• What is the role of the CGT union's security service?

    And, above all, what type of material can he legally dispose of during an event? 

  • Many Internet users have asked themselves the question the day after the clashes in the Parisian procession on May 1, even if it means taking photos of 2016 out of context.

  • 20 Minutes

    takes stock.

Between 106,650 and 170,000 demonstrators, 56 arrests, 21 members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) injured in Paris… The day of May 1 gave rise to a memorable financial report, both because of the large mobilization and the clashes that occurred in different processions.

But it is above all the Parisian images of tensions and violence between the CGT security service and certain demonstrators that have marked the spirits.

While the prosecution has opened an investigation for “willful violence” and “degradation”, several Internet users are questioning the union's self-defense capacities… and the legality of these practices.

"Is it normal that the CGT security service is equipped with a baton and ready to use it against demonstrators?"

You'd think you were seeing a cop, ”a Facebook publication, together with a screenshot showing a man striking a stick of defense in the back of another person, is surprised.

"Let me introduce you to the CGT and its bodyguards… But tell me, in the truck, is all this legal…?"

"Asks another viral post, illustrated with several different photos, one showing a group of people with CGT armbands and baseball bats, the other showing the interior of a vehicle filled with protective helmets. and a substantial stock of bats.

FAKE OFF

This latest series of photos suggests - especially because we see a man wearing a surgical mask - that they were taken on May 1, 2021, but it is not: they actually date from May 2016, as A blog post from the time attests to this.

Various media had also echoed it, like

L'Obs

.

On the other hand, the screenshot of the man with the baton was taken on May 1, 2021: it can be found from 2'30 in the images filmed by Line Press.

We also see on several occasions (at 2'31 and 5'19) another member of the security service using a gas on demonstrators.

Contacted by

20 Minutes

, Benjamin Amar, spokesperson for CGT Val-de-Marne and member of the union's national office, is offended: “Some people seem to be rediscovering the Moon or the law of gravity. The CGT's security service has existed for decades with a very clear mandate: to secure our processions. Its role is to protect the demonstrators and the procession of its journey from point A to point B, because the demonstrations have always been the target of our class enemies and also of police repression. "

Isabelle Sommier, professor of sociology at the University of Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne and co-author of the book

Violences politique en France. From 1986 to the present day,

abounds: “The order service (or SO) of the unions was first set up to authorize demonstrations in a certain way: historically, they gave rise to violence and were prohibited. At the start of the 20th century, Clémenceau therefore set out as a requirement, in order to authorize demonstrations, that order be ensured and these SOs were put in place in 1909. "

“They were designed to allow these gatherings to take place in peace, protecting the demonstrators from the police as well as from outside groups who came to break up the demonstrator.

Generally, the SOs therefore ensure calm, unless the political will is to go to confrontation, as was the case in 1952 when General Ridgway came to Paris, when the demonstration organized by the Communists had turned violence, ”continues the specialist.

"Equipment proportional to anticipated threats"

In practice, the security services, made up of union members, are therefore free to acquire the means of protection they deem necessary to carry out their missions. “They use equipment that they consider proportionate to the anticipated threats,” explains Isabelle Sommier. During the great period of tension between the CGT and the extreme left, the CGT was very well equipped. Then there was a period when the protests were going on calmly, so their SO almost went with their hands in their pockets. But in recent years, in view of the hostility to mobilizations and trade union action, which in particular led to attacks against the CGT headquarters, the SO has re-equipped. "

Benjamin Amar admits it openly: in recent years, the CGT's security service has not hesitated to resort to important equipment when it seemed necessary. “The photos [of the baseball bats] in 2016 were taken under police repression by Manuel Valls, at a time when the CGT was under a joint attack by law enforcement and radical elements. "

And if the trade unionist sees the work of the extreme right in the clashes of May 1, 2021, for Isabelle Sommier, these clashes "clearly show that we are again in a phase of tension between the demonstrators equivalent to what we have known in the 1970s, with on the one hand the CGT which wants to organize peaceful mobilisations, and on the other autonomous ones who want an offensive demonstration and consider the SO as a means of channeling the procession.

"

Society

May 1 parade: Vehicles vandalized, militants attacked and insulted ... What we know about violence against CGT militants

Media

Report information that you think is false to the "Fake Off" team of "20 Minutes"

  • Demonstration

  • Society

  • CGT

  • May 1

  • Paris

  • Union

  • Fake off

  • Fact checking