AKIPRESS.COM - French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has threatened to ban street protests in Paris after violence – including the smashing of windows at a children’s hospital – marred a demonstration on Tuesday against proposed changes to France’s labor law, reports France 24.

Valls’ comments were aimed particularly against the hard-line CGT union, which has been at the forefront of protests against a law aimed at boosting France’s economy.

The law seeks to make hiring and firing easier, and crucially would allow large companies to negotiate working conditions directly with their employees, sidelining unions.

Tuesday’s rally was, by all estimations, huge. Police estimated a turnout of up to 80,000 in Paris alone for the event (The CGT claimed a million people turned out for the demonstration), which was organized by the CGT and smaller militant unions.

But on the sidelines of the protest, which was sea of red CGT banners and angry but well-behaved demonstrators, masked youths fought running battles with police while laying waste to shopfronts and banks.

Valls, who has vowed not to back down on pushing through the employment law, which has the support of another leading national union, the CFDT, told the CGT in no uncertain terms on Wednesday that it was to blame for the breakdown in order.

“When you cannot organize a demo and take responsibility, leaving thugs in the middle of the march... then you just don’t organize a demonstration that is going to degenerate,” Valls said on France Inter radio before visiting the Necker children’s hospital whose windows had been methodically smashed by “casseurs” (“breakers”, or “smashers”, a term for violent anarchist protesters).

The CGT responded in a strongly-worded statement that the city’s police authorities, which had authorized the demonstration, were ultimately responsible for security “in the same way that it is not the responsibility of football supporters to police security at Euro 2016 games.”

The right to protest in France, and the power of unions in large businesses, is enshrined in law. Forbidding demonstrations in the French capital would therefore be an unpopular and provocative step for the French government.

Technically, according to a clause of 1789 law that has survived on the statute books, the government can forbid a demonstration “if it threatens public order.”

This clause was used in 2014 to forbid a demonstration in support of the people of Gaza after episodes of violence. The protest took place anyway, but degenerated into a running battle between angry youths and police.