THE two general strikes and the massive mobilisations of trade unionists, students, lycee students, and unemployed and working class youth which brought millions onto the streets of the major French cities and saw the majority of universities occupied, has forced the right wing French presidency and government into retreat, after they binned the hated CPE instant dismissal law for youth yesterday.
This revolutionary victory for the French masses, led by the youth and the trade unions, will now drive forward the class struggle all over Europe and beyond.
The national mobilisation of the counter-revolutionary guardians of French capitalism – the massed forces of the CRS – armed to the teeth and trained to beat, beat and beat again, without mercy, could not halt or even slow down the revolutionary reply of the French masses to the government attempt to bring in ‘instant dismissal’ slavery for young people of 26 and under.
Faced with a movement that was still growing, and a new general strike, the French ruling class has retreated, it is true in order to live to fight another day, but nevertheless they could no longer defend a measure that united the whole of the youth and working class against them.
De Villepin’s political rivals in the ruling class are already denouncing him for bringing in a measure that succeeded in uniting the whole of society against the government.
Nevertheless, it is true that faced with the deepening crisis of the world capitalist system, the French ruling class must defeat and drive back the French working class, and force it to accept huge cuts in its standard of life, if French capitalism is to survive.De Villepin has failed, now Sarkozy the French Interior minister will have to come forward to do what is necessary for the ruling class.
The fact is that in all of the major capitalist countries the ruling class is faced with taking the working class on on basic issues that unite the working class and the youth against it.
In Britain, there is the onslaught on pensions, the NHS, on wages and basic rights by a government that is determined to drive the working class back across a whole front.
The difference in Britain is that the trade union leaders have been able to hold the working class back so that the ruling class and the government are getting away with murder.
The lesson of the French events is that the British working class, the youth and the trade unions must take to the streets to smash the anti-union laws, and defend their pensions, NHS, wages, jobs and basic rights.
When the CPE was made law the French trade union leaders were not able to tell the masses that this was the law and that it could not be broken.
In fact, the general strike that took place after the unjust CPE was made law was bigger than the first mass action called by the trade unions.
In Britain the trade unions must be organised to take general strike mass actions to bring down the government and with it all of its plans to smash the Welfare State.
The revolutionary action of bringing down the government will prepare the way for a workers’ government that will carry out the required socialist policies to defend the interests of the working class, the youth and the middle class.
In France the workers and the youth must make use of their victory to prepare for the bosses’ counter attack.
They must build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International and a mass Young Socialists movement to give revolutionary leadership to the workers and the youth.
The job of this section will be to organise the working class to overthrow the Fifth Republic and to bring in a Socialist Republic that will carry out a socialist reorganisation of society.
