Macron’s vaccine passports are a betrayal of French values

What a celebration of diversity I witnessed in Paris on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital. Organisers put the figure at 50,000, the government at 18,000; I’d say the former is the more accurate estimation.

It took two hours to walk the one and three-quarter miles between the start of the march, in the Place du Palais Royal, to its terminus at the Place Pierre Laroque outside the Ministry of Health. In total, and again depending on your source, between 114,000 and 150,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday to protest against the planned introduction of the ‘Pass Sanitaire’, France’s vaccine passport.

All ages, sexes, classes and colours were represented. I saw young women in hijabs and others in shorts and singlets; young black men in sports shirts walked alongside elderly white men in checked shirts. One little old lady, I’d put her in her late 70s, walked alone holding aloft a small handwritten sign on which was written ‘Liberté’.