On the stick side was police and judicial repression. As the journalist Edwy Plenel underlined in the web-magazine Mediapart in January 2019, “Power has made the deliberate choice of going for a demonization of the current social movement”.
Acts of police violence in France are not blunders or accidents, but the result of a repressive policy developed over more than fifteen years (at least since the urban riots of 2005). This was amplified under the presidency of François Hollande by Prime Minister Manuel Valls from 2016-17 (at that time a member of the Socialist Party) and consolidated under Macron, and with the Minister of Interior Christophe Castaner (a “Macronist” coming originally from the Socialists).
Violence, and to a certain extent militarization, is a central component of this policy, as a mean of control and deterrence. It creates fear and deters participants and others from going to demonstrations.
It has its technical component with new tactics and new weapons (drones, LBD flash balls guns, blasting grenades, etc.). Thousands have been injured, dozens lost an eye or a hand, and if only one old woman was killed by a grenade during a demonstration, 26 persons altogether died in police interventions in 2019… The internal police investigations on violence by the police inspection IGPN have been dramatically ineffective (nearly 200 investigations, less than five cases reported to the judiciary).
Meanwhile the legal component of this violence has taken advantage of the legislative provisions introduced by France’s state of emergency measures and the fight against terrorism. Nearly 4000 persons have been condemned in relation to the Gilets Jaunes and social movements in 2019.
Social struggles: second round
Once past the strongest waves of the Yellow Vests and the Great Debate, Emmanuel Macron and his Prime Minister Edouard Philippe decided to continue down their path of neoliberal counter-reform with the “pension reform”.
The first major counter-reform of this type was the “reform of the labour code” initiated by François Hollande, his Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and his Minister for the Economy Emmanuel Macron. This had passed despite a strong mobilization of the unions in 2016.
The “pension battle” appeared as the second round of this social struggle. In 1995 a previous government attempt to modify the pension and social security system had been thwarted by a strong social mobilization and, in particular, a public transport strike lasting several weeks. The failure of the right-wing Prime Minister, at the time Alain Juppé (with whom current prime minister Edouard Philippe was very close), was not forgotten in 2019.
Without going into details, to understand the issue of this pension reform you should know that the current system was globally implemented just after the Second World War, according to the principles proposed by the National Council of Resistance for social security, originally based on solidarity and managed by the social partners (employers and unions). Pensions are based on redistribution of contributions from those working to those in retirement. It is not (mainly) based on capitalization (payments to pension funds, public or private). It contained favourable specific regimes, especially in sectors where the labour movement had established an advantageous balance of power, as in public transport.
The new retirement system planned by the government no longer takes into account, for the calculation of pensions, the best years worked, but has deployed a less favourable “points” system, which assumes the abolition of specific regimes, and opens the gates to greater capitalization.
The project has aroused strong opposition. And a very bitter strike then ensued, starting in December 2019, especially in the national rail transport and public transport in Paris accompanied by big waves of demonstrations.
Government again used their carrot and stick tactics. Macron preserved the particular regimes of strategic professions: police, military, air traffic controllers, prison guards …, while he postponed for years the application of the new system for railways workers, together with promised salary increases for teachers and hospital staff. At the same time, he refused real negotiations, and tried, with partial success[1], to divide the unions. The police violence continued.
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Bernard Dreano | Radio Free (2020-02-03T17:54:44+00:00) On est là /Here we are!. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/03/on-est-la-here-we-are/
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