All language subtitles for Daniele Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub_Trop tot, trop tard (1980).eng

People living on alms
at the time of the Revolutions

were numbered in the millions.

and the number of impoverished
persons was greatest

in the provinces
considered the most fertile,

because very few
peasants owned land there.

In Brittany, in three villages in the
district of Carhaix, things were thus:

Frerogan: 10 families well-off, 10 poor,
10 living by begging.

Montref: 47 families
moderately well-off,

74 less so, 64 families
of poor and daily workers.

Paule: 200 households to most of which
the name beggar belongs by right.

In Argentr�, out of 2300 inhabitants who
do not live by trade and industry,

more than half live in destitution,
and more than 300 are reduced to begging.

In Bayeux in Normandy,

of 1500 inhabitants of the parish of
Saint-Patrice, 400 live on alms,

and of the 500 in Saint-Laurent
parish, three-quarters.

The grievance book Marboeuf parish
in the Eure

laments that out of 500 inhabitants of
this parish, there are about 100 beggars.

In Vainville near Arles, of 130 families,
60 are impoverished.

From the grievance book of the bailiwick
of Douai we learn

that of the 332 families in
Bouvignies half live on alms.

In Aix, of 143 families,
65 are destitute.

In Landus, of 413 families,
about 100 are totally destitute.

The peasants of the village of Harville,
in the Meuse,

say that, for lack of work,
a good third of them are beggars.

In the seneschal
of Puy-en-Velay,

according to the notebooks
of the local clergy,

out of 120,000 inhabitants, 58,897 are
incapable of paying any tax whatsoever.

In the cities, it was no better.

In Paris, of 650,000 inhabitants,
118,784 are destitute.

In Lyon, there were 30,000 workers
reduced to begging.

In Rennes, one third of the inhabitants
lived on alms,

and another third were perpetually
in danger of pauperization.

The little town of Lourletaunier,
in the Jura, was so poor

that when the Constituent Assembly
established the electoral census,

out of 6518 inhabitants, only 728
were counted as active citizens.

"Well-being for all on the basis of work"
expresses the aspirations of

the fraternity of common people
of that time all too precisely.

What they wanted,
no one could say,

until long after the fall
of the Paris Commune of 1792,

when Babeuf expressed
it in a precise form.

If the Commune, with its aspirations
of fraternity, came too soon,

Babeuf for his part came too late.

THE PEASANTS WILL RISE UP

That the Egyptian people have
a tendency to support oppression

is a myth propagated by colonialism

which the history of the
Egyptian people refutes.

It is a continuous saga of violent revolts
by working classes for thousands of years.

In response to Western colonizers

the urban and rural masses united against
the French expedition led by Bonaparte:

revolts in Cairo,

armed peasant rebellions near Fowa...,

near Faraskur...,

near Manzala...;

numerous revolts in Upper Egypt.

When the French expedition withdrew

and Mohammad Ali established a
highly centralized regime,

peasant revolts multiplied.

South of Qena rose up an
army of thousands of villagers

which overthrew local representatives
of state power

and set up a true popular government.

Put down by a military expedition,

the revolt beg again two years later
a little more south still near Luxor,

and spread rapidly as far as Esna
in the south

and in the north as far as
the gates of Qena.

Numerous battles were fought
against the legal troops.

Remarkable victories were won.

And the ferocious repression
which descended on the region

- villages sacked,
burned, entirely destroyed,

their inhabitants
sometimes put to the sword -

at first only reinforced the revolt.

But in the end the central power prevailed
and the rebels were massacred.

Hardly a year after, another armed rebellion
took place in the same region,

against conscription,
and at the same time

and during the next 40 years
revolts broke out

in lower Egypt and as far as
the gates of Cairo

against conscription,
against the unbearable taxes,

and against the obligation
to plant certain areas with rice

on behalf of the state,
though labor power was lacking

to meet the immediate
needs of the peasants.

And a new revolt took
place in Upper Egypt

and Minya against the
feudal bondage of the corv�e.

Ever since the beginning of the reign of
Ismail, who opened Egypt to the English,

by contracting an
exorbitant national debt,

thousands of soldiers with heavy artillery
were needed

to extinguish a revolt to the south of Asyut

against the corv�e and the obligation
to work in the royal domains

for less than the usual miserable wages.

Several villages were set on fire
and hundreds of peasants deported.

And soon the central power
lost its authority everywhere.

The soldiers and tax collectors
were greeted with gunfire;

armed peasant groups left their villages
and hid in desert hills,

and harassed representatives
of order;

jacqueries broke out,
particularly in the royal domains

and those of the Turkish aristocracy.

In the army, officered by
Turks and Circassians,

the patriots rose up
in the revolt of Ahmed Orabi,

crushed in Tel el-Kebir by British intervention
which turned into permanent occupation.

In 1919 came the revolution
against the British occupation.

The rural masses, disinherited and poor,
were its principal force,

multiplying the sabotage
of lines of communication

and organizing a great many clashes
with the army of occupation.

And the revolutionary, democratic objectives
are tied to the patriotic objectives:

embryonic forms of popular power
came to light;

armed revolts broke out
against the big landowners.

Workers, unemployed, students,
shopkeepers, civil servants

found themselves side by side
all year long in the streets of Cairo

and of most of the other big cities,

in violent demonstrations of
an amplitude unknown until then.

The workers went on to engage
in specific forms of struggle:

occupation of factories and self-defense
against the forces of repression.

The repression would be completed by
a gradual co-option of the

mass movements by means of
formal concessions to the national dignity.

A constitutional monarchy was established

in which the reformist bourgeoisie
would be able to play a second-rate role.

Great Britain no longer directly
governed Egypt.

During the thirties, peasant misery,

enlarged by the after-effects
of the world crisis,

gave rise to a great many forms of

violent resistance to seizure
of lands or collection of debt.

The peasants organized to surround
the forces of order sent to their areas,

to isolate them by cutting
ways of communication

and telephone wires, and
burning their vehicles.

Meanwhile in the big cities
the patriotic movement began again

against a British occupation
which showed itself as real as

before the establishment
of the constitutional regime.

New concessions were granted by the British,
in exchange for new repression.

From 1945 on, the national
classes again revolting together

finally made impossible
the British occupation

and the reign of foreigners and
aristocrats who governed in its name.

But it was the reformist
petty-bourgeois forces

sprung from the army who took the
initiative of the coup d'�tat of 1952.

Corruption ruled in all areas
of the state, to Egypt's shame.

The State has only one goal:
the country's well-being.

Therefore we leave these problems
to government,

with which our behavior and the interest
of the people correspond.

Finally I ask the proud people,

to keep peace and trust
in the future and the patriots.

May everyone fulfill their obligations
and try to reform themselves.

May we may work together,
to eliminate corruption

and straighten out everything
which is bent

I call for unity by which
the State's mission can be realised.

The Almighty said:

"God changes no people, unless
that people change itself."

He spoke true, the great God.

It is God who leads us to good.

And from 1955 to 1967

the mass movement would be
dismantled and co-opted

by a new ruling caste inheriting
all the vices of the old

and betraying the national dignity
which had served its ascension.