EN - 'Talkin' Bout a Revolution': Student anger is rocking France

In Deep Water 

“Taxez les riches, pas notre avenir”, “Sois jeune et révolte-toi”, “Moins de répression, plus d’éducation”.* Here are some slogans that were seen over the last few weeks in the student protests that have flooded the streets of France. Since mid-September, dozens of thousands of students have been protesting to claim a better quality of education and better recognition of their rights by the government, and the movement has recently extended to a larger social movement against the current political power. Starting in the high schools of the overseas territories as well as those of Créteil and Saint-Denis (near Paris), which are the poorest cities in France, the unrest extended to the whole country, universities, and other sectors. All of this in a context where fuel prices keep increasing, and a few months before the Presidential elections. To help you see more clearly, let’s take a step back to understand why this movement started now: what the claims are, and what the protests look like, before trying to understand what outcome it can lead to. 

* “Tax the rich, not our future”, “Be young and rebel”, “Less repression, more education” 

** Picture: Protest in Bordeaux

Education in crisis 

This movement takes place in a very specific political and social context. French politics is increasingly looking like a saga, and even for the French people, it is getting more and more difficult to follow. So we’ll try to make it simple. 

President Emmanuel Macron has been in power for more than nine years now, and his successive governments have massively reformed high schools and higher education. The main reform, implemented in 2018, is the transformation of the high school graduation “baccalauréat”, making the choice of classes much freer and increasing class hours. Students can now choose between many course options to specialize in a field (science, philosophy, history…), which has brought a lot of uncertainty and created inequalities.  It also resulted in very packed classrooms, because many students want to follow the same courses, like history, economics, or maths. The Guardian explains that France ranks near the top of OECD countries for the number of students in classrooms (more than 29 when the average is 26 in the OECD), and is also one of the countries with the most teaching hours in high school. Many of these reforms are the sources of the mobilization today, as explained by the BBC in this article. Students complain about long days of classes that can take place between 8 AM and 6 PM, with gaps in the day’s schedule due to teachers being absent and not being replaced (as a high school student in France a couple of years ago, I experienced it quite often). 

Another main point to address is the reform in how students access higher education upon graduation. Macron’s government introduced the “Parcoursup” platform in 2018, where high school students fill in ten ‘wishes’, ranking the schools or universities they want to join after graduation. The platform is known for its complexity and opacity, which was denounced by students in the past weeks’ protests. Many complain about the anxiety it generates and the lack of transparency in the allocation process, because the platform does not explain how choices are made. Furthermore, sociologists and scholars have explained that this computer programme perpetuates and increases the level of inequalities between students, and it also depends on their geographical location. For example, the share of wealthy graduates increased by 7% in the most selective programs with the introduction of Parcoursup, according to the French Institute of Statistics. Moreover, many of the prestigious universities are located in Paris or its region, and students have a higher chance of joining these schools if they live in this area. Therefore, this brings a lot of uncertainty for students’ futures, who do not have a chance to concretely decide what they can expect for their future. 

It is an interesting paradox to consider that students complain about the unsanitary conditions in high schools while the government has cut funds for the Education Ministry over the last decade. Public spending on education in France has declined relative to GDP and overall public spending, despite an increase in the absolute amount spent. When looking at how the education budget is spent, we see that more than two-thirds is going into financing pension reforms and paying wages for the teachers, and a very small amount is dedicated to building maintenance. Also, as France is navigating a very difficult budget situation (this would deserve a whole separate article), we see that the government is increasing funding in education… but because of high inflation, the purchasing power shrinks. This reduction in the education budget adds uncertainty about the trajectory for students and teachers. There have been no less than seven Ministers of Education in nine years, and the budget negotiations that are currently underway are more uncertain than ever. 

What did the protests look like? 

It is important to note that these protests began in the French overseas territories long before they reached the mainland. In Mtsangadoua, Mayotte, protests broke out on August 31st, and the movement quickly spread to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and French Guiana. In all the overseas territories, the same issues are present: a lack of toilets, drinking water, ventilation, and teaching staff, and insufficient infrastructure to educate the whole population. One such example is the Younoussa Bamana school in Mamoudzou, Mayotte, which was designed to host about 900 students, yet received about 2300 this year. As deputies Steevy Gustave (from the Essonne department in Île-de-France) and Jean-Victor Castor (from the overseas department of Guiana) (f noted, the overseas territories have suffered from a structural degradation on the political, social, and economic fronts, a degradation which can be traced back to the French colonial period. These protests finally spread to metropolitan France in September.

The first mobilization in metropolitan France happened on September 17th, at the Saint-Exupéry school in Créteil, in Southern Île-de-France, in the Paris suburbs. These blockades quickly spread through social media. By September 29th, this mobilization took on a bigger dimension, as it combined with a national protest that demanded larger resources and investments in the public sector. This protest gathered about 200,000 protesters, including a tenth of all French schoolteachers, and affected over 330 schools. This took place just 2 days before Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s cabinet unveiled its new budget. This budget aimed to diminish national debt by implementing austerity measures targeting retirees, social security, and healthcare. The justification for these measures was the concerningly high ten-year interest rate in France, which had reached levels of 4.8%, the highest since the economic crisis of 2008.

Between September 21st and October 16th, over 200 students were injured in these protests (including 76 during the protests of September 29th alone) and over 6800 were detained and in custody. According to the Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez, the police response was “proportional to the protests themselves”. However, by October 13th, the General Inspection of the National Police (the organism in charge of holding the French police accountable) had already opened 36 inquiries.

During a protest on October 8th, Bally Bagayoko, mayor of Seine-Saint-Denis, physically intervened, placing himself between the protesters and the police. Afterwards, the mayor declared that the police response was marred by racist biases, as he mentioned that their response was much more violent when dealing with protests in neighborhoods with higher migrant and marginalized populations. This violence became even more visible through the now-famous “Bismillah c’est les ténèbres” and “On va bien manigancer avec ma djellaba” slogans. These two sentences are both examples of failed infiltration attempts by the police. Across several social networks, police agents attempted to infiltrate the student movements, often taking on names associated with North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and poorly attempting to use Gen Z slang. These attempts quickly went viral on social media in the form of memes, and showcased both the incompetence and racism of the French police.

Beyond Education: A National Frustration 

Let’s continue with the saga of recent political developments in France. The growing feeling in France is that people are not listened to by the government and can not express their opinion freely. Many social movements were repressed by the police since Macron came to power, like the “Yellow Vests” in 2018 and 2019. Since Macron was reelected in 2022, things have only gotten worse, as seen with the suppressed movement against the pension reform in 2023. And the situation entered a complete deadlock after the European Elections that defeated Macron’s party. The president convoked snap elections, which resulted in a completely divided Parliament in three blocks: the left, the centrist-liberals (Macron’s camp), and the far-right. Because these three parties can’t agree with each other and find a compromise to form a government, Macron formed a new centrist-right government, without considering the result of the elections. 

Protest in Le Havre (Normandy)

All of this accumulated anger erupted on the streets today, and the student movement was the spark that ignited the anger. People have had enough of being constantly neglected by the power, and used this opportunity to express their frustration. That’s how we can see trade unions, farmers, private sector workers, and retired people joining the walks alongside students. This was mainly seen during the protests on Saturday 17th October, where almost 800,000 people went out to protest against Macron’s government, but also to express their discontent with the lack of support against growing inflation and high fuel prices. Many slogans on different issues all converged in one single protest. This “convergence of struggles” will continue as trade unions appeal for new protests tomorrow and in the next weeks. However, some people might be discouraged by the very violent police response to the protests. On October 17th, many people stated that protests were broken up even before the marches started in many cities like Le Havre, Paris, Bordeaux, or Lyon. The police used tear gas and other crowd-control weapons against the demonstrators.

A Political and Security Response 

There are a plethora of examples that showcase the violence committed by French police: in Guadeloupe, a 16-year-old girl was directly struck by a defensive projectile launcher (known as LBD). In both Tours and Argenteuil, two minors were hit in the eye by this same weapon. One of them lost use of his eye, and the other remained in critical condition. In Lens, a tear-gas grenade tore out a 15-year-old's hand. These actions quickly went viral on social media, forcing Minister Nuñez to temporarily suspend the use of stun grenades. However, he clarified that this suspension was temporary and only applied to the students’ protests. On his side, Education Minister Édouard Geffray argued that the police response was appropriate, even though he deemed some of the students’ complaints to be legitimate.

This decision to only suspend the use of stun grenades temporarily and exclusively for the student protests was condemned by Manuel Bompard (national coordinator of the left-wing party La France Insoumise) and Boris Vallaud (president of the socialist bloc in the French National Assembly). They respectively declared that it was “time to ban these weapons of war” and that they “had no place [in the response] to a student protest”. On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate for the far-right Rassemblement National party, declared that the police were merely doing their job, and quickly criticized the suspension of stun grenades. Whilst this debate was ongoing, President Emmanuel Macron called for empathy and restraint, and stated that the police would only be intervening if the protests turned violent. All of this took place only 6 months before the presidential elections.

The statements made by President Macron and both Interior Minister Nuñez and Education Minister Geffray regarding the police response are dangerous, as they normalize state violence against its citizens and downplay its consequences. These statements presuppose that the state is an entity whose necessities take priority over the rights of its citizens, instead of being conceived as a tool to achieve the greater well-being of the French people. The state’s violent response to these protests reflects the dangers of these statements. When the state ceases to prioritize the well-being of all its inhabitants and prefers to maintain the status quo, the police become a force of oppression which defends the interests of a small elite. In this case, law enforcement is violently silencing the French high school students whilst ignoring their demands: the improvement of French education and public infrastructure, as well as better conditions for work and study for teachers and students alike. It is here that we must question what role the police have played in the normalization of violence against citizens and the defense of the interests of the elite, even if these interests go against the greater well-being of the majority of French people.

International Echo

These protests have sparked outrage even outside of the French borders. Most notably, students took to the streets with similar demands across several Belgian cities, with a protest taking place in Liège on October 6th. This was quickly followed by protests in other Wallonian cities such as Mons and Charleroi. This happened within a national context where school teachers have been forced to work longer hours due to a recent reform, and just as in France, the police response has been criticized for its extreme violence. These protests have also spread, although to a lesser degree, to Germany and Italy (another subject which deserves an article in its own right), two countries which neighbor France. Once again, social media played a crucial role in this development.

The most notable reaction from a world leader was that made by Donald Trump, president of the United States. Famous for his strong anti-immigration stance, he blamed Islam and migrants for the violence of the protests, despite neither of these being the subject of the actual mobilization. Some have seen these statements as a way for him to justify further implementing violent anti-immigration policies within the United States as part of his “politics of cruelty”, just one month before the mid-term elections.

Don’t Look Back in Anger 

With all these elements in mind, you might wonder how this complex crisis will be resolved. Well, no one really knows at this moment. On the night of Sunday 18th October, President Emmanuel Macron made a speech after a weekend of intense protests. Without announcing any specific measures to calm down the people’s rage, he declared that the Prime Minister would hold consultations between trade unions, political parties, and high school student representatives this week. 

Will that be enough? In this context, debates are starting in Parliament about the 2027 budget. The government has already announced major cuts in public spending, increasing people’s precarity without increasing taxes on the wealthiest and transnational corporations, which are making huge profits, as suggested by the economist Gabriel Zucman. France aims to reduce its deficit by 5% in 2027, still very far from the 3% European rule. On top of that, we already mentioned the ongoing presidential campaign, which makes the public debate even more tense. 

The title of this article is a reference to Tracy Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’.

Let’s finish with a positive note that summarizes well what the French people think and expect: “Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn…”