France

Action on Covid-19

France has seen an upturn in Covid cases and hospitalisations since mid-November, but low response to a booster jab drive (the government reckons only 21% of over-80s and 37% of those aged 60-79 are “adequately protected” by recent vaccination or mild infection). Covid death counts there remain low so far, and in Britain and many other countries as much concern focuses on Strep A, scarlet fever, flu, RSV, etc., infectious diseases especially hitting young children for which immunity may have declined due to lockdowns. But an ill-managed exit from ultra-lockdowns in China could create a huge...

The strike wave in France

A worker and union activist at RATP, the Parisian equivalent of Transport for London, spoke at an online meeting hosted by Tubeworker and Off the Rails on 17 November, discussing the recent strike wave. He is a supporter of L’Etincelle, a revolutionary socialist tendency within the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party, NPA). This morning (17 November) there was a rally in front of my company’s headquarters. It’s not the first. Last winter, we were on strike during the annual wage negotiations. On 29 September, a long-term strike movement was born, a bit like yours, it seems...

The strike wave in France

A worker and union activist at RATP, the Parisian equivalent of Transport for London, spoke at an online meeting hosted by Tubeworker and Off the Rails on 17 November, discussing the recent strike wave. He is a supporter of L'Etincelle, a revolutionary socialist tendency within the Nouveau Parti...

Free movement, not more border cops

The new UK-France deal (announced 14 Nov) to intensify policing against migrants crossing the Channel can only endanger even more lives. The deal includes UK officers joining increased beach patrols on the French coast and extra cash for French port security. Yet the UK already receives fewer refugees than France relative to population. Both lag far behind much poorer countries such as Lebanon and Chad. This is yet another in a decade of successive UK-France deals. The ever-escalating (and ever-costlier) crackdown simply pushes desperate people toward riskier routes (like the 39 people who...

Last Times where “nothing has ended”

Drawing on the author’s first-hand experience of the fall of Paris and the early French Resistance, Victor Serge’s novel Last Times (New York Review of Books, 2022) offers a bleak, immersive view of France under the German occupation and the Vichy government. Written in the early 1940s, the novel covers a period of just over a year in 1940-41. Serge’s anti-fascist protagonists have an overarching goal that leads them to join the columns of refugees making the arduous journey to Marseilles and — they hope — to a ship that will carry them to the Americas, but one should not read Last Times...

France to renationalise EDF

On 6 July the French government announced that it will take the country's primary electricity utility, EDF, back into full public ownership. This reverses the part-privatisation of 2005, from which 16% of the shares of EDF are now in private hands. The rationale of the decision is one which equally mandates public ownership of the energy industry in Britain: the need for long-term investment not vulnerable to the short-term oscillations of profit and share prices. The immediate impulse is the need to repair, renovate, and expand France's nuclear power stations, which provide a much bigger...

Urgent challenge for French left

It’s good that France’s neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron comes out of the 19 June second round of France’s National Assembly elections with only 246 seats out of 577, way short of a majority. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s electoral tactic has worked well. The Nupes alliance agreed just one candidate from among its four components — Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Green EELV — in each constituency, and so reached the second-round run-off in 370-odd seats, far more than it would have done with four first-round candidates everywhere. It came out...

Letter: A festival of dialogue

As Dale Street reports ( Solidarity 637 ), the debates on Ukraine at Lutte Ouvrière (LO) fete this year (27-29 May) were poor. Still, I think people in our Workers’ Liberty contingent had a good time. The Fete itself is impressive for bringing together many thousands of socialists and workers — working-class families from the region and groups of workmates brought by LO activists from all over France — in a fun event that mixes genuinely good food and entertainment with a really inspiring and educational international meeting of revolutionaries. Workers’ Liberty has described the world...

From blocking Macron to rebuilding left politics

As a tactic, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Nupes alliance of his La France Insoumise with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Greens (EELV), on a soft left platform, worked well in the first round of France's National Assembly election, on 12 June. In a low turnout (48%), Nupes got about the same vote (26%) as the Ensemble coalition of Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected president with 59% on the second round on 24 April. Having one official Nupes candidate in each seat, rather than four different candidates from the four components, means that Nupes gets into the 19 June run-off votes in...

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