Paris is a city that clings to the past, commemorating it in the squares and streets that bear the names of famous battles (Austerlitz, Marengo, Stalingrad) and in its many well-marked historical sites. But there are sites and events that the city prefers to forget. In Montmartre where I stay, I overheard tourist guides haranguing their flocks about famous artists and night spots long before I learned from a book of Andrew Pfannkuche’s that those same streets and street corners near where I stay were the locations of bloody battles during the Paris Commune of 1871. Our friend Serge (Blanc) records how he once happened upon another such site. Its memory had been suppressed by the city and the French government for decades. In the background of the event lay a bitter war of independence (1954-1962) of an Algeria claimed and colonized by the French who regarded it as integral to their national territory. Reflecting on the significance of the repressed event of October 17, 1961, Serge casts light on the motives of his continuing political efforts on behalf of undocumented workers, the so-called persons sans papiers. He reflects not only on the event itself but also on the insufficient internationalism of the Left.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
The 17th of October, 1961
Against Thoughtless Commemorations,
And in Favor of Grounded Internationalism.
A brief reflection on communist internationalism.
Serge (Blanc)
On Sunday, October 17th, 2021, while I was on my usual bicycle tour around Paris, I happened upon a ceremony at the Bezons Bridge commemorating those killed in a demonstration sixty years ago. The evening before this, Macron had appeared there to extend recognition to that date on behalf of the French state. A demonstration that had been organized in 1961 by the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, the FLN, had not primarily been in support of Algerian independence, but rather against the curfew instituted by a decree of October 4, as well as against the frequent police raids. It is estimated that 40,000 demonstrators took part, or attempted to do so in one way or another. The site of the demonstration—which was of course a prohibited event—was kept secret as long as possible. Evidently, in the course of the 17th, the police had obtained information and made the decision to block off access to the city for Algerians approaching from various working-class suburbs in the metropolitan area. This is why the barriers were set up at the Bezons and Neuilly Bridges and other locations.
The day and its events long remained a blind spot, even for the Left. For a long time, the historians avoided it. The first major study was by Jean-Luc Einaudi, who was not in fact a historian: The Battle of Paris (1991). Two or three hundred Algerians were massacred on that day, or rather that night; for the demonstration took place in the evening of Tuesday. The French state has always denied the massacre, declaring already the next day and far into the future that there had been only three deaths. It was not until the end of the 1990s that Jospin’s minister of the interior J.-P. Chevènement, in a cabinet that included the Communists, acknowledged a mere thirty deaths. At the same time, however, two archivists in Paris who had been researching the matter were severely sanctioned. The Algerians, nearly all of whom had been workers, had not only been prevented from demonstrating; they had been arrested and conducted to locations set up in advance (the police prefecture, the Sports Palace, several forts including Vincennes). There they were interrogated and subjected to abuse which did not stop short of torture. In response to police requisitioning, the public transport agency of Paris and Île de France (RATP) had furnished buses to transport the detainees to the sites where they would be tortured and murdered by the dozens. There was no hesitation on the part of the agents of the RATP to participate in this undertaking. It would mobilize many participants, not only the legal authorities, to act outside their official terms of service. It had been decided before the fact to torture and murder. On the orders of the state, the police had prepared for this in advance. Nor was this undertaken to maintain order during an interval decisive for the future of Algeria (a future then being decided by the spokesmen of the FLN and by the actions of the OAS). Nearly 10,000 persons were taken to the detention centers. Many were held for days. Demonstrators at nearly all points were simply thrown into the Seine or into the canals of Paris or its banlieues (some were already dead, others were still alive). These things took place at St. Michel, at the bridges of Neuilly and Bezons and elsewhere. Some corpses couldn’t be identified. Others were never found. Papon, the police prefect, a former Pétainist collaborator and for that very reason the man of the hour, had gone to work at the behest of the state. This was hardly some slip-up of chaotic events gone awry. It was a large-scale crime against humanity, organized, planned, and carried out by the state.
By way of comparison, eight Communist activists were killed in the demonstration for peace in Algeria on February 8, 1962. It was organized by the Left, notably by the French Communist Party. By then, the questions of peace and Algerian independence had been resolved and were soon to be formalized by the Evian Accords of March 18, 1962. The dead fell victim to a fascist police assault that crushed them against the closed gate of the Charonne Metro station. Yet this was no premeditated crime perpetrated by the state, even though the Parisian police methods were indeed characterized by the violent repressive practices encouraged by the Pétainist Papon against anyone who opposed state power.
Stating this does not exonerate the barbaric acts of the police with their fascist methods, nor does it lessen the responsibility of the state. And yet it is important to understand how and to what degree the 17th of October was different. Whatever else can be said of it, that date distinguishes the condition of the Algerian workers as outside the realm of the nation. They are not regarded as belonging to this country. The rules are suspended in their case to allow for curfews, raids, persecution, and arrests without cause; to permit their segregation in working-class slums where they are frequently harassed by the police; and to deprive them of the bare minimum necessary to live with dignity. The murders committed on October 17th could only occur in the established context of such practices.
A second aspect to be considered is the response of the Left to the events of October 17th. The Socialist Party (PS or PSIO at the time) had been associated with massive repression and killings in the colonies (and in particular under the authority of François Mitterrand). Following the leftist electoral victory of January 1956, with its promise of peace in Algeria, the PSIO decided to send a contingent of those who called for continuing the war. The French Communist Party did not participate in the government itself; however, contrary to its promises of withdrawal, it abstained from the no-confidence vote, making it possible to send the contingent of escalation, despite the electoral promises of Guy Mollet (SFIO).
The slogan of the PCF was not “support independence for Algeria” but rather “peace in Algeria.” The party did not consider that the movements in Algeria were mature enough, or that the workers’ movement there was strong enough either in number or political capacity, to advance a politics in pursuit of independence on a socialist path. According to the PCF, the “class contradictions were not sufficiently developed” for this to be the proper slogan. This conclusion rested on an elementary and dogmatic Marxism which ignored the example of the Chinese revolutionary development. The day after the bloody events, dozens of workers were absent from the assembly lines of the Renault works at Billancourt. Everyone knew why. The General Federation of Labor (CGT) did not promptly order a protest. Several days went by before it began to collect itself, and even then it reacted only feebly. In the National Assembly, the only question raised the next day came from a deputy of the Right, Eugène Claudius Petit (a friend of Le Corbusier), who had been the president of the Société nationale de construction de logements pour les travailleurs (Sonacotra). But here, too, the reactions were weak and belated.
In my own personal case, growing up in a communist family which echoed the PCF in speaking only of peace in Algeria and support for the Algerian people, I never heard anything about October 17th, 1961, but only ever about the deadly demonstration at Charonne. There was a mental avoidance of that other day. The rather belated decision of the Left to speak out about it (only at the start of the 2000s), much like Macron’s recent response, voided the political background in favor of a vague moral repentance absolved of any need for political understanding. The real question posed by the 17th of October is, however, who is of this country and who is not, and to what extent should the French state grant equal rights to those who live here. One can imagine that the demonstration of that day, even in the context of that time, might have taken place with the authorization of the state. The demonstrators were ordered by the FLN to come unarmed without carrying even so much as a knife. The FLN clearly had an interest in things going smoothly. The partisan and trade union Left should have taken part on terms and with locations and routes authorized by the prefecture. The FLN should have been very much integrated by collaboration with the forces of public order on the Left.
Normal Thoughts 