Category Archives: May 20-26 1968

Tract – “Workers, Students” (21 May 1968 – JCR)

22 Monday Aug 2016

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(Translation – Fisera 73)

WORKERS,
STUDENTS

The red flag of the working class flies over the faculties and factories. Millions of workers are occupying their enterprises. The hard-working masses, whom people called “apathetic”, have started to move.

On 13 May 1968, they became aware of their enormous strength, at the same time as they were judging the real weakness of the authorities. During the ten years of Gaullist rule they have experienced the total ineffectiveness of their traditional battle tactics, inherited from the Fourth Republic: parliamentary battles, token strikes, “the days of National Action”, were broken by the strength of the police state, without achieving results.

Only the direct, resolute action of the masses can force the Gaullist state to give way. This is the lesson that millions of workers have learned from the victorious student struggle. They have spontaneously and massively applied this lesson in order to solve their own problems.

Today the centre of gravity of the fight has moved from the faculties to the factories. The challenge to the bourgeois university has changed into the challenge to capitalist society. For let us not be fooled: if the workers are occupying the enterprises in their millions, it is not simply to obtain a satisfactory answer to their wage demands. The question of Power is being posed in the enterprises and in society. The future of the regime is at stake.

The employers and the state are dumbfounded. The panic-stricken Bourgeoise is calling upon the “organisations which are representative of the working class” to take things in hand. It realises that during periods of marked social crisis the reformist leaders of the working class are the best and the last rampart of the capitalist regime: steeped in parliamentarianism, scrupulously respectful of bourgeois legality, these leaders will channel the combativeness of the masses and will direct it towards aims which are in harmony with the survival of the system.

To preserve its authority, the cling class is ready to allow temporary concessions. It knows how to wait for the ebbing of the movement, to take back with one hand what it has had to concede with the other.

The young workers and the students, who are in the thick of the battle, do not want their fight to end in the same way as the 1936 and 1945 movements ended. The movement of unprecedented size which has sprung up in France today must not produce a damp squib. 

WE MUST CONTINUE TO THE END!
WE ARE OCCUPYING FACULTIES, ADMINISTRATIONS, FACTORIES

LETS STAY THERE!

 – Do not allow the bourgeois or social-democratic “politicians”, the Mitterands, the Guy Mollets, to negotiate a return to order in exchange for a cabinet seat! 
– Do not permit the trade-union leaders to negotiate a return to work in exchange for certain advantages, these may be appreciable ones, but they will be rapidly pruned by inflation and by intensification of work rates.

LET US TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE BALANCE OF FORCES WE HAVE ESTABLISHED:

    Let us consolidate our positions: set up Strike Committees at base-level in the factories, Action Committees in the faculties and neighbourhoods, gathering together all the workers involved in the fight!
    Impose the nationalisation of large occupied enterprises and the democratic management of them by workers committees!
    Set up workers’ control over job training, over the organisation of labour, over the management of enterprises!
    Seize the account books!
    Create organs of popular counter-power at the workplace, free from the bosses and the state apparatuses
    Enforce the departure of De Gaulle and the setting-up of a workers’ government!

The power we want is not that of a left-wing government taking over from a right-wing government. 

The power we want has nothing to do with parliamentary combinations of bourgeois and reformist politicians!

The power we want should create the direct democracy of socialism, based on the authority of local committees in the enterprises and in the neighbourhoods.

The power we want should emanate from strike committees and from workers’ and students’ acton committees.

STUDENTS, WORKERS, WE ARE BEING OFFERED A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY: LET US NOT THROW IT AWAY!

REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST YOUTH
(May 21 1968)

Tract – “Call to the Residents of the 11th Arrondissement” (21 May 1968 – PSU)

22 Monday Aug 2016

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P.S.U.
11th Section

CALL TO THE RESIDENTS OF THE 11th ARRONDISSEMENT

 
— 600,000 unemployed ……..
— 600,000 Students who refuse an uncertain future enslaved to capitalism
— Millions of workers exploding and occupy their workplaces
— Millions of peasants who revolt.

WHY?

— The Anger of People everywhere has the same basis:
— The refusal of a centralized capitalist society
— Protesting a scornful and authoritarian government, of the bosses and the big agricultural capital.

WHAT TO DO?

 Since 1936 dispute through elections, the parliament or via petitions has never resulted in anything.

 In contrast, since first the Students, and then the workers have begun to directly confront the government it shrinks back.

 We must therefore increase the pressure of direct action until the defeat of capitalism, and the establishment of a Socialist Society.

 To organize this action requires that the Workers, whether they are Factory Workers, Peasants, Office Workers or Students, unite in ACTION COMMITTEES at their places of work and residence.

THE UNIFIED SOCIALIST PARTY

 invites you to debate with it the action to be taken during a MEETING to be held on:

TUESDAY, MAY 21
20 H 30 at CINEMA “ARTISTIC VOLTAIRE”
  45 bis rue Richard Lenoir

With the participation of:
– Mr. BRIDIER Member of P.S.U Nat. Off.
– J. M. VINCENT. ” ” ” ” ”
-C. BALL Secretary General E.S.U.
-A representative of the Action Committee of the “VOLTAIRE” high-school
-A representative of the National Bureau of UNEF

Poster – “Employed & Unemployed Workers – all unite. Join your district’s Action Committee” (25 May 1968 – Atelier Populaire)

26 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in Atelier Populaire, Comites d'Action, May 20-26 1968, Poster, Uncategorized, Workers

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“Employed & Unemployed Workers – all unite. Join your district’s Action Committee”

(May 25 1968 – Atelier Populaire)


Red screen-print on newsprint (ENSBA stamp)

45 x 56 cm

Documented in:
Gasquet p. 157 ; Beaubourg #166 ; Camard #104a ; Wlassikoff p.70 ; Mesa p106 ; Beauty #110 ; UUU p23 ; Dobson #149; Les Affiches #45

Online References:
ENSBA # 10624
BNF

Tract – “The UNEF Declaration” (25 May 1968 – UNEF)

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in May 20-26 1968, Students, Tract, Uncategorized, UNEF

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(Translated in Schnapp – Document 85)

The UNEF Declaration

Following the events of the last three weeks, and particularly these last few days, in all the University cities in France – notably in Paris; taking into account the situation, the distortions made by official news releases or by those controlled by the government, we want to clarify the following points:

I – THE POLICE AND THE GOVERNMENT
ARE ENTIRELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INCIDENTS
THAT HAVE JUST OCCURRED
AND THE U.N.E.F. DECLARES ITS SOLIDARITY
WITH ALL THE VICTIMS OF THE FORCES OF REPRESSION

 These incidents arise from the government’s intentional tendency to create an objectively explosive and provocatory situation for the students and for the workers fighting with them: the UNEF declares its entire solidarity with victims of police repression, on whatever occasion it is used.

II – THE U.N.E.F. PROPOSES TO DESIGNATE
MONDAY MAY 27 AS A DAY FOR LARGE DEMONSTRATIONS
THROUGHOUT THE NATION

 The attitude of the police makes them entirely responsible for all confrontations, Particularly today and tomorrow, the presence of large forces in the Latin Quarter, their constant comings and goings, the way they disperse all groups, are so many provocations: if incidents occur, the government must know that it causes them.

 The UNEF makes no call for demonstrations today or tomorrow. As a counter-measure it proposes that all Paris and provincial militants make Monday, May 27 a national day for demonstrations, to be held after 5 P.M.

III – THE UNIVERSITY STRUGGLE HAS MEANING ONLY
IF IT IS INTEGRATED WITH THE LARGER STRUGGLE:
THERE WILL BE NO DIALOGUE WITH A GOVERNMENT
THAT REFUSES TO RECOGNISE THE MEANING OF
THIS COMMON STRUGGLE

 For a long time now the UNEF has emphasised that the University struggle is meaningless unless it becomes a part of the framework of confrontation and combat against the capitalist regime: true democratisation of education can only exist in liaison with an overthrow of production relationships and the transformation of economic structures by and for the workers.

 It is very evident that on all these points the government and General de Gaulle are unwilling to consider the nature of our combat and that they see it only from the standpoint of perpetuation of the present system.

 Therefore, we consider that there can be no dialogue with the regime.

IV – THE UNIVERSITY, IN ANY CASE, IS TAKING IN HAND
ITS OWN AFFAIRS

 On May 17, 1968, the UNEF proposed to all students and professors four precise points on which pressure may be brought to bear.

 The decisions freely taken by the student body are in broad agreement with proposals made by the UNEF. Wherever possible, particularly in the faculties henceforth under co-equal administration (teacher-student), we must now conclude and actually inaugurate the right of veto on all decisions taken. In reality, only control over decisions will make it possible to ensure permanent University confrontation. Wherever universities are autonomous, all deviation towards any sort of private administration of the faculties must be fought against. Autonomy also means that the University should be widely opened to workers.

 The UNEF therefore calls on all its militants and the whole student body to apply their own decisions from now on.

 It also calls for postponement of all examinations until September.

V – FOR AN EVEN STRONGER LIAISON
BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY STRUGGLE
AND THE STRUGGLE OF WORKERS AND PEASANTS

 The UNEF welcomes the actual junction of striking workers with students which took place in Paris on May 24, as well as in many provincial University cities, in the factories, and in the facultés. In all these cases tens of thousands of striking workers have joined the students.                            

 The UNEF sends its warmest greetings to all workers engaged in the battle with their unions. Because it believes in the importance of keeping a united student-worker front, it asks workers’ unions:
– To maintain the same solid front in face of government repression. As it happens, the refusal to give Daniel Cohn-Bendit a residence permit is precisely a decisive element of this repression.
-To remember that our position is a simple one: never, and in no way, do we intend to give lessons to working class organizations, but on the other hand, none will be accepted with regard to the student struggle.

 Permanent discussions exist at the grass roots between students and workers. To the extent that the aforementioned points are clearly understood, the UNEF proposes that the same discussions be begun on all levels with the workers’ union organizations.

 The degree to which action carried out in Paris has been reproduced in the provinces has made extension to the workers sector possible.

 At present, and with the same concern for developing the movement, the UNEF calls on all students in all University cities to increase their activities:
– for continuation of our university combat
– for union of students and workers
– for their common victory.

National Committee of the UNEF, 
May 25, 1968.

Tract – “De Gaulle at the Door!” (24 May 1968 – Comités d’Action)

24 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Comites d'Action, May 20-26 1968, Tract, Uncategorized

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(Translated in Beauty – pp 211-2) 

DE GAULLE AT THE DOOR!

 The Motion to Censure did not pass, and already the ministers lift up their heads, forgetting their fear of the day before, and already some hesitate to continue the struggle. Both sides are fooling themselves just as much as the other. 
 We do not need an impotent and hostile parliament to recognise our force. No censure will be as strong and definitive as this one, given by 10 million strikers. 
 No permission is any longer necessary for the masses to make their will to power known.

The State? 
 It has lost its universities, its manufacturer of fake ideas and of the framework of oppression
 It has lost its factories, its control of economic activity, its riches. 
 The State has lost everything; it has nothing left but power:

IT IS FOR THE TAKING. 

 But already the CRS attempts to attack the picket lines of strikes that are isolated from one another and therefore vulnerable. In the street we oppose them in a united front. 
 Today, the small farmers, in turn, show their opposition to the regime.

WORKERS, FARMERS, STUDENTS,
AGAINST THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM,
TOGETHER IN THE STREET

 In France, foreign workers, the most exploited, those at the greatest risk, are shoulder to shoulder with us. De Gaulle claims to forbid one of our comrades to return. If COHN-BENDIT is a foreigner, we are all foreigners!

NO BORDERS!
COHN-BENDIT WITH US!

 In Belgium, in Germany, in Italy, in England, in Holland, in all capitalist countries, struggles similar to ours or unified with our combat are developing.

LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY OF WORKERS AND STUDENTS

 Our industry, regional, and faculty Action Committees are already bringing together thousands of workers and students who do not want their struggle to be in vain:

EVERYONE TO THE DEMONSTRATION
 Friday May 24 at 5:00 p.m.

-Place Clichy -Stalingrad -Porte des Lilas -Porte de Montreuil

 We will gather at the Gare de Lyon at 7 p.m.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!

THE ACTION COMMITTEES

Poster – “Paris Belongs to Us” (3rd week of May 1968 – Coordination group for the Action Committees)

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Comites d'Action, Coordination des Comités d'Action, May 20-26 1968, Poster, Uncategorized

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PARIS BELONGS TO US

For three weeks the workers and students of Paris have occupied the factories and faculties, protested on every street of the capital, and organised themselves in response to police provocation. Their unity is forged in action, behind the barricades, in the streets, in communal debate, from the roots.

United in our struggle we have proved ourselves to be a force that the State can do nothing to oppose.

It has no more weapons to resort to other than police terrorism, with batons, tear-gas grenades and systematic beatings. Let’s not let it divide us.

WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT SEEKING?

Firstly, to divide us. How? By cutting off the workers from students and playing the politics of the carrot and stick. Pompidou and De Gaulle have offered a pseudo-reform of the University, hoping that the students would obediently come to the table. But the students know that the bourgeoisie University wont be reformed. It’s with the Workers and not De Gaulle that future of the University will be decided.

Faced with this rebuttal the state has unleashed savage repression. Its goal is to confine the struggle to the Latin Quarter, and deliberately provoke violence there, in order to show that the students as mere troublemakers, and to discredit them in the eyes of the people of Paris.

LET’S FOIL THE POLICE PLOT

On Friday and Saturday night, by the tens of thousands, we kept the mobilisation of the cops in check at the Bastille, the Gare de Lyon, the Bourse, Opera, Place Vendome, and rue de Rivoli. It was only when we had assembled around the Sorbonne that the police were able to organise the slaughter, safe from an immediate and massive retaliation by the population.

The barricades of the Latin Quarter allowed the fight to begin, but they mustn’t delimit it, or confine it to this one part of the capital.

THE FIGHT WILL BE CARRIED OUT THROUGHOUT PARIS

The cops can isolate a couple of thousand protestors who are gathered in a restricted area. They are powerless if we are tens or hundreds of thousands organised throughout the capital.

Let’s set up Action Committees in every arrondissement, and in every district.

Let’s discuss the aims of our struggle. Let’s reject the dictatorship that has oppressed Paris ever since the government of Versailles crushed the glorious Commune. No Chief of Police or Mayor can determine our destinies any longer, but rather Parisians themselves.

Together, at every level, let’s prepare action towards this goal, and let’s undertake it quickly.

THE REGIME IS TOTTERING, LET’S KNOCK IT DOWN!

Power belongs to the people.

Our struggle has shown that we are able to seize it.

WORKERS, STUDENTS LET’S COMBINE OUR EFFORTS
LET’S ORGANISE OUR FORCES

THE PEOPLE OF PARIS MUST GOVERN PARIS

(3rd week of May 1968 – Coordination group for the Action Committees)

Black Offset print

45 x 56 cm

Documented in:
Gasquet p. 14 (450 x 560) ; Beauty #369b

Online Resources:

ENSBA #12906



Tract – “Your struggle is our struggle!” (21 May 1968 – Mouvement du 22 Mars)

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in May 20-26 1968, Mouvement du 22 Mars, Students, Tract, Uncategorized, Workers

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(Translated in Fisera – Document 59)

YOUR STRUGGLE IS OUR STRUGGLE!

 We are occupying the faculties, you are occupying the factories. Aren’t we fighting for the same thing?

Higher education only contains 10 per cent workers’ children. Are we fighting so that there will be more of them, for a democratic university reform? That would be a good thing, but it’s not the most important. These workers children would just become like other students. We are not aiming for a worker’s son to be a manager, We want to wipe out segregation between workers and management.

 There are students who are unable to find jobs on leaving university. Are we fighting so that they’ll find jobs, for a decent graduate employment policy? It would be a good thing, but it is not vital. Psychology or sociology graduates will become the selectors, the planners and psycho-technicians who will try to organise your working conditions; mathematics graduates will become engineers, perfecting maximum-productivity machines to make your life even more unbearable. Why are we, students who are products of middle-class life, criticising capitalist society? The son of a worker who becomes a student leaves his own class. For the son of a middle-class family, it could be his opportunity to see his class in its true light, to question the role he is destined for in society and the organisation of our society. We refuse to besome scholars who are out of touch with real life. We refuse to be used for the benefit of the ruling class. We want to destroy the separation that exists between those who organise and think and those who execute their decisions. We want to form a classless society; your cause is the same as ours.

 You are asking for a minimum wage of 1,000 Francs in the Paris area, retirement at sixty, a 40-hour week for 48 hours’ pay.

 These are long-standing and just demands: nevertheless. they seem to be out of context with our aims. Yet you have gone on to occupy factories, take your managers as hostages, strike without warning, These forms of struggle have been made possible by perseverance and lengthy action in various enterprises, and because of the recent student battles.

 These struggles are even more radical than our official aims. because they go further than simply seeking improvements for the worker within the capitalist system, they imply the destruction of the system. They are political in the true sense of the word: you are fighting not to change the Prime Minister, but so that your boss no longer retains his power in business or society. The form that your struggle has taken offers us students the model for true socialist activity: the appropriation of the means of production and of the decision-making power by the workers.

 Our struggles converge. We must destroy everything that seeks to alienate us (everyday habits, the press, etc.). We must combine our occupations in the faculties and factories.

Long live the unification of our struggles !

Everybody to the four rallies and the demonstration at the Gare de Lyon, on Friday May 24 May 1968, at 7 p.m.

Movement of 22 March 1968

Tract – “Manifesto I” (20 May 1968 – Comité de Coordination des Cadres Contestataires)

20 Friday May 2016

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(Translated in Fisera – Document 181)

20 MAY 1968

MANIFESTO 1

The student movement has sparked off, among a large number of managerial staff, a new analysis of their purpose in the enterprises and of the goals of the consumer society that they are helping to construct, whether consciously or not. 

For these managerial staff, the student movement represents a fundamental questioning of the nature of our society. This questioning may have given rise to verbal excesses, which only express the depth of the problem in question. The managerial classes believe that they have an important role to play in order to contribute to the formation of bases and structures for a society which will turn man into something other than a consumer.

A revolution of this type means:

1. The elaboration of an original industrial society going beyond those which are normally proposed, whether they be of the American or of the Soviet type. This society’s basic characteristic will be that it is built for and by all the wage-earners, who will constitute its driving force.

2. The working out of concrete situations for the democratisation of the management of industry, and of general economic programmed, to the usual objectives of profitability and expansion – of which the material gains are real – must be added the goal of personal fulfilment at work as well as in free time activities.

In the short term – for the same reason as the questioning of society – the questioning of the trade-union and political organisations entrusted with defending and expressing the hopes of the wage-earning classes. becomes a necessity.

Aware that the battle being fought at the universities cannot be brought to a successful conclusion without the spreading of the movement to all economic sectors. the “C 4” proposes:

— to participate alongside the students in the reorganisation of educational structures and methods;

— to introduce both reflection and action in professional circles.

The Coordination Committee 
of the Protesting Managers – “C 4”

Poster – “A Youth Who Worries About the Future too Often” (May 25 1968)

07 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in de Gaulle, May 20-26 1968, Poster, Uncategorized

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A Youth Who Worries About the Future too Often 

(May 25 1968)

Purple offset on gloss paper

43cm x 56cm

This is one of my favourite posters from May 68 – and indeed one of my favourite graphic images of all time.
The text is almost a direct qoute from a speech made by de Gaulle on May 24: “the profound troubles, especially amongst the youth, who are concerned about their own role and who worry about the future too often” (“les troubles profonds, surtout dans la jeunesse, qui est soucieuse de son propre rôle et que l’avenir inquiet trop souvent”)

There were at least 3 versions made of this poster – my copy is one of the later offset printed ones (the earlier versions were less graphically less sophisticated and screen-printed).

This image is also famous for inspiring Jaimie Reid in making an early version of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” 7″ cover.

  
Documented in:

Gasquet p. 167; Wlassikoff p. 64 ; Dobson #43 ; Les Affiches #203 ; Peters #53;  Beauty #81′ Mesa p43 ; Paris p142

Poster – “(French & Immigrant) Workers United” (22 May 1968 – Atelier Populaire)

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Atelier Populaire, May 20-26 1968, Poster, Worker

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“(French & Immigrant) Workers United”

(22 May 1968 – Atelier Populaire)

Dark Brown screenprint on newspaper (Atelier Populaire stamp with no border)

37.5cm x 48cm

Documented in:
Dobson #151; Mésa p. 32; Camard #94; Beauty #9; Artcurial #566/567/574/575; UUU p29; Paves; Beaubourg #128; Peters #63; Les Affiches #145; Murs #112b; Chartres #9 & #10

Online References:
ENSBA #10532/10589/10733.    
Zurich – 64-0682
BNF