150,000 Rally at Larzac

Financial Times
August 11, 2003

Freed French activist rallies crowd
of 150,000 faithful to Larzac

By Jo Johnson Financial

More than 150,000 people gathered on the plateau of
Larzac, 80km north of Montpellier, have sent a strong
message to Paris in a spectacular weekend-long
demonstration against the French government’s plans for
public sector reform and liberalisation of the country’s
statist economy.
Speculation over whether the government will suffer from
a rentrée chaude -a politically charged return from the
August holidays - is one of France’s great summertime
traditions. For the angry crowds at Larzac, there was no
doubt at all that the 2003 rentrée will be one of the
hottest on record.

Many spent three hours in traffic in 40-degree heat to
reach the exposed hilltop site. Organisers said this
show of commitment sent a clear message to prime
minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin that opposition to his
reforms - which saw strikes paralyse France this spring
– will resume after the long summer break.
"The month of September will not just be hot for the
government," said José Bové, the media-savvy spokesman
of the Confédération Paysanne, a small farmers’ union
that helped organ ise the rally. "It must be scorching.
Everyone must be on the streets. If we are numerous, we
will be able to change things."

Originally, just 50,000 people were expected to make the
pilgrimage to Larzac, a site with a mythical place in
French social history since 1973 when hippies joined
small farmers, led by Mr Bové, in an epic campaign to
reclaim land seized by a nearby army base.
But on Saturday after noon, as traffic backed up 20km to
Millau - the town dubbed Seattle-upon-Tarn ever since Mr
Bové destroyed its half-built McDonald’s restaurant in
1999 - he reluctantly told tens of thousands of
teachers, striking actors and energy sector workers
still making their way to the three-day meeting to turn
back.

The crowds testify to Mr Bové’s pulling power. The anti-
globalisation campaigner was freed from jail just over a
week ago - to the relief of a government keen to avoid
his imprisonment becoming a violent cause célèbre at the
rally - after serving five weeks of a 10-month sentence
for destroy ing genetically-modified plants.
He is serving out the rest of his term - reduced by 4½
months by President Jacques Chirac in his Bastille Day
amnesty - under a home detention regime that may prevent
him travelling to the World Trade Organisation meeting
in Cancun in September.
Mr Bové yesterday called on the government to launch a
public debate over the role over WTO ahead of the
meeting. The request has the support of the Socialist
party, which under the uninspiring leadership of
François Hollande has so far failed to put forward a
strong programme to challenge the government’s agenda.
But this year’s gathering at Larzac has been less about
griping at the WTO’s role as an agent of "untrammeled
ultra-liberalism" than about providing those with
specific grievances in the French public sector with an
opportunity to start discussing how to defend their
corner against a reforming government.

For Giselle Vidallet, a national executive director of
the Confédération Générale du Travail, the turnout
demonstrates anger at plans to privatise Electricité de
France and reform healthcare. "These are questions that
are central to people’s lives," she said. "We fought
yesterday. We will fight tomorrow."
Gaël Detrain, a history teacher wearing the colours of
SUD, a fast-growing and hardline union, was one of many
teachers moving between the three debating tents
labelled Genoa, Seattle and Cancun, battlefields of the
anti-globalisation movement past and future.
"Teachers are here in mass because we were the first to
feel the government steamroller," she said.

"The government hoped that the summer would allow every
one to cool off. But we are instead using it as an
opportunity to prepare ourselves for the battles of the
rentrée in a spirit of inter-professional solidar ity."
Actors and technicians, whose strikes in protest at
government reductions to their unemployment benefit
disrupted so many festivals this summer, were also out
in force.

Larzac, which offered free concerts from Manu Chao and
the Asian Dub Foundation, is one of the few big events
this summer not to have been cancelled.
Olivier Letellier, a story-teller from Paris, denied any
hypocrisy. "It’s not a festival," he answers hotly.
"It’s a movement that signifies the convergence of our
different struggles. Come the rentrée, we will all stand
together that’s why we are here."

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