Several days in May

Sam White Path Coming as it does on the heels of the defeat of the left in the March general elections, the tenth anniversary of May '68 could not have come at a worse time for those congenital Peter Pans who still seek to draw inspiration from it and hope earnestly for a rePeat performance. Today's climate is different for, paradoxically, as apparently boundless prosperity has given place to austerity, the mood for such frivolities as those of ten years ago has evaporated. To rail against the consumer society now would be to mock the unemployed, of whom the Young form the largest single element. Not Only are the young no longer in the mood to lUan the barricades but as the March elections, in which the voting age for the first time was reduced to eighteen, showed, the Majority of them are not even prepared to vote left. No one should forget that the troubles of May '68 were started not by students living in hovels in the Latin Quart,er but by the sons and daughters of a uourgeoisie which had prospered mightily under de Gaulle; many of them went home after a night's rioting to good suppers and clean sheets in elegant fiats in the sixteenth arrondisisment.

And when of course they returned home I. the bruises of battle and told tales of Police brutality, horror and indignation swelled in parental breasts to the point that the government soon realised —and it was to add to its helplessness in the situation —that Public opinion (and bourgeois public opinlon at that) was decisively on the side of the

students. And there was more to public °Pinion than just the thought of the Ills de

papa' being clubbed by a copper as though Ile Were some vulgar working-class type. It was not only a time of unprecedented Prosperity for France but a time when de Gaulle's prestige stood at its highest. He had settled the Algerian war and was now Playing host to peace negotiations between the US and North Vietnam in Paris. Now if there is one man the French bourgeoisie hated and still hates, it is de Gaulle. There

Was the colonial lobby which could not f°r8ive him for Algeria and the whole docolonisation process which he had insti

gated; and there were the Vichyites who otud not forgive him for his wartime treason', the postwar purges, and the inclu

sion of communists in his first government. And there was big business which profoundly distrusted him. All these elements on the classic French _ight had long ago reversed their famous pre,war slogan 'rather Hitler than Leon Blum'

something which literally became their tittle cry as the troubles developed: 'rather Mendes-France than de Gaulle.' And if the students could wipe the self-satisfied smirk from de Gaulle's face, then bully for the students. Needless to say, this view was shared in Washington, Bonn and London — especially the latter, still smarting from two successive Gaullist vetoes on British entry into the Common Market. The only solace the general could find was in eastern Europe, and there he insisted on going, at the height of the riot on a long scheduled visit to Bucharest, against the entreaties of his prime minister M. Pompidou.

At this point one should say a word about the relations between de Gaulle and Pompidou. The two men were at loggerheads before the storm broke and remained at loggerheads almost thoughout. De Gaulle had a bee in his bonnet about worker participation — a project which left Pompidou not merely cold but aghast. De Gaulle had long ago decided to replace Pompidou with Couve de Murville, but the general election of the previous year had produced a government majority of only one and it became imperative that he stick with Pompidou. A complicating factor was Couve's inability to win a parliamentary seat. He had stood for two of the safest conservative seats in the country — and this is an indication of the bourgeois hatred of de Gaulle —and had been soundly beaten in both. Now, with the student riots sparking off what looked like becoming a general strike, de Gaulle, egged on by Andre Malraux and other left-wing Gaullists, could not resist the temptation of blaming Pompidou for his obstinate conservatism in matters of social policy. It was this which led to the bitter battle between the two over the question of a referendum or a general election as a means of overcoming the crisis.

De Gaulle wanted a referendum which would embody his reformist ideas, while Pompidou saw that as a certain loser and favoured an election. In the end, in dramatic circumstance as we shall see later, Pornpidou won both his point and the election too. Just as de Gaulle was to be absent during a critical period in Bucharest, so Pompidou was absent during an even more critical period — the very beginnings of the crisis — in Afghanistan. He did not consult his ministers on his return but only his Chef de Cabinet, Michel Jobert. He promptly decided that serious mistakes had been made in the handling of the situation during his absence. The universities and especially Nanterre should not have been closed because of the rioting, the police should never have been allowed to enter the Sorbonne — although they did so at the urgent request of the rector — and twelve students

should not have been held for trial for carrying weapons and attacking the police. He went on television that evening to announce that the universities would be reopened, the police withdrawn from the Sorbonne and that the charges against the arrested students would be dropped.

The result of these gestures of appeasement was the opposite to what had been hoped. That very night saw some of the worst violence yet, as the rioters went on a rampage of 'victory' celebrations. From that point on, too, the rioting became more serious in character — better organised, • almost professionally led, with strategic points besieged and public buildings like the Odeon theatre seized. All the techniques of street fighting had been considerably perfected; the manufacture of Molotov cocktails had become something of a cottage industry; a communication system between rioters had been developed with dispatch riders guiding them away from areas where the police forces were strong to points where they were weakest. Also the Paris underworld had decided to join in for what there might be in it for them, and the streets were full of roaming armed gangs of hoodlums from St Denis and Belleville.

Meanwhile if the streets were uncontrollable the strike itself was taking on the proportions of a national catastrophe. Here the old French tradition of anarchosyndicalism had come to the fore to match the anarchism of the students. It had nothing in common with the student agitations, held itself aloof from them and the student slogan: 'Students, workers — the same battle' remained an empty one from beginning to end. What had, however, happened was that the apparent ease with which the students were bringing the government to its knees lit a spark, first among the young and largely unorganised workers, which quickly spread. Not having initiated the strike movement, the union leaders and especially the communist ones could only follow in a desperate attempt to control it. On 16 May there were only 300,000 strikers; by the next day the number had doubled and two days later it stood at two million. It quickly mounted to six million and finally reached nine million. Many of the strikes were `sit-ins' involving the forcible detention of managers, and while the factory gates remained closed to the police they also remained firmly closed to the student agitators.

At this point something sinister was beginning to develop in the mood of the country's elite. It was a mood strangely reminiscent of the one in 1940 when the regime was threatened by the onrush of panzer divisions and not by students rioters and strikers. It was, in short, becoming frankly defeatist at all levels — cultural, journalistic, political, in the administration and even among some elements in the government. Gaullists were rare on the ground and coats were turned with what one might almost describe as practised dexterity. The regime had had it and the time had come to come to terms with those who would be most likely to be the coun try's new rulers. Film directors, actors, painters and a host of .writers suddenly discovered that they had always been men and women of the left. I remember Madame Pompidou, who had a host of friends in these circles, telling me with some bit

terness how her telephone fell silent during that month of May. The idea that de Gaulle ought to be dumped began to gather force even among Gaullist ministers though not, I should add, with Pompidou himself. The press suddenly began to take a strangely emasculated appearance with many familiar by-lines missing, and new unknown ones taking their place. Le Monde, needless to say, became the students' spokesman and major apologist, trumpeting unsubstantiated claims of students killed and of police brutality.

Its circulation soared from less than 400,000 to over 800,000. Like the rest of the Paris press, however, Le Monde was subject to the most dangerous of all forms of censorship —an unacknowledged one which left the reader in ignorance of it existence. The censorship was exercised by the printing unions, and a newspaper which was particularly badly hit by it was Le Figaro. There the entire political staff of the paper was 'blacked' by the unions and its most distinguished political columnist, Raymond Aron, was only allowed to appear if he refrained from writing about current events. Figaro did not protest publicly about the censorship at the time nor has it

acknowledged it since — leaving it to M.

Aron to spill the beans in his famous pamphlet on the May events `La revolution introuvable'. Against this background the talented young imitators of Goebbels had a field day planting stories of tortures in police stations, of dead bodies mysteriously 'disposed of by the police and finally a daily toll of those allegedly killed in the rioting.

This reached a grand total of seventy-three killed when in fact the six weeks' rioting did not prciduce a single fatality in Paris —which in itself provides a fitting commentary on the student slogan 'CRS = SS'. In fact not only was the government itself hesitant about using force — it allowed, for example, the rioters to build six foot high barricades while forbidding the police to intervene — but Paris was fortunate to have at the time a prefect of police, M. Grim aud, noted for his humanity and restraint in the use of force.

This, and not police violence, provided the true setting for the almost daily and nightly displays of posturing vainglory on the part of the students and their leaders. Having been an eye-witness on both occa sions, some of the Paris scenes reminded me strangely of the rioting 'Algerie francaise' students of Algeria and their simulated clashes with the police. Fortunately at this point elements of farce began to creep into the situation; Jean-Louis Barrault beating

his breast at the Odeon before audiences largely composed of boozy dochares, and telling them that of course his heart was

with the students and that they were welcome to the theatre of which technically he had custody; Sartre trying to win recognition as the spiritual father of the student revolt and being greeted with cries! of `Go home, papa'; a succession of television celebrities including a particularly notorious rugby commentator confessing their sins and asking for forgiveness, and pilgrims from afar included, as I remember, a humble Stephen Spender paying homage to this new fount of revolutionary wisdom. It was all beginning to take the form of a bloodless version of the Chinese cultural revolution. • However, there were more important figures jostling to take the centre of the stage, among them M. Francois Mitterrand and M. Mendes-France. They had originally come to a pact between themselves to have nothing to do with the student rioters. However, as the situation deteriorated, both independently decided that they had a national role to fulfil in the crisis. For Mendes-France it was largely a matter of being seen and being acclaimed at student demonstrations. For Mitterrand it was an occasion for live political action. He therefore announced that the time had come for the formation of a provisional government of which he generously offered the prime ministership to Mendes-France. He himself, he solemnly announced, would be a candidate for the presidency of the republic. That this procedure was totally unconstitutional and seditious did not seem to cross his mind. Now back to Pompidou and de Gaulle. The latter had appeared to have retreated into the shadows in a mood of the bleakest despondency while the former virtually constituted a one-man government. He seemed to be holding at least five different cabinet posts at the same time, while simultaneously engaged in a marathon negotiation with the trade unions in an effort to get a return to work. He never flinched, never tired, seemingly never slept and never lost his temper.

The trade union talks went on unbroken for thirty-six hours, with Pompidou shifting from dossier to dossier and from detail to detail like some kind of chess master playing against twenty different opponents. His tactic never varied — the communists, frightened about being outflanked by the extreme left, and worried about the intri gues of Mitterand and Mendes, were his objective allies. And so they proved to be up to a point. There was a moment when the communist leadership was torn between the temptation of toppling the government and frustrating its enemies on the left. It became intense when the communist boss of the CGT, Georges Seguy, having secured massive wage increases, was howled down at the Renault works when he presented the terms of agreement for approval. It was a mysterious business and remains a mysterious business to this day. Finally, however, the communists chose a return to work —largely because a return to work was already beginning in as spontaneous and uncontrolled a fashion as the strikes themselves had broken out. It was now the moment for the last most carefully staged and most spectacular act in the drama.

I refer, of course, to de Gaulle's famous disappearance on 29 May. For once the general had been reduced to a subsidiary role, not merely at a loss for words but unable to choose the right ones. In the middle of the crisis he had made a television appearance which not only failed to catch the mood of the country but had seriously aggravated its anxieties. It was, in short, a disastrous flop. On that particular day, with the rejection of the Pompidou-Seguy

agreement at the Renault works, the situ

ation had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. A large demonstration was

scheduled for that day which would take the marchers within a short stroll of the Elysee Palace. It was also the day for the weekly morning cabinet meeting. This was the morning that the general chose to ring Pompidou and tell him, just as ministers were beginning to gather for the cabinet meeting, that he was cancelling it and that he himself was about to leave Paris to spend the night in the restful air of his country house at Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises. He ended with what for him were strong words rich in emotive feeling: 'I embrace you'. His departure was as carefully arranged as his words were carefully chosen. First a convoy of cars loaded with the de Gaulles' personal luggage — very much more than they would need for an overnight stay —and containing, too, their personal servants, set out for Colombey. Then more luggage was loaded in one of the two helicopters composing the presidential flight. In short, the impression was carefully given that de Gaulle was leaving the Elysee not for a night but for ever. This was the conclusion Pompidou came to and the helicopters had no sooner taken off than he ordered the French television to stand by for an important declaration that he would make that evening. After two hours and still no sign of the general arriving in ColombeY panic set in. Where was he? It was only four hours later that it was discovered the he had flown to the HQ of the French army in West Germany, commanded by the ever-faithful General Massu in Baden-Baden. What happened in Baden-Baden is now a fairlY open secret and is as revealing as the deception practised in the departure front, Paris. For Massu's benefit de Gaulle plaYe° out the part of a broken man facing arl imminent revolution, who was seeking refuge with an army which might very soon be called upon to restore his presidential legitimacy. Would the general and his wife be staying the night? Certainly, and the luggage was duly unpacked and beds made ready in the Massu residence. Then tWoi hours later after a hearty lunch, the genera' announced that he would be going back t° Colombey that evening and then back t° Paris the following morning. The bags were duly re-packed and re-loaded and the gelleral and his wilting wife took off again.

The general must have returned to Col ombey well pleased with his day's work. He had pulled off a triple bluff. First by his carefully staged departure he had created an apparent void into which he invited his enemies to show themselves by stepping Into it. Secondly he had assured himself of army support for the constitutional head of state. And thirdly he had delivered a shock to public opinion of such a resounding nature that even the left was thrown off balance, being more concerned at what de Gaulle was up to than what it could do itself. It provided the fitting background to his final speech which rang down the curtain Of the May '68 psycho-drama. 'I stay' were the key words of that speech, but it was a speech that was not finally framed without a last tussle with Pompidou. In the end Pompidou got what he wanted — a general election not a referendum. As is now history the general election was won with the biggest singleparty majority in the history of the republic.