TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1950s) Algerian Revolution </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <link 07790> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> The Algerian Revolution </hdr> <body> [France's colonial possessions in North Africa proved even more resistant to reasonable solution than Indochina. The repercussions of that defeat, along with the tide of nationalism flooding from Egypt, led to violent rebellion in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, starting in 1954. Hundreds were killed in vicious guerrilla fighting and terrorism. Tunisia and Morocco gained independence in 1956, but Algeria's situation was complicated by the presence of 1,000,000 white Frenchmen who considered the territory both home and part of France. They violently resisted any effort to deal fairly with the Muslim majority. In May 1958, fearing that Paris about to sell them out and turn the country over to the Muslim rebels, French officers in Algeria launched an insurrection, while another French officer, in retirement in France, waited to make his move.] (May 26, 1958) As in Roman days, the revolt to bring down the regime began with the general's taking power in the provinces, and waiting for the capital to fall of its own weakness. Insurrection broke out first in Algiers when 30,000 French colons, fearful that the new French government might abandon Algeria, rioted in the streets, sacked the Government Building, and were calmed only when Paratroop General Jacques Massu announced that he had taken power in Algiers in defiance of Paris. That left it up to Paris; to the National Assembly to capitulate or fight back; to the mobs in the street to enlist for or against the battered, precarious Fourth Republic. In the Paris streets loud-speakers rasped out the orders of tough Maurice Papon recently brought from Algeria to become police prefect of Paris: "Use your clubs! Use your clubs!" His men complied. In the Place de la Concorde a mob of 6,000 right-wingers led by burly ex-Poujadist Jean-Marie Le Pen--sporting the tricolor sash of a Deputy and the green beret of his old paratroop regiment--came face to face with rifle-toting police drawn up in columns four deep. For a time the mob hesitated. Then, with cries of "Algeria is French!" and "Throw the Deputies into the Seine!," the rightists made a wild rush for the Concorde bridge leading to the National Assembly. In minutes, they reeled back in flight, blinded by gas grenades, battered by rifle butts, clubs and fists. The thwacking of Papon's night sticks and the defiance of the Algerian generals could not be heard in the sleepy (pop. 365), village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, 150 miles southeast of Paris. But these were expectant sounds that reverberated in the imagination of Colombey's first citizen, a towering man of 67 with an equine face and the stiff, awkward movements of a French career soldier. And they were sounds that drove him at least to pick up the telephone, an instrument he dislikes, and summon an aide from Paris to receive a typically laconic statement: "For twelve years France, at grips with problems too harsh for the regime of political parties, has pursued a disastrous course...Today, in the face of the troubles that again engulf the country, it should be known that I am ready to take over the powers of the republic." He had always made his terms clear. The idol of France at one of the crises in its life, he had served an ultimatum upon his countrymen: if they wanted him to take part again in the game of French politics they must change the rules. Specifically they must turn their backs on France's prewar system of parliamentary supremacy and accept a chief executive empowered to make policy without constant interference from the National Assembly. When after World War II, a majority of Frenchmen opted for the old rules De Gaulle retired to the sidelines and sat there for a decade, croaking, like Cassandra, of impending disaster. Last week his prophecies, like Cassandra's, were being borne out, and the kind of hour for which he was created was about to strike once again. For De Gaulle, as Historian Herbert Luethy noted, is essentially a "politician of catastrophe," as it was catastrophe that stalked France last week. [De Gaulle won over both the insurrectionists in Algeria and the legislators of the moribund Fourth Republic.] (June 9, 1958) As the hour hand of the clock high on the wall of the National Assembly crept past 3, the hour of final reckoning arrived for the Fourth Republic. In hushed silence the Deputies watched General Charles de Gaulle in a single-breasted grey suit stride to the podium, heard him proclaim in less than seven minutes the terms on which he had accepted the summons to power. Then, by the unimpressive vote of 329 to 224, De Gaulle got his way. Less than 18 years after the defeated Third Republic voted itself out of existence in the Casino at Vichy, the parliamentary government of France was again declaring itself bankrupt. But this time France's Parliament was capitulating not to foreign conquest, but to internal dissatisfaction. But this time the man to whom France had turned was a symbol not of defeat but of desperate hope. The illnesses that De Gaulle would have to treat were many and grave. Above all there remained Algeria. De Gaulle's high-flown rhetoric about Algeria had at one and the same time encouraged both the right-wing French "ultras" in Algeria and Arab leaders like Tunisian Premier Habib Bourguiba. Now it would have to be translated into plans and actions. De Gaulle's promised trip to Algeria would probably do more to reassure the 500,000 French troops there, who in De Gaulle's words had been "scandalized by the absence of true authority," than it would please the ultras, who may find his proposed solution for Algeria less to their taste than they anticipated. [After his overwhelming victory in the October referendum on his proposed constitutional reforms, De Gaulle traveled to Algeria to offer reassurance--without, however, disclosing his ultimate plans for the province.] (October 13, 1958) On both sides of the broad Algerian boulevard stood columns of red-bereted French paratroopers. Tommy guns slung across their chests. Inside the square 15,000 Algerians--Moslem and European--gazed expectantly at the towering figure on the distant rostrum. They had come to hear General Charles de Gaulle abandon his Delphic evasion and spell out his plans for stanching the wounds of France and Algeria. "Last Sunday," boomed the deep voice from the rostrum, "3,500,000 men and women of Algeria, without distinction of community and in complete equality, gave France and myself their vote of confidence...This fact is fundamental because it pledges Algeria and France one to the other, mutually and forever." This ringing statement seemed to suggest that France would never consent to independence for Algeria, and Constantine's European settlers were cheered. But not for long. In fact, within a few minutes, the leaders of Constantine's right-wing Committee of Public Safety--seated not on the rostrum but in a stand near by--stomped out angrily. They might have helped bring De Gaulle to power, but the triumphant Premier no longer needed them. The general still did not commit himself on Algeria's ultimate political status: "I believe it would be completely useless to petrify in advance in words something which our enterprise itself will outline," he said. But he made it abundantly clear that the day of European privilege in Algeria was ending. "In two months," he said, "Algeria will elect her representatives under the same conditions as Metropolitan France. It will be necessary that at least two-thirds of her representatives be Moslem citizens." De Gaulle outlined, too, an ambitious five-year plan to raise Algeria's Moslems to something like economic equality with Frenchmen. But this would require peace. "Therefore, turning to those who are prolonging a fratricidal conflict, I say: Stop this absurd fighting, and you will see at once a new blossoming of hope all over the land of Algeria. You will see the prisons emptying; you will see the opening up of a future great enough to embrace everybody." His speech ended. De Gaulle solemnly began to intone the Marseillaise. Sullenly, the majority of his audience kept silent. In lonely splendor the general carried on, his firm voice ringing out over the loudspeaker. [But after four more years of bloody guerrilla warfare, and a full-scale revolt by army officers in Algeria and France, De Gaulle negotiated independence for the Muslims, and the bitter French Algerians were uprooted back to France.] </body> </article> </text>