On The 50th
Anniversary of the May Days in France in 1968
By Frank Jackman
Allan Jackson labeled
the post-World War II generation that came of age in the 1960s the “Generation
of ’68.” A lot of things happened that year (including our respective draft call
notices for induction which we both in retrospect which we had refused to do
but you learn a few things in this wicked old world) and this publication has
publicized a fair part of them from Tet 1968 in January on.
A lot of the reason that
Allan tagged us as the Generation of ’68 though was in homage to the events in
France in May and June of 1968. There the students first and then the students
and workers came within a hair’s breathe of turning the world upside, of making
the newer world we were all looking for. Unfortunately “almost” is usually not
good enough and the moment which might have shifted Western history a little
bit differently on its axis. That is history in the conditional of course but a
definite possibility. We now know two things about that event. Revolutionary
moments are few and far between and, at least in the United States, defeat has
put us in a forty plus year cultural war which we have not won and are still
fighting almost daily.
The Paris days though
have a more personal frame of reference since at the time neither Allan nor I
were anything but maybe left liberals and not much interested in revolutions
and the like. We come by our “Generation of ’68” credentials by a more roundabout
way although the events in Paris play a role later. As mentioned above both Allan
and I accepted induction into the Army at different points in 1969 (which puts
us in a different class of ’69 which I won’t go into now). We both came out of
the Vietnam experience very changed in many ways but most directly by a shift
in our political perspectives. Neither of us whatever our feelings about the
war in Vietnam while students were active in the anti-war movement. Mostly
after the Summer of Love experiences out in California in 1967 we were what
might be called life-style hippies or some such. Like I said the Army experience
changed that. Mainly before that we cared about girls and getting an occasional
drug connection.
When we got our
respective discharges we were all over the place both as to life style and political
seriousness. That is where the Paris days in 1968 came into play. It was
obvious by 1971 that massive, mostly student-led, peace marches were not going
to end the war. What to do next preoccupied the minds of many of the better elements
of that movement. That is where 1968 came in. A cohort of radicals and others started
thinking about something like a united front between students and workers strange
as that sounded then, and now come to think of it, like what almost brought the
French government down. Maybe because we were from the working class, really a
notch below, the working poor, this idea sounded good to us although knowing
what working class life was really like unlike many of the middle class students
we had our doubts about the viability of the strategy. As it turned out not
only are revolutionary moments fleeting but mass action moments short of that are
as well and so nothing really ever came of that idea. Still if you think about
it today if you could get the kids to join up with some radical workers we could
shake things up. History doesn’t really repeat itself but if something rises up
looking back at the Paris days, 1968 would not be a bad idea.
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