The spontaneous uprising of the Yellow Jackets in France against the rise in fuel tax, has been gathering momentum. Starting in the small towns and villages towards the end of last year, protesters (wearing safety jackets, mandatory in vehicles) blocked roads and roundabouts. The actions have spread to the large cities and involved hundreds of thousands of protesters throughout the country. The struggle has rapidly developed into a serious challenge against the neoliberal policies of the Macron government. Polls show that it enjoys the support of the majority of the population. It has spread to the island of Reunion, where the French government has imposed a state of emergency.
The uprising has taken the government by surprise. The workers and self employed, living outside the big urban areas have been the forgotten section of the population, unrecognised by governments, political parties and social organisations. Every day 17 million people work outside their municipality of residence. They are two thirds of those who are economically active and of whom 80% use their own vehicle for work. This rise in the fuel tax therefore concerns the vast majority of employees (France! What is at stake in the “yellow jacket” mobilisation- Socialist Resistance, 3rd December 18). This movement has been built entirely from social networks. An online petition against the fuel tax gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures in October last year. From there, hundreds of Facebook groups sprang up all over the country and videos against the tax were viewed on the internet. The weekly demonstrations and actions have transformed into a nationwide movement. Confrontations with the police have become a regular occurrence, often violent. Deaths and serious injuries have occurred as a result of these confrontations. The French police have been employing far more dangerous weaponry in recent years, including dispersion and tear-gas grenades and a rubber bullet fired from a handheld launcher.
The media have gone all out to discredit the Yellow Jacket movement as have the organisations of the bosses. Some major trade unions such as CFDT and FO but also the CGT as well as some left wing organisations have joined in the attack on the movement, seeing it as a tool of the road transport bosses and the far right. This claim about the road transport bosses flies in the face of reality as they have condemned the blockades and demanded the government dismantle them. While it is true that Marine Le Pen’s far right movement has shown its support, it has disowned the blockade of the roundabouts.
The contrast between the castigations of the trade unions and the support of the majority of the population for the Yellow Jackets could not be more striking. Leaders of the left such as Louis Melenchon of France Insoumise and Olivier Besancenot of the New Anti-Capitalist Party(NPA), have expressed support for the Yellow Jackets as have other trade unions, such as CGT Metallurgie, Sud Industrie and FO Transports. They have called on their members to participate in the actions of the Yellow Jackets. They have put forward demands for wage increases, clearly rejecting indirect taxation such as fuel taxes that hit the workers, and for a progressive income tax.
The persistence of the struggle and the determination of those in the Yellow Jacket movement as it develops ideologically and increases its support base, has confounded the government and the bosses. When Macron in a speech on energy and climate change proposed a floating tax on fuel pegged to the price of crude oil, the Yellow Jackets questioned it. They asked why, if this measure was proposed to reduce carbon emissions, they as the poorer citizens were expected to pay for the rise in fuel prices as the rich, are far greater contributors to global warming than the poor (“Among the Gilets Jaunes”-London Review of Books 21 March 2019). Having failed with repression, the government became frustrated as it learnt to its cost that there are no elected leaders of the movement to whom it can talk. It was forced to withdraw the rise in the fuel tax. But this climbdown by the government did not satisfy the Yellow Jackets movement. The Macron government, elected eighteen months before the movement arose, has become one of the most unpopular in recent history, even more so than the previous Hollande administration. It is labelled as the government of the rich, enforcing neoliberal policies that have created the widest gap in incomes between the rich and poor.
The Yellow Jackets, gathering strength from a population whose living standards are under constant attack, confronted the government with further demands. These included raising the minimum wage and minimum pensions and capping monthly salaries at 15,000 euros: the earnings gap touches a raw nerve with the Yellow Jackets. The response of the government was to give in to many of the demands. It announced that a planned rise in contributions to pensions would not go ahead and that the minimum wage would go up. The one demand the government refused to accept was the reintroduction of the wealth tax.
Members of left wing parties such as the NPA have taken part in the blockades. Besancenot has called for the fight against austerity to be extended through mass mobilisation and a one day general strike by the trade unions. There are moves to heal the divisions among the trade unions as a component in the strategy to challenge the Macron government and the bosses. The task posed for the unions and left wing forces is to win the political battle inside the Yellow Jacket movement and challenging the far right and the bosses trying to suppress it. What could develop is a struggle on the higher terrain of anti-capitalism against the far right.