Left-wing Parisian mayor joins within the riots convulsing France – as firefighter is about alight and protesters threaten to burn down the Elysee Palace

A French mayor has been filmed laughing and dancing with demonstrators outside a school as violent protests continue to grip the country.

The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week and coincided on Tuesday with a broader public sector strike, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for France.

Police have made hundreds of arrests during clashes with young protesters, while authorities have reported dozens of injuries.

And now the Left-wing mayor of a Parisian suburb is facing backlash after he was filmed engaging with student protesters.

Footage shows Bally Bagayoko, mayor of the Saint-Denis suburb, laughing and dancing outside a blocked-off school while demonstrators cheer him on.

In the background, flames appear to be rising near the building’s gates.

Politicians from the hard-Left party France Unbowed have joined the demonstrations, with Mr Bagayoko having reportedly said that violence is sometimes legitimate. 

The France Unbowed party, of which Mr Bagayoko is a member, is led by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Other members have been seen outside blockaded school buildings, urging youngsters on using megaphones.

In turn, the Paris Police Prefecture has filed a complaint against Mr Bagayoko for ‘incitement to commit a crime’.

Some officials and politicians have also denounced the party for rhetoric which they said was stoking students’ anger.

It comes after a separate video caught a firefighter being set alight when he tried to put out a fire caused by protesters. 

Social media footage shows an object in flames on a street in Bordeaux during the recent demonstrations.

But as the firefighter approached the item to put out the fire, the flames suddenly spread up his leg and set him alight.

The unrest comes as the French government is set to unveil the country’s 2027 budget on Thursday, which is expected to involve spending cuts aimed at easing pressure on government finances.

In Saint-Denis, a large suburb north of Paris, students stood outside the gates of their school near a fire that had been set as police looked on, while in Lyon and Lille television images showed people throwing projectiles at lines of police officers.

‘There are cockroaches and rats everywhere in the school,’ Fadila, a 17-year-old student, told Reuters. She said temperatures in classrooms could swing from sweltering to below freezing, depending on the weather.

‘We can’t work in those conditions,’ she said.

According to the OECD global policy forum, French spending on education was in the middle of the range among member countries and increased between 2015 and 2022, but its share of the budget has slightly decreased.

France’s education minister Edouard Geffray told RTL radio that 76 people had been injured, both students and staff, since the demonstrations began. He did not specify who the personnel were or the severity of the injuries.

Interior minister Laurent Nunez told broadcaster BFM that some 440 people were detained over the high school protests on Tuesday alone, most of them minors.

He added that there were seven incidents in which people threw hydrochloric acid at law enforcement officers.

The French government has criticised violence that has broken out at some of the demonstrations but said that difficulties in high schools should be acknowledged and addressed.

‘High schools are meant to be open and to share knowledge. They are not meant to be blockaded or to have trash cans set on fire,’ French president Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Madrid.

Gamze, a 17-year-old student in Saint-Denis, said students in the historically working-class suburb were treated unfairly compared with students elsewhere.

‘It’s always us… who are suffering when, in Paris or in the countryside, they’re not in such a situation,’ she told Reuters.

Police have also arrested a protester after they threatened to burn down the Elysee Palace in Paris. 

Hard-Left activist Ritchy Thibault has called on students to burn down the Elysee and to start a revolution. 

‘We’re going to attack every police station in this country,’ he told a crowd in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. ‘Tomorrow, we’re going to set the Elysee Palace on fire.’

Teenagers at lycées – the equivalent of a British upper school including the sixth form – have been blockading their schools for two weeks.

The mass movement began in the Paris area, and has now spread to other parts of the country.

Videos posted online have shown riot police using tear gas and baton charges to fight back against the rioters.

Officers have also been accused of brutality after a 14-year-old lost six teeth when an officer fired a tear-gas grenade into his jaw at point-blank range during a blockade outside a Paris school.

The police watchdog has launched an investigation, while it is claimed that the boy hit a policewoman beforehand.

Benoît Payan, the leftist mayor of Marseille, said: ‘Our youth is legitimately concerned about its future and that of the public service. It must be able to express itself in a calm framework.

‘Today, our city is the scene of unacceptable violence, fires, and assaults suffered by teachers, firefighters, journalists, and Marseillais, which no cause can justify.

‘I call for calm from everyone, and for finding the path to a democratic expression of grievances.

‘Marseille stands alongside those who defend the public service and the future of our youth, not alongside those who destroy, set fires, and commit violence.’

The last nationwide high school protest movement on this scale demanding more funding came in the 1990s. 

That followed the government sharply expanding access to the baccalauréat, the school-leaving exam that typically paves the way to university, without providing schools ⁠with sufficient additional resources, said Professor Clemence Cardon-Quint at Paul Valery University, who researches education funding.

The movement won an increase in funding but spending per student later stagnated despite growing demands on schools.