The government of France held a crisis meeting yesterday afternoon as a school protest movement intensified in violence. On Wednesday, 625 people were arrested and 83 gendarmes and police officers were injured as youths protested outside hundreds of schools nationwide. Yesterday, a school in Nantes was severely damaged after being firebombed and a fire engine was destroyed in Marseille. In the city of Reims there were fierce clashes between protesters and police, and only the use of tear gas dispersed the demonstrators. In some cities, such as Rennes, it was reported that university students were protesting alongside the high school pupils.

The government claimed yesterday that the movement has been hijacked “by LFI and its far-left proxies.” LFI – La France insoumise – is the party led by Jean-Luc Melenchon. One of its prominent members, Bally Bagayoko, the mayor of Saint-Denis in northern Paris, declared at a protest on Tuesday that “violence, at a certain point, can be legitimate.” A complaint has been lodged with the public prosecutor’s office accusing him of “incitement to commit an offense.”

The protest movement began in the middle of September in a school in Créteil, south-east of Paris. Students and staff were........

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