Police have fired teargas and clashed with protesters supporting high school student grievances, as demonstrations across France were boosted by other groups angry over high prices and the fraying of a social welfare system. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, and tensions erupted on the fringes of the nationwide demonstrations over absent teachers, decrepit school buildings and police violence. In Marseille, protesters stormed the town hall, ramming the door with security barriers they removed from the street.
They briefly managed to enter the municipal building, where a protester spray-painted an “A” for anarchy on a wall before the police removed them. Around Place de la République in central Paris, a peaceful march turned violent, with police firing teargas at black-clad and masked rioters who threw fireworks and paving stones, attacked a bank and looted a sports shop. Others set wheelie bins on fire and threw firecrackers inside or pushed over glass recycling bins and picked up the bottles inside to use as missiles.
A lorry was set on fire and flames spread to a nearby building. Residents in surrounding streets were forced to close windows and doors as huge clouds of teargas rose to roof level. French authorities detained dozens of protesters across the country, with more arrests expected.
Saturday’s mobilisation follows calls on social media to revive the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, which emerged in 2018 against social injustice. The protests began last month at schools in the poor northern suburbs of Paris, where anger over teacher absences and shabby facilities quickly morphed into a nationwide movement against inequality, weak public spending and falling standards. Saturday’s protests called for teachers and students, labourers, pensioners and farmers to join the protests and widen the movement.
French authorities said 140 protests involving 32,800 people had been recorded outside Paris by midday, blaming the unrest and violence on what they said was the “ultra-left”. The CGT, one of France’s biggest labour unions, has also backed the protests, calling for “higher wages and pensions, lower prices and the protection of public services that meet people’s needs”. About 45% of French people are worried about the rising cost of living and inflation, according to a 2,000-person survey conducted in October.
Protesters in hi-vis vests blocked streets, an echo of the unrest that dogged President Emmanuel Macron’s previous term, and in Marseille rubbish bins were set alight. Both the far left and far right in France sought to capitalise on the protest movement, with the left positioning itself on the side of the protesters and the right backing the police. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, marched in a demonstration on Tuesday and has expressed support for student protesters.
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