“Monster mess”
,
“incalculable financial waste”
,
“fatal accidents, multiple fights”
, the words keep coming.
Le Figaro
almost choked on Monday February 20, 1984 by reporting the events which marked a catastrophic weekend on the country's roads.
A strike by truck drivers has caused a historic traffic jam, particularly on mountain roads in the midst of the winter holidays.
If the SNCF has chosen today to protect trains to the Alps from the controllers' strike movement, 40 years ago, vacationers found themselves effectively stranded in winter sports resorts.
The
“sweet carelessness”
was quickly followed by the
“blackest panic”
.
Monster traffic jam
The movement started the previous Monday from Italian and French customs officers posted on the Mont-Blanc tunnel.
They launched a work-to-rule strike that day to protest against their working conditions.
Immobilized at the border, the truck drivers become impatient, anger builds and then explodes.
They too, without a slogan, decided to block the Mont-Blanc and Fréjus tunnels.
Then come the demands against the traffic constraints imposed on them.
During the night from Thursday to Friday, thousands of trucks blocked the A6 but also the national and departmental roads.
The truck drivers get in the way of the railway tracks, leading to a complete stoppage of connections to the Savoie and Haute-Savoie stations.
On the road to Cluses, the boss of a transport company goes so far as to set fire to one of his trucks and threatens to do the same to his 60 other vehicles.
Le Figaro of February 18, 1984. Le Figaro
From Fontainebleau to Mont Blanc, everything is petrified.
“Gigantic thrombosis, immense imbroglio”
, tells
Le Figaro
the day after Black Friday.
In the weekend, the blockages extend to other regions.
Exasperated motorists try to get out of the trap and cause fatal accidents.
Fights break out between “very nervous”
truckers
and those who try to force their way through.
Tourists attack truck drivers with stones.
The gendarmes and police try to act as a buffer while the army cranes fail to move the trucks.
Anger and brotherhood
Between Cluses and Chamonix, at minus ten degrees, there are around twenty dams.
“Hundreds of vacationers,”
says
Le Figaro, “abandon their cars and set off, backpacks and skis on their shoulders, to attack resorts sometimes 40 kilometers away
. ”
An ulcerated driver dreams
of “dynamite attacks”
, others scold
“irresponsible people who take revenge on women and children”
.
But the newspaper also observes scenes of brotherhood when farmers come to bring food, bread, Camembert and wine, to the braziers.
Sometimes dialogue takes place between strikers and tourists.
Medicines were parachuted into stations, gymnasiums and schools were requisitioned, bakers
“hurriedly cooked additional batches”
.
A thousand calves trapped in trucks transporting them from the Netherlands to Italy are saved by an association.
They are transported to the slaughterhouse in Chamonix, where they are bottle-fed.
Who is responsible for this nightmare situation?
Truck drivers, customs officers, the State?
Le Figaro
, through the voice of Alain Peyrefitte, criticizes the socialist government which tolerates the strikers - customs workers, postal workers, teachers - supervised by left-wing organizations and sends the CRS on small independent bosses,
"thus right-wing"
.
Another demonstration, called
“
right-wing
”
, was held that Saturday.
After Bordeaux, 400,000 people marched in Rennes in favor of free schools.