October 17, 1961: Terror of state and “colonial” violence

The translation of Jim House and Neil McMaster’s book, released under the title Paris 1961. Algerians, State Terror and Memoryat the University Press of Oxford in 2006, can be praised as an excellent initiative on the part of Tallandier editions. Indeed, precisely because it was first written in the English language for an audience ignorant of historiography relating to what is agreed to call, in France, the manifestation of October 17, 1961, this book presents itself as the best synthesis on the subject: no bibliographic reference, no interpretation is neglected by the authors who deliver here a perfect development and the work will be a date for this reason. The question of the balance sheet, for example, at the heart of French controversies, opposing Jean-Luc Einaudi and Jean-Paul Brunet, is the subject of a rigorous study leading to the conclusion that “ In September and October, much more than 120 Algerians were murdered by the police in the Paris region (P. 211).

A real “ state terror »»

Jim House and Neil Macmaster, however, do not stick to it: operating all the archival resources, Paris police headquarters at the head but also general union of the police (Sgp), they offer a new thesis taking into account all the events of this fall in the Paris region. The title of the book reports: the police repression of October 17, 1961 results from a real “ state terror Established by the system of repression of Algerian nationalism that Maurice Papon built from his arrival in Paris in the spring of 1958. This repression is therefore not in any way a conjuncture accident, it does not hold the “ blunder “, Nor the reaction of a Parisian police force overwhelmed by the extent of the demonstration, as Jean-Paul Brunet defended. Jim House and Neil Macmaster join in this the analysis that Alain Dewerpe has recently developed about the repression of the anti-Oas From February 8, 1962 to Charonne, even though, Alain Dewerpe’s book being released at the same time as the English version of the book by Jim House and Neil Macmaster, the latter two did not have this important work to feed theirs. Together, the two books argue the existence ofhabitus With violence and repression within the Paris police in the final sequence of the Algerian War of Independence. Brushing, for this sequence, a first painting by the Parisian police, its staff, their training and its methods, they thus complete the historiography of the police which is not yet very developed for the period after the Second World War.

A policy “ colonial »»

Jim House and Neil Macmaster, however, add a dimension to the analysis: they describe the police violence of the fall of 1961 as “ colonial ». They base their argument on the reconstruction of Maurice Papon’s career to show that the initiatives he takes after his arrival in Paris are inspired by his previous experiences in Maghreb territory. Maurice Papon occupied several positions in Morocco and Algeria, in particular in Constantine from 1956 to 1958, where he was formed in the repression of nationalist and insurgency movements. This thesis, compared with that of Alain Dewerpe who set out to reconstruct a metropolitan history of the repressive practices of the Parisian police, then raises, precisely, the question of the specificity of “ colonial »: What differentiates the repression of the Algerians in October 1961 from the repression of anti-Oas from February 1962 ? And, therefore, what makes it possible to qualify it as “ colonial »» ?

This is a fundamental question in the current French context, where the question of “ colonial »Invades the public, political, media debate, to the point of being in the process of becoming a dominant reading key to French society present or passed. The comparison of the repression of the two demonstrations offers the opportunity to think about it: what is a repression “ colonial “, What are violence” colonial », Compared to a repression and violence that would not be ? That the colonial experience of Maurice Papon owes the system of repression in force in Paris at the end of the war ? What does the ordinary work of police in Paris owe that Alain Dewerpe for his part finely analyzed ? There is a reflection here to continue, fruitful for the future both for historical knowledge and for the understanding of current French society, torn between an analysis traditionally giving priority to the social question and an analysis highlighting the racial question. How to unravel each other, articulate both ? Should we choose between one and the other ? The question is also asked for this past of the Algerian war of independence, its violence and its repression.

In the first part of the book, Jim House and Neil Macmaster give violence “ colonial “A meaning combining their geographic origin and their properly racist dimension: they would result, in fact, from” A racist and dehumanized vision of the indigenous population, deeply rooted in colonial order ” Who, “ like a virus “,” threatened to cross the Mediterranean and defile a republican order “ immaculate », Perceived as the guardian of human rights and traditions of 1789 (P. 48). The combination of two criteria in the only word “ colonial “Manifests the influences of the past research of the two authors who associated their skills in the history of migrants for one and the history of French anti -racism for the other. Neil MacMaster, author of the first part of the book devoted to events themselves, has previously published Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France 1900-1962 (Basingstoke: Mac Millan, 1997) and Jim House, author of the second part on the memory of the event, defended a thesis on French anti -racism and anti -racist discourse from 1900 to the present day.

History of an underground memory

The second part of the book offers a clear periodization of the memory of the event: isolated reactions, “ fragmentary “, From the opinion at the very time of the facts, did not make it possible to inscribe this repression in the French collective memory. Until the early 1980s followed a period of “ underground memory », Expression that is all substituted for those of forgetting or concealment which, until then, were commonly used to designate this period during which the event disappeared from the field of public debate. The memory of the manifestation, in fact, was well perpetuated, continued to exist in certain circles, otherwise it could not have reappeared in the early 1980s. The journey of this memory is thus tracked in order to show how it could survive and not be out definitively. It turns out that it is not the family channel that served the transmission of this memory, but the militant channel. The Algerians victims of repression, in fact, were dispersed by the very resorption of slums from where they had released in October 1961, and it is commonplace to note that it was not to their children that the victims of any trauma that it is speaking first. In fact, the memory of the event was brought by activists engaged in support for Algerian independence, who then transmitted it to the political movements of immigration in the early 1970s, in particular the movement of Arab workers (MTA), which brought it until the 1980s when the anti-racist movement gave the event to a priority place in its anti-extreme right argument.

From the beginning of the 1980s, therefore, until 1997, the year of the trial of Maurice Papon, the event resurfaced gradually, before being the subject, thanks to its rescuing rediscovery during this trial, of a real policy of symbolic reparation with the installation of a plaque at the Saint-Michel bridge in 2001. Note: the role of the Algerian authorities, which did nothing to glorify the role of “ emigrants In the struggle for independence, is also taken into account.

The rediscovery of the event, that said, she satisfies historians ? Neil Macmaster and Jim House take their distance from the version of the event put into circulation during this resurrection, at the end of the 1990s, tending to defend his qualification as a “ massacre ». On the contrary, Jim House and Neil Macmaster saw this word from the title of their work: he “ Indeed evokes an isolated, explosive event, which occurred in a place and a unique moment when we are in reality, this book shows it, with a cycle of violence and assassinations which has extended over several weeks, if not several months They explain from the introduction (p. 31). The thesis is convincingly supported and it is even more frightening.