NANTERRE 1968: Notes on the background to the 22 March Group

As a 16-year old schoolboy from a Parisian banlieu, Jean-Pierre Duteuil became politicised in 1960 over France’s bitter and bloody Algerian war of independence. Already an anarchist, he studied at the University of Nanterre from 1964 to 1969, majoring in Sociology. While a student he was part of the Noir et Rouge collective, a member of the Le Monde Libertaire editorial team and one of the tiny anarchist nucleus on the Nanterre campus, the LEA, the Anarchist Students’ Liaison. He was also a co-founder of the Mouvement du 22 Mars (March 22 Movement) which played such a pivotal role in the events of May/June 1968, and he remains active in the anarchist movement to this day. NANTERRE 1968: Notes on the background to the 22 March Group is Jean-Pierre’s personal assessment of the people and the groups that contributed to the tumultuous events of that historic summer when, to adapt Norman Mailer’s comment on the Cuban Missile Crisis, “France — and Europe — stood like a playing card on edge"