The French fishermen's blockade that has paralysed trade and stranded tens of thousands of passengers over the past three days has inspired surprisingly little interest in France. Not a single politician or newspaper editor has suggested there might be a better way to address the issue of rising fuel costs.
On Wednesday night, when the blockade reached full pitch, it was the third item on the French television news. Not one French daily thought it worthy of its front page yesterday. A mishap in the Paris Metro in which the worst injury was a broken leg received far more coverage. A French radio correspondent in London even mocked British "paranoia" about returning to second World War-style isolation.
The French are not only inured to the discomforts of muscular industrial action, they almost invariably side with the protesters - little matter the inconvenience and financial losses inflicted. Several times a year, lorry or train drivers, farmers or subway workers can be counted on to wreak havoc in the lives of their fellow Frenchmen - and any foreigner who happens to be here.
"They're absolutely right," said a motorist held up yesterday at a blockade in the Dordogne organised by farmers, coach, ambulance and taxi-drivers to protest over petrol prices. "Et qui'ils foutent le bor del un peu plus," he added. Translated into polite English it means: "And I hope they create even more chaos."
On only one occasion - the Air France pilots' strike on the eve of the 1998 World Cup - was public opinion divided over industrial action. Fishermen and lorry drivers are the modern-day equivalent of the revolutionary sans-culottes. Well-paid airline pilots were seen as spoiled aristocrats.
The fishermen managed to inflict a short, sharp shock so intense that the fishing and agriculture minister, Jean Glavany, almost immediately offered them 100 per cent exemptions on port fees and social insurance charges yesterday. In France, these occasions begin with confrontation. The fishermen fired distress flares over the agriculture ministry and insisted that local as well as national representatives - 50 people in total - be admitted to Mr Glavany's office before the talks could start.
The government "had heard the fishermen's message", Mr Glavany announced later. It was acting "so that the imbalance created in their accounts by the rise in fuel costs is compensated, that the economic viability of fishing enterprises is restored".
As in all French social conflicts, the complainants looked to the powerful, centralised state. As usual, Mother France came through. Whether the Jospin government caved in or righted an injustice is up to interpretation. The days when former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing dispatched the navy to fire on fishermen blockading the Mediterranean port of Fossur-Mer are history. The decision helped Giscard lose the 1981 election, and would be unthinkable for a left-wing government.
Flooding French government switchboards with phone calls was a wasted effort for the Irish and British embassies and the ferry companies. It was unrealistic to think that the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh - for all his congenial relations with Mr Glavany - had a hope of influencing the outcome of the blockade. This was a Franco-French matter, involving the ministers of finance, the environment and transport as well as agriculture.
You might think the EU would have something to say about France's periodic transformation into the choke-point of Europe - or that the EU Commission would take a close look at Mr Glavany's concessions to the fishermen.
The British P&O Stena ferry operator sought a court injunction against the fishermen who blocked its Calais-Dover route. More surprising, the Marseilles Port Authority beat P&O to it, demanding an end to "this new collective hostage-taking" for a grievance that did not concern it. Port authorities said they lost Ffr3 million each day of the blockade - the second in Marseilles this year.
In June 1999 the Marseilles high court had already sided with the port, expelling striking dockyard repair workers. The Marseilles port's and P&O's actions may have established a precedent for business interests fighting back in the future.
The price of Ffr2.20 per litre of diesel paid by the fishermen was already tax-free before their blockade - they were objecting to the near-tripling of their fuel costs over the past year and a half. World oil prices have risen from $9 a barrel 18 months ago to just under $34 a barrel at present. The degree of pain varies. Refineries were initially slow to pass on price increases to consumers. And government tax at European petrol pumps ranges from 60 to 80 per cent.
But it is not necessarily those hurt most who scream loudest. A dump-the-pump boycott campaign in Britain earlier this summer fizzled out, although fuel taxes are higher there than in France.
"People in the UK are just not as good at protesting," a London energy expert commented. Lorry drivers in the United States drove a protest cortege through Washington last winter, and the high cost of fuel has become a presidential campaign issue. Both the US secretary for energy Bill Richardson and the EU energy commissioner Loyola de Palacio have called on OPEC to increase its output to lower prices.
Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC country that has the capacity to increase its oil production significantly. Crown Prince Abdallah is known to favour such a move but is opposed by the ailing King Fahd and the Saudi Aramco oil establishment, who are more interested in short-term profits. By chance, the French fishermen's blockade coincided with a meeting of the Saudi Supreme Petroleum Council, which promised to work towards "a suitable increase".
Yet it would be premature to predict the worst is over. Iran and Venezuela have no incentive to accept a Saudi production increase that would lower their income. And the Saudis have said they will not raise production without the agreement of other OPEC members. The political and financial haggling to come in the international oil cartel will dwarf Mr Glavany's encounter with his fishermen.
