A trip from the Intergalactique camp to the local supermarket took an unexpected turn today when we found ourselves in the midst of several hundred people on their way to protest at a meeting of the French Socialist Party. Much like New Labour in Britain, the Socialist Party in France has more in common with the G8 leaders in Evian than with those of us who want to expose the effects of their policies. Given this, a group decided to pay a visit to a meeting of the "Socialists" in Annemasse and we went along for the ride :-)

For a tense 30 minutes or so outside the meeting, demonstraters banged on the windows and tried to get in to the hall. Eventually stones and other things to hand were thrown at, and then through, the windows. The police, who were nowhere to be seen before this point, soon arrived. They were very quick to use tear gas which sent the crowd slowly back towards the camp. Local people were cheering us on and throwing bottles of water from their windows and balconys for us to wash off the gas. One family were lowering a bucket from their balcony for our empty water bottles which they re-filled and passed back to us.

The police then spent several hours pushing the crowd back towards the camp, firing a lot of gas as they went. I think the action was useful in that it made clear to the French Socialist Party that their version of Socialism (i.e. neo-liberalism!) is not a part of our movement of movements for social change and globalisation from below! It was also good to see so much support from local people :-)