Students burn frontier post
Weiler, Franco-German border, 6 August
Shouting ‘Europe is here!’ students of nine nationalities converged on this frontier post from both sides of the border today, smashed down barrier gates and burned them in a bonfire as customs officers looked on helplessly. The demonstration was organised by the Inter-University Federal Union, an international student body supporting the aims of European Union.
In their well-arranged protest against national barriers, the students approached the frontier from both sides, near the forest of Hagenau, where there was bitter fighting between the Germans and the Allies in 1945. The frontier guards did not interfere, and there were no casualties.
While a German youth wielding a heavy log smashed the red lamps on the frontier post, students from each side of the border picked up the barriers and carried them to the bonfire. The students had camped overnight on both sides of the border, those on the French side comprising nearly every nationality represented in the Council of Europe session now being held in Strasbourg.
This afternoon a large party of demonstrators drove to the border in a convoy which included several buses full of students, two radio reporting vans representing the French and Swiss radios, and headed by three motorcyclist scouts.
After burning the barricades the students held a meeting in a meadow under the green and white flag of the European Movement. They carried banners inscribed Europe is Here in various languages, and We Demand European Citizenship.
Freedom of travel
The students’ declaration said: ‘We demand the establishment of a European passport giving freedom of travel throughout Europe, respecting, however, the rights of national governments to control immigration.’
‘For the first time in European history Europeans have marched to the frontier, not to fight each other but unified in their desire to abolish frontiers. The splitting up of Europe at the present time is not only an absurdity but a grave danger.’
M André Philip, one of the principal French delegates to the Council of Europe, arrived with the French students and made a speech at the bonfire expressing his approval of the action taken and promising European youth that he would represent them at Strasbourg in their efforts to eliminate European borders.
A contingent of British students was led by Ernest G Thompson, a physics student, of Trinity College, Cambridge, Michael Hart, of Keble College, Oxford, and Frank Mifsud, of Oriel College, Oxford.
