1956: the Algerian War Extended and the Suez Intervention

Abstract

As 1956 began, French policy towards Algeria was in limbo pending the imminent general election and the widely anticipated victory of a centre-left Republican Front coalition of Socialists, Mendésiste Radicals, Mitterrand’s UDSR and the Gaullist followers of Jacques Chaban-Delmas’ Social Republicans.¹ British and American diplomatic observers recognised that Edgar Faure’s caretaker administration would avoid major policy statements. According to Ambassador Jebb, the government considered it ‘electorally dangerous’ to send additional troops to Algeria. During the initial round of campaigning Faure promised voters that ‘not another man would be sent’. In response, Governor Soustelle gave an interview to France-Presse on 22 December 1955 in which he lambasted Faure’s administration for failing to deliver promised reinforcements or viable reforms.² Throughout the election campaign, the government was further pilloried for its attempted cover-up of the murder of an Algerian prisoner, shot in cold blood by an Algiers gendarme before the cameras of America’s Fox-Movietone news. The newsreel was not shown in France, but it was widely broadcast in North America and was even replayed at the UN General Assembly in a debate over inscription of the Algerian problem. The Ministry of the Interior attempted to prosecute the US network, but, Georges Chassagne, the photographer involved, discredited the accusation that he had urged the policeman to commit the crime once stills of the killing were published in L’Express and Life magazine.³