Soon there were 3 million strikers; 23,371,000 working days were lost to strikes in 1947 versus 374,000 in 1946, but the movement stayed less important than in Italy, where the Communists were also excluded from the government.
Although they had been created in December 1944, the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) had their first real policing mission with the strikes of November–December 1947, all of which were under the leadership of Minister of the Interior Jules Moch (SFIO).
The importance of the PCI's involvement in the movement was made clear in an article published on 26 June 1947 in Cavalcades magazine, titled "A teacher, an engineer, a journalist, leaders of the Fourth International, could paralyse France tomorrow".
With an inflation rate of over 60% and rationing still in force, the black market remained important, and living conditions were difficult, particularly since France struggled to meet its energy needs.
From that moment, the PCF and CGT supported the social movement, which extended to Citroën, SNCF, banks, department stores, Électricité de France, Peugeot, Berliet, Michelin, and others.
On 10 November 1947, after the Gaullist victory of the Rally of the French People in the municipal election in October, a vast movement of insurrectionary strikes shook the country for several months.
The strike spread to miners; on 17 November, 10,000 of them stopped work to protest the dismissal of Leon Delfosse [fr], the communist deputy director of the nationalized coal mines in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais basin.
On 19 November, the strike resumed at Renault and Citroën and then spread to the Federation for National Education, the construction trade, steelworkers, dockworkers and all public services.
The officers refused to fire on the protestors, who got hold of weapons from soldiers (they discreetly returned them afterwards) and forced the police to evacuate the station; 100 people were injured.
On 30 June 1953, the Supreme Court delivered a leading case and considered that the train was still responsible because it had, given the social climate, expected that kind of act.
In March 1954, the case rebounded when the former deputy René Camphin [fr], formerly "Colonel Baudouin" of the Francs-tireurs et partisans and former leader of the Federation of Pas-de-Calais in 1947, was found dead in Paris.
The CGT-Workers' Force was initiated with the financial support of American unions (including the AFL–CIO), and the funding was coordinated by CIA operative Irving Brown.
Even earlier, the CIA had begun funding and arming the Guerini crime family to assault communist picket lines and to harass union officials in Marseilles.