. This is despite president Macron desperately trying to put it in the past, following it being pushed into law using […]

President Macron has officially passed his pension-busting law in France by a legal power grab, using articles 49-3. This despite more than two months of strikes and demonstrations this winter, involving millions of workers.  The […]

The movement in France has become decisive. Two months have passed since the first strike day against the government’s continued attempt to attack pensions. The movement on the streets is still very strong, and support […]

Macron and his Elizabeth Borne-led government, unsure whether they would have a majority, have finally resorted to using article 49-3 of the Constitution to force through the breakup of pensions without a vote of the […]

Since 19 January, six days of strikes and national demonstrations have brought together millions of workers, young people and pensioners in a formidable struggle against the destruction of pensions. In one month, the question of […]

Thursday was been a huge day of mobilization in France. Close to two million people demonstrated across the whole country. In Paris, several metro lines were “striked shut”, and the unions had organized dozens and […]

The Kurdish Cultural Democratic Center (CDKF), in Paris, was again the target of a deadly attack that killed at least three people. This attack took place a few days from the 10th anniversary of the […]

The results of the legislative elections were a major blow for Macron. His electoral alliance, named “Ensemble” [Together] in a final panic before the shipwreck, only obtained 245 deputies, compared with 360 in 2017. This […]

The 19 June second round of elections to France’s National Assembly – its parliament – marked a new stage in the political situation that shook establishment circles to their core. Just two months after retaining […]

The first round of the legislative elections saw good votes for the left alliance NUPES [New Ecological and Social People’s Union, headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon] and reaffirmed the support for Mélenchon in last April’s presidential […]

Emmanuel Macron has won the presidential election against Marine Le Pen. The capitalists’ plans worked, just, forcing a replay of the 2017 second round. Incredibly, Macron was able to win again despite the vicious policies […]

France’s right-wing president, Emmanuel Macron, faces far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French election on 24 April. They won 27.8% and 23.2% respectively in the first round on 10 April. […]

Anger at rising prices, record profits for French multinationals and shareholders, the destruction of public services, the reduction of the rights of the unemployed, and isolated strikes on wages ongoing for several months. As in […]

The weekend of 4-5 December was an important turning point in the race for the presidential election in France. The first round takes place on 10 April 2022.  The right-wing party, Les Républicains (LR), officially […]

With a record 66% abstention rate, the French regional and departmental elections of 20 and 27 June obviously did not excite the mass of the population. And it cannot be said that they give a […]

Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across the streets of France, including more than a hundred thousand people in Paris, alone. These demonstrations were originally against a draft law moved by the government, […]

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, suddenly and brutally decided to launch a second lockdown from the end of October, in a very hurried way, without giving at least a few days for the public services, the […]

Gauche Revolutionnaire (CWI in France) issued the following statement on 17 October after the beheading of a teacher outside his school in Paris. Re-produced as a leaflet, it has been well received on demonstrations around […]

The local elections in France reveal that Macron and his LREM party are more isolated than ever, holding only 10,000 of the 500,000 elected local councillors in the whole country (or 2%). The government was […]

Young people and workers have protested across the world. In France, an inquiry verdict on 29 May cleared three gendarmes (military police) of killing 24-year-old black man Adama Traoré. Up to 20,000 people rallied in […]

After two and a half months, the lockdown is now over in France and it is time to draw a first balance sheet. There is not one single aspect of the way Macron’s government managed […]

The first cases of Covid-19 appeared in France, in late January, but the government waited until March to take the epidemic seriously, after it had already been declared as a pandemic by the World Health […]

At the beginning of the coronavirus lock-down in France, Macron gained some support, trying to appear as the ‘strong man’, taking action to stop the virus from spreading. But this is very fragile. By the […]

On 15 March, Leïla Messaoudi of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France), was elected to the local council of Petit-Quevilly in the city of Rouen, where she has lived for 14 years and worked for 23 years. […]

“We are at war!” President Emmanuel Macron declared in his speech to the nation on the evening of Monday, 16 March. It came just one day after less than a third of voters turned out […]

The strike movement against the French government’s wholesale attack on pensions has gone on for almost two months. Many transport workers downed tools for 45 continuous days, joined by some other sectors on the unions’ […]

After more than 45 days of strikes and 62 weeks of ‘gilets jaunes’ protests, French workers’ appetite for struggle endures. The trade unions counted 250,000 on the national day of action in Paris on 17 […]

Another day of mass demonstrations of strikers all over France on 17 January 2020. The determined battle to stop Macron’s pension attacks goes on! The following photo gallery is by Gauche Révolutionnaire comrades from Paris and […]

After the biggest and most widespread strikes and demonstrations last week in the current fight over pension rights in France, Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, announced the suspension of the government’s proposal to increase the pension […]

Strikes and demonstrations took place yesterday, 9 January 2020, throughout France against President Macron’s pension cuts plans. Large protests took place in Paris and other mass demonstrations across the country – the biggest and most […]

The mass strike movement in France against government attacks on pension rights is now the longest since the revolutionary general strike of 1968. After more than a month, it has also lasted longer than the […]

As upheavals and revolutionary movements have erupted around the world, a major clash of the classes has opened up in the heart of Europe. An angry working class in France is locked in a Gargantuan […]

Yesterday’s strike and protest in Paris were huge, with more than 200,000 people taking part in the demonstration in the capital against President Macron’s policies. Strikes by transport workers, teachers, nurses and many others took […]

French President Macron is under very serious pressure. A one-day national strike of all sectors – both public and private – has been called and prepared for 5 December. It will probably be the biggest […]

During the night of September 25th, a massive fire broke out in the depot of Lubrizol chemicals on the outskirts of Rouen, Normandy. There were no personnel at the depot and no deaths at the […]

Gauche Revolutionnaire statement underlines vital need for political alternative

Hollande’s decision to over-rule parliament provokes another round of struggle

Build a general strike movement!

A final stage before indefinite action against Hollande’s government?

Full-scale struggle with ‘Socialist’ government erupting

The wave of school student protests across France has highlighted the deep crisis facing public education and the wider social conditions confronting working‑class youth. In dozens of towns and cities, students have walked out, blockaded […]

From Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales). France Insoumise is the main left organisation in France, with 70 MPs and nearly half a million members. Leïla Messaoudi of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI […]

Macron sets Kanaky on fire! Enough of France’s colonialist and repressive policy in New Caledonia! For the full and complete right to self-determination of the Kanaks! The Parisian media pretend to discover the situation in […]

The first elections since Macron came to power, the European elections were anything but exciting. Electing representatives who have no power, in an institution, the European Union, which primarily serves the interests of banks and […]

The gilets jaunes revolt in France, now in its fourth month, not only threatens the survival of Emmanuel Macron, his government and his party. It has inspired movements of discontented workers and young people far […]

The “yellow vest” movement in France has involved hundreds of thousands of people in demonstrations, blockades of roundabouts, main roads and toll booths all around the country, in big cities and in the countryside. Begun […]

For more than a month now, since 17 November, France has seen an apparently unstoppable revolt from below. A massive tide of very visible protest has swept the country, initially against a rise in the […]

After three weeks of increasingly angry mass protests, French President Emmanuel Macron suspended the massively contested tax on diesel. It remains to be seen whether this will defuse the mass movement calling for his government […]

Over the last weeks, France has witnessed widespread protest against neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron and his government. Close to 500,000 people blockaded roads and roundabouts on Saturday 17 November.

By Friday 24 May 1968, ten million workers were on strike. The greatest general strike in history. On the same day, the president of France, General Charles de Gaulle, tried to address the nation. Nobody […]

The legacy of the French revolution of 1848, the second time France overthrew a monarchy, played an important part in the escalation of the demonstrations and street fighting in Paris.

A second labour law to facilitate redundancies and short term contracts, an end to railway workers’ protected status and the national public railway enterprise, selection for university entrance, huge cuts in several public services, social […]

Since the election of Emmanuel Macron, the president of the rich, and after the onslaught of the government against all sectors in society especially the public services – the railways (the SNCF), pensioners, young people, […]

After another day of trade union protests across France, we carry an article on the growing mood of opposition to President Emmanuel Macron and his totally pro-business policies. Socialistworld

Time to build a fighting left force

Amid the trumpeting about a massive vote for the party of the new President, Emmanuel Macron, in the first round of France’s parliamentary election last Sunday (11th June), a deep malaise pervades in French society. […]

Leaflet being distributed in the run-up to the first round of the parliamentary elections in France this Sunday by Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI in France)

Fight-back and socialist policies vital

The result of the first round of the presidential election in France has shown a massive rejection of the established parties and what they represent. It marks a watershed in France’s politics and opens up […]

In spite of Paris attack, Le Pen, Fillon and Macron could all be swept aside by a mass vote for Mélenchon

Old political elite discredited.The presidential election in France is gathering pace and has become far more open. More than 40% of the electorate are said to be still undecided as to who to support and […]

Space opening up to left of Socialist Party. The situation in the run-up to the presidential elections in France at the end of April is extremely volatile. Over the past week-end three candidates held election […]

For workers’ unity and struggle against racism, division and austerity

No to hatred, suspicion and racism : don’t let us be divided !

Workers march as Senate debates hated labour law reform

Will there be a general strike against the Valls-Hollande government ?

COP21 UN climate change conference in Paris underscores failure of capitalism to solve environmental crisis

Governing ‘Socialist’ Party punished

Only workers’ unity can end terrorism, division and war

We will not be intimidated !

300, 000 people marched on demonstrations across France on Thursday 9 April

Department results show need for fightback against austerity and racism

Unity against racism and capitalism!

The shocking, cold blooded slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, and more killings in subsequent days, has been met with mass outrage

Defend freedom of speech! Don’t let us be divided!

Hollande removes ‘lefts’ from government

United private-public sector strike vital

National Front profits from social and economic discontent

Far right gains highlight need for strong fighting left opposition

More and more tensions develop in the Left Front

A fighting, working class left remains to be built

An 18-year-old student activist Clement Meric was murdered in Paris in broad daylight, on 5 June, by neo-fascist skinheads. This must be answered by mass mobilisation to halt attempts by the far right to raise […]

Parliamentary elections strengthens Socialist Party’s rule

Which way for the Left Front?

Austerity rejected in Eurozone’s second biggest economy

Make the rich and the bankers pay for their crisis!

New, polarized situation opening up

Volcano of class struggle ready to erupt

Statement from Gauche Révolutionnaire (French section of the CWI) drawing a balance sheet of its experience in the NPA

‘G8 Dégage (get out)’!

What attitude should socialists adopt in defending women’s rights?

Interview with Alex Lecoq, Gauche Revolutionnaire (CWI in France), a student in Rouen

Millions of workers and youth want an end to the Sarkozy ’dictatorship’

Workers and youth challenge cuts through mass strikes and protests

Workers can bring the whole economy to a halt

New stage in the fight against Sarkozy’s policies

Joe Higgins MEP explains why he voted in favour of the resolution condemning French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his racist policies of scapegoating and deporting peoples from the Roma minority in France.

2 million on the streets to defend pensions

Workers’ fight against attacks on jobs, wages and pensions

’Third round on the streets’ – Big gains for Socialist Party and allies, and also for far right, but new Anti-capitalist Party in disarray

Mass fightback against bosses and government continues

New Anti-capitalist Party can grow fast with clear socialist policies

Movement already larger than in 2006 and the beginning of the general strike of 1995

A message of support and solidarity from French Airbus workers to striking Boeing workers. Video.

What prospects are there for the development of a New Anti-capitalist Party?

Public-sector employees, teachers and fishing industry workers take industrial action

Capitalism brought to its knees

The first electoral defeat for Sarkozy

But real political opposition against Sarkozy urgently needed

France experiences a new wave of strikes against the plans of Sarkozy presidency.

On the 20th November 700,000 people took to the streets all over France against right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy’s neo-liberal attacks .

"Here comes the confrontation that could define his presidency"

Up to the end of the ‘official campaign’ (after which the publication of polls and articles in the media is forbidden), all commentators predicted a big victory for the UMP (president Nicolas Sarkozy’s party) and […]

Construct an opposition of workers and youth against Sarkozy: Sarko your policies will not pass.

Workers must get organised to resist new attacks!

First round of the presidential elections

Is it some historical joke that the Parti Socialiste (PS) candidate for the presidency of the French Republic is called Royal?

But union leaders refuse to seize opportunity

Extend the action – for a general strike!

Tuesday March 28’s "day of action" saw new mass protests and strikes throughout France against the government.

For a general strike!

After last Saturday’s million and half strong protest against both the new CPE, youth employment contact law, and the French government in general the key issue has become how the struggle will develop.

United workers and youth strike action to defeat employment laws

The massive 7 March demonstrations, when at least half a million protested, marked a turning point.

’Chirac-Villepin-Sarkozy – We’ve had enough!"’

‘Sarkozy: We’ve had enough! No to repression! No to racism!’

More privatisations, tax cuts for the rich and attacks on workers’ rights

The European Union and the French economic, financial and political establishment plunged into crisis as France voted last night against the proposed EU constitution.

Prospect of new wave of workers’ struggles

Last Sunday, France went to the ballot box for regional and district elections.

France goes to the polls next Sunday, 21 March, for elections in the regions and districts (‘departements’ that are divided into ‘cantonments’).

Socialists oppose right wing agenda

While the right wing Raffarin government in France increases its attacks against the social gains of the past, there is a continued radicalisation amongst workers and youth.

30 years after the first big demonstration against the military bases in Larzac, southwest France, over 350,000 people met there again this summer, three times more than expected.

The first thing that made the teachers angry was the ’decentralisation’ of education. This is a government project that aims to transfer education financing, management and recruitment from the state to the regions. But there […]

ON JUNE 12 the two central leaders of the French trade union movement came down to Marseille to address a mass rally at the end of a 260,000-strong demonstration. Bernard Thibault, leader of the Confederation […]

Strikes and protest actions are continuing across France on a daily basis, against the Raffarin government’s pension ‘reform’ plans.

Across France in countless villages, towns and cities, French workers from both the private and public sector, students and young people demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands and took strike action on Tuesday 3 June, […]

Mass strikes and demonstrations on Tuesday, 3 June, show a hardening mood of combativity and solidarity in the battle against pension reform.

An attack on workers’ pensions by French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has combined with other issues, particularly education decentralisation, to fuel a massive response by workers the length and breadth of France.

Paris pictures home page.Five pictures on each page.   Photographer: Paul Mattsson   one two three four five six seven eight nine

The streets of Paris resounded to the beat of drums and marching feet, this Sunday (25 May). Music blared. Rail workers ignited red flares filling the air with smoke. It was a riot of colour. […]

Chirac’s victory in the second round of the French National Assembly elections has been widely presented as a further part of a European swing to the political right.

The results of the June 2 first round of the national assembly elections are not simply a right wing success and do not give a full picture of French politics.

The first-round success of far-right leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, in the French presidential elections shocked the world. Hardly discussed, however, were the votes for the Trotskyist parties. Socialism Today interviews Alex Rouillard, organiser for Gauche […]

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