Anger in Marseille as police and students battle with a growing storm

It's been a tumultuous autumn, and there are no signs that France's period of unrest is coming to an end any time soon.

On social and mainstream media, economic and political arguments are heard everywhere after weeks of demonstrations. Especially the recriminations after riots in some of the largest cities.

Eddy Sid is a serving police officer and spokesman for Unité Police union in the  Bouches-du-Rhône region which covers south Marseille.

Sid told CGTN: "There is a major social anger, a deep social anger. We have few or no responses from the government so far."

Next April after presidential elections, Emanuel Macron's decade in power comes to an end. His last few months in office are likely to be over-shadowed by discontent.

Midweek in Marseille, thousands of students, teachers and university lecturers marched under the watchful eyes of the gendarmerie.  

Louane, a second year history student and colleague Odil complained about education budget cuts and poorly maintained buildings where they study.

"We’re seeing a broader popular uprising," Louane said. "In particular, there are demonstrations every Saturday about the rising cost of living. It is always the same groups of people who are being targeted: students, pensioners, people in precarious situations, teachers, and public-sector workers."

Muriel Gerber is a philosophy teacher at a high school in Aubagne in Provence. She says long-standing reforms in the French education system had already been harmful.  

Gerber said: "We are facing a government that is making enormous cuts to public budgets, and education is inevitably suffering greatly. We have experienced a series of reforms, and these reforms always have the same objective: to reduce spending on education."

With almost 85,000 students in Marseille and the town of Aix-en-Provence nearby, this region has already witnessed several demonstrations and riots. The scars of the October 17 riots are still visible in Marseille's streets near the Vieux Port area.

Dozens of windows were still boarded up, and shops remained closed after a day of violence.

Alexandre Grondeau is a professor of geography at Aix-Marseille University. He says the situation for education and the students is dire and that the police attacked young people needlessly.

"The main reason for the deterioration in relations between students, high-school pupils, and the government was the absence of dialogue in response to the pupils' demands," said Grondeau. "Rather than negotiating, the government preferred to send heavily armed police officers to suppress a number of occupations and blockades at high schools. 

"Parents therefore saw images of police officers striking minors because we must remember that high-school students are young people aged 15, 16, or 17."

As well as complaints about deteriorating budgets in France, many parents have been incensed by what’s described as the heavy-handed approach taken by the police; in particular with how pupils under the age of 18 were treated during the first few weeks of protests last September. Many suffered injuries.  

Eddy Sid of the Unité Police union in Bouches-du-Rhône region added: "Today we are faced with a youth that is somehow radicalized in ultra-violence. We see it not necessarily in social movements; we see it in drug trafficking in Marseille.

"We have a youth that is uninhibited in terms of violence, that is adept at ultra-violence, and we see it in the reports they have with teachers, not just law enforcement. We had 2,000 police officers injured, but we had 150 teachers who were harassed."

Those statistics are from the French government and haven't been verified independently.

France’s economy is struggling and there are deep divisions politically, but also in society. Currently the populist far right leader Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the populist left are presidential front runners.

Both have been happy to try and capitalize on the unrest to attract potential voters.

With increasing anger and frustration, President Macron’s popularity has plummeted.

Posters in Marseille showed the president’s face with text that reads ‘bismillah c’est les ténèbres’. It means 'In the name of God, it's the darkness',  which is a mix of French and Arabic slang for a situation having gone terribly wrong.       

The next few months promise to be stormy, not just in France but other countries in Europe too that have parliamentary elections.