Back to school "hot" or "difficult": little story of a ritual expression

"Blood, toil, tears and sweat," predicted Winston Churchill at the start of the Second World War. The start of the school year will be "difficult", the executive regularly alerts this year. The adjective was notably used by Emmanuel Macron in his interview with the regional press (including Le Parisien), on July 2.

The head of state and government hide nothing about the economic storm that is about to cross the country because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The most serious crisis "since the last world war", even insisted the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, in his speech of general policy, Wednesday July 15. The start of the new school year also promises to be hot on the social front, while a new round of consultations is opening up on pension reform.

"Political and social folklore"

If we put aside the exceptional nature of the current period, speaking of a “difficult” or “hot” return to school is nothing new. Each summer, as holiday departures approach, these expressions come back into the mouths of union officials and elected officials, in the media, to the point of having become commonplace. "This is now part of political and social folklore," said the communicator Philippe Moreau Chevrolet.

Caregivers and Yellow Vests.
The start of the school year is likely to be hot. @JeanCASTEX and @GDarmanin will have to defuse the 3 years of Macron, Philippe and Castaner if he does not want an explosive social crisis. Https://t.co/6LKAa7gttq

The historian of social movements Danielle Tartakowsky traces back to the early 1980s this expression of "hot" return. "From the turn of the rigor in 1982, we observed an acceleration of the unraveling of the social state which caused great mobilizations", she explains to the Parisian.

The term often announces strong protests against a government project. In 2010, CGT leader Bernard Thibault called on activists and citizens to demonstrate on September 4 "in opposition to the stigma strategies" of Nicolas Sarkozy and the ministers. In 2012, unionists intended to "block production or the exit of vehicles for sales" in order to protest against the layoffs of jobs in the automobile industry. In 2019, pension reform was at the heart of the mobilization announced.

More rarely, the “hot” return to school returns to a political sequence, for example when a highly contested internal election is announced within a party. Like, in 2014, with the prospect of the return of Nicolas Sarkozy to take the presidency of the UMP (ex Les Républicains).

Avoid demobilization during the summer

On the social level, the aim for the bosses of trade union organizations and the elected officials classified on the left is above all to avoid demobilization during the summer. “The summer vacation period is not conducive to collective action. It is quite natural that, at the beginning, the unions project themselves towards a more distant horizon, ”underlines Danielle Tartakowsky.

This year, the start of the school year is therefore described as “difficult” at the highest level of the State. "There will be between 800,000 and a million more unemployed by the spring of 2021," even Emmanuel Macron projected during his television interview on July 14. “Macron and the government are trying to anticipate in order to be able, possibly, to play down when the time comes. It's a bit: these things go beyond us, let's pretend to be the organizer, ”points out Philippe Moreau Chevrolet.

"We know that we will have a difficult social start." @GabrielAttal #BFMPolitics

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Opposite, the unions are already promising to mobilize, in particular against the pension reform project which will not be abandoned. The CGT calls to demonstrate on September 17 "to demand another policy, in terms of employment and wages, and signify the end of any regressive reform in retirement."

Unions overtaken by yellow vests in 2018

From there to predict a strong mobilization? “Today, we do not need to announce that the start of the school year will be complicated to know that it will be. We are all convinced of this. But just because a comeback promises to be difficult doesn't mean that it will necessarily be hot, ”notes Danielle Tartakowsky. A glance at the past proves him right. In 2003, for example, "the hot start did not take place", had titled 20 minutes in October.

In other years, on the other hand, mobilization comes from where it is not expected. In 2018, if the return to work promised to be busy with the presentation of the poverty plan and negotiations on unemployment insurance, the unions were quickly taken aback by the yellow vests. Born of the increase in fuel taxes, the movement organized its first demonstration on November 17.

Vests demonstrate in Paris, Saturday November 17, 2018 / LP / Guillaume Georges  

For more than a year, every Saturday, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the country's largest cities. “People are increasingly escaping injunctions. It is quite possible that there will again be a massive confrontation, as with the Yellow Vests, which no one would have seen coming, ”judge Philippe Moreau Chevrolet.

PODCAST. Yellow vests: a year ago, disillusionment (Part 3)

It is impossible to say this year what forms the mobilizations will take. The health context could limit major events, especially if the epidemic starts again. The only certainty: the crisis is particularly strong. But anyway, as Danielle Tartakowsky sums it up: "If we didn't say today that going back to school would be hot or difficult, we would wonder what is going on ..."