Key Points
- Millions of people across France have been protesting over a proposal to raise the pension eligibility age from 62 to 64.
- The French Revolution of the 1790s is still key to why the French protest so much.
- There is an assumption that Australians don't protest much but looking back at history suggests otherwise.
Are Australians lazy, or are the reasons they don’t protest in the way the French do, more complicated?
Several times this year, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets protest in France. At times during winter, more than a million people gathered, with some setting fire to town halls, setting off fireworks and flares and looting.
Oil refinery workers and garbage collectors have gone on strike for days, leading to fuel shortages at some petrol stations and piles of rubbish on the streets.
The quick explanation is that people are protesting against President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to raise the pension-eligibility age from 62 to 64, and more recently his decision to force it through without a parliamentary vote - but there are also other reasons the French are disillusioned and protesting.
Protesters march during a rally in Paris in 2023. Source: AAP, AP / Aurelien Morissard
It has steadily been increasing by six months every two years, and nobody has taken to the streets over it.
Neither have there been large protests over the high cost of living, inflation, soaring rents or gas prices. Why not?
Why do the French protest so much?
Australia and France have very different histories, which inform their current political situations and protest movements.
Senior history lecturer at Australian National University Ben Mercer says what's happening now in France is very similar to what we've seen before, and relates in part to the 'Yellow Vest' strike movement of the past decade.
"I think it's a very familiar story of an attempt to defend the rights of being a French citizen, whether they see it as pensions, whether it's other aspects of the welfare state, and trying to prevent their dismantlement."
Mr Mercer said that in France historically, protesting workers and people are able to maintain momentum long enough to get results.
“It’s frequently successful, it frequently gets governments to withdraw or change legislation."
The roles that unions play in France are important for protest. The union movement is not linked as strongly with political parties, as say, the Labor Party in Australia.
"They’re concentrated in particular sectors that are quite important; the post office, the railway, the subway, teachers and sectors that they can easily bring things to a halt, and they have a tradition of mobilising people via strikes, " Mr Mercer said.
Protesters have been spurred on by a sense that leftist ideals of freedom are being eroded and dissatisfaction with their president, according to Bronwyn Winter, Professor Emerita of Transnational Studies at the University of Sydney.
“Since even before he became president he started dismantling, quietly, step by step, the worker protection system. He started spouting this neoliberalist course about how has to be much easier for employers to hire people, how we have a much more flexible economy," she said.
What does this have to do with the French Revolution?
The French Revolution was a people’s revolt against the inequalities of French society, the corruption of royal officials, and despair owing to widespread economic hardship during 1789 and 1799.
Demonstrators protect themselves as they pass riot police officers during a demonstration against pension changes, Thursday, 19 January, 2023 in Paris. Source: AAP / Lewis Joly
Those events spread an idea, which is still relevant, that if a government is unjust, you rise up against it, says Professor Winter.
“There's a is a sort of national mythology of the French being people who protest because there's the revolutionary mythology. The revolution was so significant and it came from the middle classes."
But the politics of protest in France go back much further than that.
"We can go back to the wars of religion in the 16th century, or the absolutist monarchy of the 17th century, and the uprisings, against tax increases, imposed by the absolutist monarchy," Professor Winter said.
Mr Mercer said that while it's a tradition they can call on, it doesn’t mean that people are constantly trying to recreate the French Revolution.
Why aren’t Australians marching in the streets?
Stagnant wages and high inflation are hitting Australians’ wallets hard and making it extremely difficult for people to pay rent and mortgages.
But compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the global financial crisis of the 2000s, the middle classes are less affected, according to Angela Woollacott, professor of history at Australian National University.
“In historic terms, the Great Depression was far worse than the economic situation now. People were very poor and starving and there was mass homelessness in cities.
“There were marches of the unemployed, and the homeless and people were just suffering terribly, digging holes in river beds to have a place to live.
“Around Australia, men were just heading off into the bush carrying a swag trying to get work, chopping wood on farms, walking hundreds of miles looking for work with no shoes,” she said.
Australians don't have a right to protest as such - there is no Bill of Rights or constitutional embedding of human rights, so people are reliant on state and federal or anti-discrimination legislation to give effect to most of our rights.
Therefore Australians may be reluctant to protest in ways that break the law.
Is it a misconception that Australians don’t protest?
Yes - it's important to realise that protests have been a part of Australian history and political traditions, Professor Woollacott said.
From the beginning of colonisation by the British, Aboriginal people in Australia resisted the state, according to Anne Maree Payne, Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Studies at UTS.
“The history of Aboriginal resistance has been actively suppressed in the way Australian history has been told over the last 50 years, which contributed to a lack of recognition of that history.”
Around 100 years ago Aboriginal protest movements that were looking for citizenship rights for Aboriginal people emerged.
“It was at a time that Aboriginal protection legislation, restricted Aboriginal movement, limited Aboriginal people to living on missions and reserves, interfered with things like work and rights to marry,” Ms Payne said.
Protest movements led by Aboriginal people have reached mainstream support at various points in Australian history.
“If we look at something like the 1967 referendum, for example, with over 90 per cent of Australians voting, yes, that is considered to be the most successful national campaign in Australian history. That took a decade of grassroots campaigning by Aboriginal people and allies to get to that result,” Ms Payne said.
From the beginning of Australia’s colonial history, the earliest convicts protested and there were many workers’ rights protests during the Gold Rush period in Victoria.
“The Eureka Stockade in 1854, was a very serious protest event that ended up with people being killed,” according to Professor Woollacott.
“In the late 19th century, there was a spate of protests in Australia, including the suffragettes and the 1890s is when the labour movement really emerged in Australia, again, early by international standards.”
