IT'S over and this time it's for real. After a 12 day strike which had effectively held the French government and the economy to ransom, the French Truck Drivers Union yesterday won a three per cent pay rise, lower than they had demanded, but it signalled the ending of the dispute and the start of the long journey home for hundreds of stranded truck drivers.
The end of the strike came from nowhere as negotiations between CFDT, the truck drivers union, and their employers had been suspended on Wednesday night and no new date had been set for both sides to come back to the table.
However, the partial lifting of the blockade at Calais on Thursday afternoon was seen as a move in the right direction as the French government continued to appeal over the heads of the union for the truck drivers to end the strike.
In Calais, the French truck drivers had indicated that they did not want to spend another cold weekend standing on the picket line.
However, they insisted throughout this strike that they would continue "for as long as it takes" until their employers agreed to an increase in pay, and the gamble paid off.
Their original demand had been for a 10 per cent pay increase, but Mr Phillipe Rault, the CFDT union representative who organised the dispute at Calais, made no comment on the agreement of three per cent, saying only that he was "very happy" with the decision.
In future, however, the strikers will be able to retire at 55 and they also won the argument for a shorter working week.
It had been a tense day, with rumour and counter rumour about a possible end to the dispute. One factor which protracted not only the negotiations in Paris, but relations between the truck drivers and their union in Calais, had been a breakdown in communications between the two sides.
This was the case when the news of the end of the strike filtered through to Calais, and the truck drivers refused to relieve the blockade of the port until they saw proof that they had won their final demand.
Mr Rault refused to order the removal of the lorries and concrete blocks which had been placed across the access roads until his union in Paris sent a fax to the port confirming the end of the strike.
It took two hours to arrive and when it did Mr Rault, in a gesture of goodwill, swopped his trade mark Russian fur hat with the navy flat cap worn by Mr Marcel Braudel of the CFDT union.
When he received the fax Mr Rault said: "I'm very happy. It's a big victory, it is a revolution. I'm sorry about it, but we had to do it."
Then came the moment when the blockade was removed and hundreds of truck drivers drove past the concrete blocks while had prevented them from passing through the port, some for as many as nine days, to board the next ferry to Dover.
The French and British truck drivers greeted the news of the end of the strike with cheers and blew the horns of their lorries in unison.
"We are happy that the truck drivers have what they wanted. We had run out of petrol and began to lose a lot of money. The pumps had been closed because we could not get any petrol. We are glad that it has come to an end."
In the centre of Calais last night, the ending of the dispute came as a big relief" to Mr Davide Cedas, who works at the petrol station on the Place d'Armes. He said he was worried that despite allowing some of the truck drivers through the port blockade on Thursday, the strikers had done nothing about the blockades surrounding the town. He had not been optimistic. He admitted that oil supplies would have reached him before the weekend to allow him to re open his petrol pumps.
However, despite the belief that the strike might have continued over the weekend, support for the truck drivers' final demand for higher pay had appeared strong, in Calais at least.