The elderly woman was weary; jostled and baffled by the huge crowd around her going nowhere.

She had hopes of getting on the train that was due to come soon but from the throng on the platform fighting for space at the front, her chance were slim if any.

She’d faced such scenes many times in her lifetime – French rail strikes arrive each year, as does the call of the first cuckoo. But when approached by a local television crew she simply said. ‘It’s tough on us but it’s their right to strike. I back them all the way. I’ll get home eventually.’

Her attitude, one of traditional acceptance, was repeated in other interviews except those at airports where Air France was also on strike. Here the frustrations of businessmen and holidaymakers boiled over and as they were mainly foreign they posed the question: ‘What is it with you French? You’re always on strike.’

Not really. It just seems that way for all French strikes are timed for maximum disruption.

As I write many trains are halted; flights cancelled; students, pensioners, supermarket workers and even lawyers are either demonstrating or withdrawing their labour. The focus of this discontent is our boy wonder Emmanuel Macron who swept into power with a promise to raise France once more – shape it into a modern, dynamic, lean economic success story.

He would be the one who would tackle head on the bloated public sector; would halt the over-inflated awards and benefits; rid the country of its army of civil servants, re-shape the complicated often unfair tax system. In short The Great Reform.

And, as he captivated the world stage with his youth and charm, his popularity began to climb until many began to believe that this truly would be the President to face up to the small but powerful unions.

Well, we shall soon know. This Thursday, before the column appears, Macron, who has so far barely spoken on the conflict is to give an hour-long TV interview.

It’s risky to second guess any politicians these days but, if his PM’s declarations of not backing down are anything to go by, neither will Macron.

He will also be buoyed by a Sunday newspaper’s poll showing 62 per cent now in favour of SNCF (the railway) reform. The Government wants to end the right of a job for life; the early retirement plans and the myriad other perks that have contributed to the company’s €48 billion debt. None of the present staff arrangements will be cut, only new hires. The last time the government made a determined attempt at reform was in 1995 when the then PM Juppé faced up to an angry grouping of strikers. But President Chirac lost his nerve and over-ruled Juppé who resigned.

As is his nature, Macron will have studied all the traps lying in wait for any hesitancy on his part. He has to walk a narrow path, for any hint of Thatcher style roughshodding would unite the left in a powerful coalition. But he has never shown any enthusiasm for Thatcherism although he’s known to admire Blair.

Watching and waiting is the hard left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon who derides Macron as the President of the rich and almost gleefully hopes for a confrontation.

He likes to remind people of France’s glorious recent revolution – May 1968 – when, as he sees it, the left brought down the French establishment.

Students, liberated by major reforms and changing attitudes around the world, took to the Paris streets to demand a more equal, liberal society. The famous paving stones were ripped up and flung at riot police and they were soon joined by eight million angry workers stopped from pay rises by De Gaulle’s paternalistic disdain. Soon after, the government gave into the strikers’ demands and the anti-capitalist uprising fizzled out as usually happens in France. Little achieved on either side but honour satisfied and French refusal to bow before authority seen by the world.

Mélenchon hopes that today’s strikers note the 50th anniversary of the May riots and take strength and courage from their forebears.

He presents a deliberately romanticised view of the May battle as a glorious rebellion of the people.

But even if times haven’t changed quite so quickly in France, they have changed, and University students now seek to maximise their employment skills, not the barricades. It is the disaffected unemployed, the no-hope youths in the squalid city outskirts who would really damage government if they turned en masse.

If Macron wins his reforms then he must quickly turn his attention there, for this is the lost generation that will haunt him if he fails. The French are often castigated for their immediacy in hitting the streets in protest but looking back to the UK I’m glad they do. Thatcher ripped the soul out of the workers, May, with Brexit, will rip away their rights and even when the people march in protest, the national television makes little or none of it.

Macron will not smash with the brutality of Thatcher, nor will he evade and hide like May. He knows this is his greatest test and will form the base of his Presidential legacy.

If he backs down, he’s just another name in the litany of failures.