In the land of revolutions, it is tempting to regard it as yet another. But the 2.6 million people who took to the streets in France on Tuesday, disrupting schools and transport in a nationwide strike, were not trying to effect revolutionary social change. Memories of May 1968, or earlier and grander national upheavals, are being constantly invoked. But this is no idealistic call for change, for a more liberal and permissive society, but a struggle to retain what some would call a largely imagined world of secured jobs for young people under 26 years of age. Imagined, because France?s under-25 unemployment rate is alarmingly high. This is largely because of stringent job-protection measures, which put off employers from hiring young people. Hence, the French prime minister believes that relaxing these measures would encourage employment, introducing a new first job contract for the under-26, known as the CPE, which has now begun to look like a dangerously unjust ?hire and fire? contract to a huge number of French citizens.

Mr Dominique de Villepin ? who pushed through the CPE by decree without a parliamentary debate or consulting the unions ? refuses to ?roll back?. And there are cracks within his government with the interior minister, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, favouring a far more tentative approach to the reforms. For Mr Sarkozy, not only the presidential elections next year, but also memories of the recent riots have endorsed these differences. Interestingly, the immigrant youth who took to the streets during these riots have held back from the recent protests because the CPE would benefit them far more than those protesting against it, many of whom will actually remain unaffected by it. Across the Channel, the protests in Britain ?the biggest since the 1926 general strike ? by around a million local-government workers were also prompted by what was perceived as an infringement of workers? rights regarding retirement and pension. Here, too, a nationwide meltdown, which united a wide range of workers and citizens, is largely a local battle with significant consequences for the crucial local elections next month. In both cases, trade unions, ordinary citizens and large numbers of young people have joined hands against the governments? reforms on a rather massive scale. But revolutions, or even revolts, are another matter altogether.