'Police weren't overwhelmed by people protesting and marching' about education and cost of living

And for more on this weekend's protests and the response to them, I can welcome Andrew Smith, lecturer in liberal arts at Queen Mary University of London. Good morning, Andrew, and thank you very much for joining us. The French government has been accused of failures in policing and anticipating these protests on Saturday. And Interior Minister Laurent Nunez has admitted as much to, indeed, tendering his resignation, which was not accepted by Emmanuel Macron. How damaging are these failures likely to be? I think it's a really difficult situation. Clearly, the horrific violence which is taking place is completely unacceptable. And I think even this morning, when you see the mayors of Paris, Marseille, Lyon, saying that they felt that parts of their cities were abandoned by police during the night when those riots took off. And that, I think, is where we start to see the culpability of the interior ministry, those failures in intelligence. I mean, this was more than double, maybe even as much as five times as many people as were anticipated by police. And that's really something I think that is very, very challenging. It's something that's going to need a response. Clearly, it led to a lot of violence. And I think there needs to be quite a clear response to that violence in order to maintain an idea of Republican order. The state is responsible for that order. And it can't just be the case that local prefects are given the job of sorting things out. I think one of the things that's important to state as well, though, is that police weren't overwhelmed by people protesting and marching about demands and grievances about purchasing power or, you know, about investment in education. And those marches, up to 500,000 people, were by and large joyful occasions, were about people being creative, people expressing legitimate political demands. The problem came later on that night when small groups of very mobile, very violent people started to wreck, to fight, to torch parts of France. And I think that's something that's really important. People are asking questions. You know, you had an orchestra of 400 people tear gassed at midday in Paris in Marseille. Then what the mayor is saying, like, well, you know, essentially the police used up their tear gas on legitimate protesters and then failed to meet the rioters at night. So there needs to be, I think, a challenge to those policing strategies. And ultimately, that will need to come from the interior ministry and from the presidency, I think. Now, Emmanuel Macron, like many in his government, has blamed ultra-left radicals for fomenting the violence, along with delinquents. What more do we know about this? Well, it's a challenging thing. Of course, Emmanuel Macron sought a direct audience with the French people, largely to say, you're waiting here for my intermediaries. It was, of course, a well-written, it was a well-delivered speech, but it gave us very little of substance. Instead, what he tried to do is to separate, in some senses, protesters and rioters. And for the protesters, there was some kind of sense that maybe we'll hear more, maybe there'll be some listening. Nothing quite as concrete as for the Gilets Jaunes. For the rioters, he said, they will pay. There will be much more kind of stringent measures. The hints that some of the rioter pay legislation has been airing in the assembly and likewise bans on kind of congregation and public gatherings as well. But he did try and place some political traps. He said, you know, this is clearly stirred up by the far left. He talked about this idea. He tried to call political parties to be responsible, to take account of their responsibilities and essentially to side with the government against the rioters. And we can see this idea of trying to set up this narrative, the state, the Republican order versus rioters, the rabble and the crowd. Now, that's really what he's been pushing at. We know there's been nearly 2,400 arrests across France as part of this, and that will start to take place today as we start to see the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, calling in the heads of political parties to denounce that type of violence. Social partners, unions, all the rest of it, will be called in to denounce that violence and try to find a solution past it. But there are already other dates in the diary. November 5th has been rumoured as another day for protests, And that's got to worry people as well. How do we find a solution to these social problems, which does not just rely on violence and tear gas? Now, we've had several weeks of protests here in France, and there were, of course, initially by secondary school students protesting against education conditions in their schools. The government had perhaps been hoping that the protests might wane with the midterm break, but Saturday's protests were a new front, so to speak, because they were about the cost of living. Are we likely to see a continuation of these protest movements, especially considering that the yellow vests who were prominent from 2018 to 2020 have once again returned? I think one of the things we're seeing here is very much a convergence of causes. You can look, as you mentioned, at the Gilets Jaunes. Of course, you hit 2020 there. That was Covid and everything it brought with lockdowns and spending and all the rest of it, which meant that those problems didn't go away. In 2023, of course, we had the pension reform disturbances taking place. From 2024, that dissolution and then the high school student protests as well. We can draw that litany of different causes and that convergence of causes that we've seen. And if we look at historic instances of these grand convergence of causes, let's look at 1968, 1995, you know, these moments when actually we're always looking at this idea of, you know, 10 years, 14 years, in Mitterrand's case in 1995, of presidency. This is a time of political change, a sense of transition. But it's also a sense in France where since 2024, the assembly has been frozen. And so there's a sense of political drift, I think, an idea that something needs to change. And so there will be worries about new protest waves, about new convergence of causes. And there will be a need, I think, to involve those intermediaries, those social partners in politics. But ultimately, I think what we need is a much clearer commitment to participatory social democracy. Now, some people might say Gabriel Attal is out there calling for dawn raids on protesters. That may well be one of the things that helps in terms of showing that this type of violence cannot be tolerated. But that idea, that reactionary instinct to play into the narrative of the far right will, I think, lead to more violence and police meeting more legitimate protests with really strong violence. And that really, I think, leads to this kind of breakdown of the situation. If you tear gas a big crowd in an organised march, then actually you play into the hands of those small, mobile, active groups who want to cause that violence. I think this is very much a case of looking for solidarity, social solidarity, Republican solidarity, taking account of responsibilities. That needs to happen at the top and actually needs to happen at the very base of society as well. It's something which France will solve together and it needs to do so very quickly. Thank you very much for that, Andrew Smith, Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts at Queen Mary University in London.