Gilet-Jaunes team up with anarchists for Paris May Day protests

President Macron had warned of an “extremely firm” response by the police in Paris to any attempt by Ultras of the newly re-named “Black Bloc” movement to turn the traditional May Day demonstrations by the French Left into an occasion for violence.

He wasn’t kidding. The “Black Bloc” that made a difference yesterday was less the anarchists, in their balaclavas and crash helmets, than the police, and CRS in full metal-jacket. They had been given strict orders to allow no repeat of the disorder that each weekend during the four preceding months had turned central Paris into a battleground, humiliating the President and presenting an image of France in a state of incipient revolution. And true to their tradition, they waded in without fear or favour.

Not that the Ultras went quietly. Fires were lit, windows smashed and cars burned. While the majority of demonstrators, made up of city-based trade unionists and largely rural Gilets-Jaunes, confined their part in the proceedings to raised fists and insults, the casseurs and fellow-travellers chose their moments, moving in to hurl rocks and attack any shops and vehicles unlucky enough to lie in their path.

The police responded with baton charges and tear gas, ripping into the front lines of protesters to crack heads and snatch obvious ring-leaders.

What was notable amid the confusion and disarray was the seemingly structural coalition of Jaunes et Noirs, with the Red of the syndicalists as the third band in a new, alternative tricoleur. The Black Blocs, made up of hard-left anarchists with backing from the populist Right, looked to be integral to events as they unfolded. Previously shunned, they got themselves ready alongside ordinary demonstrators, apparently accepted as part of the package.

According to the ministry of the interior, some 16,000 demonstrators took part in yesterday’s protest in the capital, including at least 2,000 Ultras, but French media put the true figure at more like 40,000. An astonishing 12,500 barriers had been put in place to ensure that demonstrators kept to the designated route and avoided, in particular, the Champs-Élysée – the scene of much previous mayhem – and the Presidential Palace. By late afternoon, the number of arrests made had climbed into the high hundreds, with the worst offenders thrown into holding cells.

Outside the capital, meanwhile, Gilets-Jaunes and trade unionists were out in force, most obviously in the major cities, notably Toulouse, Strasbourg and Nantes. How many, it is hard to say. The ministry estimated 151,000 – a curiously precise figure – but it could have been twice that number.

The danger was that as darkness approached, the hard men of the protest movement would engage in further hit and run attacks. By then, the police would be tired and it would be more difficult to indentify those responsible for the violence.

One cheering moment came when the crowd in the Boulevard Montparnasse parted mid-afternoon to allow the fire service in to deal with a fire, cheering the pompiers as the heroes of Notre Dame. Another lighter moment, captured amid a fusillade of tear gas, was the appearance amid the haze  of an enormous bearded man wearing a sash and a pink kilt, hurling defiance at the police.

For Emmanuel Macron, it was not a good day. On the available evidence, a large part of the French people are not yet ready to acknowledge that his reform programme, involving a mix of short-term bribery and longer-term spending cuts, is the best way forward.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the renamed Rassemblement National – formerly the Front National (keep up!) – was quick to lay all blame for the disorder at the feet of the President, as were the Marxist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Philippe Martinez, head of France’s largest union, the CGT. When the Far Right and  Far Right are united in blaming the centre, one thing is certain: the squeeze is on.

But it could have been worse. There were, at least at the time of writing, no deaths and only a handful of serious injuries. The President will live to fight another day. His problem is that this appears to be the settled pattern of events, in which both sides battle it out and the principle loser – Macron aside – is the good name of France.