18
PETER BROOKS
shouted "Don't sign!" and voted to continue the strike. The young and
discontented element at the "base," especially the group that has come of
age with French prosperity of the fifties and sixties, clearly wanted more,
a far more radical reapportionment of riches, and the CGT was again
in danger of being outflanked to the left. A new revolutionary dynamic
was indeed triggered by the rejection of the Protocol. Already on the
evening of Monday, May 27, a new demonstration, disavowed by the
CGT and the Communist Party but supported by the smaller, more
flexible Christian Socialist CFDT, which throughout the crisis played
to distinguish itself from the CGT and gain support among the young
workers, and the
PaTti Socialiste Unifie
(which alone among parlia–
mentary parties had begun to talk revolution) gathered several thousand
students and young workers for a march to the university stadium at
CharU:ty, under the patronage of Pierre Mendes-France and Andre Bar–
jonet, a former CGT militant who had just resigned in disgust at the
union's reactionary policies. At Charlety, the stadium echoed to cries
calling for the resignation, not only of De Gaulle, but also of Georges
Seguy, chief of the CGT; and Barjonet announced, to fervent applause,
"Today, revolution is possible." A new slogan came to the fore, the
watchword of
Gouvernement PopulaiTe.
Faced with the "Spirit of Char–
lety," as France settled into total paralysis with close to ten million work–
ers on strike and the government appeared less and less capable of any
gesture whatever, Communist Party and CGT once again moved to the
left: the bright yellow Party posters plastered up every night now took
up the call for a Government of the People. By Wednesday, May
29,
chaos seemed to have come, as De Gaulle disappeared from the Elysee by
helicopter and was lost for six hours, and the CGT unleashed a giant
demonstration proclaiming "Government of the people" and "The fac–
tories to the workers," and Mendes-France met with
Fran~ois
Mitterand
to lay plans for a provisional government grouping all the forces of the
Left.
What happened the next day confirms that a revolution is a manic–
depressive phenomenon. No sooner had De Gaulle returned and cas–
tigated the opposition, the unions, the students, than the CGT took its
forces back in hand and returned to wage and hour demands, while the
Communist Party began preparing the elections. After four weeks of
bungling, the government showed a certain genius for producing a Ther–
rnidor: CRS were sent to evacuate strike pickets from the oil refineries,
gas stations were quickly resupplied, Parisians lined up to fill their
tanks, then set out in hundreds of thousands for a three-day Pentecost
weekend, creating epic traffic jams on the highways and leaving the
students virtually alone in Paris to demonstrate once again, on Saturday,
