With thousands of protesters arrested in France, Scotland’s Republican Socialist Platform (RSP) joins left-wing organisations around the world in calling for solidarity donations and messages.
The RSP have today donated €250 of our members’ money to the legal defence fund of France’s grassroots anti-repression organisation Coord antirép, and we encourage others in Scotland to do the same.
We stand unequivocally in solidarity with the students, young people, trade unionists and workers who have taken to the streets in towns and cities across France to demand better conditions in schools and properly funded public services.
We utterly deplore the authoritarian response of the Macron government, with widespread arrests and indiscriminate violence doled out by police and paramilitary forces – in some cases in collusion with far-right thugs.
Across Europe, mass working-class movements for change are challenging the status quo of spending cuts, skyrocketing prices and criminally low wages, as well as the fake alternative of fascism and climate collapse. This is why the far-right in Scotland and abroad have spread racist lies about the nature of events in France, blaming clashes on “migrants”.
As socialists and republicans, we recognise the necessity of working-class organisation and struggle to successfully overcome the rule of the rich, and therefore welcome the calls for general strikes in France as well as in Italy, Spain and Belgium.
From Scotland, we urge socialists, republicans, trade unionists and activists to offer direct, practical support by donating to grassroots organisations supporting arrestees, such as the legal defence fund of the Coordination contre la répression et les violences policières Paris/IDF (Coordination Against Repression and Police Violence Paris/Île-de-France).
Photo credit: Pascal Dazay / Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)