Hundreds of thousands marched in cities across France on Saturday in largely peaceful protests to support schoolchildren’s demands for more teachers and repairs to dilapidated buildings, as Emmanuel Macron faces a social and political crisis in his final months as president. In Paris, at least 110,000 people marched along the eastern edge of the city, according to government estimates. They supported high schoolers but also complained of the high cost of living and the government’s heavy policing, saying riot police had been sent to target school protesters over the past month, instead of the government offering political solutions.
The mood in Paris on Saturday afternoon was peaceful and lighthearted, with brass bands playing and children and grandchildren present. Some people carried banners critical of the government’s policing, saying: “Oppression breeds rebellion” and “The right to protest”. But at the end of the Paris demonstration, at Porte de Vincennes on the city’s eastern edge, different groups of masked men dressed in black emerged who had not appeared to have taken part in the peaceful march.
Some groups of masked men threw glass bottles and stones at police, who responded with teargas, water cannon and stun grenades. A bin was set alight and fireworks were set off towards police. Police also fired teargas to prevent protesters in Lyon, Lille, Montpellier, Nantes and Toulouse from reaching city centres.
In Marseille, some bin fires were lit amid clashes with police. The government estimated that at least 400,000 people had marched across France. Trade unions estimated the number at double that.
The interior ministry said there had been almost 1,000 arrests. More than 70,000 police were on the streets of French cities, with shops boarded up and many museums closed. The government had feared a repeat of last Saturday, when, despite peaceful protests taking place, France saw one of the most violent days of unrest in years with public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,700 people arrested in cities across the country.
At Saturday’s protests, there was widespread anger at Macron for banning non-union demonstrations that his government deemed “illegitimate” and for keeping all protesters away from city centres. At the Paris march, Nadège, a 43-year-old communications worker, said she had been teargassed last weekend at a peaceful demonstration. We have to keep our rights alive … In France, it’s our legal right to protest in the street and I’m here to defend that.” A 21-year-old student from a Paris science faculty that is now blockaded by demonstrators said: “We feel in France that we are increasingly living in an authoritarian regime that is trying to stop our democratic right to protest in the street.” The government has been facing a crisis since the start of high school demonstrations in mid-September, when children aged between 15 and 18 began protesting against staff shortages at their schools, leaking and crumbling buildings, and a lack of chairs in overcrowded classrooms.
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