At the end of the 1960s, there was only one university in Lyon. It brought together the four faculties: law and medicine college, traditionally right, and the facs of letters and sciences, marked on the left.
For students, the conditions were quite precarious. The Doua campus in Villeurbanne had just opened and was still a huge muddy land. And the other buildings appeared to be dilapidated, especially those of the Quai Claude Bernard where many students were forced to take the lessons on the stairs.
With 60,000 protagonists, students represent 15% of the Lyon population.
Apart from college, young Lyonnais are increasingly casting an archaic society, with media and justice in the boot of political power. The police could be very violent since the end of the Algerian war. And then there was a certain puritanism in high schools and university cities, where diversity remained prohibited.
It is also to demand the diversity that university residences were blocked at the beginning of 1968.
In Lyon, three main protest forces emerge.
There are Maoists, with many philosophy students such as Jean-Claude Rey and especially Alain Charnomordic, a passionate and an excellent speaker.
The anarchists of the slopes of the Croix-Rousse mainly recruit among students in sociology but are poorly structured, without leader.
And the protest far left, with figures like Pierre Masson, a rather methodical and reserved economy student, and unionists of the CFDT like Claude Huissou, posed but determined.
The objective was clearly political: to reverse General de Gaulle to give power to students and workers.
A very violent police
On the authorities’ side, the prefect of the Rhône Max Moulins analyzes the situation as many of his peers. And prefers strength to dialogue with students. Which will eventually degenerate.
The trigger for May 68 is the violent burden of the police against Parisian students on Boulevard Saint-Michel on May 3.
In Lyon, the strike is immediate. Students of letters and INSA are the first to mobilize. Then all the other facs followed from May 5, except that of deemed law deemed quite reactive.
But the strikers organize themselves to prevent students from entering universities, going so far as to weld the doors!
As a result, on May 10, all the facs are occupied by students who organized debates, some even sleep on the spot.
On May 13, a large demonstration took place in the streets of the capital of Gaul. More than 25,000 people parade from the peninsula to the Rhodia factory in Vaise. Students receive the welcome reinforcement of workers, but also “Trimards”, young and marginalized living in the suburbs. Unheard of since the strikes in May 1936 …
The slogan of the demonstration is still little inspired: “Ten years, that’s enough”. In reference to the longevity of Charles de Gaulle in power.
Local policies are surprised by this movement. Mayor Louis Pradel especially does not want to make waves and does not react. While the prefect and the rector no longer receive orders from Paris because of the vacancy of power, and frame the movements at least.
-In addition, many strategic sites are stopped such as the port of Gerland or the Feyzin refinery. And several temples of consumption and cultural institutions are also on strike.
“In short, Lyon belonged to us!”summarized for Lyonmag Gérard Mouret, one of the main leaders of May 68 in Lyon.
Galvanized by the situation, some students aim to take the assault prefecture to put pressure. But certain dissonant voices such as those of the CGT and the Communist Party recall that De Gaulle would then be forced to involve the army. An escalation of violence that many did not want. But others were determined to enter into front conflict with the authorities.
And on May 24, a new attempt to take the Rhône prefecture was organized. Feeling the blow to prepare, the prefect Max Moulins sends police on the Lafayette bridge to block the path to students. At the lacrymogenic grenade jets, the demonstrators reply with stones. Barricades are even erected in the Cordeliers.
Shortly before midnight, two trimards by the name of Michel Raton and Marcel Munch launch a truck stolen on a site on the police and stones with the accelerator blocked by a pavement. A terrible accident which causes the death of Commissioner René Lacroix.
A striking episode for Lyonnais who immediately distance themselves from the student movement hitherto more festive than dangerous. The next day, many of them come to flower the bridge where the commissioner was killed.
The toll is heavy: three dead including two demonstrators, and about fifty hospitalized, mainly police.
Gaullist counterattack
Power jumps at the opportunity to overthrow opinion and switch police violence in the background. Prime Minister Georges Pompidou evokes “An obvious attempt to trigger the start of a civil war, as also demonstrated what happened in big cities like Lyon”.
Moreover, the day after the death of the Lacroix Commissioner, massive arrests were made. And very rare are the voices to rise in Lyon to denounce it. More than 200 people are arrested.
In the streets, the Gaullists organize a demonstration on May 30. At the top of the procession bringing together tens of thousands of people, a certain Michel Noir, who will then become mayor of the city. In other cities such as Marseille or Lille, these counter-demonstrations make dumps. But in Lyon, there is a start, even a rejection. Even Louis Pradel displays his support by welcoming the procession from the Town Hall balcony.
If the striking students parade the same day to oppose the Gaullists, their movement runs out of steam. The fault of workers who gradually resume work, wrung financially by as many weeks without pay.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia in July by Soviet troops finished dividing the students deeply.
And the exams therefore resume in September in most Lyon faculties.
Marcel Munch and Michel Raton will be acquitted by the Assize Court of the Rhône in the fall of 1970, because the testimony of an intern will reveal that Commissioner René Lacroix, 51, died of a heart attack in the Edouard-Herriot hospital, and not overthrown by the truck. It was he who had taken care of him in the emergency room, and he had proclaimed since when existing evidence of this infarction then disappeared.
This means that today, the exact cause of René Lacroix’s death remains a subject of debate.
In addition to the departure of Charles de Gaulle in 1969, the movement of May 68 made it possible to develop society with greater independence from the media, mix in establishments, the right to abortion …
There is also the creation of the Lyon III University, which makes it possible to no longer make lawyers and literary cohabit, too opposed to the political level. The first sex shops also appear in town after May 68.
Most local leaders continued their fight differently. Jean-Marie Keunebrock, member of AGEL, founded Radio Canut in the late 1970s. Gérard Mouret entered Renault Industrial Vehicle (RVI) where he developed bus networks for Venezuela and Africa.
Faced with the Gaullist surge in the legislative elections in June 68, the left reorganized with the creation of the Socialist Party the following year. In Lyon, some activists then embarked on this adventure which will not bear fruit until thirty years later. Among them, Gérard Collomb or Jean-Jack Queyranne…
