But campus facilities had barely expanded to accommodate this rapid growth. The lecture theatres were crammed to bursting and even the new universities built in the early 1960’s were already in a dreadful state. There was mass discontent with this as well as the petty restrictions imposed on the youth by the university authorities.

Nanterre in the western Paris suburbs was the centre of this disaffection. The campus was built to house 7,000 students. Yet during 1967-8 there were 12,000 students, while the university cafeteria could only accommodate 100 people!

This explosion in student numbers occurred at the same time as unemployment began to take off. The long boom of the 1950s and 1960s was coming to an end. There were 450,000 registered unemployed at the beginning of 1968. There was a sudden loss of confidence in the future and young people felt society to be closed and unresponsive to their needs.

Youth under 21 did not have the right to vote and there was stifling government control over the media – especially the TV and radio. This led to a dull, old-fashioned conformity at a time when in imperialist countries – notably Britain and the USA – there was an explosion of youth culture. France seemed embodied in its ageing president, Charles De Gaulle: anachronistic, authoritarian and austere.

De Gaulle’s prime minister Georges Pompidou had proposed an educational “reform” designed to get rid of “bad” students. A system of degrees by credits was to be replaced all at once by one based on years of study. This was partly the cause of the student rebellion. However, the most important factor responsible for the politicisation of this new layer of youth was the Vietnam war.

US imperialism’s murderous attempt to regain control over South-East Asia, and the courageous struggle led by the Vietnamese people, radicalised hundreds of thousands of youth all over the world. In the month of February 1968 alone, there was a major Paris demonstration every week.

Just as the student movement had clear and definite roots, so too the general strike of May-June did not come from nowhere either. From the spring of 1967 onwards, a series of strikes, occupations and violent confrontations with the police showed that the working class was becoming increasingly combative.

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