In a historical referendum on May 29 the French masses voted in large numbers and rejected the EU constitutional treaty designed to carve in stone the neoliberal policies at the core of the EU project.
The 55 per cent rejection of the proposed constitution was also a clear rejection of the neo-liberal polices that president Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister Pierre Raffarin were implementing in France.
Chirac conceived the referendum as a petty political manoeuvre with two aims.
His first aim was that he intended to consolidate his position as top leader of France by winning a yes vote. He could then end his second term as President with a renewed “bonapartist” alliance with the nation. His second aim was to use the issue of the EU constitution to foster divisions in the Socialist Party (PS).
His aim to foster divisions in the PS worked. An internal PS referendum on whether to vote yes or no resulted in a narrow victory by the yes camp. The party remained spit during the campaign and both the yes and no wings of the party campaigned vigorously in the lead up to the vote.
Chirac did not taking into account the deep anger of French masses. Since 2002, when he was re-elected with a spectacular 80 % score against Jean-Marie Le Pen, Chirac has been implementing a right-wing, anti-working class and racist policy programme.
Since 2003, waves of class struggles have shaken the country. It has had a militant movement against pension reforms; a series of radical strikes by the “intermittents du spectacle” (precarious workers in theatres, TV etc); the struggle against the privatisation of state owned electricity company, EDF; a movement against Social Security reform etc.
In January 2004, after more than a decade of wage restraint, all the trade unions under the pressure from the rank and file organised massive demonstration to demand wage increases.
The introduction of the Euro had hidden a large increase in the cost of living, pushing millions of workers closer to the poverty line. Yet at the same time, French multinationals such as Total post record profits in the billions of euros.
After a successful demonstration in March, the trade unions leaders put the breaks on the struggle. They were afraid that a rising movement of struggle, combined with a campaign against the referendum, would lead to a deeper politicisation of the French working class.
There were clear signs of this deeper politicisation when Bernard Thibaut, the leader of the CGT union federation and a key figure in the 1995 railway strike, faced a serious internal fight within the union when he decided to push a soft line on the referendum.
When his soft line was defeated at the National Council of CGT, Thibaut clearly manoeuvred to put the breaks on any serious fight around wages by “interfering” with the campaign.
However the spring was not quiet for the class struggle. First the lycée students fought bravely for several months against a new reform. Then a series of sectional strikes erupted in the private sector (Carrefour, Total, etc) for wage increases and against factory closures. These struggles created a new militant climate against neo-liberalism in its various form.
But the real key to the success of the no vote was a rank and file campaign led by the communist party (PCF), the LCR and many trade unionists across France.
They were joined on the campaign trail rather late by the PS dissident Laurent Fabius. Ironically when Fabius was the prime minister in the first Mitterrand government in the 1980’s, he dumped the promises of PS to “change the life” of workers introduced an austerity drive.
In the face of out right hostility from the bourgeois press, this militant rank and file campaign was instrumental in creating a lively debate, pushing workers closer to politics and convincing them to vote no. The LCR has proposed to continue the work of the activist “collectifs” that shaped the campaign towards local and then regional conferences.
The vote of the extreme right wing Front National, of rural and backward peasants, of nationalist layers had some weight in the 55 per cent of the no vote. However, neither Le Pen nor nationalist reactionary De Villier were the leaders of this campaign. The main slogans were neither nationalist nor xenophobic nor racist. In many left-wing meetings, delegates from other EU countries were present and lively applauded. Anti-European slogans were nowhere to be heard. This was reflected in the polls, where the fear of unemployment, the general discontent and the demand to renegotiate the treaty were the dominant reasons for the no vote.
The no vote clearly showed a deep divide in France. In Paris, where the areas inhabited by bourgeoisie and upper middle class voted yes, while the no was strongest in the working class peripheral districts. In the industrial Nord region which has been severely hit by factory closures and relocations 81 per cent of industrial workers, 60 per cent of employees, and 79 per cent of unemployed voted no.
The new Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, will clearly lead a new series of attacks against the working class, against public services, immigrants and youths. The French and European ruling classes will not stop their neo-liberal offensive on Europe’s working class because of a defeat in a referendum.
It is important to transform the campaign “collectives” into organs that can continue the fight against the bosses and the governments of France and Europe. This will take more than the emergency plan put forward by LCR. While containing necessary measures like full wages for all workers, whether employed or not, or opening the borders, it does not show how the workers can organise themselves to win these demands.
The task of revolutionaries today is to win the workers to a revolutionary action program that links today’s struggle against neo-liberalism, to the fight for working class power and the fight to build a Socialist United States of Europe.