After a scorching summer, France faces the political heat

Enduring a sizzling summer, France now looks set for a politically blistering autumn.

A grassroots leftist movement, which has gathered an unexpected following, is planning to organise street rallies beginning next month to counter government reforms and effects of globalisation that critics say is forcing European nations to shed their traditional social safety nets.

The turnout of 200,000 to 300,000 people at an anti-globalisation rally at Larzac in southern France last weekend surprised both major political blocs - the centre-right coalition government and Socialist Party. The rally had been expected to attract only a fraction of the number.

Jose Bove, leader of the Peasant Confederation, has promised the pro-market government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin a 'scorching September' as the prime minister prepares to overhaul the social health system.

Although billed as an anti-globalisation movement, the Larzac conference made it clear that the focus of its efforts would be equally aimed at halting what leftist leaders at Larzac called the 'arrogant [French] government's' neo-liberal, socially regressive reforms.

This comes on top of labour unions' pledge to put up a fight against France's creeping market liberalisation.

Mr Bove, a veteran champion of the anti-globalisation cause, who was recently released from jail after serving only five weeks of a 10-month sentence he got for helping to destroy genetically modified food, appears to be now as intent on mounting pressure against the French government.