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45 Chapter 2 The Break with the PCF and Dissension within the Ranks, 1950–53 As the Cold War escalated in France and abroad, government repression against the RDA intensified. This persecution resulted in two contradictory conclusions by party members. On the one hand, the simultaneous crackdown on French communists and African RDA members seemed to reinforce their common interests and support the communist claim that only a government dominated by the PCF could bring about African emancipation. On the other hand, with the PCF out of power and cast as treasonous, the RDA was hindered rather than helped by its parliamentary alliance. In fact, during the repression of 1947–51, the National Assembly passed almost no Africa-related reforms. Based on knowledge gleaned from Parisian political circles, RDA parliamentarians increasingly believed that repression against the RDA was the result of the party’s ties to French communists and that those ties had to be severed to save the movement.1 Hoping to salvage the organization, RDA parliamentarians urged the party to abandon its communist connections. While the Guinean RDA ultimately complied with the interterritorial directive, its break with the PCF caused serious dissension within the ranks. At the local level, rank-and-file militants repudiated the decision of the interterritorial and territorial leaders. Local leftists cried foul, and mass resignations ensued. The cleavage threatened to destroy the party. Skeptical of the Guinean RDA’s avowedly centrist stance, the government continued its campaign against the party. This chapter explores the relationship of the PCF and the Guinean RDA during the tumultuous years 1950–53, as well as dissension within the RDA ranks. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. 46 The Break with the PCF and Dissension within the Ranks The Divorce of the RDA and the PCF Government repression against the RDA had been justified largely by the RDA’s communist affiliations. In 1950, after three years of official harassment, some party leaders argued that the RDA-PCF alliance should be abandoned, destroying the administration’s main pretext for acting against the party. The RDA’s interterritorial president, Ivory Coast Deputy Félix Houphouët-Boigny, was the primary proponent of this view. The strongest voice of opposition came from the interterritorial secretary-general, Gabriel d’Arboussier.2 The split reflected both generational and class cleavages. The Houphouët-Boigny faction included most of the party’s territorial leaders, who tended to be older and relatively well established in intellectual professions. In contrast, students, youths, and trade unionists—groups with overlapping constituencies—were deeply influenced by the anti-imperialism of the GECs; they tended to support the d’Arboussier faction .3 In Guinea, grassroots activists generally were more radical than their territorial leaders, although many of the latter adhered to the d’Arboussier line—at least initially. Houphouët-Boigny’s position crystallized during the brutal crackdown on the RDA in the Ivory Coast. The campaign to reassert French colonial authority had begun on Houphouët-Boigny’s home turf. If the government could shatter the RDA at its base, officials concluded, it could destroy communist in- fluence throughout the rest of the continent.4 In his campaign against “communism ,” Overseas Minister Coste-Floret had appointed as territorial governors several staunch opponents of the RDA. In February 1948, he instructed his new Ivory Coast appointee, “You are going there to suppress the RDA.”5 Between 1947 and 1950, hundreds of RDA cadres in the Ivory Coast and some of the leadership were injured or killed by the colonial government and its African collaborators. Thousands more were imprisoned. Houphouët-Boigny himself was forced to seek refuge in the forest among his Baule kin, and RDA meetings were temporarily outlawed.6 According to Guinean RDA activist, Bocar Biro Barry, the interterritorial president wished to sever ties with the PCF before all the RDA cadres in French West Africa were liquidated.7 While Houphouët-Boigny clearly was concerned about the party’s survival , his position also was influenced by the class base of the Ivorian RDA. In contrast to Guinea, where the RDA was led by civil servants and trade unionists , the Ivorian RDA was dominated by African planters and chiefs—powerful groups with intersecting memberships. Discriminatory policies in favor of French planters...

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