The French riots and car burnings of 2005 were nothing compared to those of 1968.
Londoner Karen Moller remembers the revolution of '68 on its 40th anniversary....
My part in the French Revolution ... a naive London girl's evocative memories of Paris '68
By KAREN MOLLER
18th May 2008
Daily Mail
At the beginning of May 1968, Paris exploded like a bottle of champagne.
Tens of thousands of students, enraged by university bureaucracy and burning with revolutionary fervour, marched on the Sorbonne, which had been shut by the police.
As the barricades went up and the riots began, I telephoned my friend Adrienne who lived in Paris.
"S***!" she said as soon as she heard my voice. "Right in the middle of Paris they think they can get away with beating kids and herding them into paddy wagons!"
I owned my own fashion boutique in London at the time, but had lived in France and had a great deal of sympathy for the students and their opposition to government repression. I decided to join the protests.
I arrived on May 12. The heavy-handed reaction of President Charles de Gaulle's government had generated a wave of sympathy for the students and the unions had called for a one-day general strike and demonstration the following day.
The sheer exuberance as we marched across Paris, from the Place de la Bastille to Denfert Rochereau, was amazing.
People laughed, joked, shouted slogans and sang songs such as The Internationale.
The next day, Adrienne and I joined one of the 25 barricades on the Left Bank.
It was about two metres high, made of wooden crates, flowerpots and pieces of furniture that local people had donated. A burned-out car added to the heap.
Street fighters: Karen and her banner are lifted shoulder-high by comrades
Students had been at work since early afternoon prying up paving stones and piling them on top of the barricade to use against the police.
It all had an unreal, make-believe quality, but as the hours ticked by and the dark mass of the nearby riot control police - known as the CRS - thickened, it felt far more scary.
One of the students had a transistor radio on which we heard an interview with the student leader Danny Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny the Red.
"Don't get caught alone," he warned. "They'll club you and kick you when you're down."
When morning broke, people opened their doors and brought us coffee and chocolate.
It was a strange anticlimax: nothing had really happened, apart from a few bursts of tear gas. The fighting had been elsewhere.
That was to be the pattern, with brutal encounters at night followed by almost idyllic calm when songs and poetry alternated with spontaneous meetings and revolutionary speeches during the day.
Nevertheless, a sense of impending trouble hung over the city.
Place Maubert looked desolate and ruined. Traffic lights were smashed and burned-out cars and broken street signs lay in the gutter. Rubbish smouldered in the middle of the square.
Perhaps more afraid of the students than of the police, shop owners had put up signs that read: " Solidarity with the students."
We stopped at a local café, where the barman looked us over as we sipped our coffee.
Then, nodding in sympathy, he refused our francs.
Aftermath: The devastation left after rioting in Rue Gay-Lussac
The following day I went with Adrienne to the Beaux-Arts, where art students were producing thousands of anti-government posters. Others were planning the evening ahead.
Adrienne was put in charge of the most important student enclave, in Rue Gay-Lussac.
She had grown up in the area and knew every street and alleyway.
That night, dressed in black sweaters to make us less conspicuous, we headed out to man that barricade.
The electricity supply had been interrupted and the lack of traffic lights made the streets chaotic.
Some workers had dumped building blocks nearby, and after an hour of passing them up to comrades, my hands were raw.
Adrienne suggested we take a walk down Boulevard Saint Michel and, to our surprise, we found ourselves drinking coffee next to the CRS.
They seemed like children, as young and scared as we were.
Adrienne was never one to lose her cool. After exchanging a few pleasantries with the CRS, she said: "We are making the world better for you as well."
One young policeman replied: "And we are just doing our job."
At 2am, things started to happen at the barricade.
I suspected that, like me, my 30 or so companions were damp with sweat and fear as the CRS moved forward like a solid wall.
The scale of the attack was dumbfounding, like a volcano erupting.
I panicked and began wildly throwing rocks, bottles and lumps of earth. The aim was not to hit the officers, but as Adrienne put it, "to scare the s*** out of them".
Instead, it was having a similar effect on me. If something went wrong, we could end up spending years in prison.
Ambulances could not get through, but suddenly a taxi appeared out of nowhere and carried two of our wounded to the Sorbonne.
Comrades streamed in from defeated areas, crying that the police were even beating people on stretchers.
I heard a series of thuds as tear gas canisters landed, belching smoke in thick, blue clouds.
The itching was terrible and I wanted to rub my eyes, but I knew that would make them worse.
When a photographer was knocked over and his camera smashed, we knew it was the end.
We ran, pursued by sirens. I was in despair but Adrienne brushed off the night's defeat as a hiccup.
"The struggle is only starting," she declared. "Tomorrow, more workers will join us."
In the morning we heard that De Gaulle had fled to Germany and was preparing to send in the army.
He believed the very foundations of society were under threat. But we just wanted a freer society.
By the end of the week, ten million workers were on strike. Ordinary life was at a standstill.
On May 23 I flew back to London. I had enjoyed that brief time in Paris and I loved the French being so un-French.
Instead of asking, "What is this going to cost us?" which was their usual response in times of crisis, they asked: "Who will we be when this is over? How will it change the minds and spirits of our children?"
Later, with concessions to the workers and the acknowledgement of the justness of students' complaints, the movement disintegrated.
The visionless old guard stayed in power; just the figurehead - De Gaulle - changed.
Some important things happened, of course. National nursery care was introduced, the education system was improved, women were given their right to abortion and France signed the international bill of rights for women.
But today France is still a privileged and hierarchical society. The battle for those freedoms we demanded 40 years ago continues.
• Technicolor Dreamin", by Karen Moller, is published by Trafford Canada.
dailymail.co.uk
Londoner Karen Moller remembers the revolution of '68 on its 40th anniversary....
My part in the French Revolution ... a naive London girl's evocative memories of Paris '68
By KAREN MOLLER
18th May 2008
Daily Mail
At the beginning of May 1968, Paris exploded like a bottle of champagne.
Tens of thousands of students, enraged by university bureaucracy and burning with revolutionary fervour, marched on the Sorbonne, which had been shut by the police.
As the barricades went up and the riots began, I telephoned my friend Adrienne who lived in Paris.
"S***!" she said as soon as she heard my voice. "Right in the middle of Paris they think they can get away with beating kids and herding them into paddy wagons!"
I owned my own fashion boutique in London at the time, but had lived in France and had a great deal of sympathy for the students and their opposition to government repression. I decided to join the protests.
I arrived on May 12. The heavy-handed reaction of President Charles de Gaulle's government had generated a wave of sympathy for the students and the unions had called for a one-day general strike and demonstration the following day.
The sheer exuberance as we marched across Paris, from the Place de la Bastille to Denfert Rochereau, was amazing.
People laughed, joked, shouted slogans and sang songs such as The Internationale.
The next day, Adrienne and I joined one of the 25 barricades on the Left Bank.
It was about two metres high, made of wooden crates, flowerpots and pieces of furniture that local people had donated. A burned-out car added to the heap.
Street fighters: Karen and her banner are lifted shoulder-high by comrades
Students had been at work since early afternoon prying up paving stones and piling them on top of the barricade to use against the police.
It all had an unreal, make-believe quality, but as the hours ticked by and the dark mass of the nearby riot control police - known as the CRS - thickened, it felt far more scary.
One of the students had a transistor radio on which we heard an interview with the student leader Danny Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny the Red.
"Don't get caught alone," he warned. "They'll club you and kick you when you're down."
When morning broke, people opened their doors and brought us coffee and chocolate.
It was a strange anticlimax: nothing had really happened, apart from a few bursts of tear gas. The fighting had been elsewhere.
That was to be the pattern, with brutal encounters at night followed by almost idyllic calm when songs and poetry alternated with spontaneous meetings and revolutionary speeches during the day.
Nevertheless, a sense of impending trouble hung over the city.
Place Maubert looked desolate and ruined. Traffic lights were smashed and burned-out cars and broken street signs lay in the gutter. Rubbish smouldered in the middle of the square.
Perhaps more afraid of the students than of the police, shop owners had put up signs that read: " Solidarity with the students."
We stopped at a local café, where the barman looked us over as we sipped our coffee.
Then, nodding in sympathy, he refused our francs.
Aftermath: The devastation left after rioting in Rue Gay-Lussac
The following day I went with Adrienne to the Beaux-Arts, where art students were producing thousands of anti-government posters. Others were planning the evening ahead.
Adrienne was put in charge of the most important student enclave, in Rue Gay-Lussac.
She had grown up in the area and knew every street and alleyway.
That night, dressed in black sweaters to make us less conspicuous, we headed out to man that barricade.
The electricity supply had been interrupted and the lack of traffic lights made the streets chaotic.
Some workers had dumped building blocks nearby, and after an hour of passing them up to comrades, my hands were raw.
Adrienne suggested we take a walk down Boulevard Saint Michel and, to our surprise, we found ourselves drinking coffee next to the CRS.
They seemed like children, as young and scared as we were.
Adrienne was never one to lose her cool. After exchanging a few pleasantries with the CRS, she said: "We are making the world better for you as well."
One young policeman replied: "And we are just doing our job."
At 2am, things started to happen at the barricade.
I suspected that, like me, my 30 or so companions were damp with sweat and fear as the CRS moved forward like a solid wall.
The scale of the attack was dumbfounding, like a volcano erupting.
I panicked and began wildly throwing rocks, bottles and lumps of earth. The aim was not to hit the officers, but as Adrienne put it, "to scare the s*** out of them".
Instead, it was having a similar effect on me. If something went wrong, we could end up spending years in prison.
Ambulances could not get through, but suddenly a taxi appeared out of nowhere and carried two of our wounded to the Sorbonne.
Comrades streamed in from defeated areas, crying that the police were even beating people on stretchers.
I heard a series of thuds as tear gas canisters landed, belching smoke in thick, blue clouds.
The itching was terrible and I wanted to rub my eyes, but I knew that would make them worse.
When a photographer was knocked over and his camera smashed, we knew it was the end.
We ran, pursued by sirens. I was in despair but Adrienne brushed off the night's defeat as a hiccup.
"The struggle is only starting," she declared. "Tomorrow, more workers will join us."
In the morning we heard that De Gaulle had fled to Germany and was preparing to send in the army.
He believed the very foundations of society were under threat. But we just wanted a freer society.
By the end of the week, ten million workers were on strike. Ordinary life was at a standstill.
On May 23 I flew back to London. I had enjoyed that brief time in Paris and I loved the French being so un-French.
Instead of asking, "What is this going to cost us?" which was their usual response in times of crisis, they asked: "Who will we be when this is over? How will it change the minds and spirits of our children?"
Later, with concessions to the workers and the acknowledgement of the justness of students' complaints, the movement disintegrated.
The visionless old guard stayed in power; just the figurehead - De Gaulle - changed.
Some important things happened, of course. National nursery care was introduced, the education system was improved, women were given their right to abortion and France signed the international bill of rights for women.
But today France is still a privileged and hierarchical society. The battle for those freedoms we demanded 40 years ago continues.
• Technicolor Dreamin", by Karen Moller, is published by Trafford Canada.
dailymail.co.uk