Today in Labor History May 10, 1968: Night of the Barricades began, with thousands of high school and university students occupying Paris’ Latin Quarter and barricading the streets with overturned cars, rocks and materials stolen from construction sites. They even stole and utilized bulldozers from some of the sites. When police attacked them with tear gas and truncheons, they fought back with rocks, singing the Marseillaise and the Internationale. Local residents brought the students food and water, and dumped water from apartment windows to help disperse the tear gas.

Protests had begun in late March, at Nanterre University. But after police intervened, and shut down the University on May 2, protests moved to the Sorbonne, in central Paris, where the cops brutally attacked students, with mass arrests. As the confrontations escalated, students erected barricades, with intense street battles between protesters and police on May 10. The brutal police response inspired widespread public support. And the protests continued, escalating into a General Strike in which 10 million workers stayed home, nationwide, with many taking over and occupying their factories and workplaces. Radical leftist groups called for revolution. These events weakened the authority of Charles de Gaulle, who fled to a French military base in West Germany on May 29. The next day, he dissolved the National Assembly and called for new elections. And the following year, he resigned. In the wake of the protests, the state increased investment in education and social policies, while workers won major concessions, including raises, improved working conditions, and expanded social protections. And other social movements grew, as well, particularly feminism, environmentalism, and LGBTQ activism.

The Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” was inspired by the May protests in France, as were Caetano Veloso’s "É Proibido Proibir," and Joan Miró's painting “May 1968.” For a really great film about the labor movement in the wake of the ’68 protests, see Jean Luc-Goddard’s “Tout Va Bien,” which portrays a wildcat worker takeover at a sausage factory, as witnessed by Jane Fonda, playing a U.S. reporter, and her husband, Yves Montand, playing a has-been film director.

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