Thepolice and the Network of Power

Scan page 3

The four leaders of the 1961 coup in Algeria THE parliamentary road to socialism depends on the idea that the police are 'neutral' and will do whatever Parliament tells them.

This idea is contradicted every week now, with James Anderton, Kenneth Oxtord, and David MCNee openly appearing as spokesmen for hard-line repression.

And more spectacular evidence about politics and the police has come from a recent case in France.

Twelve members

sympathisers of the Service d'Action Civique (SAC: the strong-arm squad of the Gaullist movement) have been charged with involvement in the murder of Jacques Massie and five of his family, including an 8: year old child.

Massie was also an SAC member, and a police inspector in Marseilles.

One of the SAC thugs, Jean-Bruno Finochietti, has admitted to the murder, saying it was done on 'orders from above' , and another, Didier Campana, says the purpose of the attack on Massie was to recover "compromising documents'.

No-one knows what those documents were. But among the 12 men charged is Pierre Debizet, secretary general of SAC since 1968.

Gaullist

Gaullist politicians - calculating that SAC's useful life is finished - have protested Debizet's innocence, but also claimed that links between SAC and Gaullist politics are now just history. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that one in four SAC members in Marseiles is a policeman, but a number of the accused have criminal records including hold-ups and arms thefts..

Campana, it turns out.

was active in lett wing circles as an agent provocateur. And Finochietti, a known neoNazi, has suggested that the French secret police, SDECE, was also involved.

Debizet's police file is empty . . • because of a "general clear out" just before the new Socialist ¡overnment took office!

But the SAC is a shadow if what it once was. Its hembership is 5,000; it was :0,000 in 1968.

It ends in a trail of petty rime, but it started in major ¡truggles for political power.

The fore-runner of SAC vas the Service d'Ordre steward squad) of the RPF, he Gaullist movement of he 1940s.

This squad was 16,000 strong, armed, and wellfinanced.

Fiom money provided by several bankers Morgan, Lazard Freres, Credit Lyonnais) and by the Dassault: aircraft firm, its members were paid a substantial wage.

It had a training school, cars, vans, radios and a milicary police unit at its disposal, allocated by the army general staff - against the express orders of the minister of defence.

De Gaulle had resigned as President in 1946, after the National Assembly had rejected his plans for a presidential 'strong state' He launched the RPF as a right wing, violently anticommunist, movement.

The Service d'Ordre, recruited from Gaullist exResistance fighters but also from right wing thugs of all varieties, smashed up CP meetings, helped create company unions in firms like Simca, and developed its links in the police and armed forces.

Salan

But, as the post-war political turmoil subsided, so did the RPF's chances seizing power. In 1951 de Gaulle dissolved the RPF and later retired to the countryside.

Gaullist politicians continued to operate in ihe National Assembly, but de Gaulie was contemptuous of "sterile party politics" • He was waiting for a crisis, when he could overturn the constitution and come forward as the 'saviour of the nation' The Algerian war produced that crisis. After France's defeat in Indochina. the Algerian Muslims' bitter hatred of French colonialism broke out into open war.

Soon the French government was caught in a dilemma. It could not win. But it dare not make peace. The one million European settlers in Algeria hardened in racist determination to maintain their privileges over the eight million Muslims.

In this crisis the Gaullists plotted. In January 1957 settler-extremists tried to kill General Salan, newly-appointed commander of the French army in Algeria.

The killers said they were operating under orders from i group of politicians notably de Gaulle's future Prime Minister Michel Debre -who were preparing for a coup in Paris. No-one knew for sure, because the case was allowed to drag on until July 1958 and then the chief assassin was allowed to escape.

Salan was suspected of sympathies, but soon prov ed his commitment 1o "Frenc h Algeria" . On 13 of fascists seized power in Algiers, and installed a 'Committee of Public Safety' led by Generals Salan and Massu.

Most of the leaders of the coup just wanted to stop a "sell-out" of "French Alger. But the Gaullists had a clear programme.

Gaullist agent Leon Delbecque - sent to Algiers by Jacques Chaban Delmas -prepared plans for an invasion of France. Support was certain from units stationed in France. As a warning shot, paratroopers seized Corsica.

The government in Paris - now led by Pierre Pfimlin, with the Socialist Guy Mollet as his deputy dithered.

They had all the pomp and authority of parliamentary democracy to support them. But they had no bodies of armed men - and the last thing they wanted On 27 May de Gaulle announced he was forming a government. On the 28th Pfimlin resigned, and on the 31st the Socialists decided to support de Gaulle.

The National Assembly scrapped the constitution, voted full powers to Gaulle, and sent itself on holiday for four months.

De Gaulle's men slid into the posts of power. And the SAC was set up. Its hard core were men like Debizet, from the old Service d'Ordre of the RPF.

Most of the leaders of the Algiers coup had been tricked. De Gaulle moved siowly but unmistakeably towards independence for Algeria - the only way out.

The Army, and the Europeans of Algeria, reacted angrily. In April 1961 tour generals, including Salan, seized power once again in Algiers.

This coup collapsed after a few days because the generals had no clear aims -and de Gaulle did what neither Socialists nor 'Communists' had dared do in 1958, appealing to rank and file soldiers to defy their officers orders. other leaders of the coup went underground, and started a bloody terrorist campaign in the cause of "French Algeria". . From January 1962 their "Secret Army Organisation" (OAS) killed an average of ten people a day.

There was frequent, indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims - and also a whole string of attempts to kill de Gaulle.

Some SAC members -Debizet among them - had dropped out, disillusioned by de Gaulle's Algeria policy. But the remainder were thrown into counterterrorist operations against both the OAS and the Algerian FLN.

The general strike of May-June 1968 brought the SAC to the fore again. De Gaulle announced an amnesty for all the ex-OAS leaders sentenced after 1962, and brought people like Debizet back into SAC. Jean-Jacques Susini, one of the most notorious leaders of the OAS, also worked with SAC.

May 1968 SAC organised the Gaullist *Committees for the Defence of. the Republic" and mobilised for the mass demonstration in Paris on 30 Bendit to Dachau"

There were also more ambitious reserve plans. SAC circulars gave lists (obtained from the secret police) of 820 left wing activists and asked local SAC chiefs to be ready to seize them as soon as orders came from Paris.

When de Gaulle resigned in 1969 the SAC announced that it would "clench its fists" and "continue the struggle". But its activity declined.

It was still used for. heavy-handed stewarding of meetings by Gaullists and other right wingers.

And SAC had all sorts of side activities. Debizet. as well as being secretary-general of SAC since 1968 adviser' to the Gabon.

In 1979 a man na Robert Luong, who been having an affair ' the President's wife, shot dead in France.

Barka No-one knows for that the SAC did murder; but in anc murder case linked to former French Ai colonies SAC involveme almost certain.

In 1965 Mehdi Barka, a Moroccan of tion leader, was stoppe Paris by two men preser police cards - and = seen again.

The SAC has also closely linked with cor terrorism against paigners for sell govern in Corsica.

Indeed, the SAC I finger in almost ever! tionary pie.

When gunmen fired picket line in Reims m 1911, Killing one or workers, the killer was i to be both a membe France's fascist union fe tion, the CFT, and an card-holder.

When de Ga personal regime went, s the usefulness of the St the French state.

As early as 1969 a wing Minister of the Inti Raymond Marcellin. calling for SAC banned. This lates: may finish it off.

But the nett::. links between politicians, policer*. nessmen, strong 300 tors and the mi** exist The stronges: ..•. their common cut will certainly be it: a Crisis.

Unless the le.::

ised and prepar: them on, we wil:=less as the parliamen of May 1958.

MART THOM

Scan page 4

ociatist Urganiser lugus 1 Page 4

----- pull-quotes -----

May which backed de Gaulle with slogans like "Cohn-