A WARM spring morning, and the atmosphere is more rock concert than revolution. Chicken kebabs are sizzling on pavement stalls. Giggling teenage girls in skinny jeans are dancing to a rap number on the back of a open-back truck. They and their high-school classmates have skipped school to go on a manif, or demo, in protest at the French Socialist government’s liberalising labor bill. “It is festive,” agrees Florian Mazet, a final-year lycée pupil, over the pounding beat from the truck’s amplifier: “We don’t want to be confrontational, but if we have to, we are ready for it.”
April 5th was the fourth of a series of one-day protests in which high-school pupils and university students joined unionists on the streets. This time some 34 lycées were shut, mostly due to blockades by pupils. The turnout was down on the previous week, but violence was up. After clashes with troublemakers in Paris, the police set off tear gas and detained 148 people. French students are campaigning not against harder exams or higher university fees, but against a draft law that would ease the negotiation of longer working hours and limit payouts for…
