Opening the Gates ― The Lip Affair, 1968-1981

How the occupation of a watch factory became one of the iconic labour struggles after May 1968

In the Summer of 1973, workers occupied the Lip watch and clock factory, sparking a national affair. The Lip occupation and self-management experience captured the imagination of the Left in France and internationally, as a living example of the spirit of May '68. In Opening the Gates, Donald Reid chronicles the history of this struggle.

Beginning with the early stirrings of worker radicalism in 1968, Reid's meticulously researched narrative details the nationally publicised conflict of 1973, the second bankruptcy and occupation of 1976 and the conversion of Lip into a group of cooperatives operating into the 1980s. Reid explores the arguments that that animated Lip: between the labour bureaucracy and the rank-and-file; between the two main progressive trade unions, the CGT and the CFDT; between the established worker institions at Lip (CGT, CFDT, and the CE/works council) and the more militant, less structured organizations like the Action Committee; and lastly, between male workers and an increasingly-politicized female workforce at Lip, who gradually developed a parallel feminist struggle both inside and outside the factory.

Donald Reid is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work focuses on French labour history and the history of collective memory in modern France.