How a student rebellion in Paris in 1968 paved the way for modern-day protest

ARE we living in revolutionary times? Not revolution in the sense of blood in the streets, with cannon and gunfire, but the social and cultural revolution propounded by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci?

Political change wrought by demonstrations and protest: affirmations, posters, personal witness, marches in “solidarity” with celebrated causes – these have become almost everyday elements of public life today.

And according to Daniel Cohn-Bendit – who led the notorious French student rebellion of 50 years ago – the street demonstrations and cultural norms of our times all go back to Paris in the summer of 1968.

It has become almost a cliché among certain French intellectuals to observe that the undermining of education, of the family, the Church and the tradition of patriotism that exalted the nation-state all started with the rebellious students and their street revolution of May 1968.

Cohn-Bendit, who subsequently became a Green parliamentarian, proudly claims 1968 marked the start of a globalised movement against “an inflexible capitalism” and for a “larger community of humanity”.

It might also be said that Cohn-Bendit launched a notion of sexual revolution when he challenged De Gaulle’s Youth Minister on the then-radical question of “mixed university dormitories”.

Danny the Red told the French government that it was “not attending to students’ sexual needs”: girls and boys wanted the freedom to bunk up together. Nothing like that had ever been heard before: and that’s how the protests started off, at Nanterre University.

I reported the French “revolution” of May 1968, riding from Calais to Paris on a bicycle, since there was no petrol and the trains were on strike (as, incidentally, they are currently if more episodically).

And one of the most vivid, and modern, aspects of the events was the predominance of visual communications, the posters, banners and wall graffiti which played a key role in the battle of ideas.

Some political messages could be vicious. President de Gaulle was portrayed as a repulsive tyrant, particularly by Maoist students, who might have well examined the track record of Chairman Mao.

The riot police were depicted as being brutally cruel in vivid wall posters (they could be tough, yet there were no serious injuries or fatalities).

The Church was another object of derision, with slogans proclaiming: “I cannot think freely where there is a church spire.”

The educational authorities were seen as oppressive and conformist in poster wars. “Get angry,” urged the message.

Yet a surrealistic wit was also a feature – “Let’s be realistic – demand the impossible”, “Let’s turn off the telly – let’s open our eyes”.

Amidst the competing Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, and Marcusians, the funnymen wrote: “I am a Marxist – Groucho tendency.”

Scores of books have been published analysing May 1968 and its relation to our time, many agreeing with Cohn-Bendit that it was the convulsion of “an old world dying”. De Gaulle’s traditionalist authority represented an era that was fading.

The student activists – supported to some extent by the trade unions – showed their power by paralysing the country for most of the month of May.

And 1968 became a year of protests more universally, too: in Prague, on the American campuses, and, significantly, in Northern Ireland, where the civil rights movement launched the beginnings of political change.

It can indeed be claimed as a seedbed for the activist politics of our time – which is now very much enhanced and amplified by social media.

And yet, in the long run, many paradoxes emerged.

One of the most vivid memories I have of Paris in 1968 was the night the activists set alight the stock exchange – the Paris Bourse: they danced around it shouting triumphantly “the temple of capitalism is falling”.

The “temple of capitalism” not only made a robust recovery, but spawned a new generation of hipster entrepreneurs who were to bring innovation on an unprecedented scale to the despised “consumer society”.

MANY of the witty political slogan-writers went to work in the advertising and marketing industry. One of the leading revolutionary figures, Régis Debray, subsequently became a stout defender of De Gaulle.

Yet 1968 signalled the end for the old left. The Communist Party, under instructions from Moscow, was ambivalent about riots in the streets – it didn’t want that happening in Warsaw or Berlin – and withdrew from the fray.

The old left (which was often socially conservative – the trade unions did not favour equal pay for women, for example) would be succeeded by a new liberal-left, which would embrace identity politics, anti-racism, feminism, gay and, eventually, transgender rights.

Danny Cohn-Bendit’s demand for “mixed dormitories” at the university campus is now somewhat revised. And the feminist revisionists are asking: “Was this just a way for males to get easy access to young women?”

The “safe space” and “#MeToo” era might well interpret this particular liberation in rather a different light.

The student activists – supported to some extent by the trade unions – showed their power by paralysing the country for most of the month of May