Hundreds of thousands of people marched across France on Saturday in a second consecutive weekend of protests over the cost of living, and the official count itself became part of the argument. The Interior Ministry put nationwide turnout at 410,000. Unions said the true figure was twice as high.
The main demonstration drew at least 110,000 people to the southeastern fringes of Paris, denouncing rising living costs and growing inequality. For most of the day the rallies were largely peaceful, but clashes followed in Paris and Marseille as night fell.
The numbers behind the day
Authorities deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes across the country, 10,000 more than a week earlier, after conceding they had underestimated the unrest on October 17. That earlier weekend ended with widespread looting, thousands of businesses damaged, and more than 2,000 people taken into custody.
This time, police arrested nearly 1,000 people nationwide, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez. In Paris, riot police fired tear gas and water cannon at a group of around 500 hooded youths after the main rally ended, and the group eventually dispersed on a cold, rainy evening. In Marseille, youths set fire to rubbish bins to block roads and threw rocks and bottles at security forces, and police said several stores, including two jewellery shops, were ransacked.
Clashes were also reported in Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Rennes, Nantes and Toulouse. Nunez said that in almost every march, high risk groups broke away from the main body and sought to commit acts of violence, accusing far left activists and criminal gangs of seeking to foment trouble.
Why the protests keep growing
The unrest began with student protests and has widened into a broader movement that now joins the Yellow Vests movement with high school and university students. Their complaints link classroom conditions and teacher shortages to fuel prices, household bills and a sense that living standards are falling while public services thin out.
As Reuters reported, Nunez argued the violence was less intense than a week ago. “What changed was anticipation,” he said. That is a narrow claim of success for a government that still faced 410,000 marchers by its own count, and twice that by the unions’ count.
The gap between those two numbers matters, because it measures trust as well as turnout. Until prices, fuel and public services are addressed, the pattern of peaceful marches ending in night time clashes looks set to repeat.
