We have got the solemn promise of the minister. It happened very quickly

French fisheries leader Alain Parres

You can almost imagine the fishermen's operations room in some northern port, with cabin boys using poles to push red counters across a vast map of France, representing the tens of thousands of British holidaymakers rushing home for the new school term.

Most galling of all, he has pulled off the spectacular feat of annoying everyone, and then getting what he wanted. The government has caved in.

Compensation

Transport Minister Jean Glavany has agreed - with it seems barely a quibble - that the global rise in oil prices deserves full compensation.

British holidaymakers' anger reached boiling point

And the fishermen's leaders have emerged wondering whether they should not have asked for more.

Alain Parres, president of the National Committee for Maritime Fisheries, proudly announced that the fishermen had got an "exceptional" result from their action.

"We have got the solemn promise of the minister. It happened very quickly."

Perhaps if he had known the minister was going to be such a push-over, he would have asked for a fresh lick of paint for the fleet, and a guarantee of retirement at 50.

Protest rituals

Why is it that once, twice, three times a year, the French protest story is rolled out again, and the British press gathers again at Calais, or on a motorway outside Paris, to report in cataclysmic terms on the latest by the lorry-drivers, or the ferry staff, or the farmers, or the fishermen?

Why does a front-page horror story in a London tabloid about trapped holidaymakers held hostage by rampant garlic-eaters merit just a few paragraphs in the economic pages of the French press?

Why do the police always stand around, directing traffic round the roadblocks, instead of clearing the highway? And why does the French Government always give way?

Radicalism

The answer goes back two centuries to the French Revolution.

True, France quickly discarded the populist excesses of the time. The country rediscovered the joys of absolutism under Napoleon, then spent the rest of the 19th Century under kings, another emperor, and then a bourgeois republic.

French healthcare workers protested in Paris in February

But the dream of radical action on behalf of "the people" has lived on.

It is thus a simple commonplace in France that workers have the right to make their grievances felt. The inconvenience is endured because the protest is part of the ritual of life.

The French are a conservative people - they like established ways of doing things.

For some 200 years now, strikes - angry workers pressing their claims - have become part of the establishment.

Good and bad

The effect of this is two-fold.

One is positive. For all the complaining from Britain, the undeniable fact is that France at least still has a major fishing industry, capable of making itself felt.

Does Britain? And would France, if workers were not prepared to cause havoc, and governments prepared to listen to them?

Undoubtedly most French people are happier living in a country where fresh fish are still caught and consumed in significant quantities, even if the price is occasional disruption. The same is true of farming.

The second effect is more deleterious.

If part of the social contract is an understanding that the government has a kind of treasure chest which it will dispense to appease interest groups, then clearly there is an incentive to maximise the pressure.

The ritual is repeated over and again. Protest, inconvenience, negotiation, more protest and concession.

Already the pattern is starting again. Emboldened by the fishermen's success, now it is the country's taxi drivers who are threatening nationwide action unless they receive compensation for the oil price rise.