France counts 1,435 arrests from Saturday's protests, and the interior minister warns the Halloween weekend will be hard again

France got through its second Saturday of mass protests with the streets damaged but held, and the government spent Monday warning that the next one is already scheduled.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez raised the arrest count for Saturday to 1,435 people nationwide, as of October 26. The Interior Ministry had counted 1,314 arrests as of Sunday morning, against 2,628 the Saturday before, with turnout put at 410,000 by the ministry and near 800,000 by the organisers. The state put 70,000 police and gendarmes on the streets, and the deployment kept the looting far below the weekend of October 17, when more than 1,500 businesses were hit. Violence still broke out in Paris, Marseille and Lyon.

Nunez pointed to something new in the streets. Organised far right gangs came out in formation in several cities, saying they were there to defend businesses, and confronted far left activists directly, among other places in Nice and Montpellier. "We knew there had been calls from numerous identity based and nationalist movements to come out, officially, to defend businesses," he said. "In a number of cities, such as Nice and Montpellier, these groups arrived in organised formations, mainly to target the ultra left movement."

Asked on BFM TV whether he expects trouble at the demonstrations called for October 31, Nunez answered, "Clearly, yes." Halloween evening, he said, is traditionally always a bit lively, and the ministry expects it to be complicated again. Unions have called further rallies for October 31 and a rail strike for November 5.

The government claimed the weekend as a recovery. "The state prevailed this weekend. The state was strong," spokeswoman Maud Bregeon told RTL radio. She said the protesters had raised legitimate grievances that need answers, and that a return to calm comes first. "We cannot have a functioning social dialogue in a climate of violence such as the one we experienced a week ago," she said. The government was expected to announce measures on student concerns over education and university admissions later on Monday, after a national consultation with high school and university students. President Emmanuel Macron made an unannounced visit on Monday to Marseille, which saw the worst of Saturday's unrest.

The bill keeps arriving in the shops. Alain Di Crescenzo, who heads the CCI France network of chambers of commerce, said many retailers stayed closed on Saturday as a precaution after October 17 and that sales fell by about 80 percent for them, as of October 26. "We have shopkeepers who are tired and demoralised, and we are killing local commerce," he told Radio Classique. Macron's mandate runs to April, the public finances are under severe strain, and the costly concessions that ended earlier waves of unrest are not available to him this time.