This all started with an elephant. Nantes has a famous elephant, not a real one – but a mechanical one that can move and carry up to 50 people. That has to be worth seeing, so I decided to make the trip. But, this is France during a national strike and so it wasn’t going to be easy.
The first indication I got that something was wrong, was when the bus indicator showed that it was only going to the next stop. “Odd,” I thought, but I caught it anyway thinking I might get another from there to the city centre. At that next stop, the reason for the curtailed service became clear, as I saw the police had cordoned off the road letting no traffic pass. I could still walk through – and decided that, even though it would be a long walk, I would go for it.
Soon, I came to the reason for the police cordon. A protest march connected to the current strikes.
Now I have had advice before – that when it comes to local disputes, stay away. This is flagged up loud and clear by the British Foreign Office’s “advice to travellers” website. But, hey it’s France, the procession looks calm enough. There’s even a brass band playing. But no sooner had I got to the police line, when things started to turn. First insults, then stones, then bottles and just missing me, a brick. Then as I started to walk swiftly away, the tear-gas started. It was all so quick. I think the police threw the canisters towards the march and then some people just threw them back. One landed close to me and within seconds I was crying and struggling to breathe.
The only place to go was through the police cordon and luckily for me, the younger guy in front was stopped by a couple of cops and I snuck past.
Once on the other side, what a difference! Shops open, people sat outside cafes sipping coffee and when I turned a corner, there was a Christmas market in full swing with bottle, chocolate and nougat stalls.
A microcosm of the whole world really. When the Balkans war was happening in the 1980s – I recalled that only a year or two earlier, friends would talk about holidays taken in Yugoslavia. Flights took 1.5 to 2 hours … Less time than it took me to get from Vannes to Nantes by bus the other day. Now the violence is slightly further afield, in Libya, Syria and Yemen to name but a few conflict zones. A bit further down the road in whole world terms, but tear gas would not be anything special there.
I took a seat at a table to let the gas wear off – one espresso down, I was able to walk back to my digs and sleep away the effects.
The next day, I was due to go to my next destination of Limoges, but one of my 3 trains had been cancelled and there was no lift-shares or buses available. It meant that I was just travelling across town to new digs, hastily arranged. This time the journey went without a hitch. I spoke to someone on the tram (in English) about the strike and he was broadly in support. The dispute is about pensions and he sees the public sector pension as being worth fighting for, as it is the base line for all private sector pensions. They can only get worse if the protests fail. Although I am being negatively affected, I am also in support of the strikers. Partly because I was a trade unionist and can see the benefit in taking action. Partly because at 62 myself (the age at which most French people can take their pensions) I know what it is like to have to wait another 4 years.
The irony is that the new rules being imposed would mean most people would get their pensions at 64 – still two years earlier than me.
The Conservative government in the UK (which has just been re-elected by some margin,) is proposing that people may have to work until 70 to receive a full pension. So far, I have not heard of anyone taking to the streets about that. Indeed, the people most likely to protest in the next few months will be the Scottish and Northern Irish, both of whom are being taken out of the EU against their will – because they are in a union which does not respect their opinions. And that worries me. I am worried for my friends in the UK and for the future of the country. PM Johnson was someone who purchased water cannons to use against protestors in London when he was mayor. Something that couldn’t go ahead because water cannons are not allowed to be used in the UK. He could allow them now. Having seen at first hand violence being perpetrated by the state here in France, I also worry that the legitimate right of protest can’t be fulfilled because people will be too scared to rise up. My other concern is what the protests might turn into. I can still remember the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, which always seemed to me to be a condescending word when what was really happening was an armed struggle against the state. People died on both the island of Ireland and in the UK. My mother is buried in the same cemetery as the victims of the Warrington bombing of 1993 – some of whom were children. When I pass their graves, it serves as a reminder of how close to home such things can come.
In some ways – nowhere is safe. If I had been asked before this trip, where did I think I would get my first “taste” of teargas, it wouldn’t be France. Freak accidents can occur anywhere as this link shows – a woman being killed by a beach umbrella being blown in the wind. https://tinyurl.com/t2h4zwg
I made the decision to travel and I still think it was the right one, despite the current challenges. I do need to be more aware of advice and to remember to take it. But I can’t allow myself to be put off by fear, otherwise I wouldn’t go anywhere. I did go and see the elephant, though.
It seems that elephants, like civil unrest, are always there to be visited if we want to. I now know I don’t want to go through tear gas again, to get to one!
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