A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (59 page)

In Paris, Pflimlin invested

In Paris the events in Algiers had been followed by utmost confusion. There was a feeling that never since the bloody clashes of February 1934 had circumstances so favoured a seizure of power by the mob. Rumours ran round the Assembly that Chaban-Delmas was in Algiers preparing a
coup d’état
; in fact he was in his Bordeaux constituency. A number of panicky arrests were made; one major of the general staff on his way to a conspiratorial meeting was apprehended and, after lamely pretending that he was visiting his mistress, spent the next fortnight in a cell along with Algerian suspects. Soustelle, particularly, was placed under strict police surveillance. The “lame-duck” Gaillard sent a signal to Salan, granting him full powers; then regretted it and sent a further signal limiting those powers to the Algiers zone only. Under the stress of events, the Assembly hastened to invest Pflimlin, at 2.45 on the morning of the 14th—with a substantial backing of 280 to 126 votes. Pflimlin spoke critically of “factious generals”, then regretted it on realising that Salan had behaved with almost complete propriety, so far, following Gaillard’s act of “enablement”. His new cabinet wavered between desires of keeping the bridges with Algiers open and threats of cutting off supplies and communications until the Committee of Public Safety promised loyal intent.

News of the investiture came as a severe blow to the Committee of Public Safety in the “G—G” and was greeted with howls of rage from the still attendant crowd outside. Salan, the inscrutable “Chinois”, for reasons best known to himself did not immediately reveal Gaillard’s “enabling” instruction to the Committee of Public Safety; on the other hand, he was also to ignore completely the second, restrictive instruction. Meanwhile, the persuasive Thomazo had got among the crowd, begging it to cry “ ‘
Vive Salan!
’—because he’s one of you.” With all the volatility that composed the character of the
mediterranéen-et-demi pied noir
, on the next appearance of the mistrusted Commander-in-Chief whom it had booed only a few hours previously, the crowd burst forth in rapturous acclaim. As the situation grew more complex, the non-political Massu showed himself quite out of his depth, longing to get off the hook and get back to the officers’ mess. To one of the journalists who saw him later on the 14th, he “resembled the cursèd Jackdaw of Rheims:

His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way;

His pinions drooped—he could hardly stand….”

Salan, on the other hand, the calmest of all, instantly showed considerable political acumen, and prudence. Suddenly, overnight and for the ensuing days until de Gaulle committed himself, Salan found himself supreme arbiter of the situation

14 May

The 14th was a black day for the “factious” leaders inside the “G—G”. De Gaulle had not come forward. As it was a Wednesday, he was making his weekly visit to Paris, and when his publisher expressed concern that “events” might delay completion of his memoirs he had replied absentmindedly, “What events?” Soustelle, whose arrival Delbecque had disingenuously declared to be imminent, was more or less under house-arrest in Paris; President Coty had appealed to the army for loyalty, and units in Germany and France showed no signs of rallying to Algiers; the Poujadists had not moved as their comrades of the “Seven” had expected. There were indications that Pflimlin would cut off supplies, and it was reckoned that petrol and money would run out within ten to fifteen days. Delbecque went through the day in fear that Salan, who showed signs of recoiling a step or two from his exposed position, might actually have him arrested. If something did not break it looked momentarily as if the “revolution” might simply collapse. Perhaps only the continuing enthusiasm of the crowd and the junior officers of the paras sustained it. Exclaimed Captain Sergent of the 1st R.E.P., who was unknowingly embarking that day on a long career of revolt: “It’s a dream! It’s just not possible!…So all is saved. Algeria will remain French…!” Meanwhile, in Paris that night Simone de Beauvoir recorded how, at a Brecht play attacking war and generals, a left-wing audience “nearly brought the roof down with its applause”.

15 May: Salan: “Vive de Gaulle!”

15 May was a public holiday, and little effective was done by the new government in Paris that day. In bewilderment, and pushed this way and that by his ministers, Pflimlin embarked upon what looked conspicuously like a double game: on the one hand he endorsed Salan’s actions and responsibility; on the other he imposed a blockade of Algeria, severing communications between it and the homeland, and entertaining the absurdity of a loyal “redoubt” in Kabylia. Encouraged by this pusillanimity and urged on by Delbecque, as well as now obviously beginning to enjoy his new position of power, Salan appeared once more on the “G—G” balcony before the ever-present crowds in the Forum below. He spoke in moving terms of his attachment to the soil of Algeria, which contained the human remains of his beloved son, and added: “What has been done here will show to the world that Algeria wants to remain French. Our sincerity will carry with us all the Muslims.” He concluded his address with a vibrant “
Vive la France! Vive l’Algérie française!
”, whereupon, from behind, Delbecque whispered in his ear: “Shout
Vive de Gaulle!
” Salan turned about, grasped the microphone again, and pronounced, not with the most overwhelming conviction: “…
et vive de Gaulle!
”

Though not exactly uttered fortissimo, the decisive words were nevertheless out. At lunch-time an angry Pflimlin telephoned Salan to ask what he meant by it. Salan explained that, in his view—as well as that of “the entire population of Algeria”—only de Gaulle legitimately at the head of a government could save both Algeria and France. Pflimlin hung up. Salan had stepped firmly across the Rubicon; the army in Algeria was publicly committed; the bridges with metropolitan France were down. Meanwhile, in Paris another eminent general was lobbying the Socialist leader now serving as Pflimlin’s vice-premier, Guy Mollet. Maurice Challe had had close contact with Mollet dating from Suez when he had been despatched to London to co-ordinate with Eden the Franco-British plan. Now, as deputy to the Gaullist Chief of the General Staff, General Ely, he went to warn Mollet that the situation was “heading for disaster”; that the Pflimlin government was “unviable”; that if things went on as they were, the army of Algeria would be obliged to intervene, which it could effectively achieve within forty-eight hours; and that he, Challe, personally would “never fire on my brothers-in-arms”. Mollet chided him for exceeding his brief, and shortly afterwards Challe too was placed under housearrest; but not before he was able to make arrangements for a substantial portion of the air transport command to move to Algeria, to lessen the impact of the government’s blockade.

Sparked by Salan’s utterance, de Gaulle (“The issue which was already at the back of everyone’s mind had at last been publicly raised,” he explained) now came out of his hermit-crab shell for the first time. Using carefully measured words, he declared to the nation that “in the face of the trials that again are mounting toward it, it should know that I am ready to assume the powers of the republic”. But there was no how or when. As Prime Minister Macmillan noted in his journal, it was “an equivocal statement, but one which has terrified the French politicians. It is cast in his usual scornful but enigmatic language.”

16 May: “Here are our Muslim brothers”

In Algiers, however, de Gaulle’s declaration was greeted with wildest enthusiasm. A new confidence bolstered up the leaders in the “G—G”; as exemplified by Massu, they now, said Michael Clark, “assumed the aspect of the jackdaw after plenary absolution:

He grew sleek and fat;

In addition to that,

A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat….”

More than ever, Salan was now the hero of the hour, and this sudden access of popularity and influence could not help but affect him as indeed it had Soustelle two years previously. The next day, 16 May, the euphoria of the moment occasioned one of the more remarkable and inexplicable phenomena of the whole war. Into the excited
pied noir
crowds that thronged the Forum, which had now become well-established as the centre of the daily entertainment, that evening there merged dense groups of Muslims. Waving tricolours and crosses of Lorraine, and banners that proclaimed “We demand a Government of National Unity”, or even “
Vive Massu!
”, they came in their thousands from the Algiers Casbah and from
douars
throughout Algeria; old men sporting wartime decorations, young students, pregnant
fatmas
in
haiks
. A voice from the “G—G” balcony shouted, “Here are our Muslim brothers! Make a place for them!” and there followed extraordinary scenes of mass emotion.
Pieds noirs
linked arms with Muslims, embraced them; European girls lifted the veils of acquiescent Muslim women; all together sang the
Marseillaise
and the military
Chant des Africains
. From the famous balcony the stentorian voice of Massu rang out, welcoming “with pride” this “spontaneously organised” assemblage of Muslims, and asserting, “Let them know that France will never abandon them.” Heady new slogans of “From Dunkirk to Tamanrasset, fifty-five million French!” passed among the crowd. Suddenly the horrors of the Milk-Bar and Casino bombings, of the backlash
ratonnades
, seemed all but forgotten.

Historians still find the “fraternisation” phenomenon of 16 May hard to explain. The official line of the F.L.N., as well as that of French sceptics, is that the whole demonstration was phoney, rigged by the psychological warfare experts of the French Cinquième Bureau; that the women who had so joyfully cast away their
haiks
were simply tarts rounded up for the occasion. But this at best can only be a half-truth. It is true that on the previous day para teams organised by Godard, Trinquier and Léger, who had all become intimately acquainted with the Casbah during the Battle of Algiers, had been hard at work coaxing the Muslims to turn out and stirring them up with heady assurances of equality and integration. But, unaccountably, success snowballed beyond all their expectations; instead of a hoped-for 5,000, it was a crowd of something like 30,000 Muslims that reached the Forum that evening. Stern critics of
Algérie française
like
Le Monde
and François Mauriac agreed on the genuineness of the demonstration, acclaiming it as a basis for new optimism. What thoughts and hopes lay behind those deeply etched, inscrutable Muslim faces on the Forum that day is difficult to divine, except perhaps a mystical, irrational belief that somehow the magical figure of de Gaulle was going to solve everything. Disillusion was bound to follow on both sides as euphoria was replaced by the realisation that the fraternisers were still each worshipping different gods. It was solely the army (i.e. the paras) who were the initiators, and—though carried along by the emotion of the moment—Lagaillarde and the
pied noir
“ultras” were not prepared to pay more than lip-service to such tenets as “equality”. Nevertheless, as in that other dawn celebrated by Wordsworth, it was bliss to be alive in Algiers on that day of 16 May, and for a brief spell it looked as if all might be possible—so long as de Gaulle would grasp the reins.

17 May: Soustelle arrives

On 17 May the long-awaited Jacques Soustelle arrived in Algeria; his departure from Paris had been as spectacular in its way as his send-off from Algiers two years previously. Having failed to get away on the crucial night of the 13th, the former governor-general and arch-Gaullist had been under closest police surveillance, with some ten policemen watching his apartment in the Avenue Henri-Martin. On the 15th Soustelle let it be known that he was suffering from
la grippe
and confined to bed. Two days later friends drove a car into the courtyard, brazenly smuggled Soustelle out of Paris half-stifled under a rug reeking of moth-balls, and rushed him across the Swiss frontier where a plane ferried him to Algeria. It was a getaway worthy of his wartime operations. In Algiers news of his arrival was welcomed rapturously by the crowd, but Salan—fearing a rival in the camp—greeted him coldly. “Your presence here is not indispensable,” he told him. “You are going to politicise the affair.” Playing his cards skilfully, Soustelle with humility replied that he had simply come to place himself at the disposal of
Algérie française
—and therefore Salan; if he were not wanted he would fly back home again at once. Meanwhile the crowd was clamouring for their former hero; so Soustelle was duly incorporated in the Committee of Public Safety and shown off to an exultant crowd from the famous balcony.

One of Salan’s anxieties about Soustelle’s arrival was that it would only widen the breach between Algiers and Paris. In this he was quite right, and it was also to increase enormously the momentum for the return of de Gaulle. Another blow to Pflimlin and a point for the Gaullists at this same time was the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff, General Ely, ostensibly on the grounds of the arrest of his deputy, Challe. On 18 May Guy Mollet—for once out of harmony with his party—decided to back de Gaulle, provided he were to receive his authority from the Assembly, and not from the Algiers “rebels”. The next morning a completely abortive general strike called by the Left showed just how ill-organised it would be if it came to mustering any counter-coup. But still the clear sign of assent awaited from the recluse of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises was not forthcoming.