Student Demonstration Time

Monday was a journée morte at school: a dead day.

This meant that everyone – teachers and pupils – were on strike, demonstrating against the swingeing cuts proposed by our diminutive president and his team of yes-men-and-women. Living in France, you tend to get a little cynical about strikes and manifestations, because there’s always someone or some group at it: whether it’s the lorry drivers, the functionaries or the SNCF railway mob, demonstrating their abhorrence at any attempt to raise their retirement age from 25 to 28.

I’m all for protesting any attacks on education. If anything is going to sort out society’s ills and the problems of the world, then it’s educating the citizenry. And if anything is going to provoke our short-sighted short-term political masters to wield the axe in times of economic crisis, it’s that soft target of education. Why spend money on educating our children when you could be commissioning some state-of-the-art nuclear doodlebug, or paying consultants to come up with some clever new strap line (Hey! How about, ‘Bootle – if you’ve got the bottle’?)

'OGGI OGGI OGGI! OI! OI! OI!'

So why wasn’t I out on the streets of Brive with The Daughter waving a banner and chanting slogans in French? Well, um… I’m working on several projects at the moment, all with uncompromising deadlines. And Tilley was desperately trying to catch up on all the homework that she should have done during her fortnight’s holiday.

Yes, I know – that’s lame in the extreme. I do most of my protesting by petition or letter and I tend to think that society’s high and mighty don’t pay much attention to earnest middle-class kids marching with their earnest middle-class parents under the watchful eye of their overpaid police. Of course, if the crowd turned into a mob with a guillotine in tow, then they might get a little more edgy.

The truth of the matter, though, is that on the one occasion when I took part in a demonstration over here, I felt so comprehensively out of place that I vowed never to repeat the experience.

It was maybe ten years ago in Tulle, the departmental seat of the Corrèze. I can’t even remember what we were demonstrating against. A proposal perhaps to install a V2 rocket-launcher on the disused marshalling yard by the station. I don’t know. I turned up dutifully at the appointed hour, hung around in the area by the cathedral that’s taken over twice a week by a market, looked for any familiar faces and spotted only a German therapist (who was probably behind the V2 scheme), listened in sheer befuddlement to some rousing speeches from impassioned individuals with megaphones. And felt like an alien, trying to figure out what the human race was all about.’

At a given moment, the crowd moved off and I shuffled off with them, alone and baffled, having lost sight of the familiar German therapist. We paraded along by the river Corrèze that runs through Tulle like a main drain, crossed it by one of the bridges and paraded along the other side, chanting slogans that had all the significance of ‘oggi oggi oggi, oi oi oi!’ We re-crossed the river and paraded back to the cathedral and all the time I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing in this foreign place? I could be back in Britain, demonstrating against something that I understand’. In the words of the old song, ‘What-ever possessed me?’

Mind you, if opinion polls are to be believed, Marine Le Pen could become the next president of France. Whereupon, she will turn the police into a proper rather than pretend military outfit that will suppress any subsequent marches with tear gas. So I guess we’d better hang on to this precious civil right and make the most of it while it’s still there. Use it before you lose it. OK, come the next journée morte…

Meanwhile, the Missus and I have decided to apply for joint nationality, so we can earn and exercise the right to vote as French citizens. Hopefully we won’t have to show our passports to Le Pen’s lackeys and attempt to explain that we’re really rather French. At least our skin is off-white. Any hint of colour and we’d have the devil’s own job.