The dashing of this great hope naturally led to a very radical disaffection. Now the French government is proposing that Algeria accept the ordinance of March 7, 1944, whose electoral provisions more or less emulate those of the Blum-Viollette Plan.
If this ordinance were really enforced, it would give the vote to roughly 80,000 Muslims. It would also eliminate the exceptional legal status of Arabs, a goal for which North African democrats have fought for years. In effect, Arabs were not subject to the same penal code or even the same courts as Frenchmen. Special tribunals, more severe in their punishments and more summary in their procedures, kept Arabs in a permanent state of subjection. The new ordinance has eliminated that abuse, and that is a very good thing.
Arab opinion, much dampened by all that has taken place, remains reserved and wary, however, despite all the good things in the new plan. The problem is quite simply that time marches on. The fall of France was followed by a loss of French prestige. The 1942 landing brought Arabs into contact with other nations and spurred them to make comparisons. Finally, one cannot ignore the fact that the Pan-Arab Federation is a constant temptation for the people of North Africa, whose misery only adds to all their other grievances. As a result of all this, a plan that would have been welcomed enthusiastically in 1936 and would have solved a great many problems is today met only with wariness. Once again we are late.
Peoples generally aspire to political rights only in order to set themselves on the road to social progress. The Arab people wanted the right to vote because they knew that, with it, and through the free exercise of democracy, they could eliminate the injustices that are poisoning the political climate of Algeria today. They knew that they could eliminate inequalities in wages and pensions, as well as more scandalous inequalities in military allowances and, in a more general sense, everything that helped to perpetuate their inferior status. But the Arabs seem to have lost their faith in democracy, of which they were offered only a caricature. They hope to achieve by other means a goal that has never changed: an improvement in their condition.
That is why, to believe my sample, Arab opinion is in its majority indifferent or hostile to the policy of assimilation. This is most unfortunate. But before deciding what ought to be done to improve the situation, we must have a clear sense of what the political climate in Algeria is today.
Arabs today face any number of possibilities, and since, historically, every aspiration of a people finds political expression, Muslims have lately found themselves drawn to a remarkable figure, Ferhat Abbas, and his “Friends of the Manifesto” party. In my next article, I will discuss this important movement, the most important and novel to have appeared in Algeria since the early days of the conquest.
5 The Party of the Manifesto
I said in my last article that a substantial number of North African natives, having given up on the policy of assimilation but not yet won over by pure nationalism, had turned to a new party, the “Friends of the Manifesto.” I therefore think it would be useful to make French people familiar with this party, which, like it or not, has to be reckoned with.
The leader of this movement is Ferhat Abbas, a native of Sétif, a university graduate with a degree in pharmacy, and, before the war, one of the staunchest proponents of the assimilation policy. At that time he edited a newspaper, L’Entente, which defended the Blum-Viollette Plan and called for the establishment in Algeria of a democratic political system in which Arabs would enjoy rights corresponding to their duties.
Today, Abbas, like many of his coreligionists, has turned his back on assimilation. His newspaper, Egalité, whose editor Aziz Kessous is a socialist as well a former proponent of assimilation, is calling for Algeria to be recognized as a nation linked to France by ties of federalism. Ferhat Abbas is fifty years old. He is undeniably a product of French culture. The epigraph of his first book was a quotation from Pascal. This was no accident. He is in fact a man in the Pascalian spirit, combining logic and passion with some considerable success.
The following thought is very much in the French style: “France will be free and strong by dint of our freedoms and our strengths.” Ferhat Abbas owes his style to our culture, as he is well aware. Even his humor bears the French stamp, as is evident from the following classified ad, which appeared in upper-case characters in Egalité: “Exchange one hundred feudal lords of all races for 100,000 French teachers and technicians.”
This cultivated and independent man has evolved along with his people, and he has set forth their aspirations in a manifesto that was published on February 10, 1943, and accepted by General Catroux as a basis for discussion.
What does the manifesto say? In truth, taken on its own terms, the text limits itself to a detailed critique of French policy in North Africa and to the assertion of a principle. That principle, which takes note of the failure of the assimilation policy, is that there is a need to recognize an Algerian nation linked to France but distinctive in character. According to the manifesto, “it is now clear to everyone that this assimilation policy is an unattainable reality [my italics] and a dangerous instrument designed to serve the interests of the colonization.”
Building on this principle, the manifesto asks that Algeria be given its own constitution in order to ensure that Algerians will enjoy full democratic rights and parliamentary representation. An appendix added to the manifesto on May 26, 1943, and two more recent texts from April and May 1945, further flesh out this position. The amended manifesto calls for recognition, an end to hostilities, and an Algerian state with its own constitution, to be drafted by a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage of all people residing in Algeria.
The general government would then cease to be a bureaucratic agency and become a true government, with top positions equally divided between French and Arab ministers.
As for the assembly, the “Friends of the Manifesto” were aware that any proposal for strictly proportional representation would have met with hostility in France, since with eight Arabs to every Frenchman in the population, the assembly would then become a de facto Arab parliament. As a result, they agreed that their constitution should allow for 50 percent Muslim representatives and 50 percent Europeans. Hoping to spare French sensibilities, they accepted the idea that the powers of the assembly would be limited to administrative, social, financial, and economic matters, leaving all problems of external security, military organization, and diplomacy to the central government in Paris. Of course, this basic text is accompanied by social demands, all of which are aimed at bringing the fullest possible democracy to Arab politics. I believe, however, that I have accurately summarized the gist of the document and have not distorted the ideas of the Friends of the Manifesto.
In any case, a substantial number of Muslims have rallied around these ideas and the man who represents them. Ferhat Abbas has united a diverse group of individuals and movements, including the Oulémas, a group of Muslim intellectuals who preach a rationalist reform of Islam and who were until recently proponents of assimilation, along with socialist militants. It is also quite clear that elements of the Algerian Popular Party, an Arab nationalist group that was dissolved in 1936 but has illegally continued to propagandize in favor of Algerian separatism, have joined the Friends of the Manifesto, which they may regard as a good platform for further action.
It is possible that it was this latter group that involved the Friends of the Manifesto in the recent disturbances. From a direct source, however, I know that Ferhat Abbas is too keen a political mind to have advised or desired such excesses, which he knew would only reinforce the politics of reaction in Algeria. The man who wrote “Not one African will die for Hitler” has given sufficient guarantees in this regard.
The reader may think that he would be inclined to favor the program I have just laid out. Whatever his opinions, however, he should know that this program exists and that it has profoundly influenced Arab political aspirations.
Although the French government has decided not to follow General Catroux’s lead in giving tentative approval to the manifesto, it may have noticed that the entire political basis of the document rested on the fact that it judged assimilation to be “an unattainable reality.” The government might then have concluded that it would suffice to make that reality attainable in order to undermine the argument of the Friends of the Manifesto. Instead, it preferred to respond with prison sentences and repression—stupidity pure and simple.
6 Conclusion
The French, whose confidence was shaken for a time, have since lost interest in Algerian affairs. In the ensuing period of relative calm, articles have been published in various newspapers arguing that the political crisis is not that serious or widespread and is simply the work of a handful of professional agitators. Not that these
