Since Emmanuel Macron forced through his plans to raise the pension age in France last week, public dismay over the change to a fiercely protected feature of French social policy has been bubbling. On Thursday night, at the end of the ninth day of nationwide protests since January, that anger reached boiling point.
The most visible symbol of the tensions came in video from Bordeaux, where the doors of the city hall were set alight after a day of intensifying action on the streets. The blaze was quickly put out by firefighters. But all across the country, the unpopularity of Macron’s plans was plainly visible. The authorities put the number of people on the streets at 1.1 million, while unions said it was about 3.5 million.
