As many as three million people took to the streets across France on Thursday to protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis and demand more help for struggling workers.

The protests, which polls show are backed by three quarters of the French public, reflect growing disillusion with Sarkozy’s pledges of reform as the crisis has thrown tens of thousands out of work and left millions more worried about their jobs. Bright spring sunshine helped the turnout and the total reported by union organisers surpassed the 2.5 million seen on an earlier day of protest on Jan 29.

Streets in central Paris were packed with protesters waving anti-Sarkozy placards and chanting slogans, with badges reading “Get lost you little jerk!”, the now infamous comment made by Sarkozy to a protestor at an agriculture show, much in evidence.

“There are more and more workers who feel they are not responsible for this crisis but that they are the main victims of it,” said Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT, one of the eight trade unions organising the strikes. More than 2 million people are out of work in France and despite an easing in inflation, even many with a job struggle with the high cost of living. A large public sector payroll and a relatively generous welfare state has kept French people better protected than many in other countries but there has been deep public anger at plant closures and stories of corporate excess.

Sarkozy, elected in 2007 on a pledge to shake up the French economy, has seen his approval ratings plunge as he has poured billions into bailing out banks and carmakers but rejected union demands for higher pay and tax hikes for the rich.

“People are in the streets and they are suffering, there are more and more people out of work and something has to be done,” said Sylvie Daenenck, marching in Paris. “We shouldn’t just be giving money to the bosses.”

Sarkozy’s room for manoeuvre has been limited by the dire state of French public finances, which have been drastically strained by the need to prop up the fragile financial sector. But a series of disputes, ranging from strikes by university staff to unruly protests by workers at a tyre plant in northern France, have underlined a worsening climate of discontent that the government fears could escalate.

Workers at the Continental tyre factory pelted managers with eggs at the protest this week and the government and business leaders have been acutely aware of the danger of unrest spilling over into the kind of violence seen in the urban riots of 2005.

Transport, energy and some government offices were all affected and unions said there was also strong participation by workers from the private sector, although there was no general shutdown of the economy. Most businesses and public services functioned at close to normal levels.

The unions have presented a long list of demands, including a boost for the lower salaried, more measures to protect employment, a tax hike for high earners and a halt to job cuts planned in the public sector. The government has introduced a 26 billion euro ($36 billion) stimulus plan aimed at business investment, and after the Jan. 29 strike Sarkozy offered 2.65 billion euros of additional aid to help vulnerable households weather the storm.

But there is little prospect of an improvement in the situation, with many analysts predicting the economy will contract by 2 percent this year and unemployment will jump 25 percent to almost 10 percent.

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Police warn of G20 protest scale in London

Known activists are planning in an “unprecedented” way ahead of next month’s G20 summit in London, the Metropolitan Police have warned.

Cdr Bob Broadhurst, in charge of the policing operation, said anarchists and environmentalists were plotting a series of demonstrations. Groups active in the late 1990s were re-emerging and forming new alliances to protest at the meeting, he said.

The operation will involve thousands of officers and cost an estimated £7.2m. World leaders, including US President Barack Obama, will begin to arrive in the UK on 31 March. The next day campaigners are expected to target the City of London in a series of anti-globalisation and climate change demonstrations.

As the G20 summit begins on 2 April, protests are also planned at the Excel conference centre in Docklands. The G20 countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU.

Cdr Broadhurst said officers from six forces would be involved in a massive security operation before and during the summit. However, it was difficult to estimate how many protesters would actually turn up on the main day of activity on 1 April.

“Clearly there are some very innovative and clever people and they know our tactics,” Cdr Broadhurst said. “They want to stop the City on the Wednesday – that is their avowed intention.”

He said it was his aim to “facilitate lawful protest” and he revealed plans for a special demonstration pen near the Excel Centre to accommodate a few hundred protesters. But while police had worked closely with some campaigners, the plans of other groups were harder to ascertain. “Anarchists by definition won’t come and see us,” he said.

He said there was no intelligence to suggest there was a terrorist attack planned, but there was evidence that groups not seen since the 1990s, such as direct action exponents Reclaim the Streets and the Wombles, were re-forming and planning activity. Students were also involved in larger numbers than before, he said, and there was some evidence that foreign activists were heading to the UK to take part in the protests. Police are expecting activists to block streets and hold demonstrations heading in several directions at once.

Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted policing the summit and protecting the 20 world leaders and 40 delegations was a “huge challenge”.

A history of violent protest at world summits

Violent protests at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in 1999 caught everyone by surprise. Tens of thousands of anti-globalisation protesters descended on the city, overwhelming an unprepared police force.

The National Guard was brought in to restore order and the mayor imposed a curfew. The summit ended with hundreds under arrest and numerous symbols of American corporate power — McDonald’s restaurants, Starbucks coffee shops and Gap stores — in ruins.

Activists opposed to unfettered free-trade “neoliberalism” besieged all manner of economic summits over the next few years. Meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the IMF and World Bank in Prague and the Summit of the Americas were all targeted.

In 2001, about 400 were arrested during the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City that April. At an EU summit in Gothenburg in June, three activists were shot and injured as hundreds of protesters rampaged through the streets.
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Then, in July 2001, an anti-globalisation activist was shot dead during the G8 summit in Genoa after days of battles between protesters and police. Hundreds were arrested, dozens were treated in hospital and allegations of police brutality flew.

From then on the trend was towards remote, isolated summit venues that protesters would struggle to reach, and where anarchists would find few things to smash. In 2002, the G8 met in Kananaskis, a remote Canadian ski resort. Checkpoints were in place to hold back any undesirables long before they got anywhere near the meeting. It passed off smoothly.

After renewed clashes in Evian in 2003, the security effort was stepped up again in 2004. That year, the G8 summit was held on an island 80 miles off the coast of the US state of Georgia. Even then, the American authorities took no chances. Sea Island was sealed off by land and sea. Surface-to-air missiles were in place along the coast to enforce a no-fly zone. Catering staff allowed on to the island had to undergo rigorous background checks. Coastal towns nearby were swept by secret service agents with metal detectors and sniffer dogs. Locals said the area had turned into an “armed camp”. There was no trouble.

Although some of the violent fervour seemed to have gone out of the anti-globalisation movement in recent years, the authorities could not relax. In Gleneagles in 2005 — again the G8 was held far from major population centres — 91 people were arrested and weapons seized as protesters tried to reach the venue. Two years ago in Heiligendamm, Germany, almost 1,000 people were injured, including 146 police, during street fighting.

More than 150 representatives of trade unions, farmers’ movements, global justice groups, environmental groups, development groups, migrants’ groups, faith-based groups, women’s groups, the have-not movements, student and youth groups, and anti-poverty groups from all over Europe gathered on the 10th and 11th of January 2009 in Paris to analyse collectively the current crises, to develop joint strategies and to discuss joint demands and alternatives in response to these crises. As the financial and the economic crises intensify, millions of women and men are losing their jobs, houses and livelihoods. Tens of millions more are forecast to join the 1.4 billion people already living in extreme poverty. The crises worsen the social, ecological, cultural and political situation of the majority of people on our planet. Despite the evident and foreseeable failure of the current economic model, world leaders are responding by trying to preserve the system that is responsible for the crises.

Governments have been quick to bail out bankers, corporate shareholders and their financial backers with hundreds of billions in public money. To solve the problem, they put into place bankers and heads of corporations: the same actors that created the crises. The workers, the jobless, the poor ? all those affected have received no help in their daily struggle to make ends meet, and to cap it all, they are now supposed to pay the bill.

Governments’ proposals to deal with the unfolding economic crisis do not address the other dimensions of the crisis we face today — global justice, food, climate and energy — and with it the need to transform the economic system towards one that allows us to satisfy the basic needs of all people, to implement all human rights and to restore and preserve the ecological basis of life on our planet.

It is time for change!

We can build a system that works for people and the environment, a system to serve the needs of the many, a system based on the principles of public benefit, global equity, justice, environmental sustainability and democratic control. As a first step, immediate measures must be implemented to address the social impacts on people, whilst supporting the ecological conversion of the economy.

We call upon all social movements in Europe to engage in a process of change. To start with, we call upon movements ;

- to engage in the mass mobilisation for the central demonstration in London on the 28th of March 2009 ahead of the G20 meeting, or to take to the streets in their own countries that same day to make their voices heard. 20 governments cannot decide on the future of the global financial system and economy.

- to undertake a day of action in the week of the G20 meeting, preferably on the 1st of April (FinancialFools’ Day) all across the world, exposing unaccountable financial power and promoting democratic control of finance.

This meeting is a further step in a long?term process of building spaces for European networks to meet. Recognising and drawing on previous and future mobilisations of social movements and civil society organizations in Europe and all over the world, it builds on ongoing efforts developed at the European Social Forum and elsewhere, aimed at realising a democratic and socially and environmentally sustainable
Europe. We commit to intensify cooperation and communication among our networks and organisations with the aim of building capacity for sustained mobilisation and the development of joint alternatives. We are committed to supporting and encouraging all people to have their voices heard in reshaping their societies.

We will meet again on the 18th and 19th of April 2009 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in order to develop the next steps of mobilisation and strategies towards change. We call upon all social movements and social organisations to join this process.