The Eurotunnel was blocked for a second time this week as striking French ferry workers set tyres alight on the track. No trains were running for three hours, and only a restricted service will run tonight.
Not content with simply withdrawing their labour, around 30-40 of the marauding Frenchman, intent on causing maximum disruption to workers and holidaymakers on both sides of the channel, cut their way through fencing to ignite the blaze.
The chaos caused by last week’s strikes gave the three thousand migrants camped out in Calais a perfect opportunity to try board lorries en masse, prompting the British government to send two kilometers of new fencing to France to booster security.
Gilles Garnier, a member of the French Communist Party’s National Executive Committee, told The Local, “It’s totally normal in a democratic society that strikes are allowed. Strikes are only forbidden in fascist regimes or dictatorships.” He added, without a hint of irony, that industrial action in France now is “nothing like it used to be.”
The French have certainly been on top form of late. Last Thursday Courtney Love said she would be “safer in Baghdad” after protesting French taxi drivers held her hostage in her car and shut down much of Paris.
A few hundred air traffic controllers caused disruption across most of the continent back in April by calling a last minute strike, and are already threatening a repeat this coming Thursday.
The episode has served to reinforce some time-honored stereotypes about our socialist cousin from across the channel.
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