More than half of all the high schools in France were blockaded this Tuesday. And almost all universities were shut in solidarity. They were protesting together against the systematic under-funding of education by the state.
The French schoolkids have plenty of guts. Faced with the riot police who'd already severely injured several students, their barricades of burning rubbish bins at least deterred these violent state thugs from coming too close.
Nevertheless, there had already been serious confrontations. As many as 5,060 teenagers have been arrested and over 200 have been hurt by the police. And the cops themselves have received 715 injuries - or so they say.
The protests - which began in the poorest Paris suburbs 3 weeks ago - have been long in coming. Resources for education have been cut drastically. So much so, that most schools lack teachers, with class sizes for pupils studying for their high school finals of at least 35. School buildings urgently need renovation, with leaking and collapsing roofs etc... There aren't even enough toilets.
It's an intolerable situation for staff and pupils alike - which is why the teachers and public sector unions joined the 6 October marches, demanding radical improvements and increased education-funding. The demonstrations in towns and cities throughout the country brought over a quarter of a million onto the streets.
But French government ministers are just like ministers everywhere else - they duck their responsibilities, for a living! Education Minister Edouard Geffray said it was impossible to respond to the school students' demands because there were too many and because they were "too local"! In fact he complained that there needed to be "national" demands!
Well, he should get what he wants: there is a simple demand which all students and staff and indeed the whole working class, nationally, can agree upon - and fight for: give schools, colleges and universities the funding and teachers they need and no more excuses!
It's the law of capitalism...
There have also been massive protests in Spain in the last few days. Hundreds of thousands poured onto the public squares of Madrid on Saturday. Tent cities have been erected by protesters. And yes, it's because just like in the rest of the so-called "developed" world, private landlords - but also large investment funds - have taken over housing stock and have pumped up rents up to a point where they are unaffordable for ordinary people, young and old, working or not!
The protests were sparked by the forced eviction of 87 year-old Maricarmen Abascal, removed from the home she'd lived in for 70 years, on a stretcher, after the landlord increased her rent from the equivalent of £428 a month to £2,247! It was later lowered to £1,399, but that was still £254 more than her monthly pension!
The "landlord" in question, is the private investment company "Urbagestion", which has been buying up properties in Madrid and elsewhere ever since it was "founded" back in 2005.
And then the protests were reinforced further by the failure of the coalition government - led by Spain's Socialist Party President Pedro Sanchez, to pass emergency legislation which was aimed at protecting tenants in rented accommodation... Although protesters said it was too little, too late, anyway. And no surprise there, either!
It is certainly too late for Sanchez, who presides over a parliamentary minority, and who has now had to call a snap general election for 29 November, one year earlier than scheduled.
...and we're against it!
Back home at the ranch, we have to ask ourselves why we aren't also out on the streets protesting over education and housing (among many other things!).
Isn't the education system here chronically underfunded? And substandard in every sense? 25% of children in England finish primary school (aged 11) not able to read properly. Roughly 18% of young people leave compulsory education/turn 18 without GCSEs. And around 7% of workers aged 16-64 across the whole country hold no formal qualifications at all - mainly because they never got the chance to get any!
As for rents, in the big cities here, they're also unaffordable! It's created an exodus of young (and old) workers... and thus pushed up the rents everywhere else. The homes' shortfall nationally is between 4-6m and over 1.1m in London alone. {Compared to Spain's much lesser shortfall of 700,000!)
But of course, for the working class and youth here in Britain, the housing rot started much longer ago than in Spain. In fact, when Tory PM Thatcher opened up council housing to private ownership in the late 1980s - followed by the failure of every government since, to replace the sold-off stock with new, affordable rented social homes. And then the so-called capitalist "law of supply and demand" kicked in...
Yes, we've had many decades of corruption and extortion and state under-funding. We surely have reason to protest - youth and workers together - just like our counterparts across the Channel!