Fight for the Larzac
1971 CE.
Shown on the map at 43.989°, 3.183°.
The Fight for the Larzac (Occitan: Luta del Larzac; French: Lutte du Larzac) refers to a non-violent civil disobedience action by farmers resisting the extension of a military base on the Larzac plateau in South Western France. The action lasted from 1971 to 1981 and ended in victory for the resistance movement when the new President François Mitterrand abandoned the project. The base, used for training French soldiers, was originally established in 1902 on 3,000 ha (7,400 acres; 12 sq mi) of uncultivated heathland. Michel Debré, Minister of Defence in the Georges Pompidou administration, announced that the base would be extended to 13,700 ha (34,000 acres; 53 sq mi) and that the land would be expropriated in the public interest. An initial informal resistance movement was formed by 103 landowners whose land was subject to expropriation. In 1973 their cause was taken up by a much larger group of heterogeneous activists, predominantly left wing, and numbering up to 100,000. This activist group descended on the Larzac in support of the peasant landowners and extended the protest to a more general action against what they saw as the militarism of the Pompidou government.
Text from the Wikipedia article Fight for the Larzac, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.