It began with a petition. In May 2018, Priscillia Ludosky, a gently spoken French-Martinique small-business owner who sold natural cosmetic products, launched a call on Change.org for lower prices on petrol at the pumps. It gathered steam and she was contacted by Eric Drouet, a lorry driver. Together they organised a protest against a carbon tax on petrol that was due to be implemented the following year (notably, this was not long after Emmanuel Macron cut taxes for the ultra-rich). The call was eventually answered by hundreds of thousands of people across France, in rural areas and cities. The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement was born.
Its participants are now celebrating the fifth anniversary of a movement that politicised many people across France, uniting them in rage at the “president of the rich”. I remember the first protest in Troyes in the Champagne region, where I was living at the time. I was taken aback by how angry people were as they banged at the gates of the town hall in their hi-vis jackets, venting their frustration at the daily struggles of life in post-2008 France, where average disposable incomes had dropped over several years. French protests are always lively, but as the journalist John Lichfield observed, “the white-hot anger” of the gilets jaunes was “something new and different”. As it turned out, Macron was surprised too. He abandoned the tax after just over three weeks of protest, leaving the French political class in total shock at what had just happened.
