Put a lid on it! How the pot became a global protest symbol

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent public appearances have been met with a clamour of pot clanging by demonstrators furious over his decision to hike the retirement age.

As authorities try to put the lid on the protests, we look at how the humble kitchen utensil became a global symbol of resistance.

Bashing the French king

The saucepan’s second life as a symbol of politically charged protest began in 1830s France after the July Revolution that led to the abdication of Charles X.

Republicans opposed to the new king, Louis Philippe, “sought to make their voices heard by borrowing from reality a customary ritual” known as charivari, or making loud noise, French historian Emmanuel Fureix explained to France Culture radio in 2017.

The ritual dated from the Middle Ages when villagers sought to humiliate an ill-matched marriage — generally a widower to a much younger bride — with a thundering concert of c, known in French as “casseroles”.

Hullabaloo in Latin America

The saucepan’s leap to global usage came in the 20th century.

In the 1950s and 1960s there was pot-bashing in Algeria during the country’s war of independence, by supporters of the French far-right paramilitary group OAS who wanted to keep the country French.

But the pot only really began to make a racket when it crossed the Atlantic to Latin America, where the ear-splitting tradition of mass “cacerolazos” — banging pots with wooden spoons or bashing them together like cymbals — was born.

The first major breakout came in 1971 in Chile against food shortages during the regime of Salvador Allende.

Forty years later, tens of thousands of pot bangers took to the streets of Buenos Aires after finding themselves cut off from their bank savings in the midst of a severe economic crisis.

Since then the saucepan has been a tool of protest across the globe, from Myanmar to Canada.

Pots in the closet

Clanging pots have returned loudly in France in recent decades to express discontent with politicians and policies.

In 2017, the campaign rallies of conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon drew sporadic saucepan protests, in a play on the French expression “trainer des casseroles” (skeletons in the closet).

Fillon’s “saucepans” related to a scandal that would scupper his candidacy and land him with a jail sentence, when it was revealed he had given his wife a fake job as a parliamentary assistant.

From street to smartphone

Six years later, President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular pension reforms have elicited a new chorus of pot banging.

Pot concerts were organised countrywide on Monday evening to drown out the president when he addressed the nation after signing into law a bill that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.

On Thursday, authorities in the southern Herault region announced a ban on “portable sound equipment” ahead of the president’s visit to the area.

While the move may force protesters to shelve their pots, smartphone apps such as “iCacerolazo” and “Cassolada 2.0” that reproduce the metal clanging suggest they won’t be easily silenced.