Fighting on all Fronts (10 page)

The first sign of growing resentment was the mutiny in the Maison-Carrée barracks in Algiers on 25 January 1941. The Muslim Spahi and Tirailleur units quartered there were to be sent off to Syria to reinforce the Vichy-loyal troops under General Dentz and so counterbalance the British. What triggered the mutiny was the constant harassment Muslims suffered which, among other things, prevented them from celebrating Islamic holidays. This insult made the absence of freedom acutely felt and united the troops in common hatred of their French superiors.

On 25 January, a Saturday, 800 soldiers broke the curfew and killed a captain and a dozen French corporals. They seized arms and munitions from the arsenal and made their way into the city, where they gave vent to their anger. European passers-by were killed and soldiers laid siege to the town hall and a cinema. Reaction was quick and relentless, but a number of Muslim soldiers managed to escape and go underground.

The Maison-Carrée mutiny was basically a local and isolated affair, but news travelled quickly and spread fear among French Algerians. “From this point on the settlers of the Mitidja [Plain] begin to arm themselves
and [arms] traffic takes on quite vast proportions. Apprehension and a sense of insecurity gradually take hold”.
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After the Nazi invasion of Russia in August 1941 the Algerian Communist Party faced a completely new situation. In tune with the PCF’s about-turn in France, it too started on the road of opposition to the Vichy regime without being further hampered by the Hitler-Stalin pact. Great Britain and later on the US were no longer considered enemies, but rather part of the “Anti-Hitler coalition”.

Unlike the PCF, however, the PCA initially went a step further and drew closer to the Algerian nationalists. In November 1941 some sections of the PCA for the first time took up the issue of Algerian independence. After hefty discussion the delegates at a clandestine party conference in December voted to appeal to the Algerian nationalists of the PPA to build a united resistance in order to achieve a “Free and independent People’s Republic of Algeria united with a free France”. This formula was a definite step in the direction of the PPA. At the same time it didn’t specify what the position of the PCA would be should the PPA work towards national independence including a full break with France.

The message was clear enough, and the state took harsh measures. In March 1942 61 Communists were brought to court. Six of them were condemned to death and nine to life imprisonment. Eight prisoners eventually died due to the terrible prison conditions.

Repression decimated the PCA. Several months after the Allied invasion their cadres were still languishing in the prison camps of Colomb-Béchar and Djelfa in the inhospitable south, while others remained incarcerated in the Lambèse and Maison-Carrée gaols. This was reason enough for the PCF to lend support to its Algerian counterpart the PCA, the other reason being their concern over the growth of Algerian-Muslim nationalism. First Maurice Deloison was sent over as “instructor” with the assignment to propagate “Franco-Algerian unity against fascism”. Finally André Marty took over the leadership of the PCA, receiving substantial help from many Communists in the mother country who came to Algeria after the Allied landing.

This gave the PCA a great boost. By 1943 it had 8,000 members. At the same time it developed its political line in close coordination with the “Colonial Section” of the PCF in Paris. The demand for Algerian
independence disappeared from the Communist press, the
Alger Républicain
and the weekly paper
Liberté
, which henceforth concentrated on French questions and the fight against the Nazis. The question of colonialism was reduced to that of removing social inequality between Muslims and Europeans.

Its renunciation of independence for Algeria was in accordance with Stalin’s demand for subservience to the “progressive elements of the French Bourgeoisie”, ie to de Gaulle. In January 1943 the PCF joined “Fighting France”, as the National Committee based in London called itself at the time. In March 1944 the Communists François Billoux and Fernand Grenier entered the Provisional Government. De Gaulle was hoping that by incorporating the PCF he could avoid a possible Communist takeover after victory over Nazi Germany. He proved right. In the years 1944-45 the PCF tamed the revolutionary spirit of a lot of its supporters and pushed through the disarming of the anti-fascist partisans, or francs-tireurs, thus propping up French capitalism. It now unashamedly propagated the defence of the French Empire and endeavoured to make the Communist parties in the colonies follow suit.

That is not to say that the year-long factional dispute within the PCA simply dissipated without a fight. Those Communists who had come into direct contact with Algerian nationalism, the incarcerated of Maison-Carrée and others, continued to hold that the demand for independence was justified. And a number of Communists threw themselves heart and soul into the anti-colonial struggle. However, they were in no position to influence the party line. The leadership around Marty prevailed at the party conference held in Hussein-Dey in September 1943. The main resolution spoke out against “half-measures”, stating that Algerian independence was a distraction and all efforts needed to be concentrated on the struggle against the Nazis in Europe and the liberation of France. The PCA even went so far as to shelve demands for inner reforms within the colonies. The formula chosen was: “Democracy in the colonies must come through the instalment of democracy in France… The colonies, in no position to exist independently economically, nor therefore as an independent nation, would risk falling under Anglo-Saxon domination. It is therefore in their interest to maintain their voluntary union with France”.
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Those Communists, especially in the region of Constantine, who criticised the PCA line as ‘too French’ were accused of opportunism and either ignored or expelled.
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The mere prospect of an Allied landing gave the Algerian nationalist movement an enormous boost. Contacts between the various currents had been intensifying since October 1942. The moderate Abbas, who remained a popular and influential figure, invited the leader of the PPA Lamine Debaghine to his home town. They agreed to cooperate.
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A follow-up to their discussions was the publication of a manifesto with the working title
To whatever occupying power
. The final version, drawn up by Abbas and signed by the PPA and the Ulama, was published on 10 February 1943 under the title
Manifesto of the Algerian People
.
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The manifesto was enormously influential. It told a counter-history to the colonial myths and stressed the historical significance of systematic land grabbing. “An agrarian feudalism has implanted an imperialist and racist soul into this colonial society… Dispossessed, the indigenous people own nothing. Everything is in the hands of the European minority. Even their language is considered foreign. Their social fabric has vanished, creating a people of small peasants, white collar workers and a huge working class.”

About the existing situation, Abbas observed that the Allied landing “has provoked among the Algerian French a veritable race for power. Republicans, Gaullists, Israelites, each group is vying to get its efforts at collaboration acknowledged by the Allies and to ensure the defence of their particular interests” while “everyone seems to ignore even the very existence of the eight and half million natives”.

On the occasion of the official handover of the manifesto to Governor-General Peyrouton, the demand was raised for a new statute based on social justice before there could be any talk of the mass of Muslims joining the war against the Axis powers. This was less than the demand for independence, but in the logic of the colonial state nevertheless unfulfillable. But it served Abbas and his numerous moderate cosignatories as a bridge to reach out to more radical views.

A weakened Peyrouton played for time and instituted a commission made up of Muslim dignitaries with the task of elaborating a new statute book for Algeria. It was in this context that 25 PPA leaders were released from prison, among them Messali, who was allowed to present his case before the commission. But the governor-general was only procrastinating. When the commission’s suggestions were not taken up, the Muslim negotiators were disappointed. In June they declared that the attainment of full French citizen rights was no longer their goal, but instead Algeria’s
recognition as a nation—precisely that nation whose existence Abbas had refused to recognise back in 1936. His radicalisation is representative of a whole layer of Algerian-Muslim intellectuals.

The Muslims and their representatives were not in any way involved in the power struggle between Giraud and de Gaulle. However, the cracks at the top of the colonial state created a space for mobilisation from below. And the question of participation in the Allied war became a trump card in the hand of the nationalists. Muslims were less and less willing to join the army. This became apparent when the reserves were called up in December 1942 and July 1943. In many communities up to half the draftees didn’t turn up. The growing influence of the united nationalist movement found expression in this mass refusal, as not only the PPA, but also the moderate forces around Abbas opposed Muslims filling the ranks of an army whose victory only meant restoring the same colonial set-up. Abbas argued in July 1943: “So long as the Muslim people doesn’t know what it is fighting for, it will refuse to be mobilised. If we don’t reach an agreement with the government, it will descend onto the streets”.
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De Gaulle, having won the power struggle, appointed Catroux as the new governor-general and tried to regain control by resorting to harsh measures interspersed with moments of leniency. He first had Ferhat Abbas and another moderate nationalist, Abdelkader Sayah, arrested. Then the governor-general, in consultation with de Gaulle, dug out the old reform ideas of the Popular Front Government of 1936 and decreed limited changes in the electoral law. Also 60,000 Muslims were to be granted full citizen rights, without, however, being allowed to hand these down to their children.

These policies won the approval solely of the Socialists and the Communists, who dreamt of democratising Algeria only to chain it all the more tightly to the French unitary state. The defenders of French Algeria, the main Franco-Algerian newspapers and the civil servants of the colonial state for their part rejected out of hand even the most modest reform, which in their view would only embolden the Muslims to demand more. For the nationalists on the other hand these plans were too little too late.

The message was clear: the demands of the manifesto could only be achieved through open struggle. Barely a week after the reforms were decreed, the Friends of the Manifesto and of Liberty (AML, “Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté”) was launched. It soon developed into the largest political coalition Algeria had ever seen, reflecting a new revolutionary mood in broad layers of society.

In 1943 the nationalist movement advanced enormously both in terms of unity and of dynamics. The more the war seemed to be drawing to a close, the more expectations rose that mobilisation might after all herald fundamental change. Hope for independence gripped more and more people and combined with the desire for far reaching social reform.

It was in this climate that the AML was launched on 14 March 1944. It was a united front made up of the PPA, Abbas’s new party UPA, the Ulama, boy scouts and students’ associations. Ferhat Abbas became its general secretary. The AML was tremendously successful. At the beginning of 1945 this front organisation claimed over 165 local groups and by April of the same year over 257.
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Funds kept pouring in and according to Abbas up to 500,000 applications for membership reached the main offices in Algiers.
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The AML had its own publication,
L’Égalité
, which had a print run of several tens of thousands. Abbas and others went on speaking tours visiting local groups. The leadership regularly issued circular letters and leaflets in an attempt to steer the AML organisationally and politically.

Gone were the days when the anti-colonial struggle had been tribal in character and based on the countryside. The AML was structured along the lines of the mass European parties. It grew rapidly and distinguished itself by its high level of activity. This included not just demonstrations. The AML also began to intervene in daily life. It organised boycotts of European businesses and estate owners in many localities and concealed harvest yields from landowners. The AML destroyed the networks of loyalty which bound the mass of ordinary Muslims to the Qada and had hitherto helped prop up the colonial administration. The demand for national liberation was placing social revolution on the agenda.

Gone were yesteryear’s fears and with them the “apathy” of the Muslim population that apologists of colonialism so love to dwell on. Euphoria was universal. A French captain described the general atmosphere in these words:

Cinemas, theatres, cafés everywhere are being invaded by natives taking the best seats, something they never did in the past. The indigenous population shows no desire to please, no deference towards military staff as they used to in the recent past… Even the douars [villages] are infected by politics. Political meetings are taking place practically non-stop. This is a new and disturbing symptom.
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The Communist Party and the CGT trade union it controlled both rejected the invitation to join the AML. By doing so they threw away a historic chance to overcome the chasm separating French from Algerian workers.
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The PPA, on the other hand, used the AML as a roof under which to rebuild. The path it took was quite contradictory. Its leader, Messali, now under house arrest, had a charismatic personality and the party was disciplined and well organised. Three of its cadres were in the AML leadership. Thus they were in a position to steer the activities of mass organisations in many localities and to channel the influx of new members in their direction.