[1968-1981] The Post-'68 Era and Social Reform

The cobblestones of Paris, once ripped from the streets and hurled in defiance in May of 1968, were now back in place. A fragile quiet had descended upon France, but the tremors of that near-revolution continued to shake the very foundations of the state. The old titan, President Charles de Gaulle, had won the subsequent election, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. The man who had embodied France for three decades suddenly seemed out of step with the nation he had saved. Less than a year later, in April 1969, he staked his presidency on a minor referendum on regional reform, and when it failed, he did as he promised. A terse, one-sentence communiqué was issued from his country home: “I am ceasing to exercise my functions as President of the Republic. This decision takes effect today at midday.” Just like that, the Gaullist era was over.

His successor, Georges Pompidou, a former prime minister under de Gaulle, sought to steer France into a new age of industrial prowess. This was the twilight of the “Trente Glorieuses,” the thirty glorious years of post-war economic expansion, and Pompidou’s France was a nation obsessed with the future. Concrete and steel became the symbols of progress. New motorways, the *autoroutes*, sliced through ancient farmlands, connecting cities at speeds previously unimaginable. In the heart of Paris, the old market of Les Halles was demolished, and plans were laid for a cultural centre so radical it looked as if the building’s innards—its coloured pipes and escalators—had been turned inside out. This would become the Centre Pompidou, a monument to an era that believed progress was not just possible, but inevitable. Yet, this relentless drive forward was about to hit a wall. In the autumn of 1973, the Yom Kippur War led to an OPEC oil embargo. The price of oil quadrupled almost overnight. For a nation that had built its recovery on cheap energy, the shock was profound. The term *chômage*, unemployment, which had been a distant memory, suddenly returned to the national conversation as factories slowed and the dream of endless growth evaporated in the exhaust fumes of cars queueing for petrol.

Pompidou died in office in 1974, and France chose a new kind of leader. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was younger, more refined, and projected an image of accessible modernity. He played the accordion on television and invited rubbish collectors to breakfast at the Elysée Palace. He promised to govern from the centre, to reform France not through rupture, but through steady, intelligent change. And in a whirlwind of legislative activity, his government began to dismantle the old, socially conservative state. In July 1974, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, enfranchising millions of young people whose generation had been at the forefront of the May '68 protests. The following year, divorce by mutual consent was legalized, offering a dignified end to marriages that had previously required one party to be publicly declared at fault. But the most dramatic and divisive battle was yet to come.

His Minister of Health was a woman named Simone Veil. A survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, she possessed an unshakeable resolve forged in unimaginable horror. Her task was to pass a law legalizing abortion. For 25 hours, spread across three days and two nights in November 1974, she stood before a hostile, overwhelmingly male National Assembly. The chamber echoed with vitriol. Opponents accused her of wanting to throw babies into ovens, one deputy going so far as to place a recording of a heartbeat next to the microphone. Swastikas were anonymously mailed to her home. Through it all, Simone Veil stood her ground, her voice never faltering, her arguments rooted in public health and human dignity. “I say this with my whole conviction,” she declared to the chamber, “abortion must remain the exception, the last resort for situations with no way out. But how can we tolerate it while closing our eyes to the 300,000 clandestine abortions that each year mutilate the women of this country, that trample on its laws and that humiliate or traumatize those who have recourse to it?” The *Loi Veil* passed, narrowly, thanks to votes from the left-wing opposition. It was a landmark victory, one that fundamentally reshaped the rights and lives of French women and symbolized the profound social transformation underway.

This was a France of contradictions. The high-speed future was arriving on schedule. In 1978, the state-owned railway company SNCF began testing a new kind of train, the Train à Grande Vitesse, or TGV, which would soon shatter world speed records. In homes, the PTT, the post and telephone authority, began testing a small, beige terminal called the Minitel, a forerunner of the internet that allowed users to book tickets, check bank accounts, and chat online, years before the world wide web. Yet, this futuristic France was haunted by economic anxiety. A second oil shock in 1979 plunged the country deeper into crisis. Unemployment, once below 500,000, was climbing towards 2 million. The shiny, modern vision of President Giscard d'Estaing was becoming tarnished by economic stagnation and a political scandal involving diamonds gifted by an African dictator. The promise of change from the centre felt, to many, like a promise unfulfilled.

As the decade drew to a close, the political left, fractured since 1968, saw its chance. Under the patient and cunning leadership of François Mitterrand, the Socialists and Communists forged a common front. They offered a radical alternative: nationalizations, a higher minimum wage, a shorter working week, and the abolition of the death penalty. The presidential election of 1981 became a referendum on the past seven years and the entire 23-year reign of the right in the Fifth Republic. On the evening of May 10th, 1981, the nation held its breath. Television screens showed a computer-generated image of the incumbent president's face, which would slowly fade to reveal the winner. As the minutes ticked by, the features of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing began to dissolve, and through them emerged the familiar, craggy visage of François Mitterrand. In that moment, a political earthquake shook France. Spontaneous celebrations erupted across the country. In Paris, a jubilant crowd surged towards the Place de la Bastille, the historic symbol of revolution, dancing and singing late into the night. It was more than just a change of president; it felt like the turning of a historical page, the final, delayed victory of the generation of 1968, and the dawn of an entirely new era.