A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (62 page)

That night the Caravelle flew him back to Paris, leaving behind an exultant moral triumph of almost unimaginable proportions. He had enthralled alike
pieds noirs
, Muslims and paras. At the same time, in every dealing with the representatives of the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety he had left absolutely no doubt as to who was in control. To the Europeans specifically, he had the unique advantage of never having been associated with France’s post-war Algerian policy, in any aspect. His hands were clean. For the Muslim population, it was the first time that any French leader had addressed himself to them directly, and the instinctive and unreasoning confidence held in his person was immense. So, too, was the overall impact of his authority, and the opportunities open to it. At the time of the historic Liberation
promenade
down the Champs Elysées in 1944, Georges Bidault recalls how

Practically no one shouted “Long live France!” but everyone called out “Long live de Gaulle!” In moments of great distress or great joy, the crowd has a natural tendency to turn to one man and make him the symbol of their need to admire or to be protected.

Now, in this first week of June 1958, the masses similarly turned to the magic of his person, and momentarily it seemed as if there were nothing that could not be achieved if only
he
willed it. It now only remained for the world to decipher precisely what de Gaulle had meant in the various utterances of this his first whistle-stop tour of Algeria, and how he was going to follow them up.

That he was already speaking in two voices, however—one for the elated masses, another for his own private, clairvoyant pessimism—seems to be indicated by a coldly cynical remark de Gaulle uttered to quell the jubilation of an over-eager aide immediately on his return from this peak of triumph: “
L’Afrique est foutue, et l’Algérie avec!
” Of his Mostaganem exclamation of “
Vive l’Algérie française!
” which its exponents would regard as the holy writ, he later explained dismissively that it had just “escaped” from him; it was superficial, just like talking about “French Canada”. On the other hand, those even more controversial words,
Je vous ai compris
, de Gaulle states were “seemingly spontaneous but in reality carefully calculated”; their purpose was “to establish emotional contact”. But just what did this mean? De Gaulle explained later that his whole message of June was “tantamount to saying that the day would come when the majority amongst them could decide the destiny of all”. Certainly, however, no one who heard the words agreed on understanding exactly what de Gaulle had understood. The army for one had become “dupes”, said Charles-Henri Favrod, to his “incantatory” language. At one moment army jeeps driving through the streets were heard to broadcast such wild messages to the populace as this: “Frenchmen, you have just achieved a great victory, not only over the
fellaghas
, but over the enemies of the interior, traitors, defeatists, intellectuals, Jews….” There was an equally large gulf in “understanding” among the Muslims, between those who had waved tricolours and shouted “
Vive de Gaulle!
” “
Vive l’Algérie française!
” in the Forum, and the young Algerians on the 14 July march past in Paris who (according to Simone de Beauvoir) “pulled green and white banners out from under their shirts and waved them defiantly”.

It was the people to whom the enigmatic words had been principally addressed—the
pieds noirs
—however, who understood them least well. In all his speeches during that first tour de Gaulle, by constantly repeating the phrase “only Frenchmen
à part entière
”, made it fairly clear that he was thinking in terms of equality between the races and thus, by extension, eventually majority rule. What de Gaulle “understood” about the
pieds noirs
was certainly by no means as flattering as they wished to believe, and as the realisation of this sank in
Je vous ai compris
became the bitterest of insults.

Such is the uncertainty of human communication.

Slow quest for a policy

Through the summer and into the autumn of 1958, as de Gaulle evolved his policy, there followed “great gusts of words”, said Simone de Beauvoir caustically. The sonorous speeches on Algeria sometimes seemed “like the Seine itself, full of meandering loops followed by a long spurt forward”, says Edward Behr. Five times de Gaulle flew to Algeria. But there appeared to be disappointingly little immediacy in his moves to end the war. Later de Gaulle and his apologists could offer good cause for this slow and deliberate pace; nevertheless, it was over these first months that the great momentum of May and June was to be tragically frittered away—to the immense advantage of the F.L.N. De Gaulle stated his objectives:

first, to bring Algiers completely under the authority of Paris, secondly, to show the rebels that France was aiming at peace, a peace which she would ultimately wish to conclude with them and which she counted on to preserve her ties with Algeria, and thirdly, to reinforce our military presence in such a way that nothing that happened in the field would interfere with our decisions.

Yet once the emotionalism of those “great gusts of words” had been flensed, the flesh and bones of the programme looked disappointingly like the mixture as before—even though perhaps applied with extra impetus. Still more effort and money would be expended on the Algerian economy and on education. New efforts would be made to win the war militarily. Lacoste’s
loi-cadre
was swept away, but there would be a single electoral roll, with free elections, and now with a date fixed. There would be a referendum to say Yes or No to de Gaulle’s remodelled constitution giving the republic a new backbone of steel; all Frenchmen would cast their vote in it, and countries of the Commonwealth would be entitled to decide whether or not they wished to be associated with it. It would be the first occasion that the Algerians were to be invited to vote on the new single electoral role. This was to be on 28 September. Then, in November, there would be elections for the National Assembly to confirm de Gaulle as Prime Minister, followed, in December, by new presidential elections.

Referendum triumph: electoral shortcomings

In the run-up to the referendum, de Gaulle with apparently inexhaustible energy stumped the French Commonwealth expounding the merits of his constitution. The alternatives were baldly stated; either continued association, with all the weighty material benefits that this would bring; or total severance. “Make no mistake,” de Gaulle told the principal doubter, Sékou Touré of Guinée, “the French Republic you are dealing with is no longer the one you knew, which preferred expediency to decision…. She lived for a long time without Guinée. She will live for an equally long time if she is severed from her.” Challenging words. For Algeria, however, the question posed was different; it was not yet one of self-determination (that would come later), but essentially one of
carte blanche
confidence in de Gaulle and his policy—whatever that might prove to be.

On 28 September all Algeria—women included—went to the polls for the first time “like Europeans”, casting their votes in a single electoral college. The referendum proved to be a huge personal success for de Gaulle everywhere. In France the Communists and their allies had fought hard against it, with Sartre speaking of “this constitution of contempt” and declaring that he would “rather vote for God, He is more modest.” At most both the Gaullists and their enemies reckoned on a sixty to sixty-five per cent “
oui
” vote in metropolitan France; but in the event it totalled over eighty per cent, on a record turnout of eighty-five per cent. It was the clearest possible mandate for de Gaulle (Simone de Beauvoir felt “like crying” at such “a sinister defeat … an enormous collective suicide”). Abroad, the results were even more remarkable; all Black Africa voted “
oui
” with imposing majorities, save only Sékou Touré’s Guinée, which opted for outer darkness. In Algeria, despite every threat and blandishment by the F.L.N. to abstain, there was an astonishingly high turnout of 79.9 per cent and a “
oui
” majority representing 76.4 per cent of the total electorate and 96.6 per cent of those who voted. Pressure and propaganda by the Cinquième Bureau was undoubtedly strong, but there was little evidence of any fraudulent vote-rigging as had been known in Algeria in earlier times.

The Muslim turn-out in the parliamentary elections that were to follow in November fell discouragingly to sixty-five per cent, but, reflecting as this did in part vexation with having to go to the polls a second time so soon after the first, the results still showed—statistically at least—a handsome backing for de Gaulle. What was far less satisfactory about them, however, was the orientation of most of the candidates returned, who were largely drawn from the ranks of the “integrationists”. There was thus a serious dearth of moderate nationalists among them, acting in defiance of the F.L.N. death-threats of those participating in this “colonialist election”. The F.L.N.’s curt rebuff to de Gaulle’s
paix des braves
overture, which had come in the middle of the November election campaign, also provided an additional deterrent to this eroded middle position.

Constantine plan and the “paix des braves”

Still in the full flush of his referendum triumph, on 3 October de Gaulle was in Constantine to make an important speech. In order that “this country, so vital and so courageous, but so difficult and suffering, should be profoundly transformed”, an ambitious Five-Year Plan was to be launched, with the object of turning backward Algeria into an industrialised nation. 400,000 new jobs were to be created; 250,000 hectares of new land distributed to Muslim farmers; salaries and wages raised to a par with metropolitan France; and administrative posts made available to Muslims on a ratio of one to ten with those of the mother country; vast new horizons of schooling to be opened to Muslim children. In Paris Lacoste grumbled in disgruntlement that it all offered nothing new over his discarded
loicadre
; maybe, but the important difference was that the Constantine Plan had the name of de Gaulle, and all his newly acquired authority and weight, attached to it. In his speech de Gaulle added a reminder that in the forthcoming legislative elections Algeria would vote under the same conditions as the mother country, but that “at least two-thirds of her representatives will have to be Muslim citizens”, and he concluded with a direct appeal to the F.L.N.:

Why kill? We must enable people to live. Why destroy? Our duty is to build. Why hate? We must co-operate.

Stop this absurd fighting and you will see at once a new blossoming of hope all over the land. You will see prisons emptying; you will see the opening of a future big enough for everybody, and for yourselves in particular….

To lend additional enticement to this revelation of a promised land, de Gaulle began to accelerate the number of rebels amnestied. On Armistice Day, a thousand would be released; on New Year’s Day 1959, another 7,000; on de Gaulle’s accession to the presidency all capital sentences would be commuted (among whom Yacef was to be a notable beneficiary); while Bastille Day 1959 would be chosen, appropriately enough, for the release of a further 5,000. Then, at his Press conference of 23 October, de Gaulle threw out his memorable soldier’s offer of a
paix des braves:

I say unequivocally that, as for most of them, the men of the insurrection have fought courageously. Let the peace of the brave come, and I am sure that all hatred will fade away and disappear. What does this mean? Simply this: wherever they are organised for combat, their leaders need only enter into contact with the French command. The old warrior’s procedure, long used when one wanted to silence the guns, was to wave the white flag of truce. And I answer that, in this case, the combatants would be received and treated honourably.

The
paix des braves
utterance made an immeasurable impact. Jacques Fauvet of
Le Monde
confessed to being “arrested by the nobility of the tone, the harmony of the thought”; less romantically, Alain de Sérigny put forward in the
Écho d’Alger
the simple interpretation, “The white flag means surrender.”

The overture was also to bring with it (inevitably, it seems in hindsight, because the political intent behind it remained so imprecise) the first major reversal to de Gaulle’s hitherto triumphant procession. But already, soon after the initial exhilaration of June had begun to dissipate, little puffs of cloud had been appearing from a variety of directions. First of all the concept of integration, brought out of store and burnished-up by the Cinquième Bureau of the army during those heady moments of “fraternisation” in May, came swiftly under attack. In France serious intellects standing well outside the anti-Gaullist Left, such as Raymond Aron, pointed out the flaws by pragmatic arguments. On demographic calculations alone, Aron reckoned that within twenty-five years an integrated Algeria 18 million strong would swamp a metropolitan France of 48 million, politically if not numerically. Acting as a bloc, the seventy-five Muslim deputies which it would be Algeria’s right to send to the Palais Bourbon could provide a balance of power to whichever side of the Assembly they wished, thus preventing it from functioning normally. Integration would also slow down, if not halt, any rise in the French standard of living, and he concluded, “An Algerian France, if it pretends to regenerate France by governing it, will irremediably tear asunder the nation.” On the other hand, as de Gaulle points out in his memoirs, in Algeria the
pieds noirs
tended to regard integration in totally false terms “as a means of warding off the evolution towards equality and Algerian autonomy, of not only avoiding being engulfed by ten million Muslims but of submerging them instead among fifty million Frenchmen”. This was how they tended to interpret the idealistic slogan of the time: “Fifty-five million Frenchmen from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset.”[
1
] It was a matter of mathematical juggling; the Muslims of Algeria saw the equation simply in the ratio of ten-to-one; the
pieds noirs
tried to fix it in a ratio of fifty to ten. But the basic fact was that, whereas integration, if honourably entered into, might have worked happily in 1936 and less probably in 1945, by 1958 it had become at best a romantic delusion, at worst a confidence trick.