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YELLOW VESTS

France’s ‘yellow vest’ protest enters third day as fuel depots are blocked

The "yellow vest" fuel tax protests around France continued into a third day on Monday with road blocks set up at petrol refineries and at strategic points on roads and motorways across the country. Read on for all the latest.

Published: 19 November 2018 17:17 CET
France's 'yellow vest' protest enters third day as fuel depots are blocked
Photo: AFP

LATEST on Monday

CLICK HERE for the latest on the road blocks on Wednesday

  • 'Yellow vest' protests enter their third day with around 358 operations 
  • Calls to 'block Paris' on Saturday
  • Road blocks marred by racist and homophobic violence
  • Fuel depots and refineries are blocked
  • Exit and entry points to motorways also blocked
  • British motorist and Australian truck driver arrested near Calais after driving through protesters
  • Young protesters in serious condition after being hit by lorry
  • French PM vows not to cave in to protests

Road blocks were put up across France for a third day on Monday despite the “yellow vest” movement being on a much smaller scale than was seen on Saturday.

In total, 150 protests were ongoing on morning Monday, with Benjamin Cauchy, the organizer of the movement in Toulouse, explaining their new strategy in an interview with radio station RMC. 
 
“We now want to block refineries and industrial deposits to have an economic impact. […] Edouard Philippe heard us with one ear but did not listen to us,” he said. 
 
Early Monday, dozens of barricades were still being manned on motorways and roundabouts, far fewer than the more than 2,000 sites on Saturday.
 
Around 200 trucks were backed up along a road leading to a fuel depot in the western city of Rennes, where some protesters had camped out overnight, an AFP reporter said.
 
Others continued to camp out in supermarket parking lots.
 
The fact the protesters are willing to continue their action into a third day will concern the French government, whose Prime Minister Edouard Philippe vowed on Sunday to stick to their plan to raise fuel taxes in January.

“The movement is not exceptional… and obviously isn't as big as on Saturday,” Laurent Nunez, junior interior minister, told CNews, adding that police would continue to intervene to ensure major roads are not blocked.

READ ALSO:

(Photo: AFP)

On Monday protesters, whose anger over rising fuel prices has been directed at President Emmanuel Macron, blocked several fuel depots around the country including one in Pallice near La Rochelle, Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille and Lespinasse near Toulouse.

At another fuel depot block in Vern-sur-Seiche near Rennes, dozens of “yellow vests” caused a traffic jam of 200 trucks (see tweet below).

There were also spontaneous road blocks and go-slows set up a roundabouts and motorway exit points across the country.

 

There was also a call on Monday by a member of the rightwing Debout La France (Stand Up France) party for protesters to descend on Paris on Saturday and “block” the city which has been viewed over 165,000 times on Facebook.

Another Facebook page calling for a mass rally on Saturday in Paris “because there is where the government is!!!” had also garnered widespread interest.Late on Sunday night a young protester was left in a serious condition after being hit by a lorry at a road block in Saint-Dizier in the Haute-Marne department.

Meanwhile there was another serious incident Sunday night in the town of Livron in the Drôme department in southeastern France when a drunk driver fired gun shots in the air. He was evacuated by the gendarmes and his vehicle was burned by the 'yellow vests' (see below).

The latest reports at around 8am on Monday suggested the A7 was blocked in both directions near Avignon, blockades were also in place on the A51 near Sisteron.

Access to Nimes in the south east was “complicated” and there were at least three road blocks set up around Bordeaux.

In Bordeaux the Pont d'Aquitaine had been closed to traffic however the police moved in at around 12.30pm to clear the area in the direction of Paris and a road block was in place on Pont François-Mitterand.

There were also operations in place near Nantes, Rennes, Calais, Caen and Mans. The situation may change rapidly with the government insisting police will be sent in to move the protesters on and open up the roads to traffic.

This map below shows the locations of the latest blockades on Monday according to the site blocage17november.com. Use the zoom function to see if there are any roadblocks in your area.

This map below from Vinci autoroutes also shows the problems on part of France's motorway network on Monday morning. You can CLICK HERE for an interactive version.

Autoroute INFO which advises drivers on France's motorways warned on Monday morning that there were still protesters at tolls and motorway entrance points across the country. 

It advised drivers to remain calm and not to turn around and drive in the opposite direction of traffic in order to avoid a blockade.

More than 400 people were hurt on Saturday, 14 seriously, in a day and night of “yellow vest” protests over rising fuel price hikes around France that claimed one life, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Sunday.

The injury toll followed what Castaner described as a “restive” night in 87 locations around the country where protesters had blocked roads to express their anger at a series of hikes in petrol tax.

The injured, 409 in total, included 28 police, paramilitary police or firefighters.

On Sunday night French police arrested a British motorists and an Australian truck driver near Calais after they knocked protesters over driving through a blockade near Calais.

Castaner told RTL radio that 288,000 people had taken part in Saturday's protests at 2,034 locations countrywide. About 3,500 stayed out overnight, he added.

Some 46 people continued to protest on Sunday at around 150 points across France.

The grassroots movement emerged on social media last month over a surge in fuel prices this year, in particular for diesel, which many blame on taxes implemented in recent years as part of France's anti-pollution fight.

It quickly snowballed into a broader protest over stagnant spending power under President Emmanuel Macron.

“I earn 500 euros ($570) a month — how do you expect me to live on that? 

With what I earn I can only allow myself one meal a day,” said Jean-Luc, a 57-year-old protesting in Calais.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Sunday night that the government had heard the anger, but that it would maintain the fuel taxes, which are set to increase again in January.

Last week the government unveiled a 500 million euro package of measures to help low-income households, including energy subsidies and higher scrappage bonuses for the purchase of cleaner vehicles.

 

 

 

Member comments

  1. Intimidating road users going about their legitimate business is not the way to make a point and I hope they all get arrested.
    If I went and blocked their driveway, Plod would be there in an instant.

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STRIKES

Is France’s ‘yellow vest’ movement really on its way back?

Nearly two years since 'yellow-vest' protesters flooded the streets, the signature gilets jaunes have become a rare sight in France. With a comeback announced on September 12th, what is left of the movement that shook France?

Published: 3 September 2020 11:53 CEST
Updated: 12 September 2020 08:58 CEST
Is France's 'yellow vest' movement really on its way back?
Yellow vest protests in Paris in 2019. Photo: AFP

When Priscillia Ludosky put on a yellow vest for the first time and headed out to the Champs Elysées to protest, she had no idea that nearly 300,000 people would do the same.

It was November 17th, 2018, the first 'yellow vest' protest in the capital and the birth of a mass-movement so large that its vows to overthrow French President Emmanuel Macron’s government seemed, for a moment, credible. 

Nearly two years later, Macron is still president – and aiming for reelection – while the ‘yellow vest’ movement has all but disappeared from the public eye.

“It’s been a long time since I wore the yellow vest,” Priscillia Ludosky, founder and leading figure of the movement, told The Local.

She had not left the movement, but said she was less active than she had been.

“I'm less on-the-ground than I used to. The pandemic put the brakes on most things,” she said.

Despite France's rising coronavirus rates, the 'yellow vests' have declared a comeback protest on September 12th, promising to “never give up”.

 

But with the protests before lockdown gathering only a fraction of the numbers they once rallied, how much is there really left of the 'yellow vests'?

“The movement is much smaller, much less active, and much more divided than it was at the outset,” historian Sylvain Boulouque told The Local.

Boulouque has followed the movement from the beginning and has written the book Mensonges en gilet jaune (Lies in yellow vests), about the role social media and fake news played in fuelling the 'yellow vests' anger.

When the ‘yellow vests’ first spiralled into a national mass-movement, their rallying cry “Macron demission !” (Macron resign) was the one ringing the loudest, and it was also one of the few demands that all of the ‘yellow vests’ could unite behind.

“The movement spans all the way from the extreme-left to the extreme-right. There is no unity on the fundamental political questions,” Boulouque said.

The more time passed, the more the movement's internal divisions became clear. Today, Boulouque said, there was “a little bit of everything” left, and just keeping track of the movement had become a challenge.

“It’s so local that the demographic changes from town to town and week to week,” he said.

Among the extreme right-wing were a number of conspiracy theory believers, he said, including anti-mask activists who opposed the French government's new rules on masks.

Pro- and anti-masks was just the newest fault line dividing the 'yellow vests', Boulouque said.

“The pandemic will split them rather than reunite them,” he said.

‘Covid proved our points’

Seizing on the pandemic to re-mobilise the masses is what the still-active 'yellow vests' hope to do on September 12th.

Leading 'yellow vest' figure Jérôme Rodrigues. Photo: AFP

Jérôme Rodrigues, another ‘yellow vest’ leading figure, told Slate that the pandemic was their “best ally”.

“Covid proved our points about the degrading of the health system and the limits of the capitalist system,” Rodrigues said.

When the French government imposed a nationwide, strict lockdown in March, it was to save the hospitals in hard-hit areas such as Paris from the mounting pressure of a rapidly increasing patient flow. 

The lockdown, which lasted over two months, had a crippling impact on the economy and saw the government spend billions on emergency help schemes to prevent chain bankruptcies and mass layoffs. 

Despite the government's efforts to kickstart the economy, France’s unemployment rate is set to increase by 10 percent by the end of the year. Young people will be the worst affected, according to France’s national institute for statistics, Insee. Rodrigues predicted that the looming downturn would reaffirm people's faith in the 'yellow vest' movement.

“With the coming crisis, people who were doing well financially and who have never had a hard time are going to fall flat on their faces,” Rodrigues said.

'Yellow vest' leading figure Priscillia Ludosky has been participating in protests against police violence and in support of France's hospital sector the past months. Photo: AFP

'Sensationalist media'

Rodrigues became a symbol of the ‘yellow vests’ after he was hit in the eye by what he claimed to be an LBD rubber bullet fired by police (the police refute his accusation, but the authority overseeing the police has launched an investigation into the matter). 

Blinded in one eye, Rodrigues incorporated one of the most jarring features of the protests: their increasingly violent character. The recurring scenes of violence that dominated the protests contributed to the ‘yellow vests’ hogging headlines for months – not just in France, but across the world. 

Images of burning cars, police armed with rubber-bullet guns, violent fist-fights and black-clad protesters smashing ATMs with baseball bats shocked the world. 

But the violence also dominated the media coverage of the protests, which meant what the protesters were saying got less attention.

READ ALSO How the 'yellow vests' made France have a national conversation about police violence

To Ludosky, this was a big problem.

“The media won’t cover anything unless it’s sensationalist,” she said. 

Ludosky authored the online petition that became the catalyst for the ‘yellow vest’ protests. In it, she wrote that the government’s proposed carbon tax was both falsely branded a green policy and was harmful to the many people who depended on their cars to get around every day.

The document went viral and gathered more than one million signatures, and the fluorescent yellow vest that all vehicles in France must be equipped with became the symbol of the masses revolting against the elites.

Ludosky said her main point was lost in the coverage. She was not an angry car-enthusiast defending her right to drive, she was saying that the tax was unfair and would impact the most on the poorest.

“The longer we protested, the more they tried to tell everyone that we don't know what we want. That we were only out there to break things,” she said.

The early days of the movement saw hundreds of 'roundabout protests' in the French provinces. Photo: AFP

'They are there'

The violence also discouraged many of the 'yellow vests' who had little experience with protesting and were shocked by the use of force on both sides.

Danielle Tartakowsky, a professor at the Paris 8 University who specialises in social movements in contemporary France, said it was important to distinguish between the ‘yellow vest’ who still turned up to protests in Paris – often young, keen and ready to go head to head with police – and the ‘yellow vests’ mobilising in less urban areas.

“In the countryside the ‘yellow vest’ movement is the same as it was at the outset,” she said.

In her new book, On est là ! (We’re here), a main ‘yellow vest’ rallying cry, she concludes just that; the movement had changed, but the ‘yellow vests’ were still present.

“That does not mean that they are ready to rally in the same ways, but it would be dangerous and delusional to say that they have disappeared,” she said.

Tartakowsky said that, while the 'yellow vests' successes could seem limited from the outside, they had pushed through important change indirectly by showing that it was possible to force through change.

“Even if they did not win on all points they showed that it was possible to win something, to make the government backpedal,” she said, referring to the carbon tax.

The camp

When the protests started, the roundabout became the main stage for the protesters who did not travel to Paris to make their discontent heard and seen in the capital. 

From June 2019 until March 2020, just before the pandemic hit with full force, Séverine spent most of her free time on a local roundabout where she and some 30 other ‘yellow vests’ had set up a camp.

A teacher in Amiens, a city a couple of hours north of Paris, Séverine was an early believer that the ‘yellow vests’ would be the movement that finally could radically change a system she saw as unjust, undemocratic and unsustainable.

“I passed all my evenings, all my weekends at the camp,” she said.

The camp was a microcosm of the world they hoped to create.

“We cooked together, discussed, we really had some great moments there together,” she said.

They were all kinds of people at the camp; a waiter, a metro driver, a nursery teacher, a few retirees. An Indian student who just needed somewhere to crash for free. 

“It was a very open environment,” Séverine said.

But the problems soon surfaced. The camp, like the movement, swore to a leaderless management style where no one had a final say.

“It was a mess. Obviously, we didn’t manage to make any decisions,” Séverine said.

Violence at protests became a major problem. Photo: AFP

'People are exhausted'

They split themselves into two groups. Oddly enough, the division had little to do with politics.

“It was not about left or right. We actually agreed on the fundamental issues. It was more about strong personalities and people simply not getting along,” she said.

The atmosphere soured. They argued more, discussed less. They went from 30, to 20, to about 10. Then, after the local election in March, just before the pandemic made social distancing the norm, the mayor told them to clear the camp. 

Critics have long said the ‘yellow vests’ lack of leadership was their major, perhaps the decisive, default. How could they push for change when they had no idea what they wanted?

Despite having become so disillusioned with the movement that she no longer knew if she wanted to call herself a ‘yellow vest’ at all, Séverine was not sure this was their main problem. 

“Demonstrating every weekend is tiring. It requires a significant commitment. I think people are exhausted,” she said.

'I was fed up'

In the months that followed the movement’s heyday in early 2019, the protests followed the same pattern as Séverine's camp.

They were increasingly sparse in numbers and the atmosphere increasingly tense and bitter.

“You're walking in a state of complete stress, afraid that someone is aiming at you. You don't hear the messages anymore,” Séverine said.

Five people have lost a hand in the protests. Twenty-five were blinded in an eye. According to government numbers, 2,500 protesters were hurt in the protests by the end of 2019, along with 1,800 police officers.

“No one could imagine that a movement could last this long without losing momentum,” Ludosky said.

“Keeping on going cost a lot to the people who got involved. It's money, time, people lost limbs, couples separated.”

READ ALSO ANALYSIS: French police are not all thugs – they are being placed in an impossible situation

Like many others, she was put off by the violence. In the end, she left her yellow vest in her car.

“I was fed up,” she said. “Every time I wore it I worried about the police controlling me.”

She was not sure if she still believed in the movement.

“It’s complicated. The presidential elections are coming up soon, crying out for Macron’s resignation doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“But the 12th will be the moment to go out on the streets. Not necessarily in Paris, but we need to show something.”

 

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