The university's administration called the police, who surrounded the university. On 22 March, far-left groups, a small number of prominent poets and musicians, and 150 students occupied an administration building at Paris University at Nanterre and held a meeting in the university council room about class discrimination in French society and the political bureaucracy that controlled the university's funding. Communists had long supported Socialist candidates in elections, but in the "February Declaration" the two parties agreed to attempt to form a joint government to replace President Charles de Gaulle and his Gaullist Party. In February 1968, the French Communist Party and the French Section of the Workers' International formed an electoral alliance. Alain Geismar, who was one of the student leaders at the time, later said the movement had succeeded "as a social revolution, not as a political one". The period is considered a cultural, social and moral turning point in the nation's history. The events of May 1968 continue to influence French society. Workers returned to their jobs, and after the June elections, the Gaullists emerged stronger than before. Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. A counter-demonstration organised by the Gaullist party on 29 May in central Paris gave De Gaulle the confidence to dissolve the National Assembly and call parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968. The Grenelle accords, concluded on 27 May between the government, trade unions and employers, won significant wage gains for workers. The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quell the strikes by police action only inflamed the situation, leading to street battles with the police in Paris's Latin Quarter.īy late May the flow of events had changed. The student occupations and general strikes across France met with forceful confrontation by university administrators and police. It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first nationwide wildcat general strike. The movement was characterized by spontaneous and decentralized wildcat disposition this created contrast and at times even conflict among the trade unions and leftist parties. Heavy police repression of the protesters led France's trade union confederations to call for sympathy strikes, which spread far more quickly than expected to involve 11 million workers, more than 22% of France's population at the time. The unrest began with a series of far-left student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism, American imperialism and traditional institutions. The protests are sometimes linked to similar movements around the same time worldwide that inspired a generation of protest art in the form of songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans. The protests reached a point that made political leaders fear civil war or revolution the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to West Germany on the 29th.
At the height of events, which have since become known as May 68 ( French: Mai 68), the economy of France came to a halt.
Berkeley Free Speech Movementīeginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. 1965 Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu.1968 student demonstrations in Yugoslavia.Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968.1970-1972 Huelga schools, Houston – United States.November 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising.1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.2014 Hong Kong student protest for democracy.2015 University of Amsterdam Bungehuis and Maagdenhuis Occupations.2017–18 Mahatma Gandhi Central University protests.