How 'Operation escargot' slowly drove a country to a standstill

The elderly man in metal-rimmed glasses watched the digital counter spinning on the petrol pump with a grumpy and self-righteous expression.

The elderly man in metal-rimmed glasses watched the digital counter spinning on the petrol pump with a grumpy and self-righteous expression.

Five litres, 10 litres, 15 litres, 20 litres, 30 litres... "Non," shouted someone in the queue behind. "The limit is 15 litres per person..." " Je m'en foue (I don't give a stuff) about the limit," said the man in glasses. "I have driven 50km to find this station. I'm filling up." There was a little shoving and a little name-calling (mostly the French equivalents of "swine" and "old fart"). But what could anyone do? Attempt to siphon the petrol out of the old cheat's car?

Jean-Pierre, the exhausted but just-about-cheerful cashier in one of the few petrol stations in lower Normandy still to have any petrol (though no diesel), shrugged his shoulders. "Of course no one respects the official limit," he said. "In France no one respects anything. I've been shouted at and threatened. What am I supposed to do? I just hope we run out of fuel soon, so I can go home."

This scene - on the A13 autoroute east of Caen - was repeated in varying forms yesterday all over provincial France, except in the eight out of 10 service stations decorated by red and white tape and signs reading: "No fuel". Even if you did have some petrol in your tank, you were unlikely to travel very far or very fast.

Every 50 miles, and in almost all large towns, there was a taxi drivers' demonstration, a farmers' blockade or, most infuriating of all, an "operation escargot": a rolling barricade of 500 or more lorries rumbling down all three lanes of the motorway at 10mph.

Ted and Gillian Heyhoe from Salisbury had just avoided the fishermen's blockade last week and driven to the south of France to start a two-week holiday. I met them putting the regulation 15 litres into their car at a motorway service station near Rouen. "We've had enough. We're going home early," Mr Heyhoe said. "There's no petrol at all in the south. We limped up here from petrol station to petrol station, then we ran into a bloody great taxi protest in Rouen. Where are the police? I'd like to see a policeman, even if only to strangle him."

France, the world's fourth biggest economy, has become a dysfunctional country. Dysfunctional and increasingly bad-tempered. In the fourth day of the blockade of oil refineries by lorry companies, farmers, private ambulances and a motley collection of other protesters against the high price of fuel, life remained virtually undisturbed in Paris (except for a taxi-drivers' "operation escargot"). The rest of the country coasts inexorably to a halt, like a shiny, expensive car with an empty tank.

At Lyons, Nantes and Caen airports, flights were cancelled for lack of aviation fuel. School buses were cancelled in the Vosges and the Massif Central. Supplies of fresh food to the Rungis market outside Paris began to thin out. Tens of thousands of rural people - including many here in Calvados - could no longer drive to work or go to the shops. Railway lines were blocked by protesting farmers in Caen and near Strasbourg and Toulouse.

Caen, the modern, Americanised, mall-infested capital of lower Normandy, was as quiet as a Sunday afternoon. The car-parks at the vast Mondeville II mall east of the city - the largest in Europe - were three-quarters empty. Every petrol station in the town and surrounding suburbs was closed or requisitioned for emergency use.

The local council warned that school transport and rural and suburban buses would have to cease work on Monday if the dispute ran into the weekend. Similar warnings were issued by councils throughout France. At the Channel Tunnel freight shuttle entrance near Calais, police kept at bay a convoy of tractors and two combine harvesters that attempted to prevent lorries boarding trains for England. One entrance to the freight terminal was blocked during the afternoon but lorries appeared to be boarding normally through another slip road.

That the French authorities fought to keep the tunnel open - unlike in the fishermen's protests, which started the wave of unrest last week - suggests a change of strategy by Lionel Jospin's government.

The interior and justice ministers hinted that, if the blockade does not end today, the government will send in the police and army to bulldoze the jumble of lorries, tractors, ambulances, taxis, mobile-cranes and driving school cars barricading 102 refineries and petrol depots around France.

This may be bluff. French governments usually take the view that direct action of this kind is counter-productive in a quarrelsome and unpredictable country, where violent social protest has an extraordinary degree of public support. A similar refinery blockade was, however, broken up by the army and gendarmerie in 1992.

The lorry owners, who rejected a generous package of £100m in fuel tax cuts on Wednesday, appear to be rattled. They called "imperatively" for a reopening of contacts with the government. Such contacts were important, they said, even if, as Mr Jospin warned on Wednesday, there was "nothing more to negotiate".

In places, the traditional patience of French people with social protests seemed to be breaking down. The oil price protests are - it should be remembered - run by small and medium-sized businessmen, not by workers.

The lorry owners were called "demagogues" and " poujadistes" by union leaders and even disowned by Ernest-Antoine Seilliÿre, the head of the French employers' federation. He accused them of damaging France by adopting "illegal means" to serve their sectional interests.

Why, he asked, did such destructive protests occur only in France, although the oil price rises were worldwide?

The answer could partly be found in a small newsagent's shop in the village of Saint Rémy-sur-Orne south of Caen. The proprietor, Gilbert Rolland, and a customer, Marie-Therÿse Constant, were discussing the oil blockade in apocalyptic terms. Only one petrol station was still open for 30 miles; many local people were unable to go to work in Caen; old people were unable to drive to the shops; the busy trunk road outside was as quiet as a forest track.

So, were they against the blockade? "Not at all," said Mr Rolland. "I support what they're doing and so do many people. Private car owners would be joining the barricades, if they could find any petrol. We've all had it up to here with the price of fuel. It's up to the government to do something."