Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [17]
The Fourth Republic came to an end in 1958, when extreme right-wingers, furious at what they saw as defeatism rather than tough action in dealing with the uprising in Algeria, began conspiring to overthrow the government. De Gaulle was brought back to power to prevent a military coup and even possible civil war. He soon drafted a new constitution that gave considerable powers to the president at the expense of the National Assembly.
Return to beginning of chapter
CHARLES DE GAULLE & THE FIFTH REPUBLIC
The Fifth Republic was rocked in 1961 by an attempted coup staged in Algiers by a group of right-wing military officers. When it failed, the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS) – a group of French colons (colonists) and sympathisers opposed to Algerian independence – turned to terrorism, trying several times to assassinate de Gaulle and nearly succeeding in August 1962 in the Parisian suburb of Petit Clamart. The book and film The Day of the Jackal portrayed a fictional OAS attempt on de Gaulle’s life.
In 1962, after more than 12,000 had died as a result of this ‘civil war’, de Gaulle negotiated an end to the war in Algeria. Some 750,000 pied-noir (black feet), as Algerian-born French people are known in France, flooded into France and the capital. Meanwhile, almost all of the other French colonies and protectorates in Africa had demanded and achieved independence. Shrewdly, the French government began a programme of economic and military aid to its former colonies to bolster France’s waning importance internationally and to create a bloc of French-speaking nations – la francophonie – in the developing world.
Paris retained its position as a creative and intellectual centre, particularly in philosophy and film-making, and the 1960s saw large parts of the Marais beautifully restored. But the loss of the colonies, the surge in immigration, economic difficulties and an increase in unemployment weakened de Gaulle’s government.
In March 1968 a large demonstration in Paris against the war in Vietnam was led by student Daniel ‘Danny the Red’ Cohn-Bendit, who is today copresident of the Green/Free European Alliance Group in the European Parliament. This gave impetus to the student movement, and protests were staged throughout the spring. A seemingly insignificant incident in May 1968, in which police broke up yet another in a long series of demonstrations by students of the University of Paris, sparked a violent reaction on the streets of the capital; students occupied the Sorbonne and barricades were erected in the Latin Quarter. Workers joined in the protests and six million people across France participated in a general strike that virtually paralysed the country and the city. It was a period of much creativity and new ideas with slogans appearing everywhere, such as ‘L’Imagination au Pouvoir’ (Put Imagination in Power) and ‘Sous les Pavés, la Plage’ (Under the Cobblestones, the Beach), a reference to Parisians’ favoured material for building barricades and what they could expect to find beneath them.
The alliance between workers and students couldn’t last long. While the former wanted to reap greater benefits from the consumer market, the latter wanted (or at least said they wanted) to destroy it – and were called ‘fascist provocateurs’ and ‘mindless anarchists’ by the French Communist leadership. De Gaulle took advantage of this division and appealed to people’s fear of anarchy. Just as Paris and the rest of France seemed on the brink of revolution, 100,000 Gaullists demonstrated on the av des Champs-Élysées in support of the government and stability was restored.
Return to beginning of chapter
POMPIDOU TO CHIRAC
There is no underestimating