[May - June 1968] The May 1968 Social Upheaval

In the spring of 1968, France appeared to be a model of stability. The nation was nearly a decade into the Fifth Republic, guided by the towering, almost monarchical figure of President Charles de Gaulle. The economy was booming, part of a thirty-year post-war expansion the French called 'Les Trente Glorieuses'—the Glorious Thirty. Cities hummed with new Renaults and Citroëns, and the newly affluent middle class was discovering the joys of consumerism, from refrigerators to television sets. Yet, beneath this placid surface of prosperity and order, a deep-seated frustration was simmering. It was a societal unease, particularly potent among the young. The children of the post-war baby boom, now crowding into centuries-old universities, felt suffocated by a society that seemed rigid, conservative, and deeply patriarchal. The university system was archaic, the government paternalistic, and daily life was governed by social rules that felt a century out of date.

The first crack in the façade appeared not in the bustling heart of Paris, but in its dreary western suburb of Nanterre. The university there was a stark, modern campus, a concrete symbol of France's attempt to modernize its education system. But its students felt alienated and constrained. They protested overcrowding, but also the puritanical campus rules, which, for instance, strictly forbade male students from visiting female dormitories. Leading these protests was a charismatic, red-headed sociology student named Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The administration’s response was predictable and clumsy: they disciplined the student leaders. When the protests continued, they shut down the university entirely on May 2nd, 1968. This heavy-handed reaction was the spark that would ignite a firestorm.

The displaced Nanterre students descended upon the Sorbonne, the historic heart of the University of Paris in the Latin Quarter. The atmosphere was electric. What began as a protest against university policy quickly morphed into a broader critique of French society, capitalism, and imperialism. Fearing a full-blown occupation, the university rector took an unprecedented step: he called in the police to clear the Sorbonne's courtyard. This violated a centuries-old tradition of university sanctuary from state power. As students were bundled into police vans, the Quarter erupted. Young Parisians, not all of them students, spontaneously fought back. The air, once filled with the scent of spring blossoms and coffee, was suddenly thick with the acrid smell of tear gas. The sharp crack of police batons against shields echoed off the old stone buildings. The battle for the Latin Quarter had begun.

Over the next week, the conflict escalated dramatically. The government, led by Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, remained intransigent, believing a show of force would quell the unrest. They were profoundly mistaken. Each act of police brutality, broadcast on the nation’s radios and new television sets, only brought more sympathizers into the streets. The night of May 10th became legendary as the 'Night of the Barricades'. Thousands of students and their supporters tore up the streets of the Latin Quarter, ripping out the heavy paving stones—the famous 'pavés'—and stacking them into more than sixty barricades. They were joined by local residents, who threw water and food down from their windows. For hours, a pitched battle raged against the riot police, the CRS, who charged the makeshift fortresses with tear gas and brute force. By dawn, hundreds were injured, the streets were a shambles of overturned cars and smoldering debris, and the nation was in shock.

The government's violence had backfired. It horrified the public and, crucially, galvanized the French working class. The country's powerful trade unions, initially wary of what they saw as a bourgeois student movement, could no longer stand aside. They called for a one-day general strike and a massive demonstration for Monday, May 13th. That day, Paris witnessed a sea of humanity. Up to a million students, workers, and citizens marched together through the city, singing 'The Internationale' and chanting slogans against de Gaulle. It was a breathtaking display of unity, a moment when it seemed an entire generation was rising up to demand a new future. The one-day strike was meant to be a symbolic gesture, but the workers had other ideas. The fire had spread from the universities to the factories.

The day after the march, workers at the Sud Aviation plant near Nantes occupied their factory. The idea spread like wildfire. Within a week, a spontaneous, unauthorized wave of strikes rolled across France, bringing the nation to a grinding halt. This was not a strike ordered by union bosses; it was a grassroots rebellion from the factory floor. By the third week of May, an estimated 10 to 11 million workers were on strike. This was nearly two-thirds of the entire French workforce, the largest general strike in the nation's history. Public transport stopped. Mail wasn't delivered. Petrol stations ran dry. Mountains of garbage piled up on Parisian boulevards. The country was paralyzed. But it was a strange paralysis, one filled with an intoxicating sense of possibility. The old hierarchies seemed to be dissolving. In the occupied Odéon Theatre, citizens from all walks of life held marathon debates about art, politics, and the future of society. Walls across Paris became a canvas for revolutionary art and unforgettable graffiti. Slogans appeared overnight: 'Be realistic, demand the impossible,' 'It is forbidden to forbid,' and the most famous of all, 'Sous les pavés, la plage!'—'Under the cobblestones, the beach!'. It was a poetic cry for liberation, a belief that beneath the hard, grey structures of modern life lay a world of freedom and joy.

The government of Charles de Gaulle appeared to be in a state of collapse. The President, who had faced down army mutinies and navigated the treacherous politics of Algerian independence, seemed utterly bewildered by this leaderless, chaotic, and joyous uprising. He seemed a man out of time, unable to comprehend the desires of a generation that cared more for personal freedom than for national glory. On May 29th, the crisis reached its climax. President de Gaulle vanished. His helicopter took off from the Élysée Palace, and for six agonizing hours, no one in the government knew where he was. Panic set in. Had he fled the country? Was he resigning? The Prime Minister was reportedly preparing to announce the President's departure. In reality, de Gaulle had flown to a French military base in Baden-Baden, Germany, to meet with General Jacques Massu. He needed to know if the army would still obey his orders. Assured of their loyalty, the old general found his nerve.

He returned to France the next day, May 30th, a changed man. At 4:30 PM, the nation huddled around its radios to hear his voice. It was not the voice of a defeated leader. It was the firm, resolute voice of the war hero who had rallied France in 1940. In a masterful, five-minute speech, he announced he would not resign. He would not change his Prime Minister. Instead, he was dissolving the National Assembly and calling for immediate legislative elections. He framed the choice starkly: it was him or 'totalitarian communism'. He ended with a call to action, asking 'men and women of France' to support him. The speech electrified the 'silent majority'—the millions of ordinary French citizens who were tired of the chaos and frightened by the prospect of revolution. Within hours, a colossal counter-demonstration, half a million strong, marched down the Champs-Élysées, waving French flags and chanting 'De Gaulle is not alone!'.

The tide had turned. The revolutionary fever broke. The government negotiated the Grenelle Accords with union leaders, granting huge wage increases—the minimum wage rose by 35%—and shorter working hours. The promise of an election and a fatter paycheck was enough to lure most workers back to their jobs. The strikes petered out. The police retook the Sorbonne and the Odéon Theatre. The cobblestones were put back in their place. The elections at the end of June were a resounding victory for de Gaulle's party. It seemed, on the surface, that the established order had won. The revolution had failed.

But that was not the whole story. While the political revolution fizzled out, a profound social and cultural revolution had succeeded. France would never be the same. The rigid, hierarchical, and patriarchal society that existed before May 1968 was gone forever. The events accelerated movements for women's liberation and gay rights. They led to major reforms in the education system. The relationship between citizens and the state, between workers and bosses, between men and women, had been fundamentally altered. A new emphasis on individual freedom and expression had been permanently etched into the French soul. Even Charles de Gaulle, the victor, was a casualty of the new era. Less than a year later, in April 1969, he staked his presidency on a minor referendum on regional reform, lost, and immediately resigned, true to his word. The spirit of May had, in the end, claimed the very man who had suppressed it. The barricades were gone, but the beach had been found.