In Spain the students fought the dictator Franco. In the United States, students were to the fore in the movement against the Vietnam war and in the black consciousness and civil rights movement in the South. In Northern Ireland, students were involved in an upsurge of struggle against anti-Catholic discrimination. Intellectuals, students and sections of the workers in Czechoslovakia were being drawn into a profound political ferment known as the 'Prague Spring'.

Big battles had erupted in all the major university towns of Germany. An attempt was even made on the life of the student leader Rudi Dutschke. In Britain as elsewhere students were on the march in their tens of thousands against the American war in Vietnam. Although the student struggles were symptomatic of deeper social conflicts, nowhere else other than in France did they spark off a general strike of workers, let alone one that could have brought to an end the rule of capital.

What is the explanation? It lies not in any superior methods adopted by the French students, but in the coming together of all the political and social preconditions for revolution - the combustible material. The bonapartism of de Gaulle acted as an additional and aggravating 'detonator'.

French students had been involved in big movements against the Algerian war in the early 1960s. They had demonstrated as vociferously as any in support of the struggle in Vietnam for independence. This was a particularly potent issue because it revived the memories of France's inglorious attempt to hold on to its former colony of Indo-China. It was after France's catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu that US imperialism had assumed domination of South Vietnam.

In Early 1968 it was protests against a restrictive education system and archaic rules which erupted into open clashes on the campuses. With the renowned subtlety of a frightened bureaucracy, the authorities called in the forces of the state. On a number of occasions, police 'put down' the troubles. At the beginning of May some students from Nanterre, including Daniel Cohn Bendit, were to be tried in the university courts for 'disrupted behaviour'. A battle between students and fascists loomed. On May 2, Roche, the Director, closed Nanterre University.

The next day, students from Nanterre gathering peacefully with those of the Sorbonne, were viscously attacked by the hated riot police - the CRS - and hundreds of students were arrested. Lectures at the Sorbonne and the Censier Annexe were suspended. Anger mounted and the University Teachers' Union (SneSUP) called a strike. This was promptly declared illegal by the Education Minister, Alain Peyrefitte.

On Sunday 5 May, students arrested on the previous days' demonstrations were summarily imprisoned and fined. All hell broke loose! Demonstrations were banned and the university strikes spread to the secondary schools. Each application of the iron fist aroused more anger and determination on the part of the students.

On Monday 6 May, a defiant 60,000-strong demonstration in the Latin Quarter of Paris was attacked by the riot police, with a brutality which aroused widespread sympathy for the students among the population of Paris. It aroused, too, the indignation of workers everywhere as news of the atrocities reached them over the radio. To protect themselves, the students began to throw up barricades with anything to hand. This was the first time barricades had appeared on the streets of Paris since 1944, when the workers rose up against the German army before the Allied forces had reached the capital city.

At the end of a night of bloody battles 739 injured were taken to hospital. Many hundreds more were cared for in the homes of Parisians. The middle class were stunned and horrified. In the days that followed numerous eye-witness reports appeared in the French newspapers. One doctor wrote 'with all the bitterness of my powerlessness' to Le Monde of what he had just seen from his window:

On various occasions when the police were forced back applause burst out on the balconies. No hostility was displayed towards the demonstrators - on the contrary radios, food and refuge were provided. A poll indicated that 80 per cent of the Paris population were behind the students. The government had misjudged and banked on a tiny group of agitators being isolated. Peyrefitte had spoken of 'a handful of troublemakers'. Scandalously the leaders of the 'Communist' Party had echoed these sentiments, suggesting that the movement of the students was the work of grouplets or 'groupuscules' - Trotskyists, anarchists - even OAS and CIA agents!

The events of 6 May led to days of demonstrations, street fighting and the setting up of barricades. As the students' numbers grew and the young workers joined them on the barricades they taunted the government and the Communist Party leaders with shouts of 'we are a groupuscule'. On their growing demonstrations the cries went up: 'Students and workers solidarity', 'Free our comrades!', 'Police out of the Latin Quarter!' and 'Re-open the universities!'. After the revolution of 1848, the Prefect of Police, Haussmann, had ordered the redesigning of Partis with wide boulevards to prevent the city ever again from being blockaded by barricades. The very cobblestones with which the boulevards were made, formed ideal building blocks for the barricades of May 1968! Workers lent their expertise and their pneumatic drills to assist with digging up the pavés (cobblestones) for the more rapid and effective construction of defences.

On 10 May, on what became known as 'The Night of the Barricades' more than 60 such constructions were thrown up. The police resorted to everything but shooting. Teargas, smoke bombs and even CS gas were used. Residents, at the request of the students, poured water from their houses to relieve the irritation to eyes and skin. The gas had penetrated the Metro (underground system) even causing distress to passengers traveling underneath the Latin Quarter!

In one incident thirty rounds of tear gas were launched into a cafe. Since the first attacks by the riot police students had chanted 'CRS-SS'. In this incident the CRS sought revenge, threatening, 'You'll see if we're the SS!' A first-year philosophy student described how she had been forced back a number of times into the downstairs toilet of this cafe. A number of other women were with her screaming and lying on the floor praying! She was overcome by the gas and the hysteria. Half-conscious, she was unaware until she was brought out of the cafe that she had lost the sight of both eyes!

The results of the battles on the Rue Gay Lussac were so horrific that doctors demanded publicly that the police be prosecuted. Police vehicles were reported to have mowed into demonstrators. On one occasion a pedestrian was carried thirty yards on a front bumper and the driver said he hadn't seen him! On the night of 10 May when the CRS stormed the barricades, they would not even allow the Red Cross to move in and pick up the injured.

The previous day Peyrefitte had refused to allow Nanterre to be opened. Generalised anger against the government's brutal response to the students' protests had reached boiling point. The leaders of the major trade union federations and the left parties were compelled to make the call for a 24-hour general strike for Monday, 13 May. Prime Minister Pompidou announced the reopening of the Sorbonne and the withdrawal of the police. But it was too little, too late! The floodgates were open and would not be firmly closed until well into the month of June. De Gaulle's dictum 'the state never retreats' turns to dust! It is the beginning of the end for him.

The government's partial climb-down did not satisfy the students but it was sufficient to encourage millions of workers to follow the students' example - to strike and occupy for their own demands. The workers, especially young workers, were fired by the example of action - the boldness and the élan demonstrated by the students engaged in struggle. The students had moved initially over grievances arising from the highly centralised education system but rapidly they began to question the whole structure of society. They acted as a trigger to the movement of the workers. Unfortunately this gave the students the illusion that they were a motor force. In reality the conditions for the workers' movement had already been prepared.