 Do'n gweld i chi'n gweld i chi'n meddwl yw'r eich gweithio'n gwasanaeth, y gwaith yma sy'n gofo i ddau'r gwasanaeth ar Ffranc yw'r un cyflengyrch a'r gwasanaeth yma yn gweithio iawn. Mae'r gwaith yma sy'n gofio'n cyfriadau Y 5th Republix, sy'n 1558, yma dwi'n gwneud ffordd y dda i'r gwasanaeth yma yn gweithio gwaith, a'r gwaith yma yn y gwaith yw'r gwaith yw'r gwaith. Mae'r ffordd iawn, mae'r ffordd iawn, mae'r ffordd iawn. Y ffordd iawn yn ffwrng o'r Lland wedi'u gael y presidon sydd yna 4 yma. Mae'r ffordd iawn yn hyn o gael ddod am eu gweld'r ffordd iawn. Mae'r ffordd iawn yn y cael eu gweld y teimlo'r ffordd iawn. Rwy'n rhoi sy'n gawis, a ydych chi'n gwybod addict maen nhw oelwyd reliant. Mae amgylcheddol gwybodaeth, ydych chi'n hawdd y dweud, mae'r rhai ddechrau i lŵr yn gweithgafodol o'r nyfodol. Mae'n pethau i gyfle gwneud, a'r yn ymhyddiad ar y dyfodol gwon. Ond Arland dweud masfodydol dod yn y ffordd dwi'n mynd i'w awdraeth a'r gweithio. Mae'r gweithio ffordd ei ddau'r cysylltu gyda'r blaenau sy'n gwneud bod y cofeirio fitting gweithio wedi gwneud o'r dyddi am gyfnodol sy'n iawn o'r ddoddwch, rym ni iddyn nhw. Mae'r ddiddoriadau mewn io am ffafillau sy'n mynd yn ymryd i fynd, a phawr o'r adegau sy'n hyfrindwyr, i dderbydd mwyaf y rhannu holleg am hynod, Mae'n rheswm maen nhw'n bwysig i'r eich ymddangos. Mae'r rheswm maen nhw'n bwysig i'w gael o'r rheswm. Mae'n yn fwy o'r ymddiw sy'n fwy o'r bosib. Mae'n ynchydig. Mae'n ynchydig i'w gwir yma o'r gweithio'i gynhyrchu. Mae'n gweithio'r ganddiadau, o'r ganddiadau ffasilydau ffasilydau, rhan o'r gwir o'r nomin. Mae'n gwir o'r nomin o'r ddod y pwysig. a'i gynhyrchu, nid i'r lefn, o'r pwysig o'r Pwysig Hyffordd. Hamon. Ond a'i gynhyrchu o'r pwysig hynny yn y ffwrdd y ffyrdd yma, yn ystafell ymlaen o'r cymhiliad. Mae hyn yn ymlaen o'r pwysig Hyffordd yn ymlaen o'r pwysig Hyffordd yn ei wneud yn ddiddordeb eu gynhyrchu o'r pwysig Hyffordd yn ddiddordeb yma, yn y gyrsyn o'r pwysig hyffordd a'r rai o'r Pwysig Hyffordd, This is a real humiliation for the Socialist Party in France, and deservedly so, rightly so, on the basis of the policies that they've been carrying out. And then you've also seen a crisis in the Republican Party on the right, in the party of Fillon, who started this campaign on polling about 50 percent. This was the choice of the bourgeois, the open candidate of the bourgeois, a chaf ffordd hynny dda wedi cael ei wneud o'r hollwch ar gyfwyrddol, bod hynny'n cymaint o'r hollwch y fawr sy'n ei chaf ar gyfer y fawr. Mae hynny wedi cael ei wneud o'r hollwch ar gael 50% o gael 20%. Mae hynny'n fawr i'r sgandl rhaglen i'r cymhwyllgor ar gyfer y campaidd, am ydy'r hollwch ar gyfer hynny'n cymwyr, a chyflodd o'r hollwch ar gyfer 100 o'r hollwch ar gyfer hynny'n cymhwyllgor. C entered to his family members that he was basically, he was effectively using state money and party money to employ his family members and this for a lot of people this just epitomised everything that was wrong with the traditional establishment in front of the political establishment in France and he was therefore and the party was therefore punished in the polls. Now an election, any election is just a snapshot of general processes that are taking place in society of the general trend that exists and that is the case with this election and the general trend of course extends beyond beyond France. The specific causes for the collapse of the main two parties the socialist party and the republican party they are of course specific to France but in general across Europe and in the United States you have seen this collapse of the centre ground the traditional pillars that prop up the system are crumbling and this is yet another example of that. The consequence of course then in other places and specifically in France is polarization. First of all to the right we'll look at that first because what we saw in this election was 7.6 million votes for Le Pen and the national front. This is the biggest ever vote that they've had in 2002 they had a very big vote and Le Pen senior got through to the second round but but this time Le Pen the front national got 2.8 million more votes than they got in 2002. Now these these votes they came from the predominantly the strongest areas for the national front were the northeast and the southeast. The northeast is the ex-industrial rust belt sort of area of France former coal mines there all this kind of thing and in the southeast the border with the the coast along the Mediterranean the front national for years for many years has been exploiting tensions with immigrants refugees and this sort of thing that exist in that region so there's a similarity to be drawn with Trump here and and of course Le Pen's appeal Le Pen's basis for this for her campaigning has been firstly demagogy demagogically talking to to the working class in fact to these people who have been abandoned by globalization and this sort of thing and she uses radical rhetoric yesterday she came out with the with the line that that Macron he is the face of rampant globalization we're in a world where money is the only thing that matters where money is king and she says she stands against that sort of thing she stands against that kind of establishment but this is the kind of rhetoric that she's using actually you can see her demagogy when she came out with this statement it was yesterday Macron was visiting a factory in the Somme region a a place where they produce tumble dryers the a whirlpool factory where they where they produce tumble dryers and it's faced with closure and he was meeting with the trade union leaders basically to stitch to force to encourage them to stitch up a bad deal basically to accept the his argument is you've got to accept the closure let's try and get you a good deal that was how he was spinning it Le Pen found out the last minute that he was going there and she went along as well but instead of going in to talk to the union bureaucrats like he was doing she went to the picket line of the workers outside posing for photos and using the rhetoric of he's with he's with the bureaucrats he's with the establishment and I'm with the workers and then he came out visibly upset visibly annoyed and uh oh and then after Le Pen had gone he went to the to the picket line and got booed by the workers and uh and I mean he has this tactic he has this this idea which is used before of going amongst the workers like going and talking to his detractors to his critics he sees someone booing him he decides to go and talk to them about in the past he's done things like like in the first round of campaigning he's done things like go up like argue with get into an argument with a protester who's wearing a t-shirt and said something along the lines of well the best way to to be able to afford a suit is to do some work or something like this like he comes across quite badly quite often you know he comes across as the establishment candidate and on this occasion yesterday um he uh he he he said to these to these workers he basically said look Le Pen promises to keep this place open I'm not going to promise that because I don't think it can be done the best I can get you is a is a is a is a deal basically is a deal where you're not completely screwed over that's not what people want to hear the people in these regions of France and these are in these these people have been left behind by uh by the development of capitalism globalization all the rest of it that's not what they want that is the voice of the establishment that's the voice of of the hillary clinton types of the tony Blair types uh and uh and this is that is only going to push people further towards uh le pen and she knows that and she's using this demagogic appeal to the to the working class um and the second plank of her of her pitch is the kind of uh so that that plank you can see a lot of similarities with trump with his demagogic towards um the rust belt the the or x coal mining areas this sort of thing second plank is this question of of patriotism taking taking uh france out of the euro and renegotiating its relationship with the european union uh taking back control basically in france the brexit kind of rhetoric uh this is her other her other a plank and in general she's trying to appeal and she has tried to appeal throughout this campaign to the center ground like now in fact in in preparation for the second round of voting she's actually temporarily resigned her position as president of the national front party i mean she'll go back to it obviously but the idea is she it's it's a toke it's a it's a what's the word what it's it's just a it's a nothing gesture a suggestion that sort of is um it's a it's not a real move obviously away from the party and the ideas that it represents but it's this idea that she's appealing to the mainstream to the center ground this kind of thing this is the image that she's that she's trying to project and of course these things particularly the the second thing about keeping france france for the french and keeping france safe and this sort of thing she obviously got a bit of a bit of a bump of at least one percent in the polls after the the terror attack in and the death of that policeman the murder of that policeman in in paris just before people went to vote so this has been the basis on which on which le pen has been able to to build up support and this is the basis on which she has been campaigning and will continue to campaign it's important to say at this point that le pen is not a fascist as i was coming in here i saw a poster of the of the socialist workers party um advertising a meeting saying can can a fascist take power in france and the description described the national front as a Nazi party and all this kind of thing this is this is hysterical nonsense le pen is not a fascist the front national is not a fascist party the if we take if we take classical fascism of germany in the 1930s that came about as a force electorally and everything else that came about after a decade of extremely intense class struggle where the german working class was on the verge of taking power three even four times soviets were set up there were mutinies in the in the navy and so on it was only after that period of struggle where the working class was on the verge of taking power and was unable to do so for various reasons which ultimately boiled down to to a crisis of leadership in the working class it was only then that the petty boy the enraged petty bourgeois the middle layers uh who uh who've been ruined by the crisis in germany only then did they turn en masse to to an openly fascist party which openly talked about crushing the the working class movement a party that never had any base amongst the working class the nazi party never had any base amongst the workers uh in any election and uh and and when you compare that to what you see today with the front as you know in front is very different the vote that that lapen relies on is not an active enraged um uh layer of people who are out to crush the working class many of them are working class many of them are blue collar workers as i say in the rust belt and this sort of thing it's a it's a it's a it's a passive layer of people uh who are much more passive certainly than uh than what you saw than what you've seen with classical fascism in the past it's a layer of people who who are bitter who are angry the establishment who feel left behind and who are willing to vote uh for lapen and the front as you know as a way of throwing a hand grenade into the into the establishment politics basically this is the kind of uh this is the the kind of um party uh that it is uh and there isn't the same exhaustion in the working class in france there was in germany uh at the time that hitler and the nazis came to power uh the class struggle is still uh there's still on the up turn if you like in france rather than on the downturn it's only when when class struggle is ebbing that fascism has any opportunity can make any headway uh any opportunity to to get into power and so when people on the left talk about oh there's fascism coming in france lapens are fascists they do it because they think it's a shortcut to to rallying the left to getting people involved in politics they think that's so it's scare people that there's going to be a fascist in power in france and therefore we all need to get organized and all we need to be socialists as quick as possible they think it's a way of strengthening the left in reality it weakens us it weakens the left because it confuses people it mistakes the period that we are in in the class struggle we're not in an eb in the class struggle the working class has not been defeated it's not tried to take power and failed in france we're still on the upsurge of of class struggle we're still at the early stages of this and and what's more if you point to things that you don't like things that are right wing there's no doubt that the pen is right wing racist xenophobic reaction all the rest of it of course she's not a fascist you point to everything that's right wing and say that's fascism and that's fascism and that's then you lose sight of what fascism actually is and when it does appear you're unable to recognize it so to talk about things like the franassia now as if they're Nazis and fascists and this little thing it's dangerous we have to talk about we have to recognize for them for what they really are we have to work out how we're on that basis how we're going to fight them but uh but we can't mislabel them in the way that some people on the left try to so you have this polarization to the right and you also of course and this is from our point of view much more interesting much more exciting you see the polarization to the left and you see this crucial the main point to take from from the campaign of melanchon in France is that it's able to cut across Le Pen's campaign and this is this is also related to this point about fascism as I said fascism arises when the working class is exhausted it's tried to take power multiple times and then the petty bourgeois the middle layers they can't see a future with the with the left they can't see the left ever being able to take power so they turn in desperation to the right but but what you've seen with melanchon is the ability of the left to cut across the right far from far from people moving from the left to the right you've actually seen things go the other way you've seen melanchon's campaign start at 10% in the polls and end up at 20% this is against a barrage of media nonsense basically claiming that he's uh that he's going to turn France into Cuba or Venezuela at a time when obviously there's all sorts of crisis and instability manufactured by imperialism and and the capitalists and so on in Venezuela all this propaganda being thrown against him and still he managed to increase his vote by by 10% over the course of the campaign and of course he actually got he got three million more votes than he got in in 2012 when he ran and and actually he would have got more votes than Le Pen this is another important lesson from from these events another another important point he would have got more votes than Le Pen not by much but about 10 000 votes but nevertheless more as in he would have been in the second round had there not been two ultra left sectarian left candidates basically left groups who ran candidates against uh melanchon and and the rest of the field um and that caused the vote to be split and uh and the result was that that melanchon didn't get those votes which would have propelled him into the second round against uh macron this is a this is a lesson about ultra leftism i don't have time to develop the the point now we can discuss it more in the in the discussion but this is uh this is criminal behaviour by people on the left who who should have been in the melanchon campaign um but uh but melanchon's rise this this move from 10% in the polls to 20% it was really meteoric really uh really when you when you look at the detail of the vote that he actually got it paints a really a really powerful picture of of the mood in french society particularly amongst young people and the working class he got 30% of the vote amongst 18 to 24 year olds almost one in three people in that age group voted for melanchon more than any other candidate he won that age group uh across the whole of france and then he also won the most votes in uh in in four out of the ten largest cities in france including and this is particularly significant including marseille and montpellier two cities that are on are in that region of southeast in france that traditionally is a is a front nationale heartland and marseille in particular has always been a stronghold for lepen and the national front uh but uh but melanchon was able to win there and he was able to win in in toulouse he got 29% in leil these these are the four big cities where he won and in three more cities major cities he came second in in strazburg bordeaux and nont so seven out of the ten largest cities in france melanchon came either first or second and this was the pattern in huge or like all across france in workers districts for example in paris like in the suburbs on the outskirts of paris he came first in these places in lavre in in in the north on the on the northern coastline uh this was a this was a town this was a city that was the one of the epicenters of the movement against the elconry law he increased his vote on 2012 by 13% he was a massive anyone anyone that he won that district the pattern generally is that he won amongst the youth and in the in the advanced areas where where the class struggle is most advanced and in the epicenters like the heart the proletarian heartlands the big cities and so on this is where melanchon uh won his votes and of course he was strong actually in overseas territories as well particularly the one one of most significance is gyana where they had a massive unlimited general strike uh just last month and uh and melanchon and that obviously developed the class struggle raised class consciousness and as a result uh people voted for melanchon and our own comrades in france members of the international marxist tendency in france uh they've uh they've been reporting on the general mood and uh and the mood in uh in in workplaces unionized workplaces and cafes just the general discussion in shops on the street everybody has been talking about melanchon and his campaign and uh and particularly they said actually uh among arabic immigrants immigrants of arabic origin uh almost all of them were saying that they were going to vote for melanchon that he was the uh that he was their candidate and so you see this you you can see this picture of a general like grassroots campaign um which uh which was inspiring hundreds of thousands millions of people uh to go to rallies to get organized and all the rest of it all on the basis of a very radical uh program a left wing program melanchon was arguing uh for a 32 hour week in france for the standard in france has been 35 hour week the capitalist want to want to get rid of that the bourgeois want to get rid of that but melanchon was arguing for a 32 hour week and uh and he's arguing for this kind of thing in a very radical way a very radical he talks about he has he was talking in his campaign about how the rich were trembling at the movement that that that he had created you know they were trembling at the thought that he would get into power and it was all very much us and them has and has not have nots uh and this kind of uh this kind of thing um and actually uh so another lesson that we can take from this is is a lesson for for corbin's general election campaign here melanchon based himself on uh he as i said the media were against him so he went for he went for social media there was a massive social media campaign for melanchon he he based himself on grassroots community organ he encouraged people the campaign encouraged people to set up local organizing groups to campaign for um for his his election and uh and massive rallies as well rallies which even like so tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people attended these rallies where he was talking very fiery language and all the rest of it and even in the places where he wasn't able to go personally he used holograms he projected holograms of himself which thousands of people turned out to to watch but this kind of thing not um not carefully crafted media soundbites not uh hillary clinton style small focus groups or anything like this massive rallies get people excited talk in a radical talk in a radical way this is the kind of stuff that jeremy corbin needs to be doing now um so this this was uh this was the situation uh with the election obviously melanchon uh didn't win he came just forth more or less equal with feon uh on uh on 19.6 percent not something 19.8 percent something like that um and so uh so we're faced then uh in france with the second round uh between macron and lepen a former roth's child banker and a far right reactionary demagogue and so just like in 2002 in france where you are faced with shirach and lepen you're faced with a right winger and a right and a right winger basically there's no choice uh from the working class point of view and like in 2002 as soon as this happened um everybody from the from the bourgeois to the liberal lefts they get has begun talking about the need to vote for macron as the lesser evil uh of the two and uh and this chorus has been joined by the socialist party well whilst you expect they've spent however many years betraying the working class they're going to continue to do so and uh and so they've joined this chorus the green party has done so and most most scandalously of all the communist party in france is calling for a vote for macron and we have to we have to call this exactly what it is this is a betrayal uh a terrible betrayal of the working class by people who who claim to represent them because uh because macron let me in we should look at what this lesser evil actually looks like he is in favour of allowing bosses individually not nationally or or anything else individual bosses to renegotiate the 35 hour week breaking up the the the bargaining power of the working class and effectively it's going to be an abolition of the 35 hour week he's in favour of sacking thousands of public servants and he's in favour of lower incorporation tax tax breaks for the rich effectively this is the programme of fion uh dressed up in kind of a liberal language but nevertheless it's the programme of the right of the bourgeois he is a direct continuation of the policies of our land and and sarcozi before him uh there's nothing uh there's nothing whatsoever progress his his election will mean a massive attack on the working class and there is there is no way of dressing that up as something as something progressive there is no so any anyone calling for a vote for macron is calling is demanding that the working class support someone who will attack them who will uh who will strip away their rights and everything else there is no way that anyone on the left can uh can legitimately support that kind of position um because le pen and the front arsenal we should point this out when people because we i mean it's inevitable we will hear this from people are we have to support macron as the lesser evil um we should point out that that le pen and the front arsenal they grow in the conditions created by people like macron created by our land and uh and sarcozi who is responsible in the united states for example who is responsible for donald trump winning the election for donald trump being able to win that election it's obama is responsible it's the it's the us establishment that has created the conditions in which the the rhetoric and and the the approach of somebody like trump can win an election and the same is true in france our french comrades have used the have used the phrase that you don't stop a fire by voting for the arsonist and that's exactly what a vote for macron would be he wouldn't put a stop to any of the problems that have given rise to the national front in the first place and of course i mean i'll mention the united states that was a clear failure of lesser evilism nobody like the that was the main the main plank the main argument uh for for the democrats for clinton in the election is that she's not trump and that was not enough people are not interested in that they don't want more of the same they don't want the same old establishment politics they want something different and if they're if the way is blocked on the left people will swing to the right we are in this period of collapse of the center ground and polarization and and already in france now you're seeing protests particularly of young people uh are like with the slogan of neither trump neither neither macron nor the pen and so just just today in france 500 people in in paris 2000 people in rent i say people well and they are people but they're specifically they're they're high school students uh that's the that's the point uh they're young and they're extremely radical and they're disgusted by by the choice that has been presented to to the people of france by the second round and the police have met these protests by the way with tear gas with a lot of violence that's only going to radicalize people even more and so i think uh i think this is the this this layer this is the layer with the highest kind of consciousness they recognize this is no there is no choice available here for for people and i think you're likely to see in the second round the high rate of abstention at the moment the polls put uh macron on 60 percent and the pen on 40 percent um but i mean if she keeps up she's she's a clever in the same way that trump is clever she knows what she's doing and this this stunt with the with the tumble drive factory like you get a few more of those with macron looking like a bit of a fool and the pen talking about anti-establishment uh politics one thing she has said now in the face of this this coalition of everybody from from fion to the communist party leaders calling for a vote for for macron she is using that to say look there that's the establishment there they all hate me they've all got that you can see now that they're all actually exactly the same and they all want exactly the same thing and i'm the only one who's standing against them she's using this kind of this fact this this broad coalition of of traitors of class traitors to to bolster her um her position her anti-establishment credentials so i think it's it's not a done deal the macron or i think it's by far the most likely perspective but it's not it's not certain um but it's not least because i think you will see a high rate of abstention and so i think rather than the pen necessarily winning it you could see macron losing it i think it's possible well as i say unlikely but uh but in any case we should also point out longer term beyond the second round of the election even if macron does win when when when he got through to the second round instead of instead of melanchon the stock markets went up there was this audible sigh of relief amongst the the bourgeois all these articles came out about how great macron is and all this sort of thing and the bbc was producing endless profiles of him and so on but but gideon rachman who's a journalist for the financial times who's a little bit more ffarsighted than a lot of journalists obviously in the interests of the ruling class he looks at things from that perspective but uh but of course he cares about similar things to what we care about he cares about the problems that the ruling class face and then gives advice on how to fix them we care about the problems that the ruling class face and then give advice on how to exploit them to overthrow the ruling class so we start off from a similar position and he's uh he's pointed at he said hang on a minute with all this euphoria if macron does get in he's not going to be able to solve any of the problems of high unemployment of falling wages of the the need to squeeze the working class basically he won't be able to solve any of that because he points out macron was the was the economy minister in orlon's government he was unable to solve any of the problems there what's going to what what will be the difference when he's present so any honeymoon period to the extent that does exist for macron will disappear almost instantly and then he's faced with a growing uh a growing fron national uh emboldened by the fact they got their candidates the second round and a growing uh a growing left with melonshaw as long as melonshaw will come onto this in a moment as long as melonshaw takes the right path now takes the right approach now you could have a very powerful working class movement as well and macron will be will be caught in the middle of it so uh so i think uh unlike in 2002 where shirach got elected in the second round the parents and then there was this period of kind of general stability in in in france and the french economy and so on that will not be the case this time all the all the problems all the factors that have led to this polarization this crisis situation that we have right now none of those will go away even if the bourgeois get their candidate elected and they will be faced with all sorts of problems almost immediately now uh of course the as i say le pen isn't a fascist but nevertheless she is a right winger and she needs to be fought as does macron he's a right winger and and he needs to be fought not voting for either of these two people is not uh is not to say um it's not a passive position right it's not it's not just removing ourselves from theatre and burying our heads in the sand uh it's uh it needs to be an active thing melanchon actually melanchon to his credit i should have said this melanchon has not certainly not yet come out in favour of a vote for macron uh he is he's stood his ground under enormous pressure for him to say uh to vote for macron uh as as the lesser evil he stood his ground said no what he's done instead is he's put out a poll online survey of all the supporters of his of his party of his movement and he's given them three three options uh spoil your ballot vote for macron or abstain uh and he will he says he will advise whatever um whatever comes back from this from this survey from this poll now uh we would say you should abstain from the vote because there is nothing to be gained from either of these people but it's not a passive action not a passive move of abstention um we uh we will oppose these people on the basis of our own programme on the basis of a working class socialist programme for which there is an appetite that has been proved by the events of the last few uh the last few weeks in france and actually i would say events all over the all over the world um because this vote for melanchon this movement around is part of a process that will not go away i've just explained how the crisis is going to continue no matter who gets elected and uh and marxist and the left and melanchon we have to we have to use this to raise class consciousness to point out that the only solution to these problems is a socialist one and there are plenty of opportunities now immediately for melanchon to mobilise his movement uh again on the basis of an independent working class programme against both lepen and macron and whoever wins the the election he can he can take an independent position he must not endorse macron he must instead first of all we we have to see uh he must mobilise people in the streets it's mayday on on monday that needs to be a massive demonstration and it needs to be on the on under the banners of an independent working class programme it needs to be on the basis of of the programme that he that he ran on at the very least and coupled with that the union leaders he has enormous backing from from unionised works and this sort of thing the union leaders need to put on the agenda the question of a 24 hour general strike the industrial struggle in france has been has been powerful in the last period and uh and there would be a mood there'd be an appetite for that a 24 hour general strike in defence of the working class against the attacks that are definitely coming after after whoever wins the the the second round and on on that basis you could he could flex the muscles of the working class give them confidence in their own strength and prove send a message to these right wingers who are going to be trying to attack the working class that the working class will not take it lying down they will have a fight on their hands and give the working class strength that that they can win this fight and of course then as well as the industrial plane there's a fight to be had on the political plane because there are legislative elections in france in june very soon and there is no guarantee given the given the period of instability and christ and so on in france there's no guarantee that either Le Pen or Macron whoever wins the presidency no guarantee that their party will be able to win enough of a majority in the legislature to be able to carry through their programs and if melanchol mobilises his party and his movement to win those seats in the in the legislature then that could have a very big political impact and and it would again give the working class strength in in their own policies but there's no way he could do that if he called for a vote for Macron if he endorsed in any way Macron as president he needs to take his own independent working class program and crucially and this is something he hasn't said yet and he needs to he needs to talk about his program needs to talk about the need to break with capitalism he's he's hesitated from that from from saying that so far but it's obvious to many of to us and to many of his supporters that are the policies he proposes are cannot be carried out on the basis of capitalism. There is 32 hour a week, better pension rights, like all this kind of stuff, French capitalism cannot afford that now. That is the reason behind all the attacks coming from Sarkozy along with everybody else. That is the reason for the attacks in the board rights, that they cannot afford these kind of things, they are taking back everything that was granted to the working class in the past. Unless he makes that clear, unless he felly yw ddweud hynny fod yn eu cyyllidoedd. Doedd yn ddweud bod ymddai hwnn appreciation byddai gynhyrch yn ei gyfnodol. mae'n ddweud hynny ei bod yn rhaid i gynnig ymddangosio'r cyfnodol. Mae yma'r ddweud o'r ddweud ymddangosio pwysig yn ddweud hynny, mae hwnnw wedi'i gytrein o'r rhaid i chi'n cyfnodol nyf Venturon llunio wir yma'r rhaid i gyfnodol a'r ddweud hynny'n cyfrannu yn cyrtranol. Ny. I think that was most of the general kind of lessons that I wanted to draw out. There's much more to talk about but we can talk about in the discussion. I'll just say to conclude that we obviously, as I said, let we live on a time generally when the centre-ground of politics is collapsing, we see in polarization to the left and to the right in countries all over the world. the world. This is creating, I'm sure you have noticed it, a certain pessimism amongst liberals, among people who base themselves basically on a past period, a kind of new labour period where there was a happy medium, a centre ground where you could try and negotiate with people and get everybody on the same side because the system could afford it, you could give o'r concessions here, o'r concessions there in return for some horse trading of certain rights and this sort of thing and you could negotiate a deal. Now of course that's not possible. Now the cupboard is bare, there are no concessions to be granted, there are only things to be clawed back. Concessions that were granted in the past are now being taken back because capitalism, the economic system can no longer afford them. And Liberals can't get their heads around this, they see this polarisation, they don't really understand what it means, they get very pessimistic about it. They see Trump getting elected in the United States, they see right wing nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary and so on and they get very upset. They see two right wingers in the second round of the French presidential election and they get very upset. And you also then get from the ultra left to the liberal left this scare mongering about fascism, fascism is on the rise. Isn't it a terrible situation, terrible world that we live in? Marxists have nothing in common with that approach. We look at what's happened in France, we look at tens of thousands of people on the streets of France, fists in the air singing the Internationale. This was unthinkable just even a few months ago, a few years ago. We look at the United States, we see hundreds of thousands of people at rallies for a political revolution against the billionaire class. And actually you may have seen there was a poll done in Ireland recently which said that over 50% of people aged 18 to 34 would be willing to take part in an uprising against the state. Over half of young people under 34 in Ireland said I could have an uprising against the state if it were to happen in the next days, weeks or months. I mean what a time to be alive, what a time to be a Marxist when you have this kind of thing happening in France, the United States, Ireland and everywhere else. We are, Marxists are intensely optimistic about the period that's opening up. In front of us, of course when you have this attitude, when you have this polarisation to the left, of course there's going to be polarisation to the right at the same time. Class struggle doesn't develop in a straight line, it's not just going to be one triumphant march to the socialist revolution and the working class taking power. We are going to have a fight on our hands, that's quite clear, that's inevitable. But this of course is a fight that we are up for, it's a fight we realise is worth joining. Because the future that faces us is a future under the likes of Le Pen or Macron or Trump or anybody else like that. That's a future of barbarism, it's a future of war, Syria, Libya, that sort of thing. It's a future of austerity, a situation in Greece and elsewhere. It's a future of things like environmental crisis as well, it's a future of barbarism. Whereas the other side of the fight, the fight that we are willing to join is the fight for socialism. And for a world where the resources that we have, the immense resources that the planet has, can be used for the benefit of everybody to provide for people's needs instead of being exploited for the profits of a tiny handful. So I think the main lesson from the recent events in France is that the working class in France is entering the stage of history for itself. And it is beginning to assert itself firmly in this fight that is going to dominate our lives this fight. It will be in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. This is the question that will grip society, grip the world. And the French working class are on the move in this fight. And so our job really in France and here and everywhere is to get organised and join the working class as they move into struggle and help them as much as we can. So as you all know, probably those meet-ups started basically the 31st of March last year and they lasted for pretty much until the beginning of summer. They rise out of protests against the labour law, which was proposed basically in the government around February and which has pretty much awful consequences on the workers. It's part of the broader counter reforms of the Socialist Party government that is still on place right now. It leads and leads to unpaid overtime of the workers, which is unpaid to employee abuse kind of, and just to kind of barbarism as Ben was explaining. And so this movement began on public places, like Les de la République. And it basically looked similar to the massive occupation of places in Athens in Spain too, with Pardo Cuilimos and the Indignados. And also to the similar occupation in public places in Egypt in 2011. And this whole movement basically showed a real radicalisation of the youth, radicalised by the crisis of capitalism and the austerity policies of the government, the regular counter reforms that they're doing. And so every night there would be meetings and general assemblies that continued for a few weeks. And those nights basically gave a lot of hope to the left because they really showed a revolutionary atmosphere and mood among the people and among the masses. And so in those meetings bourgeois democracy was heavily criticised, heavily brushed. And this movement was also a big surprise for the media because the youth was very much involved in it. And the youth in the years preceding it were very much like they used a lot of abstention so that they wouldn't vote. And so the media would interpret this as the fact that basically the youth just has a political apathy and is not politicised. But those movements were like random students and high schoolers and just not even like political activists would come up on the stage defend what they were fighting for. They weren't even coming from any political organisation. They were just sometimes just coming from simple movements that were fighting against some injustice. And so those nights were very spontaneous and had a very revolutionary mood. And so at some point it got kind of bourgeois. You would see all those bohemian bourgeois coming by. For Marxists, but not real Marxists I should say. But those that really organised it really showed that the problem wasn't just the labour law. The problem was the whole world around the labour law. All those can't perform to the government. They also mentioned the fact that the struggle was essential and that we needed a general strike which never happened unfortunately and which was one of the causes why part of the labour law was adopted in August. The socialist government socialist was very much like how it's violent campaigns against the workers, against stigmatised CGT militants, so the union workers, the unions. And the police repression was very high especially during the demo on the 23rd of April. It was terrible actually, but very revolutionary. And we got really taught us many lessons in the left as to how to really organise the union strikes and demos. So yeah, it taught us lots of lessons basically. And it gave a lot of hope to the left and to Mélenchon especially because he was able, especially in his campaign since he was really standing against the labour law to get lots of the people. About 70% of the population was against the labour law and he managed to drag them in his movement of the France in the United States. And yeah, so this really led to radicalisation of the youth who were tired of the growth of unemployment, the crisis, the policies. I also wanted to add that the socialist candidate Benoam, he was at first for the labour law. And of course the socialist party likes to change his mind according to the opinion of the masses. So as soon as he realised that he needed to be against the labour law to get more votes, he changed his position and followed the position of Mélenchon. But yeah, so just during this war against the labour law, the nationale practically disappeared for the five months, which shows that they're not really trying to get, they're not for the interests of the workers basically. They just called, just like when Trump called for the workers' votes, it's just because the workers are the majority of the population, so if you want the majority of the votes you need to get the workers. And yeah, sorry, so that's all I wanted to say. Okay, one last point about just the elections in general. It's just the fact that almost the four candidates that got the majority of the votes, so they all got like 20%, which shows the enormous polarization of the politics just like Ben said. And it was actually a shame because lots of my friends didn't vote for Mélenchon on the basis that they were like, otherwise it's going to be fion against the FN. And so it will be like right wing against extreme right wing, so they'd rather have like Macron, which is a kind of centre, and get Macron to get the votes. But that was really a pity, this useful vote because we saw that in the end most of the candidates got the same result. So you could have voted for your candidate that you strongly wanted. I don't know if that's fair.