ALGERIA RISE OF ALGERIA’S NATIONAL MOVEMENT

FRENCH oppression in Algeria has been as relentless as the Sirocco and as harsh as the Sahara sun. Small wonder that Algerian nationalism has proved more heroic and more enduring than any other national movement.

Modern Algerian nationalism was born in 1925 under the name of The Star of North Africa, whose founder and leader was Messali Hadj, and whose stated objectives were complete independence, withdrawal of the occupation forces and the formation of a national army.

The movement first took shape in France among the emigrant Algerian workers and_then_spread. to Algeria... In_1929 it was dissolved by the French but appeared immediately afterwards under a new name, The Glorious Star.

In 1936, after seven years of intense agitation, the French struck again. The ‘Glorious Star’ was banned ‘and Messali was imprisoned.

But the movement was irrepressible. It re-formed itself. as the National Union of North African Moslems.

The election of the People’s Front in France quickly Because of pressure on space the second of Michaci Banda’s articles on the Algerian people’s struggle for national independence wilf be printed in two parts, The second part will appear next week.

disillusioned the Algerians, for the People’s Front not only continued but intensified the persecution of Algerian nationalism.

In January 1937 the People’s Front decreed the dissolution of the National Union. For the fourth time the party changed its name, ‘this time to the Peoples’ Party of Algeria.

During this period Messali and his followers had to wage an implacable struggle against the French as well as against the reformist ideas of Ferhat Abbas, a rich lawyer who defended the assimilationist policy of the French and opposed the idea of an independent Algerian State.

1937 was an historic year for the Algerian people, Berber and Arab alike. For the first time the Algerian national flag was unfurled and carried triumphantly through the streets of Algiers. For the first time too, the streets echoed to the shouts of ‘Land to the Fellah!’

Immediately after this Messali and his associates were tried . and imprisoned for two years..So great was his popularity that in the cantonal election held while hé was in prison‘he was elected by an overwhelming. majority in Algiers!

Utilizing the war crisis the French, for the fifth time, banned the movement and imprisoned its leaders, Messali included. But the PPA did not concede an inch to the French. The party was reorganized.

Messali, heroically refusing to submit to the Vichy regime, was given 16 years’ hard labour, 20 years’ banishment and all his property was confiscated...

When the Allies landed in North Africa in 1942 they released all political prisoners with the significant exception of Messali and his followers.

In February 1943 the PPA—through its legal representatives —presented the Allies with a charter (the Manifesto of the Algerian People) demanding independence.

The response of the embarrassed Allies was swift and cynical. The petitioners were deported to the south and Messali to the Sahara.

Yet bythe end of 1944 the movement~had growri fo 600,000 ~~~ members.

In 1945 the Algerian people were dying in -thousands from a famine which was the direct result of the French Government’s policy. In May that year they rose in a spontaneous but unco-ordinated insurrection—88 Frenchmen were killed, 150 wounded.

This was the signal for a general massacre unknown since 1871—between 45,000 and 60,000 Algerians were killed and wounded and over forty villages were obliterated. To their eternal shame the Communist Party of France—then collaborating in a coalition government—were part authors of this sordid chapter of French history.

The 1945-1954 period was the heroic period of the PPA. So great was the hatred against the French, and so deep the loyalty of the people to the PPA, that more than 80 per cent. of the people followed the call of the party not to vote in the cantonal elections in 1945.

In 1946 Messali was held in ‘enforced residence’ in Algiers. Despite intensive repression the militants and leaders of the party went throughout the country sustaining the morale of the members .and_ preparing them for coming. events.

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Jt was during this period that the first secret military organizations were formed for training the leading forces of the future Algerian Liberation Army. be grasped by comparing it with the editorial in the September 1936 number of the literary magazine Oktyabr [October].

Under the heading ‘The vermin have been crushed!’, this article hailed the sentences passed on the accused in the first of the great public ‘purge’ trials, and went on to deal with ‘wreckers on the literary front’.

Among other things, the editors criticized themselves for having published the novel ‘Young Marx’ by ‘the enemy. Serebryakova’. Evidently both the novel and its authoress have now been ‘rehabilitated’.

Serebryakova was the wife of Sokolnokov, Soviet ambassador to Britain and one of Stalin’s victims. Her book ‘Nine Women of the French Revolution’ appeared in London in an English translation in 1932, with a preface by Beatrice Webb.

This change in her fortunes appears to have passed unnoticed in the British Stalinist Press—though many of those assaciated -with it enjoyed Serebryakova’s hospitality when she was at the Soviet Embassy here!