Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 183 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 183, February 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The civil war in Algeria is being brought home to France, the former colonial power. The French government backs the Algerian rulers, who cancelled elections three years ago to prevent the Islamic organisation, FIS, from taking office. Resistance to that move has escalated the war to its present level, where around 600 people are dying every week.
The Air France hijack over Xmas has been used to the advantage of the French prime minister, Edouard Balladur. His popularity had been sinking since September but an opinion poll in early January boosted it by 8 percent. He is now tipped to succeed François Mitterrand after the presidential elections.
The hijack has been the pretext for reinforcing the racist policies of minister of the interior, Charles Pasqua. Pasqua backed Balladur in the hope of becoming prime minister.
In April 1993 Pasqua identified immigrants as the chief cause of crime and drug trafficking. Then Pasqua accused immigrants of ‘complicity with terrorist organisations’. In October 1993 the police raided North African immigrant areas. They discovered Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) leaflets, which were used to justify deportations. A few months later it turned out that the police had made the leaflets up.
The latest crisis in Algeria has become an excuse for further harassment. After an attack on a French quarter of Algiers, Pasqua deported 20 Algerians. The police made 30,000 checks on people with a ‘dark appearance’ in Paris.
The fight against fundamentalism is invoked to justify every racist measure. It was used to back the government’s campaign to expel young Muslim women from the state schools for wearing head scarves. It was also used by Pasqua to back laws which allow any foreigner to he deported if found guilty of public order offences and make it virtually impossible for Algerians to obtain visas. In 1994, out of the 800 asylum requests by Algerians only ten were granted.
In Algeria military repression has been stepped up since the president announced elections by the end of the year. The French state has strengthened police cooperation with Algeria in an attempt to unearth terrorist ‘networks’ between the two countries. It is tightening immigration controls because it fears numbers of clandestine refugees will rise.
But French support for the Algerian regime is not just about domestic political considerations. France is Algeria’s number one economic partner (over a quarter of gas imports come from Algeria) and at the same time its main creditor. With 25 million inhabitants Algeria represents a highly attractive potential market: a quarter of all imports are from France.
The attempt by opposition parties – backed by the United States and Britain – to reach an agreement with the Islamic parties in Algeria is a threat to the military regime. If it succeeds it will jeopardise France’s dominant position.
The left and anti-racist organisations in France have singled out fundamentalism as the main danger in Algeria and France, in practice putting themselves on the same side as the French ruling class.
They have done little to protest at the racist policies of the right. There was no demonstration against the deportation of Algerians last August. The campaign led by Socialisme International against the expulsion of young Muslim women from state schools was only supported by local branches of the main trade union federation, the CGT, and some student unions.
The anti-racist organisation, SOS-Racisme, even supported the government over the expulsions. The mass weekly paper, Le Nouvel Observateur, which is close to the Socialist Party, had a headline front page ‘Fundamentalist plot’ which described how fundamentalists had supposedly set up infiltration networks inside French society.
In France and Algeria, hope lies in the growth of workers’ struggles against the policies carried out by each government. In November the leadership of the Algerian trade union movement, the UGTA, only managed to prevent a strike breaking out in the oil and gas industry at the last moment. Unrest is also growing in other sectors, notably the building industry which employs 700,000 workers.
In France solidarity with the Algerian people has to be built against a government which supports dictatorship in Algeria and attacks immigrants.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 30 November 2017