Hold the “
points of tension
” defensively and, above all, act tactfully to prevent peasant discontent from escalating and the negotiations led by the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, from ending up in a ditch.
Since Sunday evening, the 15,000 police officers and gendarmes announced by Gérald Darmanin, many of them from Republican security companies and mobile gendarmerie squadrons, have deployed across the country in anticipation of several days of standoff.
The bulk of the troops are mobilized in the Paris region where, according to intelligence services, more than a thousand tractors are likely to converge to carry out a “siege”, the outcome of which no one can predict.
No less than four helicopters fly over the agricultural convoys to anticipate movements, followed on the ground by discreet devices whose instructions are
to “accompany and provide security in order to avoid the tragedies which mourned the start of the movement
”, in reference to the tragedy of Pamiers, in Ariège, where a farmer and her daughter were killed last Tuesday on a dam by a crazy car.
Also read “We are not the dog!”: on the A10 in Yvelines, angry but disciplined farmers
As during the riots this summer or at the height of the “yellow vests”, the wheeled armored vehicles of the gendarmerie (VBRG) were taken out of the barracks to show the determination of the executive.
Aiming to act as a deterrent, they are methodically filtering access to the market of national interest at Rungis, which a convoy of 150 tractors leaving Agen on Monday morning, at the initiative of the Rural Coordination, wishes to encircle, starting this Tuesday.
While other blue armored vehicles protect the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly airports, machines still remain in “
intervention reserve
” in their Satory base but also in the Marseille and Lyon regions.
“
Ultimately, if the situation were to deteriorate, their blade could be used to move agricultural machinery
,” confides a law enforcement executive.
At the request of the police chief, heavy tow trucks could also be used.
In general, the deployment of force gives pause to farmers, who fear that their work tools will be taken away.
»
Sixteen highways disrupted
“
For the moment, the mobilization is starting to pick up but we are not yet at the level of last Friday
,” said an officer on Monday, while the gendarmerie noted at midday some 70 actions ranging from the filter dam to the spreading hay or manure around shopping centers through blockages.
According to our information, sixteen highways are disrupted and around thirty rural or peri-urban departments are affected.
If the beginning of the discontent was still "
a little wild
" and "
without organization
", as Gérald Darmanin described it on Sunday after a meeting at the interministerial crisis center, the movement now seems better oiled and ready to register its action over time.
The police and gendarmes will therefore be walking on eggshells, unaware of the difficulty of tackling this profession which is both popular and sometimes very rough and which has nothing left to lose.
There is a heavy liability inscribed in collective and social memories
Jean-Marc Berlière, professor emeritus of contemporary history and specialist in the history of the police in France
“
Relations between farmers and the police have been marked by a series of considerable tragedies
,” recalls Jean-Marc Berlière, professor emeritus of contemporary history and specialist in the history of the police in France.
Jumbled together, the academic evokes the bloody clashes between the gendarmes and Breton peasants, who wanted to defend their priests at the time of the inventory following the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State;
the revolt of the southern winegrowers, in 1907, which ended in a bloodbath in Narbonne when Clemenceau sent the troops in June;
the assault on August 22, 1975 of a wine cellar in Aléria, in Corsica, which cost the lives of two mobile gendarmes;
or the shooting at a roadblock of operators in Montredon-des-Corbières (Aude), in March 1976, which caused the shooting death of an activist from the wine action committee and a CRS commander.
Also read Angry farmers: a long history of revolts
“
Even if most of the police officers, gendarmes and those demonstrating today were not born at the time of these terrible affairs, there is a heavy liability inscribed in collective and social memories
,” assures Professor Berlière.
Before emphasizing:
“The gendarmes, many of whom are provincial, or even from rural areas, are well aware that the farmers are at their wits’ end.
Unless there is a serious incident and organized rampages, they tend to look with an eye full of sympathy on this profession that they encounter on a daily basis and which is fighting for its survival.
»
It remains to be seen whether the unions, some of which are internally divided, will manage to maintain their exhausted base.
And the most radical fringe of which could lead to a deadly confrontation.