Race,Migration,and Fears of Communism in 1948 Morocco

In 1948 a significant controversy struck the local branch of the Association Familiale Française (AFF) in the Moroccan border town of Oujda. The president of the AFF, a presumed communist named Georges Marchal, was accused of building a support base for himself by illegally recruiting Algerian followers, luring them to Morocco with promises of generous family benefits to which they were now entitled as French citizens, and securing their votes in exchange. Not only was it considered dangerous to have a communist at the helm of this organization, but many of the leadership positions in the organization were subsequently filled by his Algerian supporters. The AFF, part of larger pronatalist efforts to encourage a strong French settler birth rate in the protectorate, was seemingly in the throes of an Algerian-communist takeover. To French officials, this turn of events was unacceptable and contrary to French interests in the region. Following accusations of communism, personal ‘demagoguery,’ and anti-imperialist rhetoric, French officials disbanded Oujda’s AFF. The disgraced Marchal contested this decision, turned the scandal into a fight for Algerian rights and denunciation of French imperialism, and then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

At first glance, such a scandal seems surprising given the ostensibly politically-neutral nature of family associations and family policy more generally. Seemingly innocuous organizations such as the AFF in Oujda existed to represent the interests of French families and lobby for improved financial support from the residency. These objectives received support across the political spectrum as many leaders and political organizations viewed the French birth rate and state support for families to be of universal importance. Although family associations acquired a more official role under the authoritarian and collaborationist Vichy regime during the Second World War, they continued to present themselves as neutral and remote from the political conflicts that otherwise divided society. Due to their neutrality and republican roots that pre-dated the Vichy regime, the family administration and associations in Morocco and France emerged from the Vichy period with their reputations largely intact and underwent only a light purge. It is for this reason that historians studying the larger political conflicts in postwar Morocco have overlooked family associations and family policy. As this article shows, the scandal that erupted in Oujda in 1948, and the reaction of colonial officials to these events, nevertheless illustrates not only that family associations were political in nature, but also occupied a central place in many of the conflicts underway in Morocco. The scandal involving the AFF in Oujda is revealing of ongoing concerns about shifting demographics, clandestine movement across the porous border with Algeria, demands for rights, and concerns about communism in the years prior to the start of the protectorate’s armed insurrection, beginning in 1951 and culminating in Morocco’s independence in 1956.

These little-known conflicts surrounding family policy in Morocco must also be situated in the larger context of France’s attempts to reimagine its relationship with its colonized peoples during the postwar period. Marchal’s defense of Algerian rights to equal forms of social protection (family benefits), and the right to speak for the French family (through the AFF), emerged during a period when the very concept of empire was in flux. In dialog with African leaders, France developed new ideas of citizenship within the larger context of the French Union. ¹ One of the complicated questions that these transformations raised concerned the extent to which Algerians’ status as citizens enabled them to make wider claims for equal levels of social protections, something that French officials considered politically and legally challenging to deny, yet logistically and financially difficult to grant. In this era of the welfare state, generally marked by growing acceptance of the state’s role in supporting families and encouraging demographic growth, French efforts to redefine the relationship with the colonies, create new forms of citizenship, and yet simultaneously defend racially distinct family policies, was increasingly untenable. The controversy surrounding Georges Marchal in Oujda was at the intersection of these developing conflicts over rights, citizenship, and social protections.

Shortly after the establishment of the French protectorate in 1912, French settlers in Morocco formed family organizations to pressure the Residency to adopt pronatalist measures that would support French families and encourage population growth. Dissatisfied with Resident General Lyautey’s lukewarm response to their lobbying, settlers received a more encouraging response from subsequent resident generals who shared their opinion that the future of French rule depended on having a sizeable French population. ² This, they maintained, was the only way of ensuring a permanent French presence in the territory. Never as numerous as their counterparts in neighboring Algeria, Morocco’s European settlers numbered 325,000 in 1947, out of a total population of 8,505,000. ³ Throughout the colonial period, officials worried about the small size of the French population and sought to encourage a robust birth rate by offering generous funding to French families. During the interwar period the Residency took the first steps in that direction by creating the Office des Familles Nombreuses to administer modest family benefits and investigate potential new policies.

These efforts expanded during the Second World War when the Residential government in Morocco followed France’s lead in establishing a more comprehensive family policy than what had existed previously. In 1941 the Residency announced the establishment of the Office de la Famille Française (OFF), an administrative body legally separate from the Moroccan state whose purpose was to develop reforms aimed at assisting French families and increasing the French settler birth rate. The OFF disbursed a wide array of financial benefits that included marriage loans, prenatal stipends, breastfeeding stipends, and the single income allowance. ⁴ The OFF also provided funds that supplemented the family allowance system. ⁵ In a departure from France’s family policy, Morocco’s OFF funded these benefits in large part by the ‘familial compensation tax.’ Those required to pay this tax were French citizens who were unmarried and childless, as well as married couples who did not reproduce quickly enough. Avoiding this burdensome tax required that married couples produce a living child within two years of marriage and have two living children by their fifth wedding anniversary. ⁶ Pronatalist in inspiration, these benefits reflected the belief that every French citizen in the protectorate was responsible for the community’s population growth. Individuals could either contribute directly by producing adequate numbers of children, or indirectly through financial support of more prolific households. This thinking reflected the belief, long-held by pronatalists, that supporting families and contributing to population growth were collective responsibilities from which no individual was exempt.

From the beginning, Morocco’s family policy was designed to be racially exclusive and directed to the sole purpose of increasing the French settler population. French officials expected that the rich resources of the OFF would be restricted to those they considered to be French settlers of European or metropolitan origin. To that end, they required all French citizens to join the OFF so that they would either pay into the system or enjoy its benefits. They also made the OFF financially separate from the Moroccan state so they could justify not extending any benefits to the colonized Moroccan population. ⁷ Despite these steps, the OFF found it impossible to restrict access to European settlers following the war’s conclusion. Due to legal reforms coming from Paris, Algerians residing in Morocco were eligible to receive OFF funds beginning in 1946. French officials’ inability to work around these legal changes ultimately undid the racially-exclusive family policy they had tried to implement.

French officials’ concerns about Algerians receiving family benefits speaks to a larger challenge of colonial rule, one with which authorities throughout the empire struggled: controlling migration between and within colonies. In Morocco, as was the case elsewhere in the French Empire, populations were divided into separate legal categories defined by a combination of race, religion, and geography. This legal designation determined how an individual would be treated by the law, his or her freedom of movement, tax and military service obligations, and, for our purposes, access to family benefits. The legal apparatus that French authorities created depended on keeping each population in its designated place and upholding the boundaries between those populations. Though the lines between legal categories appeared rigid and impermeable on paper, the actual policing of such boundaries created numerous administrative headaches for French officials. In the case of North Africa, officials found their work frustrated by North African Jews and Muslims who crossed borders, often hoping to hide their true origins as they moved from one place to the next. One source of concern for officials in Algeria, for example, was the colony’s southern Jewish population who, unlike their counterparts in the north did not obtain French citizenship until 1961. According to Sarah Stein, this created a situation in which southern Jews sometimes tried to move north to assume the identity of a northern Algerian Jew and French citizen. ⁸

Like their counterparts in Algeria, French authorities in Morocco faced a similarly bewildering process of maintaining boundaries between separate populations. Often describing the border between Algeria and Morocco as ‘nonexistent’, French officials frequently expressed frustration at their inability to control the steady migration of Algerians into the protectorate. ⁹ Although Algerian immigration proved troublesome for French officials in Morocco, this migration had a long history that intensified with the upheavals of French imperialism in the region. The French invasion between 1830 and 1847 brought numerous Algerians across the border including many individuals who had resisted the French and were evading capture in Algeria, as well as pious Algerian Muslims who refused to submit to the authority of a Christian government. ¹⁰ After this initial influx of population, Algerians continued to arrive over the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Many were French-speaking and could more successfully obtain employment in the French administration than the local Moroccan population. These lucrative employment opportunities would ultimately prove to be short lived. ¹¹ Following the establishment of the French protectorate in 1912, growing numbers of French bureaucrats arrived, reducing demand for Francophone Algerians. Still, Algerian Muslims continued to come to Morocco in the years following the Great War, especially those who had served in the military. ¹² During the economic crisis of the 1930s, officials sought to minimize this migration by introducing the requirement that every immigrant arrive with a work contract. Such regulations were most easily circumvented in border cities such as Oujda and Algerian immigration to these localities steadily continued. ¹³

Algerian migration took on greater significance in 1944 when the Gaullist provisional government reformed the legal status of Algerian Muslims, designating them as Français musulmans d’Algérie or French Muslims from Algeria. This status, unique within the French empire, built on a complex series of laws in Algeria that determined citizenship, nationality, and rights for the colony’s Muslim population. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the French considered Algeria to be an extension of France and therefore fully assimilated into the metropole. Not only was Algeria considered ‘French’, so was its population. While this could suggest some level of unity and equality, the reality was that there were enormous distinctions between the legal rights of European settlers and those of the colonized population. French officials used terms such as European civil status, Mosaic civil status (for the Jewish population), and Koranic civil status (for the Muslim population) to define the legal identities of individuals. ¹⁴ Among other things, this meant that the European population was subject to French law whereas the Muslim and Jewish populations had separate law courts that ruled in civil matters. Concerning criminal law, there were also sharp differences between the respective populations. The ‘native code’ of 1881 codified what was already common practice in the colony by subjecting Algerian Muslims to a separate set of laws limiting their movement within the colony, punishing them for crimes and infractions for which Europeans were never charged, and institutionalizing racial discrimination. ¹⁵

These distinctions in civil status and law were codified with the Senatus Consultum of 1865. This ruling conferred French nationality to the Muslim population and, in a small minority of cases, introduced the possibility of citizenship to elite Muslim men willing to give up their local civil status, being subject to Koranic law. It is worth noting that relatively few qualifying Muslims pursued this option and even fewer had their applications approved. ¹⁶ Aside from the few exceptional cases, therefore, Algerian Muslims lacked French citizenship and the rights enjoyed by the European population. This unequal status was further reinforced in 1889 with a new nationality law facilitating the naturalization process, but only for settlers from Italy, Spain, and other European countries. Local interpretation of the nationality law held that Algerian Muslims could not gain French citizenship in this way because they already had official status in the colony and were not technically foreigners. ¹⁷ In addition to increasing the total number of ‘French’ citizens in the colony, the 1889 law made clear that French nationality was different from French citizenship which was restricted along racial and religious lines. As settlers closed ranks, they increasingly employed terms such as Français d’Algérie to define their privileged identity in the colony and distinguish themselves from the colonized Algerian population. ¹⁸

The actual significance of ‘French nationality’ for colonized Algerians is a question that has been debated by many scholars. The fact that French nationality did not automatically come with political rights and citizenship would seem to suggest that this designation was meaningless and made colonized Algerians hardly better off than colonized subjects elsewhere in the French Empire who were not legally ‘French’. However, as Todd Shepard has argued, despite the substantial limitations of this status, adult ‘Muslim’ men in Algeria did have, after 1865, a limited number of non-political rights that distinguished their legal status from that of most other colonized peoples. ¹⁹ The legal standing of Algerian ‘Muslims’ within the French Empire was further modified in 1944 when the Gaullist provisional government of Algiers passed an ordinance declaring that the Français musulmans d’Algérie (French Muslims of Algeria), as they were now officially called, could have full political rights while maintaining their local civil status, in other words remaining subject to their own, Koranic, law courts. This measure was subsequently bolstered by a law coming from France in 1946 affirming that all Algerians with local status were French citizens. ²⁰ Both measures stemmed from a series of postwar attempts to stabilize France’s position in the empire by redefining its relationship with its colonies and colonized peoples. ²¹

Although the term ‘citizen’ implies equal status, Frederick Cooper reminds us that ‘the Constitution of 1946 referred to the ‘peoples and nations’ of the French Union – in the plural – and…it recognized that overseas citizens, within the Republic, could be citizens in different ways.’ ²² It was due to this plurality of types of citizenship that the actual meaning of this legal status in the case of Français musulmans d’Algérie was hazy and subject to variable interpretation, depending on location. ²³ While French settlers in Algeria did their best to bar any extension of rights to ‘Muslims’ in the colony, those Algerian Muslims who resided in France ‘enjoyed all the rights attached to the quality of French citizenship.’ ²⁴ Therefore, it was generally outside of Algeria that this new legal status had the most meaning, often setting Français musulmans d’Algérie apart from other colonized peoples in terms of rights and opportunities. The distinction between Français musulmans d’Algérie and colonized Moroccans in Morocco was particularly evident because the latter qualified for a range of family benefits denied to local Moroccans. Because Morocco was a protectorate, a sovereign state whose Sultan was under the protection of the French flag, Moroccans were neither French nationals nor French citizens.

The legal reforms of 1944 and 1946 undermined previous efforts to develop a racially exclusive family policy in Morocco that would encourage settler population growth, but not that of rival populations in the protectorate. Much to the consternation of French officials, once these laws went into effect, there was no legal way to deny family benefits to Algerians residing in Morocco. These changes led officials to begin using a new vocabulary when discussing family policy, one that mirrored larger efforts in the French administration to move beyond the defunct language of imperialism. ²⁵ Henceforth, in the records of the OFF there were two different types of French citizens: the Français de métropole deemed worthy of family benefits, and the Français musulmans d’Algérie, whom officials considered to be unjustly receiving benefits due to a ruling originating in Paris. ²⁶ OFF discussions on the matter emphasized the significant number of Algerians already in Morocco who, having large families, would qualify for these benefits. They feared that the lure of such generous funds would only bring more Algerians across the border, thereby exacerbating what they considered an existing problem. They also expected numerous fraudulent applications that would further add to the strain on the OFF budget. ²⁷ The OFF ultimately could not avoid paying out benefits to Algerian families entirely. They did, however, try to get around this issue by introducing new requirements designed to disqualify certain Algerian applicants. ²⁸ In a further attempt to minimize payments to Algerians, French administrators made the bureaucratic process more complicated for Algerian applicants than for the Français de métropole. ²⁹

Concerns about Algerians crossing the border and accessing OFF funds were felt most acutely in the border town of Oujda with its sizeable Algerian population. Once the 1944 legal reforms went into effect, the Association Familial Française in Oujda took the unusual step of allowing Français musulmans d’Algérie to join and hold leadership positions within the organization. Initially this practice did not seem to attract the attention of French officials. However, the mood changed in 1947 when a Muslim majority was elected to Oujda’s AFF administrative council. This prompted the authorities to step in the following January, dissolve the council, and demand new elections. ³⁰ The subsequent February 1948 elections proved particularly contentious as voters and candidates divided themselves into two camps. One camp supported a man listed in the records as ‘Hug’. The rest supported the president-elect Georges Marchal, a presumed communist and outspoken advocate of Algerian rights. In the end, Marchal’s presidency was confirmed with several of his supporters elected to the administrative council. ³¹ His opponents immediately contested the results of the election arguing that there had been widespread fraud. This outrage was shared by the regional Civil Controller Brunel who viewed the election as both illegal and a communist takeover. As evidence of election irregularities and fraudulent voting, Brunel reported to his superiors that while only 272 Français musulmans d’Algérie were listed on the electoral lists for 1948, Français musulmans d’Algérie nevertheless constituted most of the region’s 1072 voters. Brunel also stated that it was suspicious that many of the Français musulmans d’Algérie who voted were newly arrived in Morocco. In what Brunel described as a ‘demagogical maneuver’, Marchal allegedly recruited them from Algeria to build his support base and ensure his own victory. ³² In his report, Brunel stated that the AFF had become ‘one of the bastions of the communist party in Oujda’ that served as platform for recruiting Algerian troops. ³³

As investigations continued over the summer, Brunel recommended that the regional council in Oujda be disbanded due to election irregularities and the general sense that Marchal was using this organization for these other, illicit, purposes. Following Brunel’s urging, the Fédération des Associations Familiales Françaises (the central organization representing all family organizations in Morocco) investigated further. Concerned that what happened in Oujda could be replicated elsewhere, they wanted to determine if Muslims were serving in administrative councils of other such family organizations elsewhere in Morocco. ³⁴ This underlying fear of an Algerian infiltration into the heart of French family associations, led the Federation to rule that Algerian Muslims could not hold office in this organization. Though eligible as citizens and married heads of household, the Algerian members of the AFF were deemed ineligible for voting or holding office because they were not in full possession of their civic rights. This conclusion, that in the months ahead Marchal would challenge, referred to the fact that in Algeria, French Muslims did not vote in the same college as the settlers. French Muslims’ voting status in Algeria, interpreted as evidence of their different or secondary type of French citizenship, was therefore used to deny them the right to hold office or vote in AFF elections in Morocco.

Also under AFF investigation was the amount of OFF money disbursed to Algerian families. Brunel alleged that most of the Français musulmans d’Algérie in Oujda did not have regular employment or pay taxes. They instead supported themselves through contraband and on the black market. Moreover, as most had large families, they generally received family benefits and were exempt from paying the family compensation tax that funded the OFF. It was allegedly the promise of this lucrative source of income that Marchal had used to lure them to Morocco in the first place. Officials concluded that of the 1715 families receiving family benefits in the region, the majority were Algerian. Some 70 per cent of the money spent on families was disbursed to Algerians. ³⁵ Not surprisingly, this finding was deeply concerning to OFF and AFF leaders alike who believed that French settler families should be the primary beneficiaries of these pronatalist programs. As we have seen, these types of concerns were not new. Beginning in 1944, officials expressed fears that due to a combination of large family sizes and irregular employment, few Algerians would pay into the system, but most would benefit from the money that French households paid in taxes. The situation in Oujda in 1948 merely confirmed what they had long feared would happen.

Ultimately, this election led to considerable scrutiny of the Algerian population in Oujda. The administration’s response included introducing new eligibility requirements that had the effect of reducing the number of Algerians who could qualify for certain benefits. For instance, on 31 May 1948, the residency announced that the allocation de la mère au foyer would be replaced by an allocation de salaire unique. This development was not surprising in that it followed earlier changes in metropolitan France’s family policy replacing the stay at home mother’s allowance with the single income allowance. However, what made this development contentious in Oujda in 1948 was the new requirement that only salaried positions qualified for the allowance. ³⁶ Marchal argued that adding this requirement represented an attempt to reduce the number of Algerian Muslims, many of whom were wage-earning, who received the benefit. ³⁷ Whether this revision of the law was introduced specifically to reduce the number of Français musulamans d’Algérie who could qualify for these benefits, or simply to follow the metropole’s example, is hard to determine. What is clear is that critics such as Georges Marchal presented this revision as a deliberate effort on the part of the administration to trample on the rights of Français musulmans d’Algérie. This claim resonated in a period in which issues concerning the rights of citizens in the empire to claim welfare state benefits were particularly contentious.

There are many reasons why elections to a seemingly innocuous entity such as the AFF council were controversial enough to warrant this level of investigation and ultimately intervention on the part of the authorities. First, the AFF had official, state recognition (reconnue d’utilité publique). Marchal made the claim that it was the only such organization in Morocco with both that status and a majority Muslim membership. ³⁸ The association also had considerable influence as the main organization in the area representing heads of French families. The AFF lobbied on behalf of French family interests and worked closely with the local branch of the OFF in disbursing benefits and developing policy. The president of the AFF in each region also served on the administrative council of the OFF. In other words, members of the council had considerable influence locally; the president was in a position of influence over the entire OFF administration in the protectorate. To French officials it was problematic that such an influential organization was dominated, in one sense or another by Algerians who, though French citizens, were not truly recognized as such.

The official response to these contested elections can also be traced to ongoing concerns about the Moroccan-Algerian border. In 1948, the correspondence between local officials in Oujda and the Residency in Rabat was replete with references to officials’ inability to monitor or control the flow of individuals across the border, whether that meant Algerian Muslims crossing into Morocco or Moroccan Jews heading to Israel via Oujda. There was a general sense that the border was more mythical than real, and that illegal border crossings were the cause of many local problems. In the Bulletin de Renseignements, a bimonthly report written by the local Civil Controller, Civil Controllers Azam and Brunel alleged that many of the Algerians crossing the border were troublemakers, often communists or nationalists, escaping the authorities in their own country. ³⁹ Moreover, many sought to use their privileged position as Français musulmans d’Algérie to gain, sometimes fraudulently, benefits to which they were not entitled at home. ⁴⁰ They alleged that this population was responsible for many conflicts developing in the region, including with the local Jewish population. As an example, in the summer of 1948 when official investigation into the Marchal affair was ongoing, there was a pogrom in Oujda and the neighboring town of Djérada. These violent riots resulted in the deaths of 47 Jewish people and one French settler, and caused considerable property damage. ⁴¹ Recent scholarship indicates that the pogrom stemmed from tensions surrounding Moroccan Jews crossing the border via Oujda, to settle in Israel and potentially take up arms in the Arab-Israeli War. Less clear than the causes of the pogrom are the facts concerning who instigated the violence, whether it was pre-planned or spontaneous, and whether French authorities took reasonable steps to restore order promptly. French officials at the time suggested that among those responsible for the pogrom were Algerian Muslims, transported in from the Algerian town of Marnia just prior to the attacks. ⁴² While evidence supporting this allegation is tenuous, the fact that officials drew such a conclusion is consistent with their general tendency to blame many problems on the border and Algerians who crossed it.

In addition to keeping tabs on the local Algerian population, French officials in Oujda kept local communists under close surveillance. In Morocco in 1948, the powerful faction of settlers who dominated political affairs were on average right wing, and some sources even label them ‘Vichyite’, a reference to the French government that collaborated with the German occupiers during the Second World War and from which postwar republican governments sought to distance themselves. Influential settlers by and large opposed many of the postwar ideas of colonial reform coming from Paris that threatened their powerful position within the protectorate. ⁴³ These settlers were generally influential enough to bring down resident generals who were reformist. It was this group who, in 1947, blocked Resident General Labonne’s attempts to put more money into social programs for Moroccans; he was soon recalled to Paris. His successor, the Algerian-born General Juin, was much more conservative politically, less interested in colonial reforms, and therefore much more to the liking of the settler lobby. ⁴⁴ In the early 1950s, this strong right-wing tendency to settler politics would lead to ‘counter-terrorist’ attacks on left-wing Frenchmen as well as numerous deportations of liberal Frenchmen. ⁴⁵ Throughout this period, communists, whether French, Algerian, or Moroccan, were considered dangerous to the colonial order. While this was consistent with the growing hostility to communists in France that led to that party’s ouster from the government in 1947, there was a specifically colonial dimension to suspicion directed at communists in 1948 Morocco. In Oujda, French communists were often accused of recruiting Moroccans and Algerians to their cause, distributing tracts that were anti-French or critical of the Residency, associating with Moroccan and Algerian nationalist groups such as Istiqlal and the Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA), and fomenting revolt. ⁴⁶ Officials attended their meetings, monitored their activities, and censored their publications (such as Les Tablettes Marocaines). According to Brunel, the Oujda region was a particularly volatile place for communist activity due to the large number of Spanish communists coming from the Spanish zone to work in the Djérada mines and Algerians crossing the border after running afoul of authorities in their homeland. ⁴⁷ Georges Marchal was far from an isolated case of a French communist in Oujda clashing with the authorities. What made his case more noteworthy was that he was accused of using the family association, perceived as an apolitical organization formed to serve the whole community, to build up his own power, spread communism, and undermine the regime with anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Marchal was not the kind of person to walk away quietly after being removed from his position of president and witnessing the dissolution of the organization he once led. His response to the events of 1948 was to challenge the overturned election results, the new voting requirements that specifically excluded Algerians, and the new requirements for the allocation de salaire unique. His attempt to reinstate the election results were unsuccessful, though he irritated officials by continuing to be influential locally and using the title of president, even after he had been removed from that position. Brunel claimed that in so doing Marchal was creating a ‘difficult climate’. ⁴⁸ Moreover, officials continued to worry that he was stirring up trouble among Algerians, spreading communism among this population and appealing to anti-French nationalist aspirations. Deemed particularly inflammatory was a manifesto he wrote and distributed to a local Algerian organization, entitled ‘Appeal to the French Muslims of Algeria for the Defense of their Right to Association.’ ⁴⁹

In this document Marchal appealed to Algerian Muslims as well as to like-minded Frenchmen who agreed that colonial reform was urgently needed. Situating his own conflict with the administration within the larger context of France’s tentative efforts at redefining its relationship with the empire, Marchal opened his essay with a statement that Brunel found to be especially incendiary.

Defeat alone can compel the evolution of institutions in a France paralyzed by egotism. The previous conflict’s disastrous beginnings revealed, among other things, that the current political and social status of French Muslims must be adapted to the new order. The lesson of 1940 obligates private interests to loosen their grip. It is evident that safeguarding what used to be the empire requires urgent reforms. ⁵⁰

Marchal went on to explain that although this urgent need for reform was evident and undertaken in small, hesitant steps during the war, this process had been reversed in the postwar period due to the obstinate, entrenched interests of the settler lobby. ‘Through a slow and hypocritical effort, the masters of North Africa are trying to reinstate the previous order, in other words reproducing the circumstances that led to the crisis of 1940.’ ⁵¹ According to Marchal, these failures were most evident in the way the state dissolved the AFF council simply because it had many Muslims who had been elected. He went on to remind his readers of the legal reforms introduced in 1944 extending new rights to Morocco’s French Muslim population. This meant that the state’s decision to bar Muslims from full participation in the AFF, effectively denying them their right to association, was illegal. ⁵²

Speaking more directly to the concerns that first prompted official investigation of the AFF, Marchal argued that the French had nothing to fear from Algerians participating in the organization and being elected to leadership positions. He painted a picture of a very peaceful organization, one in which Muslims and non-Muslims worked together to protect the rights of everyone. Collaborating in the interest of the entire population, Muslims and non-Muslims had endeavored to simplify the complicated bureaucratic procedures that plagued the OFF and hindered many individuals’ efforts to get the benefits to which they were entitled. Ultimately, he concluded, Algerian Muslims had not used their superior numbers to push out non-Muslims or develop an anti-French or Algerian nationalist campaign. His conclusion was that the AFF remained committed to its original purpose, supporting families and lobbying on their behalf. The organization had not deviated from its official role by, as alleged, spreading communism, furthering the cause of Algerian nationalism, or challenging the French state.

Civil Controller Brunel’s response to this manifesto is revealing of why someone like Marchal represented such a threat. References to his communist leanings and attempts to spread communism among the Algerian population repeatedly surface in the correspondence. Moreover, Brunel claimed that Marchal’s main motive in all of this was power. He was in effect needlessly stirring up trouble with Algerians so he could use them to build his own position. According to Brunel, Marchal wrote this document solely because he was worried about losing his support base once Algerians could no longer vote. His agitation for the rights of Algerians was just a ruse for his own attempts to build up his personal power and spread communism. ⁵³

Beyond the evident hostility to communism and sense that Marchal was acting out of self-interest, Brunel’s report on the essay contained more serious accusations. Brunel labeled Marchal’s essay ‘seditious’ and argued that, coming from a Frenchman, this language demonstrated a ‘complete scorn for basic sentiments of patriotism’. ⁵⁴ Marchal’s manifesto challenged the colonial state with its discussion of Algerian Muslims’ unequal treatment, despite being French citizens. For instance, he discussed his Oujda association’s efforts to expose all the excessive formalities and bureaucratic procedures that existed solely to make it difficult for those who had rights to family benefits to receive these funds: namely impoverished Muslims. His organization had made it their goal to fight back against these procedures. Moreover, he connected the issue of family benefits to larger questions about rights. He alleged that the state’s decision to effectively rescind the right to association of Algerians by denying their participation in AFF elections was ultimately an anti-Algerian policy and a return to the pre-war practice of exclusion and discriminatory laws. He appealed to Frenchmen and Algerian Muslims to fight against the government’s attempts to deprive people of their rights. The fact that it was a Frenchman who wrote this essay asserting the rights of Algerians, criticizing the colonial state, and issuing a call to action, was what Brunel found to be most objectionable and dangerous. Brunel criticized Marchal for breaking ranks by taking these criticisms to the Algerian population directly, and encouraging them to fight for their rights, instead of working through more appropriate channels. Brunel expressed fears that Marchal’s essay was likely to stir up trouble with Algerians, arguing that the rhetoric it contained was right in line with PPA propaganda. ⁵⁵

By the end of 1948 the Marchal affair had quieted down and Marchal himself faded from the archival record. In the fall of that year, French officials continued to report on Marchal’s activities, including information that he appealed to one of Algeria’s deputies, Ahmed Mekki-Bezzeghoud, encouraging the latter to stand up for the rights of his people. Though a proponent of expanding Algerian rights, Mekki reportedly declined to get involved, stating that this was a Moroccan problem and not his concern. The final report, in October of 1948, stated that Marchal had fled to France to ‘escape the consequences of his actions’. ⁵⁶ This simplistic explanation of how the scandal came to be resolved strains credulity. Considering Marchal’s record of activism and confrontations with the Residency, it is hard to imagine that he somehow reversed his position, regretted his actions, and voluntarily left. What is more likely is that he either fled after feeling threatened or, even possibly, was forced to leave. Unfortunately, the archival records do not tell us how Marchal’s personal story ends and he remains a mysterious figure in this larger history of Algerian migration and family policy. The only subsequent reference to Marchal appears in December of 1949 when Civil Controller Azam reported that the Oujda AFF, having been disbanded after a communist takeover, was reconstituted under the leadership of a provisional president named Rigail. ⁵⁷

Behind the obscure history of one, largely unknown figure in history, nevertheless sits a much more important story that reveals many of the tensions shaping Morocco’s political situation in 1948. The Marchal Affair demonstrates how the sense of rights and entitlements associated with family benefits positioned seemingly unimportant organizations such as the AFF at the very center of intersecting colonial conflicts. French settlers, in collaboration with their government, developed a family policy and formed the AFF to strengthen French colonial rule, support French families, and encourage a more robust birthrate. In practice, however, they could not restrict family policy to these narrowly-conceived goals. In just a short span of a few years, cracks appeared in the system as the metropole introduced new legislation reforming its relationship with the empire and extending a new legal status to Algerian Muslims. Henceforth, the long tradition of Algerians migrating to Morocco took on new significance as Français musulmans d’Algérie were now eligible to benefit from Morocco’s extensive system of benefits supporting French families. French officials in Morocco were perhaps loath to pay out such benefits to Algerians or allow their participation in the family administration; yet they found that it was politically unwise to attempt to deny Algerian families financial support or the right to lead family associations in defending their interests. At this point in time, many French, whether in France or North Africa, considered support of families to be a government responsibility and right of citizens. The well-established pronatalist language of family rights, originally geared towards strengthening France’s position in the world, had now become a language that could be used to challenge the colonial state. Looking at family policy therefore enlarges our understanding of many of the social conflicts defining interactions between different categories of citizens (or subjects) and the state at a point in time when these legal categories were undergoing numerous revisions, as was France’s very relationship with its empire. In this case, the conflict was centered in the Association Famille Française, an organization that was founded to strengthen France’s position in the empire. Instead, officials feared, it served to promote communism, bring Algerians across the border, and challenge French rule with a new platform for demanding rights for colonized people.