Free Republic

France's exhaustion with its unions has found its voice in a 21-year-old student, Sabine Herold, who is challenging the silent majority to revolt against the strikes crippling her country ... In the middle of the Iraq war, she and her friends demonstrated outside the American embassy in support of military action, a bold step considering the overwhelming opposition to the war in France. "There is a systemic opposition to America in France," she said yesterday.

HAILED as the new Joan of Arc on a crusade to stop France’s powerful unions holding the silent majority hostage over pension reform, Sabine Herold, 21, a politics student, has become an instant heroine to those who are fed up with seeing their country crippled by seemingly endless strikes. Shouting into a microphone to loud applause, Ms Herold delivered a stirring message to the tens of thousands of followers who gathered in the Place du Chatelet in the centre of Paris at the weekend, to hear her speak on behalf of her association, Liberté, j’écris ton nom. "How numerous we...