Just in case anyone was wondering whether there were any voices of reason left in France. Slightly EFL
France's exhaustion with its unions has found its voice in a 21-year-old student, Sabine Herold, who is challenging the silent majority to revolt against the strikes crippling her country and causing havoc for travellers. With schools and government offices closed yesterday, Channel ferries halted, and airlines cancelling most of their flights to and from France, Mlle Herold called the union members 'reactionary egotists'. They "claim to defend public services but are just defending their own interests", she said. With her pale blue mascara and long eyelashes, she makes an unlikely Joan of Arc. But her words have found an echo in large protests by students and parents against repeated strikes by teachers and threats to disrupt this summer's exam schedule. She has also become an emblem for the many in French society who believe that economic reforms are long overdue. She blames President Jacques Chirac for caving in repeatedly during his career to union pressure.
Mlle Herold shot to prominence on May 25, when hundreds of thousands of union members marched through Paris to protest against the government's pension and de-centralisation reforms. She addressed 2,000 people in front of the Paris town hall. She pointed to where the unions were marching and to loud applause shouted: "We will not give up the streets to them. For once, we are going to tell them 'No'. "I have lessons and exams, but I have no bus service. I pay for my carte orange [a monthly public transport ticket] but I have no underground service. Later on, I will pay my taxes, but my children won't go to school. Like all of us here today, I am angry."
In the middle of the Iraq war, she and her friends demonstrated outside the American embassy in support of military action, a bold step considering the overwhelming opposition to the war in France. "There is a systemic opposition to America in France," she said yesterday. Mlle Herold, who attends the prestigious Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris, said: "The Left in France used to be reforming, but has become conservative, while the Right has gone the other way."
She had to walk only half an hour to her lessons yesterday morning, but she said the unions were "punishing the people who want to go to work, kids who want to take their exams. These strikes are a catastrophe for France". On June 15 she plans to address a far larger crowd in the Place du Châtelet, assembled by her organisation, Liberté J'Ecris Ton Nom. The daughter of two teachers from Reims, Mlle Herold was not interested in politics until about two years ago. Since then, she has been devouring the great texts of "classical liberalism", seizing on thinkers such as Hayek, one of Margaret Thatcher's favourites, and wondering where France went wrong. Liberal conservatives are a rarity in France where the Right-wing parties are much more centrist than in Britain or America.
Mlle Herold, however, is not alone in pining for change in France. Like many of her generation, she would rather go on to business school than the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the civil servants' graduate school that trained most of France's current political and business elite, but is losing kudos as the French state loses respect. "There is no value put on work in France," she said. "I've just come back from Hong Kong where people love to work. In France they are always looking for a way to get out of it." During an exchange term at Birmingham University she was impressed not only by the beer but also by the British work ethic. "If people want to work, they can work. In France we have let the union minority take us all hostage." The question now facing Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is whether Mlle Herold really does speak for millions. If so, he may be able to press through his changes. If not, and the strikes continue, he will be forced to resign.
But will it be too much effort for the man on la rue to comprehend that someone not virulently anti-American is also a patriot who wishes the best for her country? |