A very French education: riot police, tear gas, and wheelie bins

Last year, when yellow vest riots were weekly events in Paris, I joked with my teenage son it was time for him to fight the cops. This week riot police paid a less than friendly visit to his school, reports Rory Mulholland in Paris

School’s out: French riot police outside the Lycee Colbert, central Paris last week (L Mulholland)

“Right, son, it’s time you became a man. Let’s go and fight the police,” I told my then 15-year-old sometime last year. It was a Saturday afternoon, and on Saturday afternoons for quite a while it was likely that somewhere in Paris “yellow vest” protesters or anarchists were looting shops, ripping up street furniture, or battling riot cops.

This particular weekend the action was conveniently at Place de la Republique, a few minutes walk from our home in the 10th arrondissement. My son was momentarily perturbed at the thought of wrestling with a robocop, before realising that his old man was winding him up again. But off we went to see what was going on in the square dominated by the statue of Marianne, the female embodiment of the French Republic.  

Paris security forces were by now well versed in dealing with the gilets jaunes. They’d been caught off guard when hordes of them laid waste to the Champs Elysees, and were now adept at “kettling” the unruly.