Algerian Independence and the British Left

Solidarities and Resistance in a Decolonising World

Mélanie Torrent

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788318426
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Based on archives from governments, parties, organisations and individuals, this book investigates the relationship between the British left and Algerian liberation movements during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). It explores the presence of representatives of the Mouvement national algérien (MNA) and the Front de libération nationale (FLN) in London, where they actively sought support for peace, independence from France and the global end of European domination. By surveying their interactions with individuals and groups in the anticolonial left, including prominent Labour MPs, and Trotskyist groups, Asian and African associations and students' unions, Torrent shows how and why solidarity was interpreted differently across the left, and in relation to Britain's own end-of-empire conflicts.

Tracing connections across Europe and beyond, this book demonstrates how the war influenced conceptions of socialism, communism and internationalism in Britain, what being European meant, and what place the Commonwealth should have in a world where armed struggle and liberation diplomacy disrupted boundaries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms
• List of illustrations
• A note on aims, sources and terms
• Introduction
• 1 Putting Algeria on the anticolonial map: North Africa and the politics of empire in post-war Britain
• 2 Algeria in anticolonial and peace networks in Britain: Self-determination, world security and early appraisals of Algerian nationalist movements
• 3 Searching for socialism under Guy Mollet: French socialists, Algerian nationalists and a divided British left
• 4 A world of military force?: France, Algeria and Labour’s internationalist policies at the time of Suez
• 5 Labour and Algeria’s first unofficial diplomats in Britain: Testing anticolonial ideas, practices and networks
• 6 ‘No longer domestic’: Labour activism and the British debate for rights, peace and justice in Algeria
• 7 Democracy under threat?: The British left and the Algerian birth of the Fifth Republic
• 8 Meeting the FLN in Africa: New international forces, new Labour perspectives?
• 9 Beyond the politics of war?: H-bomb protests, refugee relief and the limits of anticolonialism in British society
• 10 Algeria in the Year of Africa: Winds of change for the British left?
• 11 Individual freedoms and collective security: Reassessing violence and diplomacy at the end of empire
• 12 Independence at long last: A victory for socialism?
• 13 After Algeria’s independence: Perspectives and limits of a Labour government in waiting
• Conclusion
• Sources
• Index
• Copyright