May in France is a heady month, in which the nation embraces its dual heritage of rebellion and leisure. At least three and sometimes four of the country’s 15 public holidays fall in May and this year, the workforce can look forward to a month peppered with long weekends and industrial action. Emboldened by the success of four general strikes since January, France’s leading trade unions intend to make May day “the new crowning moment of mobilisation.”
On 1st May, the nation’s deep ambivalence towards the idea of work seems to crystallise. Legally inaugurated in 1941 as la fête du travail by none other than Marshal Pétain (the only French leader apart from Sarkozy to champion le travail as a value), France’s Labour day has tended to be a celebration not of work, but of the struggle to liberate mankind from work. People like to remember 1st May 1936, when Leon Blum’s Popular Front, days away from power, organised a pageant of activism and solidarity that heralded the very real joys of the 40-hour week and the paid holiday. Or else 1st May 1968, when Daniel Cohn-Bendit was summoned to appear before the disciplinary board of the Sorbonne and the spark was lit for les événements. They recall 1st May 2002, which saw 400,000 Parisians marching against Le Pen’s presence in the second round of the presidential elections.
Indeed, most Parisians go misty-eyed at that memory. Haunted by the spectre of Vichy, my children’s generation made banners saying “Abstention = Collaboration,” “Better to be screwed by Chirac than raped by Le Pen” or “We are all immigrants.” The French do mass demonstration very well. They embrace that atmosphere of collective euphoria, of dissolution in the throng with a gusto it is hard to imagine in our restrained and leery Protestant culture. The manif is the closest this lapsed Catholic society gets to the rapture of Mass, and on May day all sides of the political spectrum submit with joy.
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