PARIS – Strikes and demonstrations have taken place across France in a day of action called by a united front of most public sector unions. The action has been called in response to a new law which targets the rights of railway workers, as a precursor to a general offensive against the 5.3 million strong public […]

PARIS – The new French President, Emmanuel Macron, speaking at a business start-up event

WITH 32 PER CENT of the votes in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections, Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République en Marche

DURING THE weeks between the first and second round of the French presidential elections, some on the French left called for a vote for Emmanuel Macron to stop Marine Le Pen of the Front National (FN) winning.

Emmanuel Macron, former investment banker and economy minister, easily won the second round of France’s presidential elections

“Since 1965 I have never lived through a presidential election like this. There are no more axes, no more rules”, says Socialist Party, PS, first secretary, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. “Nothing is stable anymore. It is a great chamboule-tout (coconut shy),” adds PS MP Jean-Marie Le Guen. Indeed, nothing has been going according to expectations for the […]

By Marc Lasalle In the wake of the terrorist atrocities of 13 November 2015, which left 130 dead, Socialist government ministers and local mayors in various cities and regions have launched a series of measures targeting Muslims and the immigrant population. The barbarous attack in Nice on 14 July has renewed the sense of fear […]

IN THE wake of the terrorist atrocities of 13 November 2015, which left 130 dead, Socialist government ministers and local mayors in various cities and regions have launched a series of measures targeting Muslims and the immigrant population. The barbarous attack in Nice on 14 July has renewed the sense of fear and the tolerance of […]

By KD Tait More than a million people marched in Paris in protest at the government’s attempt to demolish the Code du Travail [Work Law] which regulates labour rights, including the 35 hour working week, collective bargaining and overtime rates. The head of the demonstration arrived at its destination, while those at the rear were […]

By KD Tait French Trade unions have staged two nationwide days of action in response to the Socialist Party government’s use of emergency powers to impose its reforms to the Work Law without a vote in the National Assembly. This reform is the most serious attack since the pension reform carried out by the right […]

By KD Tait President François Hollande’s Socialist Party (PS) government has used emergency powers to force through Minister of Labour Myriam El Khomri’s labour reform bill. This major plank of the PS government’s austerity offensive had provoked weeks of mass demonstrations, general strikes and the “Nuit Debout” (“rise up at night”) movement. Prime Minister Manuel […]

3 September 2015 The drowned body of three year old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey on Wednesday 2nd. The photograph has concentrated the minds of millions on the catastrophe unfolding on Europe’s Mediterranean shore. Aylan drowned along with his five year old brother Galip, his mother Rehan and nine other […]

By Jeremy Dewar 12 August 2015 There are more refugees in the world today than ever before. This year’s Global Trends Report, published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), puts the figure at 59.5 million people at the end of 2014, a record 11 million up on the 2013 figure and over […]

By KD Tait 30 July, 2015 On Tuesday night a young Sudanese man was crushed to death by a lorry. Nine people have been killed trying to cross the channel this month. What kind of desperation would convince you to leap onto the back of a moving lorry? What kind of existence leaves you no […]

5 February 2015 The Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris on 7 January, when two terrorists murdered 12 journalists, a worker and a police officer, shocked the world, as did the subsequent killing of Jewish shoppers two days later. Dave Stockton and Marcus Halaby analyse the events and their aftermath In France, secularism (laicité) and biting […]

The 7 January attack on the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were killed, must be condemned without equivocation. It was an attack carried out by advocates of a reactionary political philosophy rejected by the overwhelming majority of France’s Muslims as well by French workers and young people. It […]

By Marc Lasalle The Parti de gauche (PdG), founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2008, aims to unite all the forces to the left of the social-democratic Socialist Party. This article looks at the reasons for its rapid growth as well as the current crisis in the Front de gauche (FdG), and considers the claim that […]

By KD Tait, 11 December 2013   The French government has sent 1,600 troops to the Central African Republic to disarm rebel militias under a United Nations plan to “restore order” to a country destabilised by decades of exploitation at the hands of French imperialism. More than 450 people, mainly Christian civilians, have been killed […]

By Marc Lassalle This autumn, “Socialist” President François Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have been facing an upturn in the class struggle. Until recently, they have been successful – thanks to the trade unions, and the student union UNEF, in defusing, or at least applying the brakes to, any workers’ and social struggles. This […]

  By KD Tait In October, thousands of French school and college students blockaded schools and took to the streets to protest the deportation of 15-year-old student Léonarda Dibrani.   Dibrani, a young Roma woman, was dragged off her school bus and deported to Kosovo on 9 October. One week later, Armenian student Khatchik Kachatryan […]

The New Anticapitalist Party (founded in 2009) at first seemed a beacon of hope to the left, not just in France but also across Europe. Marc Lasalle looks at why the dream has faded. Olivier Besancenot was in 2002 and again in 2007 the charismatic young presidential candidate of the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire (LCR), when […]