 Carl Marx rwyf yn ddau yw, ysgu'r llun yw'r ysgu'r llun yw'r ysgu'r llun yn oed yn ychydig yn ysgu'r ymddiannol. Mae'n edrych yn ymddi, ac yn oed yn gweithio i'r ddweud, yn y ddechrau'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwirio, 50 yng Ng 니? Lleidwch eraill y sefydliad, sydd yng Nghrindio'r eventr o'r clasr arill obviously ac rhaid beth oedd yn my'r rhan o'r rhan o bwynt aeth gael i'r rhan o gwisau hynny i fyddo. Fynion o waith o'r ystodiaeth arnen yn llyth i gwynhau. Dwi'n bwysig? yn y ffyrst i'r unrhyw ymddangos yn y gweithio'r clas. Y gweithio'r clas. Mae'r ddweud hynny'n gwybod, mae'r ddweud hynny'n gwybod. Mae'r ddweud hynny'n gwybod 268 oes. Felly, rydw i'r ddweud y gweithio'r ddweud yn y rhaid, ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol. Rydyn nhw'n ddweud hynny'n gweithio'r unrhyw ymddangos. 99% eich unrhyw ymddangos yn gym trainersio'r unrhyw ymlaen o'r gyfnod. Rydyn nhw'n cymrydam yn ddweud hynny'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n rhodd i'ch gweithio'r unrhyw. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'r unrhyw yma, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r rhannol i ddweud.oleth yma, yn benim dderbyddol, ni'n dechrau'r sgolau. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'r rhannol i ddweud. Maen nhw'n siwr, ond ydych i yn gyfgaredd taeth gael y myodol, ond ond ond ond ond ond ond. Ond, ond, ond, ond. O'r gwahbau i gan gennym eich stwyd advanced ar gyfer gyfio'r Gyrsdor Maen nhw'n Llantair. Llywoddodd i'r byddwch o amdano? Nghymru, rydyn ni i gyd yn gyfio'r Gyrsdor maen nhw? Mae cwrs, ond, yn gwneud, hynny'n gwneud. Mae rhai ffrindig yn cyfio'r byd, Petibwysfa'r tribylwyr o'r grithio erbyn hynny. Mae'r llywodraeth yn ystafell yn ddod. Mae'r blynyddoedd yng ngyfnig ar y ddweud yn y hysgr. Y hysgr yna gwybod ni'n gwybod hynny. Fe wnaeth ymddangos y Comwyll yn y gweith. ..like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky. This earthquake of the classroom was not foreseen by anybody. Not even ourselves, although in principle we understood it, which others did not. But others, most of the others, denied it as they do today, to this very day. As that happened in Quebec in that unfortunate discussion, where yet again these idiots, these morons, who infest the universities, have come to the conclusion that some of the most ignorant people in society are to be found between the four walls of a university, and I'm not afraid of the students necessarily. The working class doesn't exist. Did you know that, Ben? You noticed? The working class doesn't exist. I'm informed by these intellectuals. Let us after their name. Yes. There was a young worker, Cymru, of ours from Quebec, who stood up, I was pleased to say in the course of the discussion, he said, well, Cymru, you said in French, I am fed up of attending meetings where I'm informed that I do not exist. I said, well, the working class doesn't exist. But of course we are sitting in this wonderful auditorium, the speakers are working. The light is shining, by the way. Who's responsible for that? Is it an act of God that the light is shining on us? I think the working class has got something to do with that. Of course it remains a fact, whether you like it or not, it remains a fact. But in all countries, in the world, not a light bulb shines. Not a telephone rings. Not a wheel turns without the kind permission of the working class. You better remember that. That the working class has got colossal power in its hands. And this was precisely revealed very clearly in 1968. And yet you have these fools, including fools that call themselves Marxists, that are quite a few of them, also Marx, even Trotsky. Who failed to understand this completely. You see, the fact of the matter is, to a certain extent, one could understand it at that time. To a certain extent. I had a conversation with a couple of Italian communists that are staying in my house, young comrades. And I was explaining the kind of situation I remember when I was their age about a million years ago. Well, not as long ago as that. In the 1960s precisely. In Britain, in France, in Germany, you had full employment. Oh, yes. There was no unemployment. The only time you were unemployed was when you changed your job, basically. And you left school, you left university, you walked into a job of your choice. There was free education in Britain. You didn't have to pay. I didn't pay. I'm from a poor working class family. I didn't pay a bean for eight years. And I went to quite a posh university at that time. Eight years. I never paid a bean. I was paid a living wage. Because of the gains won by the working class. Nobody ever gives us anything. The ruling class never gives anything away. As a result of decades of struggle of clasiting with one of these enormous achievements, of course at that time, the capitalist could afford it because there was a colossal upswing. That's the part I wanted to make. A colossal upswing of the productive forces after the end of the Second World War. Which lasted until 1973-74. That was the first international recession. And this enormous upswing in capitalism undoubtedly caused problems for the revolution. It caused problems for us. We were isolated for the whole historical period. Ted Grant, the forces that supported him, myself included, Rob also. We were isolated. When we argued that in favour of revolution and capitalism doesn't work and so on, people just looked at you rather strangely. And that was the case also in France. And of course the ignorant sectarians, the smart intellectual academic Marxists, how I hate that expression. Academic Marxists. What the hell is an academic Marxist? I would like to know. It's not in the Oxford Dictionary. You cannot be an academic Marxist. Either you're a revolutionary Marxist or you're nothing. These people of course were nothing. Let me give you a quote from one of these academic Marxists. He was quite a well-known intellectual of the period. By the name of Andre Gortz. Who wrote the following? Get a load of this, write it down. Don't forget these words. They're priceless. In the foreseeable future, there will be no crisis of European capitalism so dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general strikes or armed insurrections in support of their vital interests. These pearls of wisdom were published during the biggest revolutionary general strike in history. I wonder that the sect didn't die of shame. But these people don't have any shame. They don't have any sense. The reason I'm underlining this point is that they haven't learned. They say the same things now. Many of these so-called university intellectual Marxists deny the role of the working class. The workers are bought off. I'll give you another example. The great Ernest Mandel you may have heard of him. Hands up, those who have heard of Ernest Mandel. Why do you come and forget him now? He's not worth remembering. He was no good. I know you shouldn't speak ill of the dead but he was no good then and he's even worse now. Ernest Mandel, this great so-called Marxist came to London, I remember. I was there. I think it was January 1968. He spoke for about an hour and he spoke about all kinds of things. Negros struggled in America, women's lib, gay lib, Vietnam War, Che Guevara, multi lib. You name it. Anything and everything except for the French working class. And this man was living in Paris. So one of our comments asked him a question. Comedian Mandel, he was spoken for an hour and you haven't mentioned the working class once. You know what he said. The words are engraved on my memory. The French working class, you can forget about the French working class. They are bourgeoisified, they are Americanized and you can forget about any movement of the French working class for the next 20 years. This was in January 1968. So Mr. Andrew Goats was not alone in his intellectual wonderland. Yes, but you see, it was true. There was no empirical, there was nothing to suggest that such a movement could take place in France. The French working class, in fact, had not moved for quite a long time. There were strikes, some strikes. There were symptoms if people were... Pass me a little every 10 minutes going up. Did you? I didn't see it. You didn't. I'd ignore that. There was no real movement and therefore, of course, they looked elsewhere. They looked somewhere else. They had other professors like Marcuse, that horrible wretch. In fact, they showed a contempt for the working class. Absolute contempt. No understanding, because they had no contact with the real world of the workers. And therefore, they looked for some other point of support. The peasants in backward countries, a guerrilla war, a woutsitong, a che Guevara, all this stuff. Oh, and the students of course, the students. Students were okay, the intellectuals and so on. That was the basis, not the working class. Now, they could be, to some extent, excused. No, they could not be excused, I take that back. You see, the point is this. What this shows is that these ladies and gentlemen had not an atom of understanding of dialectics. You cannot understand the French Revolution in 1968 without understanding dialectics. These people were empirics. On the facts. You know the facts. Let's see the facts. What's the facts? The fact is the workers have not... Yes, that may be perfectly true. Yes, that's empiricism. But empiricism is very narrow and very superficial. It doesn't get you very far. Dialectics doesn't just base itself on the facts, the things you see in front of yourself. It penetrates beneath the surface of what is to demonstrate the internal contradictions and tensions within society which build up and build up over a long period of time until they reach a critical point where a qualitative change takes an explosion. That's called a revolution in everyday language. Trotsky had a really wonderful, remarkable, brilliant way of expressing this fact. He referred to the molecular process of socialist revolution. All bear that in mind, that marvellous phrase. The molecular process of socialist revolution is precisely that beneath the surface, and that goes for Britain today, I was coming Martin just pointed out, beneath the surface of apparent calm, apparent immobility, there's a seething discontent, indignation, rage, frustration, more than it is, which is trying to find a way out. It's like the invisible forces beneath our feet. In geology, the seething mass of molten rock, moving at unimaginable temperatures and speeds, quite invisible to the naked eye, until it explodes with an elemental force. And that, my friends, is precisely what occurred in May 1968. Now, the general run of people imagine, they think that there's a kind of mythology, that oh yes, it was all started by the students, now to some extent that is true, only to some extent, you see. One could argue, and you wouldn't be wrong on that, that the students could have acted as a kind of catalyst. Yes, but a catalyst can only take effect when the conditions are there. If the conditions are not there prepared in advance, then you can do what you like, you'll have no effect whatsoever. But it's true, there was a ferment among the students. Not just in France, it was an international phenomenon. You had it in Northern Ireland, you had it in America in particular. The Vietnam War was a huge issue in Britain also, which I lived through that also, mass demonstrations and so on. In France, throughout 1967 there were big demonstrations, protesting mainly about foreign affairs, against the Vietnam War in particular, which were met with great brutality in Britain and in France by the police, beating up students and so on. There was also, of course, issues among the students as ever, as today, as they must be today. Many issues of discipline, of bad conditions, of things like that, that existed in France. France had advanced industrially quite a lot, particularly compared to pre-war. The French capitalist class, different from the British capitalist, based themselves on backwardness for quite a long time. They didn't want to develop industry. They had colonies, of course, that was the secret, like Britain, they had colonies. They didn't want to develop industry in fact, because that meant developing the French working class. They were not stupid, especially after the fright they had with the Paris commune, where they nearly lost power in 1871. Therefore, since that time, they didn't want to develop it, because finally they were obliged to do so. There was a big development of industry in France and all other countries. The peasantry, which traditionally was the basis of reaction, of fascism, of bonapartism in particular, was wiped out. You can't imagine this. You don't understand. Countries like Italy, Spain, the peasants were in the majority up until recently. Greece, they were in the majority within what I can remember. They were 60% of the population, not long ago. They've been wiped out in Britain. The peasantry, of course, didn't exist a long time ago. In Germany, even at the time of Hitler, there was a very large peasantry, I don't know, about 30% at least. All these reserves of reaction would be whittled away, would be destroyed, and the proletariat emerged with a tremendous strength. Huge factories were built. The car industry in particular, the Renault factory in Flann, had 10,000 workers. During these events I'm referring to, at daily meetings of at least 1,000, and many more 1,000 participated in strikes, pickets, and demonstrations. Colossal power that was in the hands of the working class. What's the problem? Problems that the working class has this power, and they do not know that they have this power. And the people that are supposed to be leading them, I was interested to hear the remarks of the comedy with Jespo, the trade union leaders that should be providing a lead, are constantly pouring water over the working class, trying to prevent militancy, prevent strikes, prevent actions and so on. That goes for all countries, and it was true of France in 1968. Now it, I'll deal a little bit with my own experience later on, but let's deal with this question of the student to vote. There were serious issues, but there were issues of severe overcrowding, bad facilities, other things, even the terrible questions of not being allowed into female dormitories. That's really something. If you like, there were disciplinary questions, because there was severe repression taking place in the universities. And therefore, of course, the discontent erupted in the seas of... No, let's ask ourselves the question. What is the role of students in society? Can students carry through the socialist revolution on their own? No, they cannot. They don't have the power, they don't have the strength. Students' strikes, whether you can have a student strike, you can strike as long as you like. What difference does it make to the employers or the government? Not very much, it's like a demonstration. And eventually you get tired of that, then they drift back to their studies, and that will be the end of it. With the working class, as you saw in France, it's entirely different. What is true of students is that they can play a very important role. I don't wish to contradict that. Students can, and they did play an important role in France. But it's more as a barometer. The students and intellectuals are a sensitive barometer of the tensions that are building up in society. If you see that a big student's movement is taking place, you can be sure. That reflects, that's a sensitive barometer, and it's like the heat lightning that occurs before a storm. That would be an appropriate comparison. In Nanterre in particular, which was a new university, there was severe overcrowding, severe disciplinary problems, all kinds of discontent. It erupted in March 1968 in a series of sit-ins and demonstrations and so on, which were brutally repressed. The rector of the university called in, the police occupied Nanterre, I think it was on the 22nd of March, 1990, they called the police, and the French police had a pretty brutal lot, especially the CRS, the Thugs, the riot police, which played also a significant role in these events. They waited in, of course, with their battlons flailing left, right and centre, beating up students, arresting people and so on. They took over Nanterre. And that, if you like, was the spark, the spark that lit an explosion. The such was the mood throughout French universities. There was a massive movement of solidarity of protests, culminating in the occupation of the Saarbonne. If you know the Saarbonne, it's like Oxford or Cambridge. That is the elite university in France. The students occupied the Saarbonne and they also were met with violence on the part of the state. And the police occupied, on the 3rd of May, the police occupied, violently occupied the Saarbonne and ejected the students. And that set off a massive reaction. There were riots in the streets, mass, mass, violent demonstrations of the students, classes with the police, leading to many casualties, many arrests. I've got the figures here. By the way, make a note of these figures if you like. I'll have to check them because my memory is not too brilliant. Let's just see if I've got the figures handy if you pinch them. Because they tell a story. Ah, here we are, here we are. Yes, May the 3rd, the police entered the Saarbonne, and there were riots in the Latin Quarter. That's the international student, artist's quarter, it used to be. In which there were, that's one night, there were 100 people injured, beaten up and so on. And 596 were arrested, there were students. 596 were arrested by the police. The next day, courses in the Saarbonne were suspended, but the thing didn't finish. This brutality far from cowing the people, it made things worse. On the 6th of May, there were new battles in the Latin Quarter. This time, with a balance force, a balance of 422 arrests, 345 police and 600 students were injured. So look at the ratio. The first day, it's just the 600 students are beaten up and injured. The second day, there are 600 students injured, but there's also 345 police injured. The students form barricades, picked up cobblesport. In Paris, there are these charming old streets with cobblestones. Handy things are cobbles, about that size. Very, very handy as a weapon of mass destruction. For use against these police with their riot shields and their battles and their tear gas and so on. So that was the thing. And of course, it continued. Then of course, we reached the culminating point. On the 9th of May, the 10th, there was a full-scale riot all over the Latin Quarter. Rioters erected barricades which the police assaulted with great violence and so on. But then they sent in these thugs, the CRS, real thugs, moving in like Roman soldiers with shields and battons and so on, laying into the students and so on. Yes, but these thugs, these tough guys on the night of the 10th of May had the shock of their lives. They weren't just met with the resistance of students armed with cobblestones. They were attacked by ordinary Parisian people, working-class people, women, housewives, dropping flower pots of balconies. Oops, sorry. Big, heavy flower pots and refrigerators and anything that came to hand. Throne of the police. So that, on the night of the 10th, let's have the figures. Out of the 367 people hospitalised, not injured, hospitalised, seriously injured, out of 367, 251 were police. That's not a bad ratio. If you know mathematics, you know. Further 720 people were hurt and 468 were arrested. Now this is serious stuff. You guys have been on student demonstration. I think you might have had the experience of being kept by police. Why can't the British students be like the French? You can keep the police in that case. This was serious stuff. Fighting on the scene. Of course it began to have an effect. The general population looked at this, read the news paper, saw these reports of police brutality, and of course the people were shock, profoundly shocked. And that shock, of course, extended to the working class, to the trade unions, to the factories and so on and so forth. People said, well, we can't have this. This is not good enough. What was the role of the leaders? The trade union leaders are particularly the leaders of the French Communist Party. The French Communist Party at this stage was the main workers' party in Spain. It controlled a big union called the CGT. Did I say Spain? France. My heart is in Spain, as you know. But tonight my head has got to be in France, so I better go back to Paris. The CGT was the biggest trade union in Spain. It was controlled by the Communist Party. Did I say the same thing again? I think I'm getting old. Somebody else can take over. The biggest trade union in France, there, I got it out. Thank you. Finally, Finale Mon. I got it out. The biggest party, the biggest trade union in France, was controlled by the Communist Party. What was their attitude? What did they have to say about it? Nothing. Not quite nothing. They said these were adventures, irresponsible adventures, organised by petty bourgeois pseudo-revolutionaries who should be ignored, should not be supported. That was the line. That's what you could read in the Communist newspaper, Humanity, an absolute blatant betrayal of elementary, if you're not socialist, of elementary democratic principles. Yes, but that did not reflect the mood of the rank and file. That was not the attitude of the ordinary workers in the factories or in the Communist Party workers, or the workers in the CGT. They were scandalised, outraged. They put colossal pressure on the leaders. Of course, you know where the trade union leaders stand. They stand where they pushed, always. They were under severe pressure. Therefore, they responded as they should have responded from the beginning by calling a general strike, a one-day general strike, for May 11. They were called by all the main unions, not just the CGT, but the CFDT. That's interesting. That was the second union which grew rapidly during the strike. This had been up until recently a Catholic trade union. Oh, yes. An anti-communist trade union controlled by the church. You see how things can change? When the class begins to move all things, you can have all kinds of strange changes taking place. The CFDT, actually, it was to the left of the CGT. In a confused way they put forth the argument of workers' control or the gestion. They called it self-management in French and so on. But there's this general strike. Therefore, this was accompanied by a mass demonstration, a huge demonstration of the CGT, the CFDT, and the FEN, the FEN, which is the main student union. The official student union, if you like. They called for a general strike on the 13th of May, where there was a huge turnout. A huge turnout. The first strike was accompanied by, I think it was a demonstration of 200,000, I think. The second strike would have been much bigger than that. With your permission, I don't have a lot of time, but I must quote an eyewitness account, published at the time, said the following. Endlessly they filed past. Every factory, every major workplace seemed to be represented. There were numerous groups of railwomen, postmen, printers, metro personnel, metal workers, airport workers, market men, electricians, lawyers, sewer men, bank employees, building workers, glass and chemical workers, waiters, municipal employees, printers, painters and decorators, gas workers, shop girls, insurance clerks, road sweepers. I could continue this more. In other words, the whole of the working class was moving into action, layer after layer. Even workers that had been, sectors that had been inert for years, that weren't unionised. Let me just give you one astonishing figure, one astonishing figure. I said this was the biggest revolutionary general strike in history. Do you know how many trade union members they were in France at that time? 3.5 million, that's all. Very small, the French have never been very good at organisation, Marx and Engels commented on that, compared to the British or the Germans or the Belgians, the French were a bit more. 3.5 million workers in unions, 10 million workers occupied the factories at the height of the strike, astonishing. Whole factories became organised like the Citrail plant, the gigantic Citrail car factory, where there was a regime of terror. I said to the workers, they should make the point, clever guys who couldn't see any sign of a movement of the working class, they were ignorant of the real position of the workers, in the fact they didn't know, as they don't know now in Britain, they've got no contact with the workers, they have no understanding of the real serious problems that workers face. It's true that industry has grown, the economy is booming, bosses are making a lot of profits, but that wasn't reflected in the general increase in living standards. They improved their position, but many workers, especially the young workers, did not. There was a lot of discontent, a lot of tyranny in the factories. Citrail is the case in point. There were no trade unions allowed in Citrail, this gigantic car factory. The bosses had armed guards stationed all over the factory to control the workers, to make them disappear. Most of the workers in that factory, by the way, were not born French citizens, they were mainly immigrants from North Africa, from Spain, from Portugal, from Yugoslavia, from all over. Backward, depressed immigrant workers under the heel of the bosses. The Citrail factory became organised in 24 hours. They all joined the union. I think it might have been the CGT, or the CGT, or both. It doesn't matter. Tremendous movement of the workers. The workers understood the need for unity, the need for organisation, the need for change. Amazingly. Yes, of course, but the trade union is called this general strike, one-day general strike, one-day note general strike, reluctantly dragging their heels, cursing under their breath. The trade union, they don't like to be bothered, they don't like to do very much. And therefore, they were forced to do this. And they did this, they called this strike with the clear intention of allowing the workers, allowing the people to blow off steam. Oh, yes, we'll have a nice one-day strike and a nice little demonstration. People will shout their lungs out and they'll get tired and they'll go home satisfied. And that'll be the end of the matter. Big miscalculation. Tremendous miscalculation. That one-day strike and that demonstration, it was like a huge rock, huge boulder, dropped into a lake, a calm, tranquil lake. It dropped into the waters and it caused waves, like wildfire. The revolutionary moorcus, that's what it was, spread all over France, instantly, immediately. Factory after factory after factory came out on strike the next day. They couldn't hold it, they couldn't hold it. And therefore, like a gigantic snowball, the general strike began to gather strength. The scope of it is absolutely incredible. Let me see if I've got some other stuff here. Yes, I've said that already, yes. Yes, there was the Citron workers I've mentioned. Particularly on May the 14th, the huge air-building factories, the Sud Aviation in Nantes, the workers didn't just strike, they occupied the factories, the occupations began. The workers began to occupy the factories. Spontaneously, nobody asked them to do that. The Soviet Union leaders were against it, but they did it anyway, they occupied the factories. The Reynolds factory at Cléon followed by the Reynolds workers at Flein, Le Mans, and Boulogne-Bilancourt, which I'll mention in that factory later on. On May the 18th, the coal miners came out. The gas workers, the electricity workers, the workers took control of petrol supplies in Nantes, refusing entry to all petrol tankers which did not carry authorization from the strike committee. Workers' control. They even controlled, they appealed to the peasants. Very important, they appealed a smaller peasantry than in the past, but it's still important. They appealed to the peasants. Peasants were being robbed and cheated of their products, the workers at Boulogne. We were distributed to the population at a fair price. We will agree with you, cut out the middlemen. We'll agree with the peasants how much you want for your product and we'll sell this product at that price. And this was done with the result. There's an example here, I've got somewhere. Yes, a litre of milk was sold for 50 centim compared to the normal 80. That's not bad. In other words, with workers' control, cutting out the capitalist selling direct to the public, have a considerable reduction of prices, and give the peasants a far better deal. Students, of course, teachers, near where I was staying, I was staying at that, I went to, plus I should say a bit about that. At the time I was a member of what was then called the militant tendency, it was Marxist organisation, and I was in Sussex University. We decided that we should say, we weren't a very large organisation at that stage, we didn't have many resources, but we were always internationalists, and therefore we understood the significance of these events for Britain and the whole of Europe, so we decided that they would send me to France, I could speak French, better French than now, but I could speak French. I went with a Scottish comrade in a battered old car. He didn't. I hesitated to make remarks about the idea of Scottish people and money. Mainly because, and I've never in my life met a mean Scotsman, only once, that's another story. Scottish people are very generous people, it's entirely false what they say, but this comrade anyway, perhaps because he didn't have much money, he didn't fill the tank up, of course he didn't occur to him, or me, that in a general strike it's a bit difficult to get hold of petrol. And therefore, I don't know how we did this, and therefore with our hearts, hearts in our mouths, we were struggling along from Calais to Paris, looking for a petrol station, they were all closed, of course. Along the road, you can see every factory had red flags fluttering in the breeze. Over every factory there were red flags, and where there were petrol stations there were gigantic queues. Finally we queued up, but eventually we managed to get some petrol and we finally staggered into Paris. What would be fine? Well look, actually in my, during my life, I was counting it this morning, on four occasions I've had the possibility of participating or observing at close quarters of revolution, and they all have the same features. And this you better believe it, this was a revolution, it wasn't just a strike, it was a revolution. You arrived in Paris, you could breathe it. The atmosphere was electric. I've never seen anything like it before, I saw it subsequently a number of times, but I've never seen it before. Everyone on every street corner there were groups of people arguing heatedly about politics of what's happening, what's happening in the strike, what's the meaning of this, where are we going, what's to go, there would be, on every wall was plastered with posters, with revolutionary manifestos and people would, often written by hand, badly written, but there'd be groups of people gathering around and reading this, avidly. What does this group say? What does that group say? What does this party say? The atmosphere was buzzing, it was electric. And every single layer, you wouldn't believe this. I'm going to quote some incredible examples now. Every single layer was involved in this movement. Near where I was staying in the Latin Quarter, we were walking along, we passed a labour exchange, you know. They were not supposed to be organised in trade unions, the labour exchange was plastered with trade union posters of the CFTT as it happens, and then some distance away, some scientists had occupied the observatory, astronomers had occupied the observatory. That isn't the most extraordinary thing, let me see. Where are we now? Oh, yes, the footballers occupied the football ground. I'm not normally friendly to footballers, but there we are. Footballers hoisted the red flag over the football ground. Imagine that happening in West Ham, I know this. I changed my attitude towards football drastically. Even the girls in the Folly Berger, the Can Can dancers, they went on strike, everything. This was precisely what a revolution precisely is. I must look at this. Oh, yes, you see. The Communist Party, I'll come back to the people involved in a moment. The Communist Party leaders and the leaders of the CGT, they're so interested in all of this, was to put the brakes on to limit the strike. They argued that it was, oh yes, it's like an ordinary strike. It was not an ordinary strike, my friends. A general strike is not an ordinary strike. Why? Because a general strike poses the question of power. Think about it. Think of those workers distributing petrol and say, it doesn't matter if you're a government minister, if you ain't got a chip from the strike committee, you don't get any petrol. And the question that arises is this. Who controls? Who's boss? Who's master of the house? Is it the government? Is it De Gaulle? By the way, President De Gaulle, if you didn't know, was to use the strong man, bonapartist, authoritarian type. Oh yes, but who runs society? And that question has to, that's the question that must be resolved by a general strike. Either the workers will take power into their own hands, and that was possible, by the way. We actually took a leaflet across, which we distributed as much as possible. Putting our programme forward, and our programme was this. What is needed in France? 10 million workers are talking about the factories. They could control the factories, they had committees and so on and so forth. What should it be done? Simple. Link up the committees. Link up the committees on a local basis, on a city-wide basis, on a district basis, and elect a general committee of the strike. Elected from below, not the bureaucracy, elected with right of recall. And the next step, of course, is that that committee, Soviet, call it what you like, it doesn't matter. Should take power, say, we are the government. De Gaulle can go to hell, it represents nobody. We are the power and we will take control of France from this moment. But of course, such an idea that this was very far from the mentality of the Communist Party leaders. And the leaders of the CGT, who had the, no, no, no, this is only for demands of higher wages and pensions and so on and so forth. And by the way, you mustn't have a general movement, you must probably negotiate on a factory-by-factory basis in other words, to split the movement up, to weaken it, to destroy it. That was what they were up to. But of course, this is, this of course was not possible. Now, just a PS, by the way, to show you the bankruptcy of sectarianism, of ultra-left sectarianism, which is a common feature of the university. It was very difficult. We tried to contact the workers in the factories, but it was virtually impossible because the bureaucrats made sure that the factory gates were locked. Nobody was allowed into the factories because of provocateurs. Be very careful of people from the outside, dangerous people spreading dangerous ideas and so on and so forth. It's impossible. So finally, we went along to the sauban, which was occupied. That was an incredible sight, this elite university. You walk into the courtyard, huge courtyard, surrounded by statues of Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu, all of them with red caps, and pictures of Pau Ceytong and Che Guevara, and Leon Trotsky and so on and so forth, staring down at you. Of course, all the left groups had tables, like our table at the back. At that time, they were all monthly newspapers. They had been published, of course, before the strike started, before the movement started. I went round, I looked at every single table, with one exception. It was kind of an agro syndicalist group called Voire. All of the groups had on their front page Che Guevara, Pau Ceytong, Vietnam, Bolivia, anything and everything except the French working class. That experience told me everything that I need to understand. These guys were completely divorced from the real situation in the factories, in the real position of the workers. That's something, I echo what our last speaker said, very true. That's something that must never happen to us. Our student commons must find ways and means of linking directly personally to the workers in the factories, get to know their, and across the government offices also, get to know their problems, their experiences, and so on, at first hand. It is the only way, and support the workers by every means, at our disposal. Now the question arises, I have not yet dealt with this. How did the government react? Well, the fact of the matter is it didn't. This President de Gaulle, who taken power in a coup d'etat by the way, in 1958, as a representative of the army and so on, under the slogan Algerie Française during the Algerian War for Independence, this strong man proved to be a straw man. A straw man, a nobody, a non-entity. He didn't know what to do. He was demoralised. I'll prove that to them, I've got the quotes to prove this. He actually, he buggered off, he went to Romania where he was welcomed with open arms by Nicola Ceaucescu. I think we have a Romanian comedy of this evening. Buna ziara. See my farch? Fuarte bine, that exhausts my knowledge of Romanian. Let's just ask him, welcome in with open arms during this revolution. I think that was deliberate by the way to try to influence the communists. Who de Gaulle saw correctly as his main point of support in France at that time. But he laughed behind this unfortunate individual, George Pompey Do, who was the Prime Minister, who said the following, I've got the quote here. The crisis was infinitely, this is his memoirs, the crisis was infinitely more serious and more profound. The regime could stand or be overthrown. The regime could stand or be overthrown. But it could not be saved by a mere cabinet resufl. It was not my position that was in question. It was General de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic, and to a considerable extent, the Republican rule itself. In other words, capitalism. Capitalism was in danger of being overthrown. Not my words, the words of George Pompey who written after the events. De Gaulle, by the way I said that he places confidence on the communists. You don't believe me. Let me quote this from a favourable biographer of de Gaulle. De Gaulle initially placed his confidence in the Stalinist leaders to save the situation. He said to his naval aide de Gaulle, Francois Follet, don't worry Follet, the communists will keep them in order. This is de Gaulle. So he's a shrewd member of the wing. He understands the role of the Labour leaders rather well. Yes, but it didn't help him. By May 20, an estimated 10 million workers were on strike and the country was practically paralysed. The government was suspended in mid-air. That was the position. De Gaulle was demoralised. There's no question about it. Here's this biographer Charles Williams writing on the eve of de Gaulle's broadcast on the 24th. Quote, there is no doubt that after the exhilaration of Romania, must have been a terrible shock when he came back to Paris, the general had been badly shaken by what he found on his return to France. During the ensuing three days, he seemed to be, he seemed to, he seemed at last one visitor, he seemed at last to one visitor who had not seen him for some time, to be old and indecisive. His stoop accentuated. It seemed as though it was all getting too much for him. He kept on repeating. It's a mess, it's a mess and he was right, he was right. As a matter of fact we have another witness. I called witness for the prosecution. The then American ambassador, I think his name was Frank Carlucci, if my memory serves me correctly. The French ambassador called de Gaulle and he said, what's going on, what's going on in France? De Gaulle replied as follows. It's all up, the game's up. In a few days time the communists will be in power. This is de Gaulle to the American ambassador. And therefore nobody is going to tell me that the French working class could not have taken power easily like that if the leaders had so wished. But of course they did not, they did not wish. Of course the reformers have always got a thousand arguments, haven't they? As to why revolution is impossible. And of course the final argument, you know what it is. Oh, if we tried to take power there would be bloodshed, the streets running with blood and there's the army and there's the police force and there's the intelligence services. What can we do? We are powerless. We don't have any arms, we are powerless people. Oh, yes. Well look, de Gaulle on paper had a very powerful army. Army I think of about over quarter of a million soldiers. In France and in Germany, at that time they were still in Germany, a big police force, the CRS. So on paper, if you look at it on paper and you count the number of guns, revolution in France was physically impossible. Yes, the same as it was physically impossible in 1789 or in Russia in 1917 or any other revolution you care to mention in history. I'll be dealing with Oliver Cromwell tomorrow. That would have been impossible on paper if you looked at this. Of course it doesn't work like that. Because the army is made up, the police also, but above all the army is made up of ordinary working class kids who are also affected, particularly in France at that time, all scripts, not professional soldiers, they were called up. De Gaulle actually disappeared at this point. He took a plane, guess where he went? Not back to Romania. He went to Germany to have an interview with General Masso who was in charge of the French soldiers, French army in the Rhine. Now I was not present unfortunately, I would have loved to be present in that discussion, but it would have been very interesting. First question would be this. Can I use the army to crush this revolution? Which was his intention, but initially we know. Initially he had a plan to arrest thousands of students and workers, put them in a football stadium the same as Pinochet did in Chile. I don't know what would happen next, but this plan existed, but they had to drop it. And the reason they couldn't use the army was explained by the Times. Now I've got the cutting in the house, but I've left it at home. The Times newspaper in Britain sent, obviously they were concerned about France, they sent a correspondent to Germany to interview the French soldiers. And the Times correspondent asked them, would you be prepared to fire on the workers in France? And they said, no. What are you talking about? My father's a worker, my brother's a worker. All right, they're a little bit rough in the methods, but fire on the working class? No. And the Times, a very intelligent journal at that time, it's a rubbish paper now, but it was quite good. Never been the same since they took the advertisements off the front page. The Times was an intelligent bourgeois paper at that time. And you know what they said in an editorial? They actually put the question, can De Gaulle use the army? They said, De Gaulle could perhaps use the army once, once. That means one bloody clash between the army and the working class, and that would have been it. That would have been it, the fat would have been on the fire, they'd lose control of the army, they'd lose control of France. They would lose control of everything. Therefore they could not use the army. That's the fact of the matter. Therefore the state itself was in crisis. Times also said, 31 May, that the police were seething with discontent, quote, unquote. By the way, here's a leaflet, a leaflet, which is published at the time by the Mechanised Infantry Regiment stationed near Strasbourg in France, said the following. Like all conscripts, we are confined to barracks, that's what they didn't trust, they locked them up. They didn't unleash them on the public, they locked them inside the barracks for fear that they'd fraternize and go over with their guns. Like all conscripts we are confined to barracks. We are being prepared to intervene as repressive forces. The workers and youth must know that the soldiers of this contingent will never fire on workers. We, action committees, you see they got action committees in the army now, we action committees are opposed at all costs to the surrounding of factories by soldiers. Tomorrow or the day after, we are expected to surround an armaments factory with 300 workers who work there want to occupy. We shall fraternize. That's the capital of the letters. Soldiers of the contingent, formula committees. It ends up now. That's the red light for the bulls, you see. In fact they finished, as De Gaulle said, the games up in a few days the communists will be in power and they should have been in power and they could have been in power. And if that would have been the case, it would have transformed Europe. But the communists persisted in treating this as an ordinary strike. They sat down to negotiate in the middle of all this, to negotiate with the employers and negotiate with the governments, wage increases, holidays, stuff like this. At a time where the general strike had gone far beyond that, far beyond demands for increased pay and so on and so forth, and the proof of that was soon to be seen incidentally. The journalists went on strike, the print workers went on strike, the papers ceased to come out. I tell a lie. The strike committees imposed a censorship on the press, whereby they added, not a bad idea this, the editors had to show them any article that was published and if they didn't like the content it wouldn't go in. There'd be a blank space. Workers' censorship. The TV workers went on strike. The radio workers went on strike. This is absolutely astonishing. This of course is far beyond anything that I can't find, before I go to the list, I've forgotten, this is a long list. Doctors, I mean surgeons occupied the doctors union offices. The architects occupied the architects offices. The Cannes film fact festival. You know the Cannes, the Cannes, I think it's pronounced, the Cannes film fact in English. The Cannes film fact with all the vedettes and the film stars and all the rest of it and all the... They went on strike. And the strike committee eventually ended the festival. It was finished. So that means everything is certainly incredibly, even some of the capitalists went on to say, some factory director, I don't know why, some factory director occupied the employers association. I'll never know until my dying day why they did that. Perhaps they thought it was the fashion. I don't know. But what I'm saying, this is not an ordinary strike. This is a revolution. It reminds me, you know, the Great French Revolution of 1789, when the masses turned up at Versailles, the women led this. They turned up with the pikes and so on and so on. And the kings, lackey, terrified, came to see the kings. They explained what was going on. They said, my city is over. But this is a rebellion. No city in the revolution. No sire, it's a revolution. And this is a... Look, if this was not a revolution, I think we will never live to see a revolution in our lives. But of course, they didn't take the action, the leadership didn't take the action that they could and ought to have taken. Now, I was in Paris. Of course, I didn't arrive at the beginning of these events. But I arrived towards the latter part. And of course, a situation like this, by its very needs, it cannot last. Marx or Engels, one of the two, once said, there are periods in history in which 10 years can pass as one day. Another 10 years passes, nothing much happens. That was the case in France before that. Nothing much was happening, apparently. He said there are other days in which the history of 10 years can be summed up in 24 hours. That was the case in France. A revolutionary situation by its very nature cannot be maintained indefinitely. The sum analogy is even with an ordinary strike at the beginning of any ordinary strike at the beginning. The workers are enthusiastic. They attend the meetings. They attend the picket lines. They make sacrifices and so on. Yes, but if this strike is allowed to drag on too long without any end in sight, then the workers will get tired. Beginning with the weaker elements, the more backward elements, they will drift back to work and so on and so forth. And the strike will be lost. Something similar is the case in the general strike also. This is three weeks of strike and nothing was happening. Except that the trade union leaders were beginning to negotiate a sell-out. Now I was present, but one incident I remember. People were very distrustful of the Communist Party leaders and the bureaucrats. Very upset with them, you know. I was standing inside. Tuesday I said, this guy comes up and he's distributing a leaflet of his. He's a Communist Party member. I got over the leaflet. Against all manoeuvres. And some guy, some worker takes the leaflet, looks at it and says, ha! Le manoeuvre, c'est nous! Ah! Manoeuvres! Refering to the Communist Party. So there was that mood existing. But we couldn't go to the factory. So I went into a local bar, which is full of workers, looking at the television. The television cameras were inside the giant Renault car factory at Bilancourt. It was incredible, you could see. The factory was packed from top to bottom. There were workers sitting on the gantries on the cranes, trying to hear what was being said. There was a report back being given by George Seagie, General Secretary of the CGT. You've never heard such a report in your life. He's a clever bastard, you know. Real fox, typical Stalinist fox. He didn't make any comment about his participation in these negotiations, these secret negotiations. He says, okay. I'll just read out the list of what's on offer. What's on offer? 35% wage increase. That's not bad for the PCS, is it? Martin, are you there? 35% wage increase. Man, the inflation at that time was quite high, but it wasn't that high. 35% pensions, holidays, anything you like. Anything you like. One condition. Leave the factories. Go home. Leave. And you have all these things. You know. I'll never forget this scene, although it was on television. I wasn't there, but it was as if I was there. He couldn't continue speaking. He was drowned out with a huge roar. Gouvernement populaire. Gouvernement populaire. People's government, we don't want your increases. We don't want 35%. We want power. Gouvernement populaire. I don't think the man, to the best of my knowledge, he never finished his speech. Yes, and that was the mood that exists. The workers knew they had power in their hands that they were that near to taking power. It would have been easy, and it would have been bloodless. There would have been no civil war, no blood. Of course, the Communist Party continued. They betrayed him. And of course, as I said, there's a limit that's not put up with. By this stage, people were getting tired. Tiredness, weirdness, disillusionment were setting in. Of course, to go on, it got an access of confidence and issued a radio, television broadcast in which he announced, I'm going to dissolve the National Assembly and call new elections. Then he said to the Communist leaders, oh, we're having elections. We're having strikes and revolutions. Why don't you participate in a nice little election? You'll end up as ministers. You'll have jobs, of course. What more did the CP leaders want than that? Oh, and by the way, he added slyly. If you don't do this, I'll have the army and it'll be bloodshed. It'll be civil war to frighten them. Of course, they didn't need any frightening. They didn't need any encouragement. That was what they were attending all along. And I'm sorry to say, terrible tragedy. They succeeded. They succeeded. After all these superhuman efforts, this wonderful, a land, this wonderful revolutionary struggle ended in nothing. People drifted back to work. The workers drifted back to work, disillusionment. The students drifted back to their studies. Everything was as before, except that it wasn't as before. You see, the ruling class, it's a law. You can see this. I've even got a nice little report of the first recorded strike in history of the Egyptian pyramid workers, I think it was, in the Valley of Kings. That is the same tactics. Combination of concession and repression. When they were terrified out of their skulls by this mass movement, they offered concessions on paper. The police, wages, holidays. They even accepted, they all accepted the sacking of the Minister of Education. Look, we got to do this man. We got to do what more do you want. Everything will be fine. Concessions on paper, yes. Followed by repression. Repression. The moment the workers left the factory, the moment the students drifted back to studies, the moment things came back to normality, they stuck the boot in. The victimisation started. The sacking started. Thousands of workers were sacked. Other people were arrested. Even some people were killed. In the orgy of police violence. The police reoccupied Nantai University and reoccupied the Saban with violence, beating up students, arresting student leaders and so on. Black reaction. The elections, they called a mass demonstration of the right wing, of its own supporters. That would have been nothing compared to the huge demonstrations of millions of workers that had occurred in the previous weeks. During the election they mobilised reaction. Workers were demoralised, most of them didn't vote. The Communist Party was rewarded and the socialists were rewarded by slumping their votes. The right wing won and De Gaulle was put back in power for a whole historical period. Now I'll finish there, but I don't wish to finish on a negative note. Because to me, somebody that experienced these things first hand, the memory of that spectacular movement will stay with me for the rest of my life. That was an inspiration, believe me. It reminded me of the words, the immortal words of the English poet, William Wordsworth, when as a young man he went to France, he experienced the revolution and he wrote the immortal words in the prelude, blessed was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. This was a genuine revolution, a magnificent revolution, which if it had succeeded and it could have succeeded, and it should have succeeded, except for one thing and that question is the leadership. It would have transformed the whole of Europe, never more by France. It would have caused shock waves throughout Europe and changed the whole of history. What conclusions do we draw? Well, you know when a king dies, they say the king is dead, long live the king, I say. The French Revolution is dead, long live the French Revolution and long live the world revolution in which drawing the necessary conclusions, the new vanguard of the youth will play the necessary role to finish this system and carry through what has to be carried through to a victorious conclusion.