Our historian of the day
This is Morgan Poggioli, associate researcher at LIR3S in Dijon.
The student movement
As we have learned in the history books, the May 68 movement actually begins on March 22 at the University of Nanterre. That same day a gathering of students and high school students also takes place in Dijon. But the claims are not the same. In Nanterre, young people are mobilizing against the Vietnam War. In Dijon, people protested for the free movement of girls and boys between the different university housing estates which were then single-sex.
From May 1, 1968, there were 10,000 demonstrators in Dijon. It is the students of the UNEF who are launching the movement. Ten days later the unions joined the fight and took part in the 24-hour strike call. On May 13, 1968, in the pouring rain, they are 8000 in the streets of Dijon to give the green light to paralyze the country.
The strike movement
The first strikes in Burgundy began in Yonne and Nièvre among workers in the metalworking industry. In Côte-d’Or, it was the railway workers who turned the department upside down. Indeed, Dijon is a mandatory stopover for all trains on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille line. The blocking of railway lines therefore has an impact on the whole country.
It was also the strike in the quarries of Comblanchien, among the garbage collectors, at the New Galeries of Dijon who joined the movement on May 23, 1968. In the Dijon metropolitan area alone, there were 40,000 strikers.
Similarities with the Popular Front of 1936
Morgan Poggioli drew similarities between these two “social myths”. First of all, the occupation of factories, department stores, stations, universities etc. The participation of women is also to be noted in 1936 and 1968, with the latter date the development of the feminist movement of the 1970s. In Le Creusot, we read in particular on a strike poster “Mini-skirt, yes. Mini-salary, no”. Moreover, the world of culture is invited to the factories and some artists are on strike.
The last resemblance between 1936 and 1968 is the resolution of the social crisis and inter-professional negotiation. However, the 1968 accords are not really. Employers’ organizations have never signed the Grenelle protocol.
The anti-May 68
Dijon is one of the few university towns where students demonstrated against the students of May 68. The UNEF, more on the left, finds opposition to the right in the National Federation of Students of France. They defend the “freedom of work” on May 27 in Dijon. It is also a Côte-d’Orian figure who steers the great pro-Gaullist demonstration on the Champs Elysées on May 30: Robert Poujade, then deputy. He also refused the seat of mayor which he won after the municipal elections of May 26.
