This is not going to be an easy week for the French police. More than 200,000 people are expected on the streets today in ‘Act 5’ of the high school protest, and on Saturday the Gilets Jaunes will join a demonstration about the cost of living crisis.

The extreme-left and their anarchist allies are set on disorder

The extreme-left and their anarchist allies are set on disorder

There will be violence. There was on Monday, which was supposed to be a relatively quiet day in preparation for today. It was anything but. In a school in Aubagne, in the south of the country, a 14-year-old boy opened fire with a hunting rifle, wounding two teachers and terrifying his classmates. Police are still working to establish a motive.

Elsewhere in France, eight teachers were assaulted by protestors. In total, more than seventy of their profession have been physically harmed since the movement erupted in the middle of last month.

The violence has intensified as the scale of the school protest has diminished. This is no coincidence. Initially, the barricades were manned by pupils who wanted to peacefully make the point that their schools and their needs had been neglected for........

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