Firefighters spray water to cool off anti-globalization activists at 'Larzac 2003' meeting, in the Aveyron region, southern France, Sunday Aug. 10, 2003. More than 150,000 people gathered at the Larzac plateau, forcing organizers to close Saturday the event to new arrivals. The three-day rally was organized against the World Trade Organization which meets next month in Cancun, Mexico. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

Two hundred thousand protesters came together in the southern French countryside at the weekend to plot ways of making September a difficult month for the government.

Almost twice as many participants as expected pitched tents in the scorching heat of the Larzac plain.

A government spokesman tried to play down the significance of the event. "By stirring up the concerns felt by a number of professions, the minority extreme-left activists have only one real goal: to paralyze French society," he said.

But many of those there insisted that they were not extremist activists, just moderates infuriated by the direction taken by the center-right administration during its first year in power, and spurred to take action for the first time in their lives.

"Of course when you get such a large number of politically motivated people together, there's a powerful sense of solidarity," said Joël Collot, an actor from Montpellier.

"But this isn't a gathering of radicals behaving in a hysterical manner. There are a lot of reasonable people here who are just very angry with the government.

"You can sense that trouble is brewing for the autumn."

Thousands of people squeezed into huge tents to listen to debates over new government reforms proposed for the education system, the perils of privatizing France's public services and the menace posed by genetically modified crops.

The organizational forces behind the strikes and demon strations, which have united teachers, train drivers, postmen, students, health workers and actors since the spring, were present.

French farmer Jose Bove sings at the closure of 'Larzac 2003' meeting, in the Aveyron region, southern France, Sunday Aug. 10, 2003. France's best-known farmer, Bove, said Sunday that he will step down next April as spokesman of his union and anti-globalization movement. Speaking during the protest against the World Trade Organization , Bove said ``It would be very dangerous to personalize the movement''. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

Unions and campaign groups were recruiting supporters and planning further action for the autumn in protest against the government's plans to extend its implementation of pension reforms to other areas of social security.

Rightwing commentators and organizers alike referred to the gathering as a "summer-school in anti-establishment activity".

"The month of September mustn't merely be hot, it should be scorching; everyone must be on the streets.

"If there are lots of us, we will be able to make a difference," said José Bové, the radical sheep farmer and leader of France's anti-globalization movement, who was released from prison last week.

"If we do nothing, France's education, its farming community, its health service and culture will all definitively be forced into the commercial sector."

The tone of the occasion was serious; philosophers and union leaders were greeted on stage with the kind of ecstatic excitement reserved elsewhere for pop stars and footballers.

One seminar focused optimistically on the drive to unite the separate campaigns being fought by different professions this year into a grander action on the scale of a general strike. Others planned protests for next month's World Trade Organization summit in Cancun, Mexico.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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