The tear gas has cleared from the streets of Saint-Denis, but the damage left behind by violent protests will take much longer to remove. Huge rubbish bins were set alight and pushed towards police lines, while the remains of fireworks used as missiles still littered the roads.
After hate-fuelled violence erupted at schools in the deprived Paris suburb and in cities across France, a fragile calm returned yesterday—at least temporarily.
That lull came at a significant cost. More than 400 schools were closed, forcing pupils to switch to remote learning in a move reminiscent of the Covid pandemic. Ministers, caught off guard by the scale of the unrest, were left making a desperate attempt to contain the demonstrations.
The violence has shocked even France, where revolution and the right to protest are deeply embedded in national culture. What makes the unrest especially disturbing is that many of those involved are children, some reportedly as young as 14.
In Marseille, a head teacher was doused with petrol while trying to stop arsonists from setting his school alight. In Lille, northern France, a headmaster was struck in the ear by a firework, while another school employee was hit in the leg.
On Thursday alone, 305 gendarmes were injured. Among them was a young female officer who fell while fleeing a masked mob and was attacked as she lay on the ground.
Schools were set ablaze and fire engines vandalised to prevent crews from reaching the fires. Television footage showed a firefighter engulfed in flames after an aerosol can exploded outside a school in Bordeaux.
One French news outlet reported that police were targeted with fireworks, other projectiles and hydrochloric acid. Videos shared online appeared to show a youth using a lighter and an aerosol can as a makeshift flamethrower against a woman. Intelligence officers also said electric scooters were being used to transport fireworks between schools and help suspects evade police.
Demonstrators set rubbish bins alight as protesting students blockade a street near Place de la Nation in Paris
French police officers operate in the foreground as demonstrators stand amid tear gas during student protests near Kerichen High School in Brest, western France, on October 2
Clashes broke out across France between high school students and police as an escalating protest movement demanded better conditions in education
Images of running battles between riot police and students have intensified the anger gripping France.
Many people are enraged by what they see as senseless violence and by the authorities’ apparent inability to regain control.
Much of that anger has been aimed at Emmanuel Macron, France’s lame-duck president, whose final months at the Élysée Palace have been overshadowed by disputes over budget reductions and austerity.
There has also been widespread condemnation of the force used against some adolescents. A video circulating online appeared to show a frightened teenage girl being partly dragged in a chokehold by a heavily built police officer.
Another video appeared to show a baton round being fired at almost point-blank range towards a masked youth. Claims have since emerged that the boy suffered a broken jaw and shattered teeth. At least three internal police investigations are under way, while prosecutors maintain that the youth had assaulted a policewoman first.
Protesters have also said that a secondary school pupil lost an eye after being struck by a projectile.
Yet the allegations of excessive force must be weighed against the brutality faced by police officers and others. Nearly 2,000 people were arrested on Thursday as students blockaded school buildings during more than 900 separate protests.
Near Orléans, south of Paris, a teacher was punched by a teenager who did not attend his school. In Rennes, Brittany, staff at two lycées found their cars vandalised. In total, 284 people were injured, including a young demonstrator who apparently lost the use of part of his hand after mishandling a firework.
The unrest has spread beyond school grounds into town and city centres. Marseille suspended its entire public transport network after drivers were attacked and buses set on fire, while Strasbourg and Grenoble introduced similar measures.
In the Paris region, troubles have erupted even in usually quiet suburbs such as Vanves, where youths in hoods and masks gathered on a roundabout to throw firecrackers at police vehicles.
French citizens horrified by this spreading uprising have taken to social media claiming the country is losing its unifying culture. Others say the fact that many protests erupted in poor quarters, traditionally where immigrants are housed, prove that France is paying the price for open borders.
Damage to schools over the past days is estimated at £850,000.
There are calls for robust action. Eric Ciotti, the right-wing mayor of Nice has called for the benefits of parents of violent school protesters to be withdrawn.
Students pose before burning trash as highschool students demonstrate countrywide over what they denounce as poor learning conditions, near the Lycee Deodat high school in Toulouse, south-western France
A student kicks a burning bin as students for a blockade at the Louis Pasteur middle school, in Strasbourg
A masked student is seen as flames rise from burning barricades in Nancy, France
A demonstrator jumps over a fire during student protests in Saint-Pierre, on the French overseas island of La Reunion
What is clear is that what began as teenage complaints over what they resent about school has been escalated by far-left activists.
The finger of blame is being pointed at the populist leftist party, France Unbowed, which the government has accused of whipping up disorder, describing it as an ‘organised manoeuvre’.
Its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is expected to face right-wing firebrand Marine Le Pen in a runoff for next year’s presidential election, denied this, saying protests were ‘self-organised’.
To win next April the hard left will need the support of the young and many of those involved in this week’s clashes will be eligible to vote for the first time.
Inconveniently, the mayor of St Denis, Bally Bagayoko, a member of a coalition of the Communist and France Unbowed parties, joined one of the school blockades and described the protest as ‘completely legitimate’. He was carried shoulder high by pupils singing La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
Back-to-school protests are an annual French ritual, often involving union-led strikes over pay, staffing and class sizes. But what began as frankly petty complaints about restrictions on mobile phone use, long queues for canteens, and inadequate supplies such as toilet paper, dramatically changed.
The first blockade was at the Lycee Saint-Exupery in Creteil, southeast Paris, where pupils complained there were not enough staff or support for children with special needs.
It spread rapidly through poorer Paris suburbs amid anger over more genuine demands such as absent teachers, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classes, as well as claims of not enough desks and chairs.
Students at the Paul-Eluard school in St Denis complained of classrooms being too hot or too cold and of rats and cockroaches.
At a school not far away in St Ouen a 16-year-old said: ‘At first it was peaceful, but it went too far when about 15 young people who had come from another town took the opportunity to run riot.’
Copycat protests erupted, driven by slick AI-generated posters on TikTok and Snapchat which suggested a degree of planning to the unrest.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu urged government ministers to cancel all trips away from Paris, officially to avoid additional strain on police resources. Some suggested he was afraid that they would become targets too.
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A French firefighter extinguishes a fire on the street
French Gendarmes run towards a high school student that pointed a firework launcher at them as protesting students demonstrate in the streets of Bordeaux, south-western France
Protesting students throw items on to burning bins in Lille, northern France
Lecornu also chaired a crisis meeting, after which his office said the school riots had ‘tipped into urban violence’ – a statement of the obvious given the tumult.
Students gathering outside the Suger Lycee in St Denis yesterday held banners reading: ‘8am until 6pm is like prison’.
As they faced off with around 50 armed riot police brandishing shields, a protester called Gilles, 17, told the Daily Mail: ‘Classrooms are dirty, teachers are not always present, and yet we are expected to sit around all day.
‘The conditions are terrible, and yet the government just takes money away, rather than doing something about the deep problems.’
Lycee, or high school students, in France – aged between 15 and 18 – are preparing for the crucial baccalaureat, the equivalent of A-levels, which is a primary requirement for university entry.
Le Bac’ – as it is universally known – is a tough exam, in multiple subject areas and accordingly many individual timetables do indeed stretch from 8am to 6pm – far longer than British state schools, where teaching is roughly from 9am until 3.45pm.
The protests are not confined to the impoverished suburbs (the infamous banlieues). At the exclusive Lycee Henri IV, on the tourist-filled Left Bank of Paris, where past students include the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Macron himself, the front entrance was blockaded by about 50 mainly female students.
An 18-year-old, who asked to be referred to as Mathilde, said: ‘We support all our oppressed brothers and sisters across France, and won’t stop until there is justice for all of them.’
It was this kind of blockade that sparked the infamous Paris riots of 1968, a brutally crushed insurrection that wanted to overthrow the government of General Charles de Gaulle.
The parallels are significant. For the schools unrest comes at a perilous time for Mr Macron. France’s public debt has soared to over £3trillion and swingeing cuts to public services have been ordered.
Meanwhile organisers are calling for a ‘national mobilisation’ next week. And later this month the anti-government gilets jaunes, or yellow vest, protesters who paralysed France in 2018 are holding a rally against Macron’s cuts.
Protesting students may be the spark to a far greater and more dangerous conflagration.
Additional reporting by Peter Allen and Rory Mulholland in Paris.