On one side, there is a weakened govern- ment, in free fall, but which wants to continue its destructive policies at any cost by relying on the antidemocratic institutions of the V Republic. On the other, a rising revolt seeks to come together. In this context, no one is fooled: the police operation against Mélenchon, against La France Insoumise, has no other goal than to try to check this movement, to intimidate it, to terrorise the militants who refuse to yield, who refuse to submit.

Because it is weakened, the government would like, in order to pass its counter-reforms, to neu- tralise the union organisations, to associate them with its plans, to make them turn away from the independence needed to counter Macron. On the con- trary, for tens of thousands of labour militants that do not accept, preserving their union organisations and safeguarding their independence is a major stake, a key question in the whole situation.

The world crisis sharpened by Trump and the European Union’s march to dislocation throw those at the top into a panic. With the coming European elections, the principal leaders of the European Union, and a above all Macron, seek to create a diversion: they wave around the threat of nationalism and the extreme right. They who, in less time than it takes to say it, agreed with Orban and Salvini when it came to attacking the “migrants” and refugees, they dare to say: “it is either us or chaos”; they dare to accuse the peoples, they who in the wake of preceding governments are taking the worst of measures against the workers and undertake the liquidation, one by one, of all the conquest of the working class.

No, the peoples are not responsible for the chaos: it is the policies demanded by financial capital, by its international institutions, such as the European Union, and by the governments in their service that are leading to catastrophe. Those responsible are all of the leaders, those of the left like those of the right, who have not stopped applying these policies and, for this reason, are massively rejected.

The immense majority of the workers and the population do not want chaos. They want to preserve the bases of civilisation, to preserve the social conquests and the democratic conquests insepara- ble from them.

Faced with the counter revolution, the complete upending of society that financial capital and its servant Macron want to impose, the defence of the gains of 1936 and 1945 constitutes the starting point for a rescue plan for the working class and civilisation.

Gathered in Paris in response to the call of the CNRR, we take up the engagement to multiply, in the coming months, the meetings in the departments, localities, neighbourhoods and workplaces, to help bring together all the forces that resist, to form new committees everywhere, to reinforce and enlarge the existing committees of resistance and reconquest, to call on the labour militants, the workers and the youth to join them, to bring together thousands and thousands of people to cover all the departments and towns of this country.

Through these meetings to bring together thousands and thousands of people, we will help to organise the resistance and thus establish the bases of the rescue plan for civilisation concentrated in the defence of the conquests of 1936 and 1945.

Two thousand five hundred labour militants, labour unionists, political militants and elected officials… of various affiliations met in Paris, 10 November 2018, in response to the call from the CNRR for the defence of the gains of 1936 and 1945.