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1968 overview
A
tour of Europe's revolts
Spain, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Poland
and Germany - spinning through Europe's uprisings during that infamous year of
rebellion
By JANE MERY
Story from
CAFE BABEL
After
years of strong economic growth, a revolt is brewing in factories around the whole
of Europe. Labour's law, a rise in wages but also freedom of expression and sexual
liberation, the demands of 1968 have shook the Old continent. Memories, memories.
With Franco, only married women are established
Echoes of Prague
and Paris appear at the gates of Spanish universities. Students demonstrate against
the 'grey', the 'political and social' police. Departments are closed. The working
class demonstrate on a wide scale in the streets in order to demand, at last,
some social rights and public liberties.
5,000 miners from the north of
the country are beginning to strike, even though they simply do not have the right
to do so. Franco's regime appears out of obligation to open itself to modernity.
Result: women, strictly married ones, can become local councillors. 1968 is also
the year when the crown prince was born. In the terraces of the cafés, we hum
with a patriotic pride the tune to the song La, la, la by Massiel, who wins the
Eurovision song contest for Spain for the first time in 1968.
In the
name of democracy: springtime in Prague
Whilst students from other
countries rebel against materialism and a consumer society, citizens from Czechoslovakia
fight for their fundamental rights, from their freedom of expression to their
social rights.
Springtime in Prague is a democratic rise which attempts
to install 'socialism with a human face.' Whilst reforms are envisaged within
the monolithic structure of the communist economy, whilst socialists look into
human rights, the country is invaded by Soviet troops who take charge of putting
it back on the right path.
Still today, in the press, in public gardens,
on television, springtime in Prague is largely commemorated in the Czech Republic.
Citizens remember the immense hope raised by this period of political thaw. Vaclav
Havel, a communist opponent and man of the theatre, became the country's president,
is forever present and much respected within Czech public opinion.
A
messy place to be for France's De Gaulle
In France, two worlds, yet
so different, are joined together in huge demonstrations. On the one hand, the
students who besiege the streets and fight with the police by using slogans and
cobblestones. On the other hand, the workers: millions of them begin to strike.
A strike which becomes general and paralyses the country: 'In 1966, the wages
of French workers were the lowest in the EEC, the longest weeks and the highest
taxes,' remember workers from the League for an International Communist Revolution.
Society also changes: speech is now free. Generations of people debate in
the street, in cafés, in companies. The strictness of the period's morals flies
into pieces. Finally, Charles de Gaulle is faced with the uprisings which he regards
as 'messy', dissolves the National Assembly and organises the anticipated elections.
He leaves power the following year after a referendum in the form of a fist fight.
God is dead in Italy
The song by the group Nomadi which gains
huge success in 1967 gives the gift for the start of the new Italian academic
year. God is dead and society is tired out. Like in France, the students are the
first to trigger off the movement against archaic and withdrawn institutions.
Unpublished: the students become politicised in a radical way. Their criticisms
have an effect on the capitalist system, but also on left-wing political parties
accused of renouncement. The wind of debate does not delay in reaching the big
industries of northern Italy. The country is also experiencing general strikes,
with decisively the involvement of workers from the car company Fiat, the biggest
in the country. Later, the opposition toughens. Italy returns to a decade known
as 'the dark years' marked by violence from small left-wing and neo-fascist groups.
Poland
against anti-Semitism
Dziady (1824), a play by Adam Mickiewiczwhich
sets the events of March 1968 in motion in Poland. Too anti-Russian and anti-communist,
the show is banned and students demonstrate. Marches follow one another in numerous
Polish cities. Artists, students and intellectuals rally together for their freedom
of speech. And the eyes of the demonstrators turn towards its neighbour, Czechoslovakia,
and its democratic hopes. The war in Israel divides the communist party. The Soviet
Union supports the Arab states and Jewish members of the party are progressively
hunted down and thrown out of the country. Some emigrate to the United States;
others to France.
Easter riots in Germany
From 1968, in Germany,
we remember Joschka Fischer's trainers, former minister of Foreign Affairs and
participant in the event of May 1968 from the very beginning and in the general
meeting for students. One year from the liberation of morals and duty of memory
for young people faced with the stifling silence of their parents.
Young
people are showing solidarity in Paris and rally together against the Vietnam
War with the slogan Ho ho ho Chi Minh. The murder of the student Benno Ohnesorg
in 1967, whilst he demonstrates against the visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin,
further adds to political dissatisfaction. And a new opposition party, ultra parliamentary,
led by members of the SDS, the German Socialist Union of Students, takes shape.
The press becomes heated until the attack which greatly angers the leader of the
students, Rudi Dutschke, in 1968.
The 'Easter riots' further add to the
European cacophony. However more quickly than elsewhere, in Germany, calm is restored
in the country. A big part of the movement turns towards the socialist party (SPD).
Some activists turn their allegiance to the armed terrorism of the extreme left
in organisations like the 'Fraction armée rouge' or the 'Rote Zora'.
Thanks
to Katharina Kloss, Fernando Navarro Sordo, Vitek Nedjelo and Natalia Sosin
(Published: 15.11.2008.)
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