Amid strike chaos on road and rail, far right sees its chance

The symbolism that German farmers chose to express their discontent with the government in the first days of the new year was as unambiguous as it was ominous: by the side of rural roads across the country, there were sightings of makeshift gallows dangling trafficlight signs, referring to the colours of the three governing parties.

- Philip Oltermann

The chilling sculptures were harbingers of unprecedented protests and strikes that hit German roads and railways this week, and represent a dramatic change of mood in a country long feted for its consensus-seeking approach to industrial relations, especially compared with its more traditionally strike-prone neighbour France.

With key elections coming up in eastern German states this year, even some farmers fear the new revolutionary spirit could play straight into the hands of a buoyant far right.

An eight-day countrywide protest by agricultural workers, involving motorway blockades, began on Monday in spite of the government's partial U-turn on the policies that had triggered the action.

"We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector," the president of the German farmers' association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on Monday, as the protests brought the centres of cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen to a near-standstill.

In a sign of the levels of anger driving the protests, about 100 farmers last Thursday blocked the vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, from disembarking from a ferry in northern Germany.