France: Thousands rally in support of Mélenchon and Front de Gauche

Lisbeth Latham

On March 18 more than 120,000 people joined in the rally for a Sixth republic called by the Front de Gauche (FdG) in support of its presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The rally was held in the Place de la Bastille and marked the 141st anniversary of the Paris Commune.



The FdG is an electoral alliance that draws together the majority of the parties to the left of the Parti Socialiste (PS), whose candidate Francois Hallande is expected to win the presidence.

Leading into the March 18 protest, Mélenchon had been polling at 11%, however in the immediate wake he polled as high as 13%. Both massive election rally and high polls demonstrates that the FdG has established significant momentum that it may be able to carry into the National Assembly elections in June and increase the Front's representation.



The Nouveau Parti Anticapaliste (NPA), which is standing it's own presidential candidate Philippe Poutou, has argued that the growing success of Mélenchon will increasingly open up contradictions both within Mélenchon position and between the organisations that make up the FdG.

Mélenchon has repeatedly called for "citizen's revolutions" which he sees as being achieved through the elections. While such a call could be seen as an aspirational hope of winning government outright, it is important to note that Mélenchon has endorsed the course pursued by Die Linke in Germany, which has entered government with the social democrats at the local level. There is also strong expectation that Parti Communiste Francais, which is by far the largest component of the FdG, and hold more than 90% of the FdG's current seats in the National Assembly, will push to enter government with the PS should it win government. When the PCF entered PS governments in the early 1980s and between 1997 and 2002, the PCF ministers participated in significant liberalisation of the French economy.

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National Conference of the NPA: a campaign faced with the crisis of the system

Jean-Francois Cabral, Sandra Demarcq
Published in the NPA weekly Tout est a nous (TEAN), 30/06/11.
Republished from International Viewpoint
July 2011

The national conference of the NPA brought together 240 delegates, elected by the 3,100 members who had voted in 92 local aggregate meetings. The purpose of the conference was to decide the NPA’s approach to the upcoming elections, presidential and legislative. The vote of the members gave a majority of 50.4 per cent to Motion A, thus deciding to launch our presidential campaign without putting our candidature in parentheses.

On Saturday, the first debate began around our approach to the elections. The principal divergence between the delegates of Position A and those of Position B (40 per cent of the delegates) related to the strategy of the NPA towards the Left Front. Position C (5.8 per cent of the delegates) considered that the approach proposed by Position A has was not sufficiently revolutionary.
The general profile of the campaign


The discussions on Saturday afternoon centred on the profile and the main lines of our campaign. As a result of these discussions, broad agreement took shape around the idea that our campaign should respond to the crisis of the capitalist system and its consequences for the population and the working class. This crisis, which is at the same time economic, financial, social, environmental, energy and food, has disastrous effects. Faced the with governments of both right and left which orchestrate the austerity plans in the service of the ruling classes, the need to give our social camp the confidence that is necessary to fight back is a common preoccupation. But differences have arisen on the way that this campaign should be conducted. Some comrades of Position B are afraid that there will be a “workerist and sectarian” campaign and the comrades of Position C are worried that there will be a campaign which would not refer sufficiently to measures of a break with capitalism.

On Saturday evening, our comrade Philippe Poutou was designated as presidential candidate of the NPA by 122 For, 50 Against, 11 Abstentions and 47 NPPV (did not take part in the vote). Some comrades in particular were opposed because they considered it regrettable that our candidate is not a woman, in particular one of our two spokespersons. But a majority considered that the social and political profile of Philippe illustrated best the project of our organization during this crisis period of capitalism and made it possible to unite the party.
The launching of the campaign

On Sunday, the discussions in workshops made it possible to deepen the various axes of our campaign  : working conditions, sharing out of work, jobs and precarious work, wages, ecology, discriminations, cancellation of the debt, youth… As an anti-capitalist organization, we want to link the defence of the demands that arise in the daily life of the population to the discussion on how to win them, by the mobilization of the working class, in order to organize society according to other interests than those of the capitalists.

At the beginning of the morning session, a discussion also took place on the urgency of succeeding, all together, in overcoming the barrier of 500 sponsorships of elected representatives that the law imposes on us. This is the immediate task, the most urgent thing for everyone. At the conclusion of the national conference, a declaration was adopted, with 62 per cent of delegates voting in favour, in order to unite the organization around its campaign. Position B wished to make a public statement putting forward the basic disagreements and is calling for the constitution of a public current next October.

After this national conference, the challenge is now to put the internal discussions in the background, to unite the NPA and to turn the party outwards, towards struggles and towards the electoral campaign which must give coherence to our interventions, by linking them to our project of society.

Published in the NPA weekly Tout est a nous (TEAN), 30/06/11.

-Jean-Francois Cabral is a member of the leadership of the NPA.

-Sandra Demarcq is a member of the Executive Committee of the New Anti-Capitalist pary (NPA) in France, and a member of the leadership of the Fourth International.

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French Unions Announce Mass Demonstrations for May and June

Lisbeth Latham

France’s eight major union confederations have called further mass mobilisations for May 26 and June 13. The announcement followed a joint meeting of the national leaderships of the union confederations held on May 4 to assess the May Day protests.

In their joint statement, the Unions argue that the May 1st demonstration – which involved more than 1.2 million and was third joint action in the last four months “testifies to the deep roots of the mobilisation and indicated the commitment of employees, job seekers and retirees to express their grievances and get a response”. The statement continued “the government and employers would be wrong to treat them with contempt by refusing them, where as the crisis, with unemployment and dismissals strike them (workers, retirees and job seekers) with full whip”.

The joint union leaderships will meet in the next few days to develop a set of demands that develop on the demands raised on the government and employers on January 5. The unions have made it clear that they are expecting a rapid response to their demands.

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French Unions Plan Campaign Against Financial Crisis Following 3 Million Strong General Strike

Lisbeth Latham

More than three million people joined in the second day of strikes and mobilisations called by France’s eight main union confederations against the Sarkozy Government’s response to the financial crisis and in support of policies to defend jobs and the purchasing power of French workers and unemployed. The protests on March 19 reflected a significant growth on the size of the previous day of action on January 29 which mobilised 2.5 million people. With the government showing no interest in changing course, the debate over what the direction the campaign should take is deepening.

Unions are demanding actions to counter the impact of the economic crisis and to make capital rather than workers pay for the cost of the crisis. Central demands have included:

• Increases in the minimum wage and payments to the unemployed and pensioners;
• Increased social spending on public housing;
• Action to reduce job losses including bans on redundancies at profitable companies;
• Reversal of the tax cuts given to the rich at the start of the crisis;
• Reversal of job losses and restructuring of the public sector

The growth in size of the demonstrations and extent of strike action reflects widespread and growing public support for the strike. Recent opinion polls indicate that 78% of France believes the strike is justified, up from 69% in January. This growth in support has lead to increasingly desperate attempts to delegitimize the movement. Many media reports quoted police estimates of 1.2 million participating in the protests, however the Confédération Générale du Travail, (General Confederation of Labour - CGT), France’s largest union confederation, reported that the police estimate was issued at 8.15 am well before the protests actually started. The President of France’s largest employer federation MEDEF described protestors as “demagogues”.

The growing anger reflects a number of factors including the rapid growth of unemployment as companies shed jobs to improve their bottom lines. More than 100, 000 private sector jobs were shed in the last three months of 2008, a further 350, 000 expected to be destroyed in the first half of this year. The highest profile example is the French Oil Company Total, which announced in early March that it would shed more than 500 hundreds of jobs despite posting record profits in 2008 of 13.9 billion Euros.

At the same time the government is persevering with attacks on the public sector based on claims on having no money to sustain spending – but it has had little trouble finding the billions to fund its corporate bailout. In response to these attacks public sector workers have been involved in broader industrial action including university staff who have been conducting a seven-week strike.

Adding to the confidence and combativity of workers have been the militant general strikes conducted in France’s Colonies of Guadalupe; Reunion and Martinique. The Guadalupe and Martinique strikes were victorious following 44 and 38 day general strikes.

Despite the growth militancy – the government remains unmoved. On March 20, Sarkozy while acknowledging that the strikes reflected “how worried workers are by the economic crisis”, he ruled out any further spending.

Sarkozy’s refusal to meet the strikes demands is increasing the tension over the direction for the movement. In a joint media statement, the eight union confederations stated that the magnatude of the mobilisation says loud and clear that workers "do not want to pay for a crisis they did not cause". The statement indicated that the leaderships of the eight union confederations would meet on March 30 to discuss the next steps in the campaign.

On March 20, Jean-Claude Mailly, head of Force Ouvrière (Workers Force – FO) said they were “determined to keep up the pressure” and were considering calling new protests on May 1.

In a March 19 statement, radical union confederation Union Syndicale Solidaires (Trade Union Solidarity – Solidaires) called for the momentum of the day’s protests and strikes to be extended. The statement argued that struggle facing workers was who would pay for the crisis – the rich or workers, unemployed and pensioners. The statement continued “In order to deal with the social crisis and the need for alternative policies” required the building of a movement to build a general strike.

Solidaires call for an ongoing general strike has been supported by a statement issued by Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party – NPA) Olivier Besancenot on March 19. Besacenot said “The general strike on Thursday, 19 March was an even more significant success than that of 29 January”. Besacenot continued “that very evening, [French Prime Minister] François Fillon gave the finger to 3 million demonstrators, by staying the course on the policy of finding tens of billions only for those responsible for the crisis while telling the strikers and protesters that the coffers are empty when it comes to jobs or wages.

“Such a success and such a government provocation deserve better than the announcement of a new meeting of trade unions on 30 March.

“Twentyfour hours of strikes and demos are not enough to make the government and employers bend. Only by a prolonged general strike can we make them meet our demands: prohibit layoffs, increase wages, and lower prices”.

MRZine have provided English Language Translations of both the CGT’s and Olivier Besancenot’s statements.
Solidaires' Statement is available in French.

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