victory, some belated reforms and a rapid return
to calm and stability. Was it just a brief period of
turbulence of no great significance? With hind-
sight, the events of 1968 look different, the
dramatising of a change in Western society that
had been slow in the making. It was a revolt in
the first place against authority: in the professions,
and especially among would-be professionals in
the universities, it marked a rejection of preor-
dained patterns, of subservience and patronage,
and of the concomitant corruption. It was a revolt
of youth, against an older generation that it held
responsible for the mismanagement of the past.
With the security provided by the welfare state,
relatively full employment and student grants,
students no longer had to concentrate on pro-
viding their daily needs but could aspire to some-
thing better. The success of the assault on the
bastions of privilege and archaic structures in edu-
cation and the professions was uneven, but a
recognition of the need for change, a loosening
of rigid hierarchies and the granting of a larger
role and greater freedom to the younger members
of society have been among the positive results of
- It reflected a movement evident through-
out Western society during the 1960s and 1970s.
The May crisis in France revealed the frustra-
tions of an active minority section of the popula-
tion, no longer confident that change could be
effected through the existing channels of bureau-
cracy and government. Thousands took to the
streets, giving the upheaval its particular character:
half revolution, half carnival, shaking off the strait-
laced conformist stupor identified with Gaullist
France. The crisis was easily mastered because,
outside certain parts of Paris, France remained
profoundly conservative in attitude, a conser-
vatism affecting all parties from left to right, as
politicians of all shades preferred to lead the
masses rather than to have them take control into
their own hands. The efforts of the small group of
extremist students, such as the Marxist Danny
Cohn-Bendit, who were working for revolution-
ary change, were doomed to failure, though for a
short while they drew the limelight on themselves.
The red flags and non-stop speeches by students
in Nanterre and the Sorbonne were not the real
stuff of which revolutions are made, but the
increase in student numbers to more than half a
million nationally since 1958 had made them a
significant force. The repressive police actions in
response might have become a more serious cause
of revolution, because they were met by counter-
violence in the streets of Paris, reinforced by bar-
ricades and burning cars.
One reason why revolution did not break out
was that workers did not make common cause
with the intellectuals and students, and this was so
even though the workers had their own griev-
ances. The growth of their real wages had been hit
by an austerity economic programme, and unem-
ployment, though small, was rising. Trade unions,
receiving no cooperation from management,
called a strike, and workers throughout France
spontaneously occupied factories. But the unions,
the communist one included, were seeking better
conditions, not revolution. De Gaulle, incredu-
lous at the sudden storm, left crisis management
to Prime Minister Pompidou. At the height of the
crisis, on 29 May, he secretly withdrew and, near
breaking point, flew to a French military base in
Baden-Baden, West Germany, intending to depart
permanently from office and from France, but
General Massu persuaded him not to give up and
the following day he returned to Paris. Pompidou,
left to himself, had in the meantime bought off
the unions with large concessions. By the time de
Gaulle reappeared to broadcast a plea for massive
support and for a counter-demonstration to the
previous left-wing march on the Champs Élysées,
the response was immediate and impressive. In
June disturbances were practically over. Students
went on their vacations and the workers returned
to work. The National Assembly, with its slender
Gaullist majority in 1967, was dissolved in June
1968 and France gave its verdict at the polls: the
opposition was severely weakened and the
Gaullists secured an overwhelming majority. But
this was not quite the positive vote for de Gaulle
that it appeared to be. It was a fearful reaction
against the left, and a display of support for
Pompidou, whose moderation had brought suc-
cess. De Gaulle knew this and promptly dropped
Pompidou, appointing Couve de Murville as his
successor. Fresh economic problems were coun-
tered with another austerity programme in the
1
THE WAR OF ALGERIAN INDEPENDENCE 533
