ALGERIA TWO ROADS BEFORE ALGERIA’S REVOLUTION
1958The NewsletterMichael Banda Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
The indications for A.I.H. are cases where the husband is impotent (but not sterile) or where some local ‘physical disorder in either partner prevents the normal sexual act.
A.D. has been resorted to in cases of male sterility and in cases where the husband is suffering from some serious and inheritable defect or disease.
Its use has also been advocated in cases where the paternity of a man of conspicuous endowment is desired or in‘ cases of single unmarried women who desire to bear children. No figures are available as to its use in the latter type of case.
Medical opinion considers it advisable that the recipient of artificial insemination should not know who the donor is, and that the donor should likewise be kept in ‘the dark.
Of proved healthy stock As far as possible donors are chosen among married men with families of their own, and of proved healthy stock. The blood group of the donor should resemble that of the husband as far as possible (to avoid possible future litigation).
There are no medical objections to AILH. One serious objection to A.LD. is the risk of endogamy (marriage of children of the same donor).
This could have harmful genetic. effects should the donor be carrying some unrecognized and deleterious recessive gene. The risk can to a large extent be obviated by limiting the ‘donations’ of cach individual donor. THE defeat of the 1945 insurrection did not fail to affect the People’s Party of Algeria, now renamied the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD).
In Algiers the efforts of the French administration to woo the Algerian moderates on the basis of small reforms and much demagogy were successful.
These moderates included a majority of the MTLD central committee. By a series of subterfuges and manoeuvres the majority (known as ‘Centralists’). managed in 1953 to impose their watered-down policy on the party.
Inevitably this angered the ordinary members. In March 1954 Messali Hadj appealed to the ranks above the heads of the Centralists.
After a long battle the Centralists gave way and a Congress : was convened in July 1954 in Belgium which repudiated them This is the last of three articles by Michael Banda on the Algerian people’s struggle for national independence.
and charted a course for armed insurrection.