World News 08-09-2000 2000: Year In Review: British Motorists Blockade Channel Tunnel who: Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot what: U-turns in stand-off with fuel price protestors where: France when: Yesterday snippet: "British motorists declared war on the French last night," says The Express, "launching their own blockades in protest at the antics of farmers who had paralysed France`s transport network". The French government is at loggerheads with "a growing lobby of road hauliers, ambulancemen, taxi drivers and farmers blocking roads and refineries," writes Adam Sage in The Times. Despite refusing to compromise as recently as Wednesday, Jean-Claude Gayssot, the Transport Minister, dramatically U-turned yesterday by saying "my door is always open" to the protestors who are demanding cuts in fuel taxation. In Calais yesterday, "French cops drew their batons and pushed the Brits aside," says The Sun, "after officers sparked a row by letting only local drivers through a farmers` blockade outside the Channel Tunnel." "There was no way I`d back down," says 66 year-old British holidaymaker Ron Jones in The Sun. "I`d sooner be arrested than watch racist French police let their countrymen pass as we miss our ferries." After a three hour wait, about fifty British holidaymakers reacted by "staging their own blockade of a lane of the A26," says The Telegraph. "Organisers of the counter-protest said they were angry at being the innocent victims of French internal problems and being treated as scapegoats by the police, who appeared to be in league with protesting farmers". "This was as sweet a victory as Wellington`s over Napoleon at Waterloo," said 49 year-old protester Frank Davidson, in The Express. "They didn`t like it when we put up a fight." [... more]

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