French government holds crisis talks after school protests

Janet Jaleel (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 7th of October, these are our main stories. After a quarter of a million French people take part in the biggest day of school protests yet, the government holds crisis talks and condemns those who've clashed with the police. The American death row inmate Christa Pike regains consciousness after a botched attempt to execute her. Lionel Messi retires from international football, scoring a penalty on his final appearance for Argentina.

Also in this podcast, scientists are sending whiskey into space. We ask why.

Gilles Bouillet (0:42)

We are thinking that it might be able to age your whiskey faster.

Janet Jaleel (0:50)

France's beleaguered government already struggling with a sluggish economy, political deadlock and ballooning debt is trying to work out how to contain the country's biggest student protests in decades. What started as a demonstration in a rundown school in one of Paris' poorest suburbs last month has snowballed into a nationwide protest that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets on Tuesday. The past couple of weeks have seen daily clashes with police firing tear gas and water cannon to try to disperse violent groups on the fringes of the protests. Hundreds of people have been injured and thousands arrested since the crisis erupted. And hundreds of schools have been blockaded or forced to close. The government has ordered classes to be suspended until the end of the week.

President Macron chaired a crisis meeting on Tuesday night with ministers, including the Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who had earlier condemned the violence.

Sébastien Lecornu (1:52)

Ultraviolence has come knocking at the door of these high schools. And this ultraviolence must be condemned unconditionally.

In a functioning democracy, we cannot leave any space for violence to be tolerated.

Janet Jaleel (2:06)

With more on these latest protests, here's our correspondent in France, Nick Beek.

Nick Beek (2:11)

Another eruption of violence in France. Police on the charge in Paris.

Peaceful protest over the state of schools descending to this.

Across the country, other clashes in what is a third week of action, triggered by crumbling buildings and a shortage of teachers. Once again, officers accused of being heavy handed. The morning was calmer, relatively. Pupils in the northern city of Lille telling us they deserve better. Why are people so angry and why are people protesting day after day? What's the problem?

SPEAKER_5 (2:48)

We have a lack of teachers, we have a lack of money in establishments. We have like no means, there's no, sometimes there's no heat in winter.

SPEAKER_6 (2:58)

I'm angry and I'm really scared because we saw a student getting his hand cut off because of a bomb. And we shouldn't be scared to be protesting. We should be protesting and not be scared.

Nick Beek (3:13)

Trade unions joined protests, which have been powered by teenagers, but they appear to have support among a fractious and fractured France. It's striking just how young some of the children here on the march are. They've been joined in some cases by their parents and teachers. And the chants are talking about young people suffering here in France, working people too, as well as the elderly. There is a wider discontent. One concern for teachers, such as Marine, is class sizes.

She explains how 35 pupils in a room has become the norm, that it's impossible to give everyone the attention they deserve. But such arguments risk being overshadowed if the protests continue and grow even bigger. Do you think the government will listen to you? Will anything change?

Marine (4:01)

I feel like the violence for this mobilisation was so intense that it has to make people react and it has to make the government react. And we won't stop until the government changes things for us.

Nick Beek (4:16)

The number of injured, pupils, teachers and police now exceeds a thousand. And France's young say they'll keep coming back to the streets until their government listens.

Janet Jaleel (4:27)

Nick Beek, well, the government has accused the far-left France unbowed party of stoking the violence with just months to go until the presidential election next year, a charge it denies. And President Trump has weighed in blaming mass migration and Islam, a claim dismissed by French commentators.

Marseille in the south is a city that has been shaped by centuries of immigration. Mark Lowen reports on the protests there.

Mark Lowen (4:53)

We've been in Marseille all day and it's been frankly a bit of a game of cat and mouse as thousands of protesters have constantly been moving around this city. We have followed them up different streets trying to kind of catch them and then the police will come in and disperse them. We saw the police firing tear gas earlier as some protesters tried to take bollards and bins to try to erect barricades. I could feel the tear gas in my eyes and mouth. The CRS, as they are known here, the riot police in France, they are at the ready, but you can see they are fairly relaxed. It doesn't look as though there is a confrontation that is imminent, but they are there because the violence of these protests has been pretty extreme over the last two and a half weeks. There have been schools ransacked and burned. There have been dozens of teachers who have been injured. There have been a lot of students who have been injured. This is the biggest wave of student protests that France has seen in many years and it is coming at a delicate, volatile moment for this country.