bboc/07_The_armed_gangs_of_Capital_in_Rep._France.tex

\chapter[The armed gangs of Capital in Rep. France]{The armed gangs of Capital in Republican France}

\chapterauthor{Maurice RAJSFUS}

Capitalism is naturally black. Like this coal that helped to enrich the coal companies as soon as the nineteenth century. Black as the misery organized at the same time, by the forge masters.
It is impossible to forget that capitalist systems – national back then – were already taking their marks for expansion on a global scale, through colonialism.
This was the time when the big bosses explained that the economies of the industrialized countries would face the greatest dangers if it were forbidden to make children under the age of twelve work and if one worked less than sixty hours a week.
At paltry salaries, of course.

\section{The sons of workers, best cops of the owners!}

This nascent capitalist society could only rely on the men in black who had the task of defending it.
It is a fact that, for more than one hundred and fifty years, the police have rarely been used for the \enquote{protection of people and property}, its initial mission, but much more to ensure the security of capital.
We must not close our eyes on the long series of bloody repressive actions carried out by these armed gangs recruited from among the children of the working class and the poor peasantry.

After the fall of royalty in February 1848 and the failure of the national workshops, the ruling bourgeoisie encouraged young workers to enlist in the newly created mobile guard to maintain order in Paris — at a wage five times higher.
A few weeks later, during the June 1848 uprising of the Parisian workers, it was these sons of the working class who were launched against the insurgents, alongside regiments returning from the war of conquest in Algeria.
These new types of police officers will not fail in their duty, as they say: \enquote{... Atrocious massacres by the mobile guard of the army or the national guard have taken place... (June 26)
They shoot at the Conciergerie, at the town hall. Forty-eight hours after the victory, wounded and unarmed prisoners were shot... Horror, horror, horror!}\footnote{\emph{Dans les Cahiers}, de Proudhon, quoted by Édouard Dolléans in his \emph{Histoire du mouvement ouvrier} (History of the worker movement), Armand Collin, 1967, t. I, p. 241.}.
More precise information will soon be provided after five days of ruthless repression:
\enquote{We know that the bourgeoisie compensated itself for its deadly trances with unprecedented brutality and massacred more than 3,000 prisoners}\footnote{Karl Marx, \emph{La lutte des classes en France} (Class struggle in France) Éditions Sociales, 1946, p. 89.}.
To which must be added the hundreds of killed on the barricades. Not to mention the approximately 12,000 workers arrested and, for the most part, \enquote{transported} to Algeria or shipped to prison.
In fact, the government of the Second Republic treated Parisians in the same way as Algerians who refused to suffer the colonial yoke\footnote{On 1848's revolution, refer more particularly to Maurice Aghulon's book, \emph{Les Quarante-huitards} (the forty-eightards), Folio-Histoire, 1992.}.

A few months later, General Changarnier, project manager of this repression, with other generals from Africa, such as Lamoricière, under the orders of the infamous General Cavaignac, head of the executive power, could declare with the greatest cynicism:
\enquote{Modern armies have less the function to fight against enemies from the outside than the defense of order against rioters.}
Quickly, these great republicans will bring to power Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, during the presidential elections of December 1848.

In 1849, in a book \emph{Les Partageux} (the Sharers), a certain Henri Wallon, historian at the orders of this bloody bourgeoisie, described the worker, \enquote{the red}, as the hereditary enemy:
\enquote{... A red is not a man, it is a red... He is a fallen and degenerate being... A dumb physiognomy,... dull eyes, fleeing like those of the pig... the insignificant and mute mouth like that of the donkey...}\footnote{Quoted by René Arnaud in December 2, Hachette, \emph{L’Histoire par l’image} (History by picture), 1967, pp. 22 et 26.}

The insurgents of June 1848, like those of July 1830, were still nostalgic for the ideals of 1789.
Subsequently, the need to defend oneself collectively, and then to try to counter the industrial society that was developing by repressing the working class, led the most lucid to constitute the 1st International, in 1864.
It was clear, however, that the repression would be even harsher because the bourgeoisie, now an unavoidable economic power, could not accept the conclusion of this Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels, in 1847:
\enquote{May the ruling classes tremble at the idea of a communist revolution! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!}

\section{The slaughter of the Communards}

Following the violent reaction of the Parisian workers in June 1848, the worried bourgeoisie would perfect its repressive means when the Paris Commune was crushed in May 1871.
Once again, the Republican politicians prove their will to ensure the tranquility of the economic agents. Even at the cost of killing those workers who ensured capitalist prosperity.
The army and police who worked to assassinate the Paris Commune were effectively waging war on the Parisians. (This war they didn't really want to wage against the Prussians.)
The destructive rage became more and more deadly in the last days, even when the last barricades had fallen:
\enquote{... People were shot everywhere, on street corners, in the alleys of houses, in demolition sites, wherever there was a wall to push the victims.
The lower banks of the Seine witnessed fierce massacres. At the bottom of the Pont Neuf, they shot for more than eight days.}\footnote{Maxime Wuillaume, \emph{La Semaine sanglante} (The bloody week), La Palatine, 1964, p. 249.}

Beyond a victory already assured for Thiers and the Versaillais, there was the will to kill because if, in war, we do not shoot the prisoners, it is not the same with the internal enemy for whom there is no quarter given, says Maxime Wuillaume.
\enquote{As they advanced, the Versaillais installed, from place to place, these sinister military provosts whose whole task was to kill — the judgment did not count!}\footnote{\emph{Idem.}}
Louise Michel is not to be outdone and, in her memories, she describes the entry of the Versaillais into Paris as days of nightmare:
\enquote{They cut throats in ambulances... Machine guns mold in barracks. They kill like hunting. It is an inhuman butchery. Those who, badly killed, remain standing, or run against the walls, are shot at will.}\footnote{Louise Michel, \emph{La Commune, Histoires et souvenirs} (The commune, history and memories), Maspero, 1970, t. II, p. 58.}

While the military courts sit unabated (more than 10,000 condemned to deportation), Killings continue for the sake of killing.
Without further justification. This is what the historian of the Commune, C. Talés, puts it well: \enquote{It was necessary to massacre, to be safe, for a long time!}\footnote{C. Talés, \emph{La Commune de 1871} (The commune of 1871), Spartacus, 1971, p. 120.}
This revenge on insurgent Paris is celebrated as it should be and the \emph{Journal des débats}, evoking the recent defeats of Napoleon III spreads its satisfaction:
\enquote{What an honor! Our army avenged its disasters with an invaluable victory!}
And again: \enquote{Long live order, long live the army which is it's only support!}\footnote{Quoted by Jean-Pierre Azéma et Michel Winock in \emph{Les Communards} (The communards), Le Seuil, Le Temps qui court, 1964, p. 165.}
The general staff of this army had chosen unlimited repression:
\enquote{Those who unleashed on Paris the blind force of terror ensured that the carnage was as great as possible.}\footnote{C. Talés, \emph{La Commune de 1871} (The commune of 1871), p. 130.}
Refinement was not absent from the concerns, as evidenced by the slow advance of the troop: \enquote{They wanted it to last, in order to kill longer.}\footnote{\emph{Idem}., p. 142.}

On June 15, 1871, they were still shooting at the Bois de Boulogne. \enquote{They stopped killing only when they feared being poisoned by the corpses.}\footnote{\emph{Idem}.}
At the Madeleine church, 300 federated were shot, 700 to 800 on the Place du Panthéon, etc.
Many weeks later, the episode of the little Savoyards, usual chimney sweepers of Paris, shot because they had black hands — supposedly black with powder — was told.
There was also this legend, tenacious, of these pétroleuses setting fire to Paris:
\enquote{From then on, any suspicious woman is searched; woe to her if we discover a cellar rat, matches, if she brings back a bottle: olive oil, bleach, become oil; booed, brutalized by the crowd, the oiler is shot like the women taken with weapons in their hands. Hundreds of women were murdered.}\footnote{\emph{Idem}., p. 145.}.

In the midst of this coldly decided repression, xenophobia held a prominent place:
\enquote{Republicans are being shot because the Commune was republican. It was cosmopolitan, foreigners were massacred. The fame of Dombrowski\footnote{One of Paris Commune military chiefs, just like the Cipriani brothers, Italians, or the Pole Wroblewski.} causes the death of many Poles...
All those who were Italians, Poles, Dutch, Germans, were shot, said an officer who played an active role in the repression.}\footnote{C. Talés, \emph{La Commune de 1871} (The commune of 1871), p. 145.}

Those who read the British press of the time, such as P. O. Lissagaray\footnote{Auteur de \emph{Histoire de la Commune de Paris} (History of the Paris Commune), Maspero, 1967.}, were able to pick up details forgotten by French chroniclers.
Thus, on May 28, 1871, General Galiffet, chief rifleman, addressed a group of communards prisoners:
\enquote{Let those with gray hair come out of the ranks. You have seen June 1848, you are more guilty than the others! And he rolled the corpses in the ditches of the fortifications.}\footnote{Édouard Dolléans, \emph{Histoire du mouvement ouvrier} (History of the worker movement), t. I, p. 386.}.
The massacre over, Adolphe Thiers, head of the executive power, telegraphed to the prefects: \enquote{The ground is littered with their corpses, this awful spectacle will serve as a lesson.}\footnote{\emph{Idem}.}.

The assessment drawn up by Lissagaray in his \emph{Histoire de la commune} (History of the Commune) is most precise:
20,000 Parisians killed during the battle, including women and children; 3,000 dead in new Caledonia's depots, pontoons, prisons and exile; 13,700 prison sentences, 70,000 women, children and the elderly deprived of their natural support. Following the Bloody Week, there were some 400,000 denunciations.
For his part, Jacques Rougerie, who was able to strip the historical archives of the Vincennes's Fort, notes that of the 36,909 Communards arrested, more than two-thirds were manual workers, but is it possible to separate them from the employees and servants who had opposed the Versaillais?\footnote{Jacques Rougerie, \emph{Paris ville libre} (Paris free city), Le Seuil, 1971, pp. 259-261.}

\section{The order ruled under Clemenceau!}


Twenty years after the Paris Commune, the blood of the workers will flow in Fourmies (North). On May 1, 1891, side by side, police, gendarmes and soldiers of the 145th line fired on the crowd.
There were ten dead, including several children, and many injured. The following May 1st, although less bloody, will take place for a long time under the sign of repression: violent charges of the gendarmes in the provinces and the police in Paris, as in 1893.
The numerous arrests and dismissals that follow these days demonstrate that the police and employers are in sync\footnote{Refer to à Maurice Dommanget, \emph{Histoire du 1er mai} (History of May First), Société universitaire d’édition, 1953, pp. 136-154.}.

Having become Minister of the Interior, Georges Clemenceau immediately took the nickname of \enquote{top cop of France}.
On May 1, 1906, he put Paris under siege after having concentrated some 50,000 troops there in mid-April.
At dawn, hundreds of preventive arrests have already been made. On the Place de la République, cuirassiers on horseback rub shoulders with plainclothes policemen.
The provocations of the police and the soldier quickly did their work and barricades were erected in this popular district.
As if the police were just waiting for this signal, the police start banging randomly, also targeting passers-by.
The day ended in 800 arrests, 173 of which were maintained. Wounded people are cluttering hospitals in large numbers. There were also reportedly two deaths.
\enquote{The liberated from the Château-d'Eau left, in the evening, by bending their backs under the blows of the agents \enquote{lining the bridge}.}\footnote{\emph{Idem}, p. 221.}

In these times, which some call \enquote{Belle Époque} (good old days), it was enough for a business leader to report to the police commissioner of the neighborhood that his workers were on strike or simply challenged his authority for a squad of kepis to arrive immediately, with their batons risen.
To oppose his boss was already to put public order in danger. Among other bloody episodes, Clemenceau will have to his credit many anti-worker shootings:

{
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{--}
\begin{itemize}
\item On June 19, 1907, the army fired on the winegrowers in revolt in Narbonne. There are five dead and about twenty wounded.
\item On July 26, 1907, in Raon-L'Étape, in the Vosges, the textile strikers were facing the army: three dead and thirty wounded.
\item On June 2, 1908, in Draveil (Seine et Oise), the striking workers, who threw stones at the gendarmes who had come to dislodge them, saw two of their comrades killed and ten others seriously wounded.
\item On July 30, 1908, in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, the troop fired salvo at strikers and passers-by, while cavalrymen charged swords in the clear: four dead and many wounded.
\end{itemize}
}

Paradoxically, the republican constitution of 1875, the secular school of Jules Ferry, the laws on the press and the right of association, the separation of Church and State, etc. have in no way changed the harshness of the vigilantes in power.
It is enough to recall how, after crushing the fascist riot of February 6, 1934, in Paris, in front of the Chamber of Deputies, the republican government launched its police against the workers who demonstrated, on February 9, in support of the democratic institutions: six dead, shot almost at point-blank range\footnote{Sur cette soirée du 9 février 1934, refer to the debriefing pages published in \emph{L’Humanité} (The Humanity) du 10 février 1934.}.

\section{From the unthinkable to the unspeakable}


It is impossible to write off the role played by the police and gendarmerie as prison warden against the Spanish republicans and the fighters of the international brigades, as early as February 1939, after Franco's victory.
Just as we must not forget the fate reserved for the anti-fascists and German Jews who fled Nazism and who found themselves, in October 1939 and May 1940, in 110 concentration camps, under the vigilant guard of the same servants of the order who, as at the Camp des Milles, explained to the internees, during the debacle of the French armies,  that they were going to be handed over to the Nazis by them\footnote{On these inglorious episodes of the French police and gendarmerie, refer essentially to \emph{La lie de la Terre} (Scum of the Earth), by Arthur Koestler (Calmann-Lévy, 1947);  \emph{Les camps en Provence}, collective work (Ex, 1984); \emph{Le Diable en France}, by Lion Feuchtwanger (Jean-Cyrille Godefroy, 1985);
\emph{Zones d'ombre}, collective work (Alinéa, 1990); \emph{Exils en France}, collective work (Maspero, 1982); \emph{Les Bannis de Hitler}, collective work (EDI, 1982); \emph{Le camp de Gurs}, by Claude Laharie (chez l'auteur, 1985); \emph{Vivre à Gurs}, by Hanna Schram and Barbara Vormeïer (Maspero, 1979).}.

Soon followed the most despicable episode of the French police forces: their role under the Nazi occupation, in the northern zone and in the Vichy France, in the so-called \enquote{free} zone.
For four years, police and gendarmes, GMR, and even customs officers in many circumstances, will unconditionally put themselves at the service of the Gestapo.
With little misgivings at the task they are asked to accomplish, these 200,000 men, often recruited at the time of the Popular Front, will indulge without qualms in the hunt for Jews, Gaullists, Communists, Freemasons, etc.
No matter who gives the order, the main thing is to fulfill the mission with maximum zeal. 
When liberation comes, It will be never meant to judge, both the men and the institutions that engaged in criminal activities from the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1944.
It is true that General de Gaulle, back in France, preferred to use these men than the forces of the Resistance and the maquis.
The calculation was consistent: just as for the magistrates, the prefectural administration and the high civil service, the man of London knew that these men would be all the more loyal to him because they had failed despicably during the past four years\footnote{Refer to \emph{La Police de Vichy} (Vichy's police), by Maurice Rajsfus, Le Cherche midi éditeur, 1995.}.

It is worth noting that if, in 1945, some 4,000 police officers were \enquote{dismissed}, momentarily — those having been a little more collaborator than the others — these officials were reinstated by the prefect of police Baylot, in the early 1950s\footnote{Auguste Lecœur, \emph{Le Partisan} (The partisan), Flammarion, 1963.}.
As these men had lost a few years, they were counted a copious catch-up of salary, while a rapid advancement – faster than for their colleagues – immediately placed them in the leading spheres of the Paris police.

\section{Republican police? Wishful thinking!}

Although on a completely different scale, the Fourth Republic, born from the Resistance, did not escape the repressive temptation.
As early as 1945 these Republican Security Companies (RS) were formed, which would be illustrated in a very sinister way.
Curiously shaped, by a strange amalgam between these GMRs\rfootnote{stands for Groupe Mobile de Réserve/mobile reserve group} who had served Vichy and the Gestapo and FFI(Forces Française de l'intérieur/ Inside Frecnh forces) and FTP(Francs Tireurs et Partisans/Mavericks and partisans) fighters from the maquis or urban guerrillas, the CRS(Companies Républicaines de Sécurité/Republican security companies ) were the perfect illustration of this short memory that concerned as much deep France as the new authorities.
From the end of 1947, three years after the liberation of France from the Nazi yoke and the Vichy regime, the CRS, new soldiers of the order, did not hesitate to shoot at striking workers.
There will be three dead in Valence and one in Marseille, as well as many wounded.
Faced with the first major wave of strikes since the Liberation, the government, still composed of politicians from the Resistance, had the National Assembly pass a law called \enquote{republican defense}.
This meant the provision to the Minister of the Interior, Jules Moch, of a force of 80,000 men, responsible for \enquote{enforcing the freedom of work}\footnote{\emph{Idem.}, p. 234.}.
At the same time, a parliamentary assembly, also composed mainly of former resistance fighters, voted on texts that wanted to jeopardize the right to strike (recognized in the 1946 constitution), the right to organize, individual freedoms, and freedom of the press.
(The old class conflicts were reviving and the police were acting as arbiters in these circumstances.)

In October 1948, a major strike movement was launched by the miners, rapidly extending from Nord-Pas-de-Calais to the Basins of the Loire and the South-East.
Immediately, the Republican power sent the troops, the mobile gendarmes and policemen in large numbers, on the mine tiles and in the corons.
In all, several thousand men were released against these miners, presented two years earlier as heroes of work.
This real army launched against the \enquote{black mugs} had tanks, machine guns, chenillettes, radio cars, transport and reconnaissance planes.
It was war. At the head of this repressive force was Jules Moch, supported by the young Raymond Marcellin\footnote{\emph{Idem.}, p. 238.}.

Following the pitched battles that are sure to erupt, there will be three dead, many wounded and thousands of arrests.
In the face of this ferocious repression, the American miners' union leader, John Lewis, remarked:
\enquote{The French government would rather send American bullets into their bodies (miners) than put bread in their shrunken stomachs.}\footnote{\emph{Idem.}, pp. 238 et 239.}
On 12 November, more than a thousand miners were arrested for violating the freedom to work and three hundred of them sentenced to prison terms.
1,800 miners will be dismissed for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin alone.

The memory of the terrible years of the Occupation was barely dispelled, but the social dialogue could only take place under the shelter of the batons and guns of the CRS.
Admittedly, it is not possible to compare this repression to that experienced by the Forty-Eighters and the Communards.
Yet, just as in June 1848, and in a certain way in May 1871, the members of the forces of order were mainly from the working classes and, what is more, for some, fighters of the Resistance...

Facing the deep country, the strikers of 1947 and 1948 were alone. The keeping of order can therefore be ensured without too much fuss.
Freed from the weight of the Nazi occupation, the population of this country had returned to its usual indifferent, even selfish behavior.
Who, then, advised to shout their indignation, after May 8, 1945, when the French navy had bombed Sétif and some cities in eastern Algeria, when the army and the police, accompanied by the settlers – all tendencies combined – shot Algerian militants in the streets?
Who wanted to know that there had been tens of thousands of Algerian deaths on a land still reputed to be French while the good citizens rejoiced, on the same day, at the defeat of Nazi Germany?
This was followed by the Indochina war, with the desire to make the Vietnamese understand that democratic freedoms were reserved – sometimes – only for the French of France, then a terrible repression in Madagascar, in 1947.

After opening fire on French workers in 1947 and 1948, the police had no difficulty shooting at Algerian workers who had the audacity to join the parade of July 14, 1953, in the midst of Parisians:
\enquote{This is certainly not the first time that Algerians have been killed in demonstrations, but never before has it happened so openly, in the heart of Paris.}\footnote{Claude Angeli and Paul Gillet, \emph{La Police dans la politique} (Police in politics), Grasset, 1967.}.
Quickly, the spiral of colonial wars no longer offending a population that thought above all of its own well-being, the Algerian conflict, from the autumn of 1954, could be modestly referred to as a law enforcement operation, with hundreds of thousands of deaths at stake; preluding the collapse of this Fourth Republic born of the struggle against the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupier.

\section{The Fifth Republic, a police society}

As early as May 13, 1958, it seemed obvious that the French police were in communion of spirit with the perpetrators of the Algiers coup that would lead de Gaulle to power.
Once again Minister of the Interior, Jules Moch is no longer the idol of the police who have their eye fixed on the events in Algeria:
\enquote{The police? He has known since May 13 that there is no need to rely on her. That evening, leaving the Palais-Bourbon, he saw the agents and inspectors marching by, booing the deputies. He heard the cries of \enquote{Death to the Jews}.
The majority of Paris' 20,000 peacekeepers are won over to Commissioner Dides'\footnote{Jean Dides, police commissioner, dismissed in 1954, then rallied to Poujadism. Previously in charge of an anti-Jewish service at the Paris police prefecture from 1942 to 1944.} movement for an authoritarian regime.}\footnote{Serge et Merry Bromberger, \emph{Les 13 complots du 13 mai} (The 13 conspiracies of May 13), Fayard, 1959, p.82.}.

Quickly, after the arrival of De Gaulle in \enquote{business}, it is not appropriate to invoke human rights, especially those of Algerians.
In the autumn of 1960, the first major demonstrations for the independence of Algeria were brutally repressed.
With all the more ease that hundreds of thousands of young French people now do their military service in the Aurès, where their officers teach them to \enquote{break} these \enquote{trunks of fig trees} insensitive to civilization ...

To better control the fighting desires of Algerians of France, the prefect of police Papon decided to establish an unfair curfew, penalizing this population, already weakened, from October 5, 1961.
This is a well-studied provocation. Indeed, from January 1 to August 31, 1961, more than 450 Algerians were shot, in fact coldly murdered.
In this climate, the application of the curfew can only provoke a response. On 17 October 1961, the leaders of the FLN\rfootnote{Front de libération Nationale, the algerian national liberation movement} Federation of France call on Algerians to hold a peaceful demonstration in Paris.
During this evening, in front of tens of thousands of Algerians, in Sunday clothes, who came to protest \enquote{with dignity} against a scoundrel decision, the police are unleashed with a murderous savagery.
Twelve thousand people were arrested and crammed into the sports park of the Porte de Versailles, in the grounds of the Palais des Expositions, at the Vincennes sorting centre, in the very courtyard of the police prefecture where, under the gaze of the prefect Papon, murders happened.
In the streets of Paris, a huge ratonnade takes place and, from the bridges, dozens of Algerians are thrown into the Seine, in the icy cold of night\footnote{Refer to the testimonies quoted by Jean-Luc Einaudi in \emph{La Bataille de Paris} (The battle of Paris) Le Seuil, 1991.}.
This massacre, denied by the prefect Papon and the Minister of the Interior, Roger Frey, before the municipal and parliamentary assemblies, is obvious.

The IGS\rfootnote{Inspection générale des Services, the police policing the police} investigates, and discreetly suggests that there were 140 deaths.
For its part, the FLN France Federation lists more than 250 dead and some 400 missing.
This repression is hardly known to the Parisian population because many media are discreet to say the least.
Few witnesses dare to evoke the event.
Fortunately, a courageous photographer, Élie Kagan, crisscrossed Paris during this infernal night, then providing implacable documents that the press would hardly use, apart from \emph{Libération}, \emph{L'Humanité}, \emph{France-Observateur} and \emph{Témoignage Chrétien}\footnote{The photos taken that evening by Elie Kagan were collected by the Anne-Marie Métaillé editions, as well as in \emph{Le silence du fleuve} (Silence of the river), by Anne Tristan, Au nom de la mémoire, 1991.}.
Oblivion does the rest and public opinion will remember only the death of the eight communist militants, who died murdered during the demonstration of February 8, 1962, at the Charonne metro station. All French, it is true.

A police society, the Fifth Republic naturally developed parallel police forces such as the SAC, where mobsters frequented the men of the Gaullist networks.
In the sinister Ben Barka case in 1965, the active agents of the SDEC (tl:Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage, french intelligence agency from 1945 to 1982) will work in partnership with men in the field, as if it were a long habit\footnote{On the Ben Barka case,refer to Daniel Guérin's book, \emph{Ben Barka, ses assassins} (Ben Barka, his murderers), Pion, 1981.}.
In the shadow of these mobsters, there were former members of the Carlingue (French Gestapo where some policemen met in the company of mobsters) and even the prefect Papon who, like others, \enquote{covered up} this abominable operation.

It was really in May and June 1968 that the French police and gendarmerie gave the full measure of their talent.
From May 3, 1968, after the entry of the CRS at the Sorbonne, the police will go wild, attacking the students as if they were real enemies.
For six weeks, over the course of the demonstrations, thousands of Parisians – and it will be the same in many provincial cities – will be ruthlessly bludgeoned, assaulted with combat gas.
Who can know how many of them have suffered such sequelae that they have never fully recovered.
Police bludgeoned in the streets, beat boys and girls who fell to the ground, bludgeoned and sometimes tortured in police stations. It was war\footnote{Report to \emph{La Police hors la loi}, by Maurice Rajsfus, Le Cherche midi éditeur, 1996.}!

From June 1968 to March 1974, under the senior direction of Raymond Marcellin, France was under almost permanent siege.
During this period, the real center of power was in the Ministry of the Interior.
Everything that constitutes the driving forces of the France of human rights is suspected of a spirit of protest, and necessarily repressed with the greatest rigor.
One can no longer write, express oneself publicly, publish, make films, stage plays, or even paint, sometimes, only under the vigilant control of Raymond Marcellin.
The police, and the justice at its service, watch for the slightest rustle in high schools, as at the University\footnote{Report to \emph{Mai 68, sous les pavés, la répression} (May 68, under the cobblestones, repression), by Maurice Rajsfus, Le Cherche midi éditeur, 1998.}.

A police society, France is in great danger of abuse.
The police state is waiting for us, even when the majority changes sides. France is one of the democratic countries with the largest law enforcement agencies. We have:

{
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{--}
\begin{itemize}
\item More than 120,000 police officers (Ministry of the Interior) including some 18,000 CRS
\item 95,000 gendarmes, of which about 15 000 mobile gendarmes (Ministry of the Armed Forces)
\item 20,000 customs officers (Ministry of Finance) who occasionally behave like CRS or mobile gendarmes.
\end{itemize}
}

To these traditional law enforcement agencies must be added about 12,000 municipal police officers.
In large cities such as Paris, hundreds of highly repressive public transport controllers are assisted by the men of the Network Protection and Security Group (GPRS) equipped with batons and tear gas.
Nor should we forget: private security companies, often in liaison with the police, building guards, and the many indicators, paid or volunteer, that it is not possible to quantify.
In a few years with the disappearance of conscription, the government will have a professionalized army of some 250,000 men, ready to carry out all the missions of repression.
So, once again, France is not a police state, not yet, but our society is more sensitive to security ideology than to numerous violations of human rights.
Without any illusions about the capacity of the police to suppress, we must first note the inconsistencies in the recruitment and training of police officers.
Similarly, the selection criteria implemented are equally questionable.
That said, it is certain that, for the past fifteen years, it is in order not to fall into unemployment that one chooses to repress one's contemporaries.
Until about 1950, police training lasted less than a month and the level of recruitment was at the level of the certificate of studies. The police were not too rough outside of repressive missions.
Nowadays, the police academy lasts a year, and the new police officers, all at the baccalaureate level or bac plus two, have never been so racist, so sexist, so violent.
The policeman has turned into a vigilante, which is not his function, but Justice is a good mother with deviant police officers...

\rauthor{Maurice Rajsfus}

Maurice Rajsfus is the author of twenty-two books, mainly devoted to repressive systems.
 Last publications: \emph{Mai 68, sous les pavés, la répression} (May 68, under the cobblestones, repression) (Le Cherche midi éditeur, 1998) et \emph{En gros et en détail, Le Pen au quotidien} (In bulk and in detail, Le Pen on a daily basis) (Paris-Méditerranée, 1998). 
He chairs the Observatory of Civil Liberties, which publishes the monthly bulletin \emph{Que fait la police?} (What does the police do?) He is one of the founders of the network Ras l'Front\rfootnote{Antifascist network, \emph{Ras l'} stands for Ras le bol, fed up with; Front for \emph{Front National}, main French far right party}.