The University:
the Gaullist Régime is Responsible!
DECLARATION
OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY
Right in the middle of the preparation period for the exams, the Sorbonne and the faculty at Nanterre are closed and police repression is on the rampage.
Responsibility for this situation lies at the door of the Gaullist régime which, for ten years, has been maintaining and aggravating an educational system which is ill-adjusted to our times, in its operation and its methods. Yesterday, the Minister of Education himself declared that there were only 10 per cent of workers’ children amongst the students. Three out of four students cannot finish their studies. And it is still against the students that the government strikes. The students’ discontent is legitimate. Besides, this situation favours the actions of adventurers whose ideas open no horizons for the students and have nothing in common with a truly progressive movement looking towards the future, with a truly revolutionary movement.
The French Communist Party calls on the workers and on all democrats to act with it and with the Union of Communist Students for:
• an immediate and total stop to all police repression. the withdrawal of police from university areas;
• the reopening of the faculties and the normal sitting of examinations;
• the liberation of the prisoners.
United democratic forces can impose these measures. To this end manual and intellectual workers, in solidarity with the students, will extend their action in different ways and will increase their resolutions and delegations to the Ministry of Education.
The French Communist Party calls on the students and the academics, and the mass of workers, to fight for:
• the construction of new faculties (notably at Villetaneuse, Créteil and at Verrières in the Paris region);
• the widespread extension of university institutes of technology, adapted to contemporary realities;
• the appointment of a sufficient number of teachers.
In this struggle the students will continue their action for the awarding of scholarships and for the installation of democratic life in the faculties and in the grandes écoles. These are the first aims of a movement which will lead to a true democratic reform in teaching.
The French Communist Party is fighting for the disappearance of capitalism and the realisation of socialism in France. Consequently it is struggling for a new democracy which will guarantee profound changes, notably in the university and in teaching.
THE SECRETARIAT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY
Paris, 7 May 1968
Documents from May 1968 