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 […]

The continent is still deep in recession. Coordinated by Germany, France and the European Commission and Central Bank, savage austerity is being imposed on its weaker economies. KD Tait looks at resistance in Portugal and Greece and opposition in France to the new Fiscal Treaty. The southern states of the European Union – Portugal, Italy and […]

Celebrations on the streets, in the Place de la Bastille and across France, greeted François Hollande’s victory in the second round of the French presidential elections. The Socialist Party (PS) was back in the Elysée Palace after seventeen years in the wilderness. People do have real reasons to rejoice.With parlaimentary elections taking place, Marc Lasalle […]

THE VICTORY of Francois Hollande has raised huge expectations among workers across France and Europe of an end to austerity, posing the possibility of major struggles ahead. On a high turnout of 81 per cent, right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy was booted from office, leaving the Elysée Palace to be occupied by a Socialist President for the […]

France has been gripped by mass strikes and demonstrations many times over the last decade, Marc Lassalle examines the reason for the present lull and the strategy needed to renew them

By Emile Gallet GRAINY BLACK and white film of Parisian students hurling rocks at the police; crowds choking on clouds of tear-gas. The passing of time lends romance to the media view of May ’68; a student insurrection which came out of nowhere and was essentially libertarian in its politics. The romance is tinged with […]