A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (14 page)

And yet, and yet, beneath the surface and beyond the bickering of the politicians, favoured by the same system of excessive centralisation that proved a bugbear in other ways (not least in the administering of Algeria), France’s new technocrats — supported by bountiful Marshall Aid — were laying the foundations for her astonishing economic recovery. Under the Monnet Plan, vast hydro-electric systems and oil refineries were being built to power new industrial complexes. France’s railways, electrified and modernised, were already running the fastest express services in Europe; but the maximum benefits would not be reaped until the Gaullist era of the 1960s.

On the world scene, France was fearful of Stalinist Russia and, increasingly by 1953, fearful of a more traditional enemy — a resurgent Germany. She was distrustful of her more powerful friends, Britain and Eisenhower’s United States, while the pusillanimity of her divided leaders over ratifying the European Defence Community (E.D.C.) and West German rearmament maddened the inflexible John Foster Dulles. In North Africa and the Middle East she felt her position seriously undermined, first by Britain’s forcing her out of her Syrian and Lebanese Mandates, and secondly by Britain’s own withdrawal, first from Palestine, then Egypt; followed swiftly by the arrival of the nationalist Nasser. The protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco were already clamouring for independence. But worst of all was the predicament in which France found herself endlessly trapped in Indo-China, where the war ground on year after year and where, said de Gaulle: “the determination to win the war had alternated with the desire to make peace without anyone being able to decide between the two”. The war was a running sore that had consumed over the years more than France received in Marshall Aid; that cost annually ten per cent of the national budget, that swallowed up an entire class of St Cyr officers every three years, and that by the time it ended was to account for 75,000 French casualties in dead and missing alone.

Dien Bien Phu and Mendès-France

In 1953 a new and ambitious military command embarked on a calculated risk to lure the Viet-Minh forces into a pitched battle and destroy them. The field chosen was Dien Bien Phu, a camp fortified up to almost Verdun standards; but isolated far away in the interior of North Vietnam, too close for comfort to the Chinese frontier, and tactically badly sited in a hollow overlooked by dominating hills. The French generals overestimated their capacity to supply and support the garrison by air power, and underestimated the ability of an irregular colonial guerrilla force to bring heavy artillery to bear. General Giap took up the French challenge, and for fifty-six days the defenders heroically withstood a siege accompanied by a bombardment of First World War intensity. On the eve of the ninth anniversary of V.E. Day, 7 May 1954, Dien Bien Phu fell, at a cost of some 13,000 dead among the defenders. Psychologically, there was no more devastating defeat ever inflicted on a Western regular army by a colonial “resistance movement”, and it was to have far-reaching repercussions in Algeria.

The immediate consequence of Dien Bien Phu was to cause the downfall of the government of Joseph Laniel, a weaver from Calvados known to his associates as “poor Joseph” — France’s twentieth premier since the Liberation. In his place there now entered a new and imposing figure — new to the front benches, though long familiar on the back benches of the Assembly as a figure in the wilderness — Pierre Mendès-France. Scion of a prosperous and old-established family of Sephardic Jews, aged only forty-seven in 1954, he had already been Under-Secretary of State for Finance under Blum in 1938, at the tender age of thirty-one. Mendès-France was an unorthodox leftish radical with an austerely cold and penetrating intellect which made him the maverick of the Fourth Republic. He had had a distinguished war record, escaping from France to join the Free French air forces, and he brought the same courage into post-war politics, refusing to curry favour or peddle alliances. Minister for Economic Affairs in de Gaulle’s first government, he had been, refreshingly, the only Fourth Republic politician to resign on an issue of national policy — with the exception of François Mitterrand (who was later to become his Minister of the Interior and, still later, President of France at the head of a Socialist-Communist alliance). In the world of finance Mendès-France stood for austerity, currency reform and a controlled economy; but above all he had long stood for an end to the war in Indo-China. “If you ask me to sum up in one word my policy,” he told the Chamber of Deputies, turning upside-down Clemenceau’s famous bellicose utterance: “
Je ferai la paix
.”

To an astounded Chamber on 17 June he promised that within thirty-three days he would not only make peace in Indo-China but also produce an economic reform programme for France, a new political deal for the protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco where riots had been steadily worsening through the summer, and an untying of the Gordian knot of the E.D.C. If he could not deliver the goods within the appointed time, then he and his new government would resign. The following month the Geneva accords brought an end to the fighting in Indo-China. For the first time since 1939 France was at peace — but only for three months and four days. On 23 July Mendès-France and his government received an unprecedentedly overwhelming vote of confidence of 471 to 14. A week later (a Henry Kissinger ahead of his time) he flew off on a whirlwind trip to Tunisia to speed the transfer of autonomy. Though his conservative opponents growled that he was selling the empire down the river, by and large Mendès-France was — briefly — fêted in France as a national hero for his ending the “dirty war” in Indo-China; while in Algeria the moderate nationalists regarded his coming with intense hope.

Because of France’s long involvement in Indo-China, wrote Mitterrand, she “would miss her European rendezvous and neglect her African mission. She had fallen into the trap.” And Indo-China had been but one of the numerous factors all conspiring to avert France’s gaze from Algeria in the post-war years. During that cruel summer of 1954 there were many Frenchmen who, with the insouciance of the little pigs, consoled themselves with the thought, “well, at least Algeria has remained calm!” There had, after all, been nine years of tranquillity there. But what, in fact, had been happening during this time of French preoccupation elsewhere?

Algeria after Sétif

After the ruthless crushing of the Sétif revolt in 1945, and the splintering of the Algerian nationalist factions that followed it, the
pieds noirs
found themselves in a position of supreme — but temporary — power somewhat similar to that gained by the Israelis through their crushing victory of 1967. Here was the superlative opportunity to make a generous and lasting settlement from a posture of strength; but the
pieds noirs
, like the Israelis, and from not altogether dissimilar motives, were to muff it. Shaken by the events at Sétif, the French government decided it was time to draft a new “bill of rights” for Algeria, and present the country with her first
statut organique
. For the usual reasons of the opposed forces at the Palais Bourbon, and the very diverse propositions put forward by them, the statute ended as a compromise, having nearly brought down the Ramadier cabinet. Nevertheless, on 27 August 1947 it was finally voted in by 328 to 33, with 208 abstentions — including, discouragingly, those of the fifteen Muslim deputies. The 1947 statute tabled five important reforms which the Muslims had been demanding for many years:

The suppression of the
communes mixtes
, and their replacement by democratically elected local councils.

The suppression of the military government of the Saharan territories, and their replacement by civil departments.

The recognition of Arabic as an official language alongside French.

The separation of Church and State for the Muslims, as for the other religions.

The electoral enfranchisement of Muslim women.

At the same time it abolished the system of “government by decree”, replacing it with an elected Assemblée Algérienne composed of 120 members (sixty from each electoral college), with powers to modify metropolitan laws applicable to Algeria, and also to vote in the budget and finance bills.

The statute, however, still retained the inequitable double college principle,[
3
] whereby, in effect, the European minority were balanced against the entire Muslim population. It met neither the demands of the Muslim parliamentary group for sovereignty to be granted to the Algerian Assembly, with the exception of reserve rights of defence and foreign affairs; nor for the according of dual citizenship rights. During the debate, among the various heated exchanges there was one that spoke volumes about the problem of national identity of the Algerian:

M. BOUKADOUM — “Don’t forget that I’m an Algerian, first and foremost!”

M. LOUVEL — “That’s an admission!”

From several benches, in the centre
— “You are French, first and foremost!”

M. BOUKADOUM — “I am a Muslim Algerian, first and foremost!”

M. MUSMEAUX — “If you consider the Muslim Algerians as French, give them all the rights of the French!”

M. LOUVEL — “Then let them declare that they’re French.”

In effect, the statute satisfied few; the Algerian deputies (as already noted) abstained; the supporters of Messali’s M.T.L.D. refused even to recognise the competence of the French Assembly to legislate the statute; and the
pied noir
conservatives — Borgeaud, Laquière and their supporters — declared that national security would be threatened by opening the door to a Muslim majority in the Algerian Assembly. Nevertheless, if the statute had been enacted it would at least have represented a more important reform than anything preceding it. As it was, the
pied noir
lobby managed to block it just as they had the Blum—Viollette proposals of 1936. A procedural clause was inserted into the statute whereby its five crucial reforms would be made subject to the approval of the Algerian Assembly. Thus, so long as the
pieds noirs
maintained a majority there, these — like every other attempt at major political reform since 1909 — would never see the light of day. All that remained to be ensured was that this majority would not ever be at risk — which the
pied noir
politicians set about achieving with ruthless efficiency.

Electoral swindles

In the municipal elections of 1947 sweeping victories by Messali’s followers alarmed the
pied noir
leaders. This could not be permitted on a national level. Consequently, when, in 1948, elections for the new Algerian Assembly took place as required by the 1947 statute, they turned out to be a masterpiece of rigging. There was widespread evidence of “stuffing” of election boxes by “loyal”
caids
or local officials; in some villages registration cards were never issued; in others heavily armed police (sometimes supported by tanks) assumed a menacing presence, and at Dechyma, where the populace refused to vote, the
gardes mobiles
opened fire, killing seven; nationalist election meetings were broken up and numerous arrests made. At Guelma and Sétif, the two centres of revolt in 1945, the results were simply never announced. Discrepancies between the first and second run-offs, too, were suggestive; at Guelma, Messali’s M.T.L.D. candidates got 6,544 on the first, and only 96 on the second; at Blida, 10,647 was reduced to 2,534. Even in France voices (not only of the Left) were raised against the electoral fraud in Algeria; in a letter of 14 April 1949 to the Minister of the Interior, one M.R.P. deputy, Fonlupt-Esperaber, reported an incident where, although voting ended at ten-thirty,

one of my M.R.P. colleagues from Algiers was invited to leave the polling centre at 10.45, but returned there a quarter of an hour later, because it was snowing, and observed that whereas at the moment of his departure the electoral list contained only some ten entries, it contained one hundred and ninety-four on his return. Having stood in the doorway of the polling centre throughout this quarter of an hour, he avouched that no one had entered.…

None of the officials I saw disputed for a single second that the elections in Algeria were the work of the administration.…

Whereas the administration had been warned in advance that, if given a free rein, the M.T.L.D. might gain ninety per cent of the Second College seats, the final figures were in fact as follows:

“Independents” (i.e. government candidates, or Beni-Oui-Ouis) 55 seats

M.T.L.D. (Messali) 9 seats

U.D.M.A. (Abbas) 8 seats

Independent Socialists 2 seats

It was a result of which a Communist bloc regime could have been proud. Naegelen, the governor-general, declared smugly: “I congratulate myself that the Algerian populations have accomplished their electoral duty in tranquillity, and I thank them … we are marching towards liberty and fraternity, towards ever greater democracy.…” “Reason”, Algiers radio blared forth, “has triumphed in Algeria.” Neither were views that many Algerians could endorse. M’hamed Yazid, later F.L.N. Minister of Information, claimed in a letter to the
New York Times
of 1958 that when he was standing for election in 1948, “more than thirty of us were arrested during the electoral campaign and put into jail for years. A look at the list of those then jailed will give you an approximate list of the actual leadership of the Algerian revolution today.” Even the most pro-French among the Algerian
évolués
was profoundly shocked by the blatancy of the electoral fraud. But the technique was to be improved upon by the next elections for the Algerian Assembly and the National Assembly, in 1951. At Djelfa neither the M.T.L.D. nor U.D.M.A. collected a single vote; while the government candidate managed to tot up 800 — out of 500 eligible voters! At Port-Gueydon 23,671 votes were cast; 23,645 registered for the government candidate. As a result, the opponents of the regime were reduced in Algiers to no more than seven or eight; in Paris the M.T.L.D. and U.D.M.A. between them were deprived of every single representative — including Ferhat Abbas.