Once upon a time, I was driving through France with the family, when we encountered a sign ‘route barre’, with another sign ‘deviation’ sending us up a side street.
“Qu’est ce que passe?” I enquired of a gentleman in a high-vis jacket.
“Manifestation,” he shrugged in that Gallic way.
A queue was building up behind, so I headed up the deviation. Manifestation? What or who had manifested itself? Evidence of life on Mars? The Virgin Mary? The Angel of Mons? I gave the matter no further thought, particularly in view of the fact that the deviation seemed to lead to nowhere and soon we were lost.
Later, I looked up the French word ‘manifestation’. Of course! It means ‘protest’. What the town was protesting about, I never did find out, but there were one or two further manifestations during the course of our journey
You have to hand it to the Frogs; when they don’t approve of some law or edict, they certainly let their government know of their feelings. Noisily, en masse, sometimes violently and always immediately. We can all remember the country being ground to a halt by cavalcades of tractors choking the highways and byways of the country, protesting against some (perceived) anti-farming legislation. I was a student myself in 1968 when France was paralysed by a youth uprising in protest against capitalism, consumerism and American imperialism. In more recent years, the French taxi drivers went on strike in protest at the proliferation of Uber. But they didn’t just withdraw their labour; roads were blockaded, fires were lit, vehicles were overturned and the routes to airports were obstructed. Then there were the gilets jaunes riots (still ongoing) in protest at wealth disparity and increased fuel taxes. The population wasn’t too impressed either by the proposed raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64; demonstrations countrywide saw over one million take to the streets. Rubbish piled up and public transport came to a standstill until the government initiated a crack- down, prompting violent confrontation. Just hours before the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris, the entire railway network was sabotaged by a series of well-coordinated arson attacks, which the authorities called “acts of malice”. So far, nobody seems to have got to the bottom of the nature of thatgrievance. And of course, the uprising to beat all uprisings was the French Revolution of 1789. The tricoteuses sat by the guillotine in Paris, knitting their scarves and gossiping with their neighbours as, one by one, the nobility had the heads chopped off and the streets ran red with blood. No, the French do not do things by halves.
Perhaps it ill behoves an Englishman to raise his eyes at French public demonstrations of dissatisfaction and protest when we have seen shocking images of lawlessness, looting and violence on our own streets in recent weeks. But they seem to be prompted by nothing more than racial hatred and general anarchy, idiots and thugs motivated by some sort of pointless, inchoate rage and an instinct for violence, spoiling for a fight, in other words. No cause, no objective, no ideal (no matter how misguided) drives them. The French love to protest but it’s rarely without purpose.
They also have an endearing custom of informing you of the name of the village or town which you are exiting by a sign with the name crossed out by a red line…just in case you have forgotten. Or are lost. Or you have Alzheimer’s, and you cannot remember that you live there. Or that you should at once turn around and go back; you should never have left in the first place because our hamlet is one of the acclaimed “plus belles villages de France”. On our recent visit to la France profonde, I was immediately struck by the fact that these signs with the name crossed out were upside down. How come, I enquired of my friend and chauffeur. He gave a passable imitation of a Gallic shrug, insofar as he was able to,without taking his hands off the steering wheel. “Something to do with protests about speed limits,” he hazarded. At every inverted sign, I gave a snort of laughter. Of course they were protesting against imposed speed limits; a Frenchman always knows the correct speed for him to drive. And you had to admire the inventiveness of the protest. It was a witty rejoinder, I felt, to arbitrary officialdom. Not worth a few burnt-out cars, perhaps, but making its point clearly enough. I wonder next time I visit whether the signs will have been righted. I rather hope not. I wish somebody back home would invert those hated and unnecessary 20mph speed limits in London. After all, have you ever been able to exceed 20mph in the rush hour? As for Wales and their unpopular 20mph limits… yet another attempt to make visitors to the Principality feel unwelcome. I’m always reminded of Thomas More’s riposte at his trial to Richard Rich when it became clear that Rich had betrayed his friend for the Attorney-Generalcy of Wales: “Why Richard, it profit a man to give his soul for the whole world…but Wales?”
In point of fact, I later discovered, the upside-down signage is a protest by farmers – who else? – against the heavy burden of bureaucracy, regulations and restrictions being imposed on them by an unfeeling government. As it happens, I am very friendly with a farmer in our neck of the woods back in the UK. “Come here,” he said to me one day and led me into his dining room. The large oak table was groaning under paperwork. “That is what I have to deal with,” he sighed, “Every month there is another regulation or requirement from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. It does my head in.” Farmers are by nature outdoors folk. They like to get their hands dirty, with soil or animals or machinery, not red ink. He finds it all rather depressing. I think I might suggest to him that he turn the sign for the village where he lives, Upton-upon-Severn, upside down. You never know, it might catch on. After all, the reverse-sign protest in France started in a remote area of the Tarn before it spread countywide. Then we would really be living in a world that has gone belly-up. Some think we are already there.
Comments